Chicken in a Biscuit is Soylent Yellow!!!
In 1973 there was Soylent Green. In 2023, get ready for Soylent Yellow!
In 1966 Harry Harrison wrote a science fiction novel called Make Room! Make Room! exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority. Set in a future August 1999, the novel explores trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world where the global population is seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure. The plot jumps from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City, population 35 million. The novel was the basis of the 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green, although the film changed much of the plot and theme and introduced cannibalism as a solution to feeding people. But, let's face it, without crowd control scooping up rioters and turning them into crackers, it just wouldn't be the same now, would it?
The world population is over eight billion people, now. I remember when they said six billion would be unsustainable. Or maybe five billion. Read up on the Malthusian theory for the reason why if you're curious. Simply stated, population growth is (potentially) exponential, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear. Food production, etc. increases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 while population can potentially increase 1, 2, 9, 16, 25 at the same time. I think it's called arithmetic progression versus geometric progression, but my migraine is making it nearly impossible to think. It took 123 years to go from 1 billion people on Earth to 2 billion, but only 33 years to get to 3 billion, and 14 years to get to 4 billion. Is it any wonder some people saw nothing but doom and gloom in our future? They weren't pessimists, they were realists looking at the facts. But some people decided they didn't need so many kids, and advances were made in food production.
Harry Harrison didn't predict the future, but New York City is still bad. It had a population in 2020 of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles. To put that in terms I can more easily understand, Michigan had a population of at 10,077,331 at the 2020 census, and has an area of 99,716 sq mi. So, Michigan has almost 14.5% more people than New York City, spread out over about 33,188% more land. Jeez! No wonder they built so many skyscrapers in New York City! They couldn't fit everyone in there if they didn't stack them up, one atop the other.