History Main / TheFamine

* This is what kicks off the main plot of [[VideoGame/Pikmin3 Pikmin 3]]. The [[HumanAliens Koppiates]] are suffering a major food shortage due to “[[ExplosiveBreeder booming populations,]] [[BigEater booming appetites,]] [[DidntThinkThisThrough and a basic lack of planning.]]” That is why main characters Alph, Brittany, and Charlie headed to [[FictionalEarth PNF-404,]] since they need to retrieve the food there in order to stop the famine.

-->-- '''[[Literature/BooksOfKings 2 Kings 6:24-25]]'''

** The most extreme, and one of the most underreported (Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} doesn't even have a page for it), was [[https://www.histclo.com/country/other/indo/hist/dut/ihd-fam.html the famine in the Dutch East Indies]] (now UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}}), during which up to 4 million died. This was caused by the Japanese policy of rationing food and creating a slave labor market that was worse than anything the natives experienced during the long Dutch colonization beforehand. The Dutch East Indies had the world's fifth-highest WWII death count, 90% of which was caused by famine.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime V'' sees the residents of the Great Valley forced to leave in search of food, after "swarming leaf-gobblers" (prehistoric locusts) devoured all the edible plant matter there.

* The UsefulNotes/IrishPotatoFamine was provoked by blight destroying potato crops and caused the Irish population to lose 2 million out of 8, half by hunger and half by emigration.

* The Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth very nearly didn't survive its first year. According to Bradford's journal, they initially attempted a communal lifestyle, but there were too many slackers and they didn't produce enough food to go around. This compounded the difficulties faced in their first winter and led to many deaths. Fortunately, they made some friends in the local native tribe who helped them through. After that, they hit upon the idea to divide up the communal farms into private property, with each family responsible for working its own plot, and the next year the harvest was abundant enough to have the first Thanksgiving feast.

** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor Holodomor]] is a part of the aforementioned Soviet famine, and caused the death of 4 million UsefulNotes/{{Ukrain|e}}ians.

** The Soviet Union also experienced this, among other WWII hardships, with a death count rivaling combat-related deaths. During the Siege of Leningrad, thanks to the Germans' policy of cutting supply lines, up to 1 million died of hunger and many more starved. Overall, as many as 9 million people died because of famine and disease.
** The Dutch famine in 1944-1945, when a German blockade to hamper the Allies' advance cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens. A young Creator/AudreyHepburn almost died of malnutrition because of this.
* While China already went through three major famines (the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, the Chinese famine of 1928–1930, and the Chinese famine of 1942–43) the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine Great Chinese Famine]] (1958-1962), caused by the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Great Leap Forward]] stands as the biggest man-made famine in history. It was caused by radical collectivization, deep changes in agriculture, economic mismanagement, social pressure, and to a degree bad weather conditions. The complete death toll remains unclear, modern Dutch historian [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Dik%C3%B6tter Frank Dikötter]] researched all available archival sources and estimates around ''45 to 50 million people'' dying directly or indirectly from starvation.

* The UsefulNotes/IrishPotatoFamine was provoked by blight destroying potato crops and caused the Irish population to lose 6 million out of 8, half by hunger and half by emigration.

** The Dutch famine in 1944-1945, when a German blockade to hamper the Allies' advance cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens. Creator/AudreyHepburn almost died of malnutrition in her youth because of this.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932-33 Soviet famine of 1932–1933]], caused by collectivisation and grain exports to fund industrialization, caused the death of 6 or 7 million.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ''Holodomor'']] is a part of the aforementioned Soviet famine and caused the death of three million people in UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}.

Famine used to be [[PrimalFear a feared event]] [[AdultFear for humans]], resulting in it being depicted as a divine punishment or something you prayed to the gods to avoid. Revolutions and mass migrations erupted over famines, and authorities would go to extreme ends to prevent them.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ''Holodomor'']] is a part of the beforementioned Soviet famine and caused the death of three millions in UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}.
* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, there were several large-scale war-related famines and diseases, which often went uncounted in casualty count. Countries or territories which weren't even belligerents of the war had some of the highest death count in the world because of this.
** The most extreme, and one of the most underreported (Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} doesn't even have a page for it), was [[https://www.histclo.com/country/other/indo/hist/dut/ihd-fam.html the famine in the Dutch East Indies]] (now UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}}), during which up to 4 million died. This was caused by the Japanese policy of rationing food and creating a slave labor that was worse than anything the natives experienced during the long Dutch colonization beforehand. The Dutch East Indies had the world's fifth-highest WWII death count, 90% of which was caused by famine.
** The Dutch East Indies' neighbor, the French Indochina (now UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}}, UsefulNotes/{{Laos}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam}}) also had a disproportionate number of famine deaths that are equally underreported, with the hardest hit region being North Vietnam. The primary causes were typhoons that reduced the availability of food, Japan's occupation, American attacks on the region's transport system, and French colonial administration hindering an effective famine alleviation response. The colony experienced very little military activity, with virtually all of its 2.2 million deaths being caused by hunger.

