Imagine a giant asteroid strikes the Earth a few years from now, blocking out the Sun and collapsing agriculture worldwide. We see it coming, but all attempts to redirect its trajectory fail. At first glance, our chances don’t look good. The planet is engulfed in flames. Dead fish carpet the rivers and canals. Farmers lose most of their livestock. After just a few days, the air begins to cool, and global average temperatures plummet. Crops fail catastrophically, and the food supply system as we know it falls apart. Yet what if I told you we were able to survive – that we managed to build a new food system by repurposing heavy-duty infrastructure and excavating knowledge from the past? Focusing on how we’d respond to a post-apocalyptic scenario like this is an exercise in research-based “future history” – a way to travel backwards in time from a possible future, inspecting every juncture that takes us from then to now. It’s a practice beloved of both corporate leaders and military strategists because it encourages preparedness, but also because it requires imagination. It helps us see the present in a different light… (READ MORE)

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