About Maggot Farming...

[nihilgoodbud]

Ok, you're lost and wandering through another indistinguishable expanse of dunes, scarred from a recent battle you only just scraped your way through, and a sandstorm is bearing down on you. Managing to just find cover, a small cave, you sit and wait for safety. Oh look, a human corpse crawling with maggots. It makes sense that you'd use this for some quick nutrients.

You're back at a stronghold. Huge walls keep out the winds, cars and raiders. You've wowed the leader, and he gives you a little corner to set up whatever you want. Here, the choice for maggots seems weird.

The main benefit, it would seem, of maggots, is to just randomly be there (on some dead body), with you not having had to do anything for it, beyond finding it. Once you've evolved to farming, it seems like you could aim a little higher.

I guess my main concern (beyond the question of safety eating something that eats exclusively, and lives inside, a parasite-ridden chunk of rotting flesh) would be the sustainability of it. Sure now you can't step outside without getting into a life or death fight with some raiders, so just chop those guys up and sprinkle into the flower boxes. But what happens when you recude all hostility worldwide to 0, kill every warlord, reinstitute democracy, and then drive off into the sunset? You've left these people with exactly one food source, which requires constant human sacrifice. The bad guys are all gone, there can't be that many prisoners, so eventually the situation will demand non-voluntary civilian sacrifice, which will need to be embraced religiously by all as a society-wide psychological defense.

We know there are still maggots, and we know there are still vultures. Mammals survived underground on Earth after the last extinction, presumably eating and drinking, so it`s reasonable to assume there`s a hidden food chain out there. Just go on one of your super dangerous retrieval missions to a subterranean cave, grab a few spores, and you`ve got a mushroom farm.

[Einstine]

You need a better avatar. Too dark.

[Mako]

I was thinking about this as well. I noticed that the maggot farms seem to be working off of rotting bits of meat and some unidentifiable substrate, sawdust I guess. I figured that there's probably altertnate food sources we don't see (I remember something about Gutgash's people scavenging canned goods from ships and shipping containers), and that the maggot farming is a way to turn inedible things, rotting meat or spoiled food into edible stuff.

Basicly, I figure that there's some more relaible source of food for the strongholds; we just don't see it because it's not really important to the story. The maggot farming is more of a way to avoid wasting rotting or spoiled food and turn it into more food.

[Colcheeky]

Well, from a biological stand point, maggots are pretty safe to eat, even though they may have been eating a variety of revolting & unhygienic things, maggots aren't exactly unhealthy, they digest cells & waste on a microscopic level, meaning that the majority of parasites would wither be uneated or digested by the maggots if dead, since maggots only eat dead tissue, among this, maggots kill bacteria, which is one of the reasons that they were used medically for the purpose of keeping a wound safe from infection. They are also a good source of protein & do not carry diseases. They are safe to eat... albeit a little disgusting, but pretty safe to eat. Also, maggots feed of faeces, so the people at the strongholds can go to the toilet in the maggot farm & pick the maggots off of their rotting faeces, an essentially sustainable system for if times get a little too tough, I imagine they eat normal food if it's available... Still... I wouldn't try it...

[Einstine]

Originally posted by colcheeky:

They are safe to eat... albeit a little disgusting...

A little?

[TheGreenman]

Fungus rely on cool damp places to grow. They probably don't use that as a food source to save as much water as possible.

[Syntax Error]

When you get rid of all the warlords and reduce hostilities to zero you could perhaps undertake some agricultural projects using those water collection units upscaled to support a drip irrigation system. Even if you couldn't grow traditional crops, that could support a fungus farm. Right now though, everyone is focused on getting raided and warlords and all that so major civil projects just give the bad guys a reason to come visit.

Sort of like real life food shortages in Africa -- the problem is rarely an inability to grow anything, it's that militias are constantly breaking your stuff and warlords are stealing your food (or taking food meant as aid).

Short term though, as noted, maggots are a way to turn unusable waste into usable protein. Perhaps not a long term solution but better than dumping all those bodies and waste into a ditch and having nothing to eat.

[Wulf]

The Wasteland lottery's got a different prize to most. Draw the short straw and you're maggot meat for the rest of us, man's gotta survive somehow.

Even though it's wretched, I'd prefer to farm insects or something like that, what also dwells in the desert but lizards? And those things you shouldn't tread on.

Shoot some vultures?

Because of the lack of water and fertile ground you'd have to get into hydroponics, built underground like in a Fremen Sietch, otherwise topside you've just got the odd bird or rodent to scavenge or humies to gobble.

Maybe farm rats? or hey actually do a Bartertown and keep pigs, they'll eat all the corpses you currently use for maggots.

[Geeks On Hugs]

I noticed that as you improve Jeet's someone starts raising rats...so presumably these communities improve the menu on their own over time.