* While China already went through three major famines (the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, the Chinese famine of 1928–1930, and the Chinese famine of 1942–43) the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine Great Chinese Famine]] (1958-1962), caused by the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Great Leap Forward]] stands as the biggest man-made famine in history. It was caused by radical collectivization, deep changes in agriculture, economic mismanagement, social pressure and to a degree bad weather conditions. The complete death toll remains unclear, modern Dutch historian [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Dik%C3%B6tter Frank Dikötter]] researched all available archival sources and estimates around ''45 million people'' dying directly or indirectly from starvation.
* The Vietnamese famine of 1945 devastated Northern Vietnam, killing between 400000 to 2 million people. It was caused by a TraumaCongaLine of disasters: mismanagement from the French colonial and then Japanese imperial government (rice and maize, both staple foods in Vietnamese cuisine, were being used as fuel for UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo efforts), civilians' food being seized to feed soldiers, Allied air strikes on roads, warehouses, and transportation facilities impeding the distribution of food, farmers being forced to grow cash crops instead of staple crops, poor harvests, natural disasters (droughts, pests, followed by flooding thanks to catastrophic rainfall and lack of dike management).

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* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': The protagonist tells how she nearly starved to death in the past. And she explains how mostly but not exclusively old people can occasionally be seen lying in the streets or leaned towards housewalls, dead. Those death will officially always be attributed to the flu, exposure or other natural causes, while nobody in the neighborhood believes that they did not die from starvation.

* ''Literature/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy'': Famine is one of the tools that Ruin, a [[PiecesOfGod Piece of God]] bent on causing the apocalypse, uses to try to purge the planet of life. He starts with irregular weather to ruin harvests, then escalates to [[spoiler:roving armies of mind-controlled {{Super Soldier}}s]].
* ''Literature/TheFifthSeason'' is set on a continent that periodically turns into a DeathWorld, so society is built around surviving years-long famines. Every household and community maintains caches of non-perishable food, and they're familiar with the {{Cold Equation}}s of rationing resources when a "Season" comes. ("You don't think about [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty the meat]].")
* Creator/NikolaiGogol's ''Taras Bulba'' contains a chapter where Andriy infiltrates the Dubno Castle he and his father are [[TheSiege currently besieging]] and is horrified by the lengths the defenders go to survive while deprived of food completely.

* The future section of ''Literature/TheHistoryOfBees'' shows a bleak look at a world without bees/pollinating-insects. This means a world without most fruits, cereals and vegetables. Obviously, with reduced plant matter (bees pollinating common silage crops like hay) the husbandry of animals becomes more expensive and impractical, removing dairy and meat from the shop-shelves as well. The world of 2098 is one of an extended famine that has destroyed most of society as we know it.
* Anarres, the moon settlement in Literature/TheDispossessed. goes through a famine that rocks the anarchist society. It survives, but goes through incredible hardships, when people were working as much as eight hours a day [[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* ''The Fields of Athenry'' is about the story of a man named Michael getting SentencedToDownUnder for stealing "Trevelyn's corn" during the Irish Great Famine.

* In ''TabletopGame/ApocalypseWorld'', famine is codified as one of the basic post-apocalyptic scarcities that can serve as catalysts for in-game storylines and events.

