[londons_explore]

People use 1000x more water than they need to drink.

If a water supply chain attack happened, we would just distribute bottled water for drinking, and people would go without washing for a few days whilst the issue was sorted.

Bottled water production is already big enough that delivering a bottle a day per person in new York is within the scale of the current production and retail networks scope.

It wouldn't cause the mass casualties an enemy might assume.

[halJordan]

It's actually insane to me that the nation convulsed over the inability to get water to flint Michigan and people are still over here doing "no one actually deserves water, you use too much of it anyway"

[nvme0n1p1]

And let's not forget:

> Agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of consumptive use in the United States

https://www.nifa.usda.gov/topics/water

Maybe if we're worried about running out of water, we should prioritize getting the water we do have to actual people. Could the problem be that we're trying to grow avocados in a literal desert? Nah, it's the dang citizens taking too many showers again.

[applicative]

Are you one of these broadminded people who are about to destroy the Peruvian economy and genocide their people because you heard on tiktok that an avocado in the Peruvian desert takes eight gallons etc etc ... while the alternative is applying the half ton of fungicide it takes everywhere else. This is by the way the first desert irrigated, ~5000 years ago, with the same water, by the earliest state in the Americas, growing cotton for export.

[nvme0n1p1]

I'm not sure what Peru has to do with anything. TFA is about the USA, and usda.gov is an American site.

But I bet if the average ancient Peruvian had to choose between their avocados dying or their next-door neighbors dying, they'd choose to save their neighbors. Unfortunately in modern times, I'm not so sure anymore.

[applicative]

Peru is the home of desert irrigated avocado. It is a leading factor in the total economy, following techniques already known to their ancestors 5000 years ago, but with their cotton not with Mexican avocado.

There were no avocados until quite recently, and thus no choice. There was only uninhabitable desert - though it had once been inhabited and indeed constituted the first known state in the Americas.

Your idea is 'i heard about desert avocadoes on tiktok and its insane and whoever does it needs machine-gunned.'.

[nvme0n1p1]

Chill. I've never used tiktok. Don't assume everyone you talk to saw the same meme you did.

Did you know more than one country grows avocados?

[pibaker]

Apple to oranges. The problem with Flint was lead in municipal pipes, and it has been fixed since forever ago. The majority of US water usage is agricultural and that is only really an issue west of the Mississippi. They are completely separate concerns supported by completely separate infrastructures.

[nerevarthelame]

Iran doesn't need to cause mass casualties. They just need to make US citizens hate the war in Iran.

[genocidicbunny]

Trouble is, there's a good chance that a large portion of the population will then be in favour of ending the war by escalating it to the point of flattening Iran. And that portion of the population has somewhat of a correlation with the political base of the current administration.

[applicative]

It is impossible to affect the Persian empire by such means. They might as well have tried to take the Soviet Union or China by like means. There is no such thing as 'flattening' China or Iran

[genocidicbunny]

Notice I said that it's the populace who will gain an appetite for flattening Iran, not that it's actually practical to achieve that. You could very well find yourself extending the war for much longer than it would otherwise go on, because there will be increased political support for it.

Look at what 9/11 did - for quite a while after the attack, which was heinous but in the grand scheme of things nothing compared to the scale of destruction that was visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan afterwards; And at least for a few years, very many Americans were in favour of those conflicts.

[ChoGGi]

What's he gonna do? Nuke Iran?

You know, I said that as a joke, but...

It's getting hard to tell jokes from reality with this administration (excluding roasts at the WHCD).

[swat535]

How are you going to flatten Iran? A country twice the size of Texas with 90M people.

You would have to fire your entire nuclear arsenal and commit mass genocide.

Even then, you may not be able to destroy the missile cities, many of them were built to be nuclear resistant.

[genocidicbunny]

I'm not saying it's possible to accomplish that, just that directly harming the comfort of the American populace is a good way to unify large parts of said populace in wanting to destroy you. There's a non-zero chance of increasing America's appetite for war rather than reducing it with such actions.

[applicative]

Dunno, Trump's war didn't make them give up on 'Death to America', but just gave it new life.

[BigTTYGothGF]

Exactly how big do you think those bottles would be?

[mindslight]

Who exactly is this "we" in 2026 ?

The only thing I can see is some political crony company getting a big payment from the federal budget to take on the "burden" of doing so. But then not actually distributing enough water so they can still price-gouge individuals because we wouldn't want people to become entitled, right?