but they'll have extra "bodies" to do menial farm work
the mayor became a basic bitch janitor b/c there wasn't a need anymore for local govt
Yeah dude already addressed that. All of human history since the advent of agriculture we've steadily increased productivity to free up more slots for things other than menial farm labor. Take away pesticides and industrial agriculture and it will take 75% of the world's population to farm by hand, really it would take more than that since they aren't even farming they are just gathering, but for sake of argument lets say it only takes 75% of the earths population to farm. Really you're increasing the caloric requirements of most of the earths population having them work the fields all day, so the game is already lost but lets ignore that for now.
There's no livestock for either calories or to assist in farming so off the rip we're about down about 25% of calories needed to support the human population, we can't use any machinery or pesticides so we're down another 50% yield for crops. So it will take 3 out of every 4 people on earth to feed 1 out of every 4, just harvesting the crops already planted. So 75% of the population starves to death immediately and you can no longer leave 25% free to pursue other interests, once the dying starts it takes 100% of the population to work the fields. and that process continues until life is no longer supportable outside of picking fruit off trees in the jungles of the congo.
no pesticides, no animals, no animal by products (no eggs, no milk, no honey, other than wild gathered). farming with hand tools only, that means walking fields and digging holes by hand to plant crops, avoiding tilling or killing off animal burrows you discover, you have to plant around them. You lose 1/4 of your arable farm land to wildlife and 50% of the yield to locusts and other insects.
It's a plothole the size of the jersey turnpike that you could drive a 747 through. Either its just the shittiest of writing imaginable, zero research or thought went into it, which is what you guys seem to be advocating that it is since you dont understand how food works, or its part of the story and something that will be addressed in coming episodes.
I happen to think the show runner is not retarded and its part of the plot. I could be wrong, maybe he is a retard, but i think the point of bringing up the lobsters on day 2 was hinting at this. They set all the animals free, so anything not already dead and frozen isn't available anymore. Seafood/shellfish spoils the fastest and the hive knows this, so the first thing they did was consume all of it that was on hand world wide, and that was gone in a day. They then immediately started centralizing remaining food stores and emptied out every grocery store. They are definitely rationing.
It only takes about 50 or so bodies to entertain the 13 immunes, the rest of the population is either gathering food to extend the life or they are working on whatever the hind mind project is, maybe they don't need to live months, maybe it only takes a few weeks to build a telescope large enough to beam the signal out to the next planet to continue the process and then dying off
is the goal.
maybe the reason they care so much about converting the immunes is because their programming won't allow them to harm them directly and when the hive completes its goal (of ending intelligent life) and dies off they don't want anyone left to restart humanity, adam and eve style.