I think we get into this mindset that .... well we can recover from earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes etc. But what about a on going disaster that would last months or years? How would that be handled?
INDEED.
Some sources indicate that late summer . . . the toll may have reached a horrific tipping point.
Humans are incredibly adaptable. When our backs are to a wall, we can adapt with amazing quickness.
The problem today is that we are highly specialized with extremely few of us being able to be self sufficient with our own crops and livestocks. Most of us are entirely dependent on trade to survive.
If we had a massive shift in long term environmental conditions, we would adapt to it somehow, even as we suffered heavily during the transition, even as rates of death and disease would soar during the transition.
Unlike lower animals, we are so extremely adaptable, I have no doubt we would come through it, if with a far more basic lifestyle.
What terrifies me is some cataclysm that causes us to lose our modern technology, so we fall back into a hunter/gatherer basic agrarian lifestyle with no chance to leap out of it because all of the technology necessary is lost and has to be re-discovered from scratch.
That terrifies me.