Hi David, thanks for this article. I live in Italy, in Liguria, close to the famous town of Triora, where the worst witch trial of our country happened in 1587. Who is interested in history and witchcraft know for sure about the sad story of Franchetta Borelli, who survived the trials, even if crippled and in pain for the rest of her life. But what people probably don’t know is that Triora was called granaio della Repubblica, the bread basket of the Republic. The most important grain harvest of the republic of Genoa came from there. I really believe Ergot was the cause of the witch trials. Franchetta kept a diary that was saved after her death and gives us really important insight of the climate in that period. She wrote: “i remember it was the summer of 1587. Not the happy summer of the harvest, but a new one of poverty and famine. We had nothing to feed the animals and to save for winter in our pantries. Since two years we were starving, since two years you could see desperation in our sad and poor eyes, since two years the animals were thin to the bones e we walked in the streets with great fatigue. It was because of the witches, for sure it was the witches. The parliament of Triora was in council and decided it was the witches. They paid 500 shields to have their trials. We were starving to death, but they used the money to find the witches.”
When the new grand solar minimum will hit who will be blamed? Maybe fascists or comunists? The truth is we are not ready and we won’t be ready. A new famine is upon us, but this time we it will take a while to learn how to grow food again without the help of technology. In the past minimum people new how to survive, do we? Can we stay without power for more than a week without killing each other? Well, we wait and see