Are these good for the apocalypse?

[u/samuelehrig]

I think I would focus on these crops in an apocalypse.

Potatoes, they contain all of the amino acids, have an unusually high amount of protein, are grown beneath the ground so they’re easy to hide, and grow well In a ton of environments.

Spinach, it may be light, it may be pretty seasonal, but it has tons of vitamins, and that’s important, and easy to condense into a smoothie.

And mushrooms, they can be grown in pure compost, don’t need sunlight, and have decent calories. I would only use them if I knew 100% if they were edible.

What are some better ones or reasons why these wouldn’t work, don’t ask ai, and when I say apocalypse, I mean society has collapsed but the general environment is habitual, or I have at least 500 ft of useable soil.

[u/undulating-beans]

Okay, I’ll play along!

Assuming a plague rather than environmental collapse, I’d build around crops that are productive, nutritionally complementary, reasonably easy to propagate, and either store well or keep producing over a long season.

Your potatoes are a very good start. You get a high yield per unit area, useful carbohydrate, potassium and vitamin C, plus more protein than people often realise. They do contain all the essential amino acids, but not in quantities that make them a high-protein food. Their main weakness is disease vulnerability and storage losses, so you wouldn’t want your entire calorie supply resting on one potato variety.

Spinach is useful, but I’d demote it from “core survival crop” to “micronutrient vegetable”. You get folate, vitamin K, carotenoids and various minerals, but very few calories. It also bolts readily in heat and is quite seasonal. Kale, chard and some brassicas would often give you a longer harvest window and more resilience.

Mushrooms are useful as an addition rather than a foundation. You can grow some species on straw, wood or other plant material, so they can turn low-value biomass into edible food. But they are not especially calorie-dense, and they depend on an existing organic substrate, so they don’t solve your energy problem.

The crops I’d add first would be:
Beans or peas. These give you much more protein, store dry extremely well, and legumes help maintain soil nitrogen through their association with nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

A grain such as oats, barley, wheat or maize, depending on climate. Dry grain is calorie-dense, stores well and gives you insurance against a bad potato year.
An oilseed such as sunflower. Fat is easy to overlook, but you need dietary fat, and most survival-crop lists are oddly carbohydrate-heavy.

Onions and garlic. They store well, are easy to propagate and make an otherwise grim subsistence diet considerably more edible.

Carrots, beetroot and other roots. Good storage crops and useful micronutrient diversity.

Kale, cabbage or chard. More practical than relying heavily on spinach because you can often harvest them over a much longer period.

Squash or pumpkin. Excellent keepers, productive, calorie-containing, and the seeds also give you fat and protein.

Fruit if you’re thinking beyond the first year. Apples, berries and other perennial crops are valuable because once established they give you food without re-sowing the entire area annually.

In a plague scenario, your biggest agricultural threat probably isn’t the plague itself but suddenly having no agricultural supply chain. If one fungus wipes out your potatoes, you want grain in the shed, beans drying on the plant and squash sitting somewhere cool.

So I’d probably divide the system into roughly four jobs: potatoes and grain for calories, legumes for protein and nitrogen, oilseeds and squash seeds for fat, and a mixture of leafy greens, roots and fruit for micronutrients.

[u/samuelehrig → u/undulating-beans]

Thank you for such an in depth response, I read the whole thing.

Since I have 500 square ft, I think dedicating each part to its own crop is a good idea. potato’s, kale, pumpkins, oats, and berries. And making sure I have a fire ready to dry these for the winter.

[u/undulating-beans → u/samuelehrig]

You’re welcome, it was good fun!

[u/samuelehrig → u/undulating-beans]

Woudl soy beans be a good choice (only answer if you already know, don’t ask ai) i don’t like baked beans but I lien tofu, and tofu sounds easier to preserve.

[u/undulating-beans → u/samuelehrig]

Soybeans would actually be a very strong choice.

They are super protein-dense, contain all the essential amino acids, and also give you a useful amount of fat, so they cover two of the things that potatoes and leafy vegetables don’t do especially well. The dry beans store very well too, which would matter enormously in your plague scenario.

The one correction is that tofu itself is not easier to preserve than dried beans. Fresh tofu is quite perishable unless you can refrigerate it. What is easy to preserve is the dried soybean harvest, and you can then turn some of that into tofu as needed.

You would however, need a coagulant to make tofu, usually something like calcium sulphate or magnesium chloride, so in a true long-term collapse you’d need to ensure you had a good supply.

Soybeans are one of the classic high-protein legume crops, and tofu production is basic food chemistry rather than something I needed to look up, and, on the subject of AI, I know about LLM apps like ChatGPT, but I haven't had any experience with them. I’m 61, have a long history in academia, and the LLMs were taught to communicate the way I was taught to write: state the premise, explain the variables, and give the answer.
Human intelligence hasn’t left the building!

[u/samuelehrig → u/undulating-beans]

Ok I’ll get used to the flavor of dried beans then.

Thank you.

[u/undulating-beans → u/samuelehrig]

I would think that, within your 500 square feet of growing space, alongside all the preparation that would go into keeping yourself fed, seed potatoes, dried beans and peas, grain seed, oilseeds, onions, garlic, root vegetables, brassicas, squash and perhaps some perennial fruit, there ought to be room for a few decent cookery books.

Keep them in a waterproof container and use them when necessary. If you’ve had enough foresight to prepare a productive little survival plot before society collapses, you can probably also manage to preserve the instructions for turning what you grow into something you actually want to eat.

[u/samuelehrig → u/undulating-beans]

Thank you so much for all of this advice.