Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. Psalms 105:16
To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. Robert Green Ingersoll
I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. Robert G Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
And there came forth a great famine into the land, and the Lord cursed the earth with a sore curse, and many of the inhabitants thereof died.
And the Lord said unto Noah: The daughters of thy sons have sold themselves; for behold mine anger is kindled against the sons of men, for they will not hearken to my voice.
And in those days there were giants on the earth, and they sought Noah to take away his life; but the Lord was with Noah, and the power of the Lord was upon him.
And also, after that they had heard him, they came up before him, saying: Behold, we are the sons of God; have we not taken unto ourselves the daughters of men? And are we not eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage? And our wives bear unto us children, and the same are mighty men, which are like unto men of old, men of great renown. And they hearkened not unto the words of Noah.
And the Lord said: I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth Noah that I have created them, and that I have made them; and he hath called upon me; for they have sought his life.
And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth. Moses 8:4&15&18&21&26&30
Now the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur, insomuch that Haran, my brother, died; but Terah, my father, yet lived in the land of Ur, of the Chaldees.
But I, Abraham, and Lot, my brother’s son, prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord appeared unto me, and said unto me: Arise, and take Lot with thee; for I have purposed to take thee away out of Haran, and to make of thee a minister to bear my name in a strange land which I will give unto thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession, when they hearken to my voice.
And the Lord appeared unto me in answer to my prayers, and said unto me: Unto thy seed will I give this land. Book of Abraham 2:1&6&19
Now the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur, insomuch that Haran, my brother, died; but Terah, my father, yet lived in the land of Ur, of the Chaldees.
But I, Abraham, and Lot, my brother’s son, prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord appeared unto me, and said unto me: Arise, and take Lot with thee; for I have purposed to take thee away out of Haran, and to make of thee a minister to bear my name in a strange land which I will give unto thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession, when they hearken to my voice.
And the Lord appeared unto me in answer to my prayers, and said unto me: Unto thy seed will I give this land. Book of Abraham 2:1&6&19
A famine killed up to three million people. North Korea Undercover, National Geographic 2013
Somalia – East Africa 1992: Years of warfare among rival clans causes famine on a biblical scale. 300,000 civilians died of starvation. Black Hawk Down 2001 starring Orlando Bloom & Ewan McGregor & Josh Hartnett & Eric Bana & Tim Sizemore & William Fichtner & Sam Shepard & Kim Coates & Hugh Dancy et al, director Ridley Scott, opening caption
North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as ‘duck’. Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essay
In the 1950s, life expectancy in China plunged for several years to far below that of India because of a huge famine, which took an estimated thirty million lives. Sen attributes the famine to the nature of the Chinese regime, which did not react for three years and many not even have been aware of the scale of the famine because totalitarian conditions blocked information flow. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
‘A major famine that claimed as many as three million lives.’ What North Korean Defectors Think of Korea, Asia Boss Youtube 2017, male defector #1
Tonight: desperate scenes as four separate famines loom threatening the lives of twenty million people across Africa and in Yemen. Tonight: Famine – Millions on the Brink, ITV 2017
How could this happen again? … How can people still be going hungry in the twentieth century? ibid.
At the end of the ’90s North Korea experiences one of the worst famines in history. Kim Jong-Il: The Forbidden Biography, History 2011