A person can easily survive 21 days without food. But, by the end of the first week, their body is getting the brain to obsessively think about food and to repress any thoughts such as “you can’t do that” if that stops them getting food.

The first day, the power goes out. Within 24-48hrs, most people will be thinking of trying to get fresh food. Within a week, I’d guess a majority will have run out of food. Within a month almost everyone will run out.

As soon as it is possible to move, people will be at the shops trying to get fresh food. A week after they run out, they will be breaking into any building with a potential for food.

That includes the police … who will be amongst the worst offenders. Because they know the law is made up, and they know that if they aren’t enforcing the law, no one is. So, once the police start grabbing food, all the police will be grabbing food … before the public have the chance to get it from them.

In large cities, which import all their food, where in normal times, it is easy to get food, and where accommodation space is a premium, so they don’t have the space for large stocks of food “just in case”, I give it a week till every shop is cleared out, and houses being systematically looted for food.

In rural towns and villages, it could take a month or two. Indeed, in farming areas, where they have an excess of edible food for the local needs, law and order may be retained. That is, until the city dwellers start spilling out.

Without modern infrastructure, people cannot live in cities. So those there will either die or move out.

But, whilst the farm land around cities can easily provide for the people who live there, using modern cheap-energy fertilisers, machinery, etc. They are intensive agriculture usually focussed on one product. Some like cows are edible. Others like trees are not. So, some farming areas, despite huge potential to grow crops, will have no food, because everything they are producing is the wrong things to eat. Other areas will do very well.

People will be moving to the country, as soon as there is any warning of a nuclear war. And, they will continue moving after.  The country is going to have a mass of immigrants, who have no food, and many areas of the country will also have no means to produce food.

People will initially move out along the main roads. Then they will take lesser roads. So, some parts of the countryside will be swamped by incomers. Others, at the very end of obscure country roads, will see none.

Without modern infrastructure, modern infrastructure cannot be repaired, so restarting everything is not going to be easy and will take a very long time. Farmers will quickly run out of fuel for their machinery. They won’t have the tools to harvest manually. What food there is that could be harvested, will very likely, largely go to waste, because there just is not the means to harvest it. So, a temporary glut, then because there is no storage for the food, that glut is followed by the rest of the year without food

Government

At some point, some people will try to recreate “government”. Their first objective in doing this, is to create a legitimacy for their own acquisition of food.

However, the UK will be economically fucked, to put it politely. We start with a massive debt, no doubt any government insane enough to take us to war will increase that much further. And, then, overnight, the ability to repay that debt will disappear, and so too will the willingness of anyone to trade goods with the UK. That means no food coming in!

This will all happen at a time when the war that leads to the “total strike” on the UK means every other country is suffering a lapse in confidence and economic problems of their own. There might be an odd boat sent as “relief” to salve the conscience of a few countries with strong historic ties to the UK, but the amount sent will be a drop in the ocean of need.

Government works if there is a reason for people to have government. And, unless it can supply food, national government is going to be irrelevant. Which means that government, as far as it goes, will develop amongst those communities which have food, largely to protect their food from others.

That situation will probably last 2-3months. After which a majority of people who survived the total strike itself, will have died from starvation. As huge numbers die, at that point, demand and supply start to come closer and those with a surplus of food, will find it expedient to trade for whatever those without food can offer them. Once trade begins, government has something to govern.

I would guess the first vestiges of real government will begin about 6months after a nuclear exchange. That’s 2-3 months of total chaos and millions dying. Then some months to stabilise, then a few months to create a new governmental structure.

I would guess maybe 70-95% of the population will survive till the end of the first week. But, by the sixth month point only 10-20% will still be living (that figure is “gut feeling” for what UK agriculture, without any time or resources to transform could feed). Almost all of those will be in the country. Cities will be ghost towns.

As such, government will begin again in large rural towns. That is where the economy is going to start growing again. Cities will be devoid of  most economic activity although for several generations, cities will become the raw-material resources of smaller rural towns. In other words, they will be largely devoid of population except those scavenging from the buildings. Only cities with intrinsic utility … such as a key transport link such as a usable bridge over a major river or a port, will begin to regrow again from those key points – and obviously hugely dependent on whether their bridge(s) survive. A place like Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester may utterly disappear from the map.

Conclusion

This scenario is for a “total strike” that makes the UK militarily impotent and unable to fire nukes. It doesn’t necessitate any nukes are fired at Britain. Britain is a hugely densely over-populated country that will suffer more than most if the economy flatlines and food imports cease. In countries which grow far more of their own food, using less intensive (import consuming) agriculture, the effects of a total strike will be far less. But, the UK is particularly vulnerable to that scenario.

Food is human fuel … once that runs out, the economy flat lines, because no one is going to be working if they do not have food. And, once the economy flat lines, there is no way to import food. The UK agricultural sector is not set up to supply UK people with food. It is a money making business reliant on other countries. You can’t feed a population on a wheat field, until the wheat is harvested. You cannot harvest the wheat without fuel for the combines. So, there will be no food, and then there will be no harvest. And then there still will be no food. The UK is therefore extremely vulnerable to a “total strike”, especially if it were nuclear which would cause the global economy to shudder, making it unlikely we get help.

Without power, there is no means to store food, so any food that has a yearly crop, will largely go to waste. Without fuel, agriculture and food processing disappears. But, we lack the means to do it manually.

I am now firmly convinced, that the only course that anyone should follow in this scenario, is to get out of the UK FAST. There is no place globally that is more vulnerable. The UK is incapable of handling this scenario.

Sorry, if this is depressing, but it is my best prediction of what would happen to the UK.

But, it gets worse. Looking at what happened during covid … an ordinary flu bug, we can see the UK “elite” are particularly psychotic. They ignored the problem completely (Jan-Mar), then they completely over-reacted, then they did the EXACT OPPOSITE of what was required (the lockup, which focussed the epidemic amongst those who had to go and see doctors). That was a normal winter flu bug. They were systemically incapable of coping and now refuse to learn any lessons from their monumental disaster of a response … for a simple flu bug.

Now scale up that disaster 1000x …

• 1000x the lies,
• 1000x the censorship
• 1000x the state oppression
• 1000x the fear,
• 1000x the doing the wrong thing and doing it harder and faster.

The behaviour during covid over a simple bug, was bad enough, but there is little doubt the same sought of denial, overreaction, totalitarianism then coverup will occur … and people will see it and government will lose all credibility and cease to exist. People, facing a real problem, not a winter bug, will just ignore anyone who tries to claim to be the psychotic “government”. The UK government is the worst possible example of the breed that we could have in an emergency.

Due to population density and an inability to grow our own food and reliance on technology, the UK is more vulnerable than any other country, yet as covid proves, the people “running us” are psychotic liars who will not respond, and then do the opposite of what is needed. There is not a lot of hope in this scenario.

The only option, if it looks even vaguely likely, is to get out.