Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
The real trouble will be with storms, and especially hurricanes. Normally a major hurricane draws in repair crews from a radius of several hundred miles, but with half the number of crews available, plus the danger and disrepair of most highways, it’s unlikely any crews will be traveling any distance, so the power outages from hurricanes will last for weeks or months.

That means even more shortages, more fatalities from lack of medical care, and more violence from armed gangs and generalized crime. If more than one hurricane hits the same area in the same season, the power outages could be permanent if infrastructure can’t be replaced—and since most hurricane-prone areas have inadequate evacuation plans, residents will be at risk whether they stay or try to leave.
That raises another question: when did the Snap take place, calendar-wise? Spider-man FFH mentions they had already taken midterms, there’s no snow on the ground, Peter’s apparently still in school, so spring?

Assuming that’s the case, northern hemisphere planting is going to be impacted, but depending on when the Snap occurred either it hasn’t happened yet or is in progress (and would probably need to be re-seeded in the latter case, given that half the seedlings would have been snapped).

Fruit trees are going to be impossible to replace in that time frame and some species may not end up getting back up to capacity until Dr. Banner snaps everything back, because of how long they take to grow them. (Google says 6 to 10 years for apple trees to produce fruit, 3 to 5 for orange.)

Beef is going to be hard to come by, chicken meat the poultry farms might be able to cheat a little. Fish is a little fuzzier; apparently shrimp grow to edible size in 3-4 weeks (!) but salmon and such take longer. So, depends on the species.

Tentatively, if I was a major government, I would buy, rent, or otherwise get ahold of as much farmland as possible to grow peas, beans, lettuce and anything else that grows fast, and pray for a long growing season to try and get two crops in for the first year. Farms for non-food substances (ex: tobacco) would be converted to food farms where possible.