Depending on my mood, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series (2003-09) is in my personal all-time top five. And right now, there’s just something about a small group of survivors stuck inside spaceships for an indefinite period of time that resonates with me.
But it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t like science fiction. It’s too unrealistic for them. And that’s fair. Thinking about Battlestar now, I am struck by one massively unrealistic aspect of the show — but it has nothing to do with science fiction.
It has to do with the supply chain.
Battlestar Galactica: How Do These People Have Food?
What’s most unrealistic about the show isn’t everything to do with space travel. It’s that the 50,000-ish survivors on the 100-plus spaceships have enough food to survive.
At times, the show addresses the issue of food. Colonel Saul Tigh’s line about “paper shortage” is one of the best in the series.
But far too often the matter of sustenance — and supplies in general — is ignored.
There’s no way these people have enough food to last them for the entire series — even if you take into account any food they may have acquired on the failed New Caprica and fateful algae planet, even if you adjust for significant advances in food-growing and -processing technology, and even if you blindly accept that they have the necessary technology and resources (seeds, plants, water, 3D printers, whatever) to grow and process food on their ships.
The survivors of the Cylon-caused nuclear holocaust would not have survived their trek in outer space. They never would have made it to Earth, because they would starved in transit.
And that fact brings me back to the present moment.
The Coronavirus Crisis: Nothing Matters Except the Supply Chain
We have a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the future.
- U.S. coronavirus testing is still inadequate.
- Too many people are acting as if the coronavirus is a short-term problem.
- The post-coronavirus economic data coming out of China is discouraging.
- Stock buybacks will halt as a condition of the $2 trillion stimulus package.
- The U.S. might get screwed by the $1.2 trillion leveraged loan market.
But all of these points are relatively small in comparison to the supply chain.
As long as we have a robust supply chain — as long as we can grow food and access raw materials and then transport those resources through the processing and delivery stages — we’re going to be fine.
If, however, the coronavirus breaks the supply chain of our basic necessities — if it hinders our ability to grow, harvest, and transport food, for instance — then, as a society, we’ll be in a world of trouble.
We’ve all got problems, but the only problem that really matters is the supply chain.
I’m not a financial advisor, and I don’t suggest that you make any decisions based on anything I say or write … but I’m going to pay a lot of attention over the next few weeks to any reports I hear about the supply chain and specifically food production and transportation.