* In the third game of ''{{VideoGame/Growlanser}}'' due to the weakening power of the sun the entire world is experiencing a famine. One country exists in the LastFertileRegion. The first third of the plot deals with this small country creating alliances to protect itself from those who are trying to raid them for food.
* When there's not enough food in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', population growth stops and morale takes a hit.
* ''VideoGame/{{Hamurabi}}'' and similar games are based around the idea of producing enough food to prevent famines. In ''Hamurabi'', losing more than half of the population at once by starvation causes the player to lose.
* From the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' is the nation of [[GrimUpNorth North Ambria]], which was hit by the [[ApocalypseHow Salt Pale]], a giant pillar of salt that turned anything it came into contact with to salt. It bled into the soil and spread throughout North Ambria, killing a third of its population. While the Salt Pale eventually stopped and ran out of power, the soil was damaged beyond repair through salinization, making it difficult to grow anything, and making living conditions for the survivors terrible.
* A frequent cause of colony collapse in ''VideoGame/OxygenNotIncluded''. Too many Duplicants with too few food sources can mean a lack of food, creeping atmosphere or temperature changes can cause crop failures, and food can rot to inedibility over time if care is not put into storage. All of these can force the colony to resort to mush bars and frantic digging for muckroots, and even those are not guaranteed to provide enough food.
* In ''VideoGame/ThisWarOfMine'', thanks to the siege, no new food is entering the city, and everyone hoards what little supplies they have. Picking over the ruins for what edible scraps can be found is necessary, and people (including the players) can be driven to do desperate things by the need to find enough to eat to live one more day.
* As revealed in the later stages of ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'', [[spoiler:''the entire Halcyon system'' is barreling headlong into a galactic level famine. Thanks to irresponsible corporate idiocy, even the food available has zero nutrition. Meaning people are starving no matter how much they eat. And The Board has no idea how to fix it.]]
* In between the third and fourth game of the ''Videogame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' series, the Barbarian kingdom of Krewlod suffered a massive famine thanks to Kilgor (the player character of the ''Armageddon's Blade'' campaign "Festival of Life") burning many of Krewlod's farms during his campaign to become its new king. Kilgor's "solution" was to wage war on the rest of Enroth to plunder their lands. This would lead to the destruction of Enroth since Kilgor wielded the Sword of Frost while one of the foes standing in his way, Gelu, wielded Armageddon's Blade. When the two swords clashed, the collision of their formidable magical powers triggered the Reckoning, a massive explosion that destabilized the entire world and caused it to fall apart.
* Strongly implied to be looming in ''VideoGame/WeHappyFew'', due to supplies from mainland Britain being cut off and citizens too addled on Joy to grow food instead of flowers. One sidequest in Arthur's story reveals that one butcher has resorted to making meat from corpses. Ollie's story all but confirms it, as he tries to make the Executive Committee aware of it only to learn that they're just as Joy-crazy as the rest of the town.

* The UsefulNotes/IrishPotatoFamine was provoked by blight destroying potato crops and caused Irish population to lose 6 millions out of 8, half by hunger and half by emigration.

[[quoteright:249:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/irishfamine_5664.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:249:An 1849 depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and her two children during the UsefulNotes/IrishPotatoFamine.]]

** An often-seen event throughout the campaigns is a city suffering famine and begging you for food. Annoyingly, they always demand a specific type of food (such as fish or pomegranates), and you have to set it apart from the food used for your citizens' use. Not responding is a good way to ensure your approval rating drops like a brick.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'', the main characters go through a famine at least twice in the series. Once, in "Spelunking Smurfs", it came because of a drought, and the Smurfs sought after food in the forest until they found a cave with frozen food and a frozen ogre guarding it. Another time, in "The Horn Of Plenty", Mother Nature's bad broken wand causes the Smurfs' crops to wither and die right at harvest time, causing them to suffer penury during winter until they discover a land where its citizens are fed by a musical instrument called the Horn of Plenty.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': The protagonist tells how she nearly starved to death in the past. And she explains how mostly but not exclusively old people can occassionally be seen lying in the streets or leaned towards housewalls, dead. Those death will officially always be attributed to the flu, exposure or other natural causes, while nobody in the neighbourhood believes that they did not die from starvation.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932-33 Soviet famine of 1932–1933]], caused by collectivisation and grain exports to fund industrialisation, caused the death of 6 or 7 million.

* ClassicalMythology: Demeter famously rendered the whole world's farmlands (as far as the ancient Greeks knew) infertile after Persephone's kidnapping, eventually forcing Zeus to broker her (partial) return. DependingOnTheWriter, this was either a matter of her just being so grief-stricken/busy searching for Persephone that she neglected her duties, or her ''deliberately'' creating famine to blackmail the other Gods ([[GodsNeedPrayerBadly who did, after all, need living worshipers]]) into helping her.

* From the ''VideoGame/KisekiSeries'' is the nation of [[GrimUpNorth North Ambria]], which was hit by the [[ApocalypseHow Salt Pale]], a giant pillar of salt that turned anything it came into contact with to salt. It bled into the soil and spread throughout North Ambria, killing a third of its population. While the Salt Pale eventually stopped and ran out of power, the soil was damaged beyond repair through salinization, making it difficult to grow anything, and making living conditions for the survivors terrible.