Food is a weapon. Nations weaponize food against nations, governments use it against dissenters, invaders use it against holdouts. Here are examples from the recent past.

Sherman's 1864 March to the Sea in Georgia was a scorched earth campaign. Horses, mules, cattle and millions of pounds of fodder were confiscated. Farms were stripped and put to the torch. The novel and movie Gone With The Wind was set in this time.

The British naval blockade of Germany from 1914 to 1919 led to widespread starvation. The most reliable account puts the death toll at 424,000. The unpayable war reparations levied on Germany after the war led to more hunger during the Weimar era.

Stalin's confiscation of food and blockade of Ukraine in 1932-1933, for resisting collectivization of farms, resulted in death by starvation of about five million people.

Nazi Germany's "Hunger Plan" of 1941 to divert food to Germany from Soviet countries was to allow only a small remnant of the population to survive, as slave labor. As it was, huge numbers of conquered peoples perished from hunger, including one rarely cited, the Netherlands.

For the first three years of the war World War II, German U-boats successfully attacked shipping bound for Britain. While they didn't manage to close the shipping lanes as completely as did the Royal Navy in the previous war, the losses forced drastic cuts to already severe food rationing

Operation Starvation, begun by the US in the waning days of World War II, used advanced sea mines to all but destroy what remained of Japan's merchant fleet. Some experts claim it could have won the war had it begun earlier.

None of these famines were from natural causes—drought, insect infestation or plant disease and the like. But have a care, weaponized hunger isn't "instead" of natural causes, it's in addition to natural causes. Notice the accelerating ramp up of the price for pork in China due to the epidemic of "pig ebola". They're drawing down reserves at present, when those are gone there is no obvious alternative source for the quantity needed. And the knock-on effects for substitutes is under way, just as their import tariffs take full effect.

The food supply is a target for any number of disasters. Most times it evades a hit altogether, sometimes it's merely wounded, occasionally it takes a ruinous blow. There are no guarantees. Disruptions often can't be foreseen well enough to do much good. Example: poor growing weather in the UK and the desperate demands of a hungry Europe caused food rationing from 1945 to 1948 even more severe than it was in the war years. The successful survivalist will have a secure source of food with sufficient reserves for unforeseen adversities.

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