> We can outsmart, and have repeatedly outsmarted, all sorts of potential disasters.
Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions, and is all but certain to happen again.
Geologically speaking, the 20th century was pretty quiet. In the 21st century we've already had two tsunamis (including the 2nd or 3rd biggest earthquake), and the Tonga volcanic eruption, which was fortunately below sea level, but still likely the second loudest noise in human history after Krakatoa, and Eyjafjallajökull which had the potential for volcanic smog but fortunately didn't happen.
We're overdue a Cascadia mega-thrust earthquake which would have "interesting" repercussions for the tech industry, given how much of it is based on the US west coast.
I agree with your point though, we've largely progressed through normal seasonal issues with crops, and dramatically improved yields via science.
The main difference between now and 1315 is the amount of calories we get from meat. When we have a food shortage, farmers can't afford to feed their cattle so they sell them, depressing the price of beef. Rich people eat more beef, and poor people eat cattle feed.
What really causes starvation is a shortage of shipping. Shipping wheat from Thunder Bay to Egypt requires a lot more ships than shipping from Odessa to Egypt.
Thus, we better get over our dependency of oil before the next food disaster hits.
(A volcanic winter would be quite bad for solar too. I don't know how fast we can scale fission in a disaster scenario, but I think it's our best hope. We should keep improving our fission tech too.)
Another big virtual stockpile is ethanol. If the price of corn rises, less of it will be converted into ethanol. But if the price of oil rises faster than the price of gas...
It is sort of interesting -- in the US, we waste about 30%-40% of our food, so there's clearly enough food that we should be able to capture some excess (possibly changing our diets slightly, to make sure to eat stuff that spoils quickly and save stuff which can be made shell stable). Say we can only capture 1/4 of it, so, we stockpile ~a country's worth of food per decade. This seems like the most obvious possible thing for a people that has already met it's needs to do -- prepare for an emergencies. But we've never seen a famine like this, so we probably won't prepare for it.
Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions, and is all but certain to happen again.
Geologically speaking, the 20th century was pretty quiet. In the 21st century we've already had two tsunamis (including the 2nd or 3rd biggest earthquake), and the Tonga volcanic eruption, which was fortunately below sea level, but still likely the second loudest noise in human history after Krakatoa, and Eyjafjallajökull which had the potential for volcanic smog but fortunately didn't happen.
We're overdue a Cascadia mega-thrust earthquake which would have "interesting" repercussions for the tech industry, given how much of it is based on the US west coast.
I agree with your point though, we've largely progressed through normal seasonal issues with crops, and dramatically improved yields via science.