Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Could Ireland survive without importing anything?

Options
1246710

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 422 ✭✭teediddlyeye


    This

    Lawlessness, famine and killings in a matter of weeks.

    Assuming any oil reserves stored overseas would be seized by wherever they're stored (wouldn'tblame them either tbh). Whatever you have in the tank and whatever you're willing to pay/fight for at the local forecourt is all you're getting.

    Assume every home heating tank will be raided almost instantly as well!

    Big lol at the "we'll just have steak and milk", how does a modern farmer reliant on diesel power for everything do anything without fuel? Genuine question, does everyone have a donkey and cart on standby? Do we have that many donkeys and carts? There'll be fights over them as well!

    Can't go back to everything non mechanised at the flick of a switch, be like asking someone at Space X to work on a Saturn V!

    "I never thought I was normal, never tried to be normal."- Charlie Manson



  • Registered Users Posts: 21,064 ✭✭✭✭dxhound2005


    When a country is part of the EU there is no need. We all look after each other in times of emergency. Switzerland should join.



  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 10,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    Ya, maybe you should learn a bit more about the EU's competences and indeed if you are that interested the Swiss bilateral agreement with the EU. The EU treatys mutual assistance clause requires members to come to each other's aid to the best of their ability that does not include stock piling food stuffs, building nuclear bunker of putting the logistics in place for Ireland. rescEU is really just getting of the ground now.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Ireland has a minimum 90 days supply of fuel in reserve. This would give some time to adapt. Also if this were to come about fuel would be strictly rationed and priority given to farming, certain industries and the military. Private motoring would come to an end.



  • Registered Users Posts: 21,064 ✭✭✭✭dxhound2005


    Do they keep the gold in with the toilet rolls?



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 1,961 ✭✭✭nachouser


    Distribution is the problem. When food can no longer be purchased with money, because it is now worthless, it is an end game. It's a good thread:-)



  • Registered Users Posts: 12,500 ✭✭✭✭mariaalice


    You would need to get in with an old-style traveler (used to living outside the system ) and an old-style farmer who was still using horses until the 70s and only got pumped water and electricity in the 70s so they might be ancient. Still, they have the old-school knowledge of how to do it without modern machinery. The third member of the tribe would be the kind that can make or fix anything and has a shed full of bits of everything.

    Then you might survive.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Why would money be worthless? Some items would become extremely expensive but meat/milk/cheese would be plentiful with no external market. Rationing would also become the norm and enforced by the police/military with food distribution a priority. We would still have gas and electricity (electric vehicles) but otherwise a bit like the Emergency.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,961 ✭✭✭nachouser




  • Registered Users Posts: 21,064 ✭✭✭✭dxhound2005


    If it happens after this new bridge is built from Louth to Down, there will be chaos at the border.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 580 ✭✭✭GNWoodd


    Plenty of timber and if we were really stuck the bogs we still there !



  • Registered Users Posts: 28,568 ✭✭✭✭looksee


    Did you ever try cooking on green wood or wet turf?



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    No need there are stocks of fuel for a while. Even BnM had 4 years worth of briquettes when they stopped.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 49,621 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    4 years worth at what consumption rate?



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,131 ✭✭✭silliussoddius




  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Ok, at normal consumption. Still, buys some time while new stuff dries out.



  • Registered Users Posts: 26,511 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Over the counter. Branch banking would make a revival. Expect also a return to the use of cheques to make payments.



  • Registered Users Posts: 12,588 ✭✭✭✭machiavellianme




  • Registered Users Posts: 1,210 ✭✭✭Quitelife


    sadly Ireland would not survive without drugs , cocaine in particular as it has overtaken alcohol in terms of revenue with drug dealers all over the country controlling towns through fear and having more money than they can bury ☹️



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,319 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    Perhaps with shortages of protein sources, foods that wouldn't be culturally acceptable now would begin to be consumed. Horse, donkey and goat come to mind. Households could keep a goat for milk.

    Also like the war years, profiteering and black market for scarce goods would explode. Barter would take the place of money in many cases too.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 26,511 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Generally you'll get more meat by using pasture to graze beef cattle than you will by using the same pasture to graze horses or donkeys for food. Plus, beef can be sold for a higher price because people are not averse to eating it. So I wouldn't see any reason for growing consumption of horsemeat.

    However, if we raise a large herd of horses for use as beasts of burden then, after some years, as those horses reach the end of their useful working lives it would make sense to slaughter and eat them, rather than simply waste them, so there might be some limited horsemeat production. (But in that circumstance the meat would be fairly tough.)

    Goats can be grazed on land that won't support other livestock, so there might be some growth in goatmeat production.



  • Registered Users Posts: 151 ✭✭AnnieinDundrum


    lol… a goat would be a tight fit on my windowsill in an apartment. Possibly the height wouldn’t bother her though.
    id give us 9 or 10 weeks before anarchy



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,941 ✭✭✭randd1


    Yes, we'd survive. Quite literally, we've gone through worse. We'd lose a few comforts, but we'd get through.

    It would likely mean though serious work programmes, increased authoritarianism for a while, and serious cuts to social and public services.

    But we would be fine, more or less.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,319 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    They could graze lawns and green areas of housing estates and roadside verges. Maybe 50 or more years ago, it wasn't unusual to see a goat tethered near a house and moved each time it ate all round it.

    Pigeons or doves could be raised for food, and take up little space, monks did so back in the day after all.



  • Registered Users Posts: 580 ✭✭✭GNWoodd


    Both turf and timber have been cut and saved/ dried for generations.
    All we have in this hypothetical scenario is a lack of imports.

    No mention of there being no sun or wind .



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,385 ✭✭✭kowloonkev


    Interesting debate. I think rural people would be okay and we'd see a return to living as a community. People with actual skills necessary for survival such as farming and construction would thrive and people with no skills (apart from thieving) like bankers and politicians would be finished. I think the Euro would be instantly worthless and we'd be living a barter economy in no time.

    The cities might empty out, except for the people actually born there. And eventually they might try to migrate to the more stable environment of rural communities. Whether they'd be welcomed or not depends on what they have to offer.

    I don't think there would be large scale anarchy. I think law and order would also be meted out in each community and the useless drug addicts would be cured or dead within a short period.

    This is all on the assumption that we are cut off permanently and we know it.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 49,621 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    there was worry about anarchy when covid hit, which didn't come to pass - and a lot of it centred around the fragility of the just in time model. but the issue with the above scenario is JIT would fall apart.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,256 ✭✭✭yagan


    The supposed strength of JIT is interdependence, but with aging demographics and growing hostility to immigration EU wide, the supply chains would be under a lot of pressure.

    I think there was a future threats reports listing supply chain shocks in the top three, along with over reliance on anti biotics creating more resistant virulent virus's.

    A century ago the average life expectancy in Ireland was around 50, so looking back to community level interdependence isn't much use for the present.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 49,621 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    i remember reading an article in new scientist probably 20 years ago, about JIT and the possible effects of a superflu - e.g. what would happen if 20% of lorry drivers got sick or decided to avoid work, and there were serious concerns about the breakdown of the entire model as it's built around reducing buffers.

    would be interesting to see if i could find that article now.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭orangerhyme


    We could survive but society as we know it would collapse.

    We'd have no electricity, no transport, no mod cons.

    We'd have to organise ourselves into agricultural communes and survive that way.

    Each village would produce their own food and just survive that way.



Advertisement