I could buy 1000 Dec '14 1040 strike wheat calls for .01. Put out $50k and some commission and if wheat goes to $20 I pocket $50 million. Actually doubt that it would stop anywhere near $20 if the scenario that the article depicts actually happened.
Crazy as that sounds (and is) I recall seeing a long term chart of London wheat where the highest price (until the 2008 spike, I believe) ever paid was in the 1810s when the Napoleonic Wars and the Year Without a Summer coincided.
So crazy stuff does happen although I can guarantee that there were millions more suffering than the few who got a windfall.
My luck Chicago would declare force majuere or whatever you'd call it and I'd get stiffed anyway.
But actually, the geologocal timescale of within a few tens of millions of years is a bit long for me. Was actually thinking about Fukushima- a much more managable scale- and how much it would cost to put lead lining in my grain bins.
Probably the better play would be to buy farmland in the southern hemisphere since all the stuff in the north would be radioactive.
