Thanks, I have to confess that I'm not that good with US history/geography and it always surprises me there were (and are) massive droughts. Also, sorry that my previous comments sounded douchier than usual. Had a bad couple of days, hope you can understand.
Ohhhh, my friend you are missing out on some awesome history. The thing that kept Americans from expanding sea to shining sea? The Comanche. Archetypal reavers, barbarians, primitives with a thin culture compared to the other tribes they raided but as soon as they gained horses they became ruthless, efficient mass murderers of all comers. At one point several tribes banded together with the Spanish to drive out the Comanche... and failed. Comanche ate buffalo. The United States took on the massive project of driving the buffalo to extinction, basically intentionally destroying the ecosystem of the bulk of its landmass to drive an enemy to famine. And then once the Comanche capitulated they invited the flotsam and jetsam of the country to go tear up the buffalo grass and plant wheat. And then it didn't rain and the wheat died and the blowing dust from the ecological apocalypse traveled 2000 miles to rain down on the capitol. 'murica. Go big or go home. I didn't find your previous comments douchey at all. I didn't really consider the gestalt Malthusian problem until reading about six or seven different kinds of shortage-based apocalypse.