We're pretty much fucked

[Shinova]

I assume the government wouldn't be skimping out on the major cities in terms of electricity and other services. Moving into a city isn't a big deal for me. Two of my biggest concerns are pollution and noise and the lack of oil would decrease both within the cities. Another is crime, but meh what can you do about it.



EDIT: Oh yeah speaking of nuclear power. The crude awakenings website has nuclear energy as one of the alternative power sources, and they claim that assuming the United States somehow magically gets all the reactors it needs to sufficiently power the country, the world's total uranium reserves would be drained in I forgot how short exactly but it was pretty short.

I've read other articles that say that untapped reserves of uranium in addition to uranium in seawater could last the human race millions of years. I'm guessing the technique's expensive and unrefined right now, but I found it suspicious that the crude awakenings website doesn't have any mention of this.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh yeah speaking of nuclear power. The crude awakenings website has nuclear energy as one of the alternative power sources, and they claim that assuming the United States somehow magically gets all the reactors it needs to sufficiently power the country, the world's total uranium reserves would be drained in I forgot how short exactly but it was pretty short.

I've read other articles that say that untapped reserves of uranium in addition to uranium in seawater could last the human race millions of years. I'm guessing the technique's expensive and unrefined right now, but I found it suspicious that the crude awakenings website doesn't have any mention of this.

Various methods of fuel reprocessing are the key to extending uranium supply on the order of hundreds of centuries. One thing we're not in danger of facing anytime soon is Peak Uranium.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Crude Awakenings as its own agenda, which like much of the environmentalist movement excludes nuclear power for woo-woo reasons. Suffice to say, we are not running out of uranium anytime soon.

[Ford Prefect]

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a leather jacket and go beyond Thunderdome in post-apocalyptic Australia. Seriously, it's the plot of Mad Max.

And to be frank, if the world's uranium ran out inside of a century, I would be very impressed.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a leather jacket and go beyond Thunderdome in post-apocalyptic Australia. Seriously, it's the plot of Mad Max.

And to be frank, if the world's uranium ran out inside of a century, I would be very impressed.

Considering you can basically get tons of the stuff out of seawater with large pieces of cloth, it would be damned hard to do this, indeed.

[Lonestar]

Maintain my job as a cog in the military-industrial complex. Dennis Toy's bitching about having to walk 50 yards to get to a bus stop in Fairfax aside, the DC Area is sufficiently centralized that I suspect it would be survivable in a PO situation.

There's always going to be call for the military and the support structure for it.

[PeZook]

Maintain my job as a cog in the military-industrial complex. Dennis Toy's bitching about having to walk 50 yards to get to a bus stop in Fairfax aside, the DC Area is sufficiently centralized that I suspect it would be survivable in a PO situation.

There's always going to be call for the military and the support structure for it.

At worst, you get access to the really big guns

This whole thing makes me think just how much of a hit Europe will take ; the entire EU doesn't use anywhere near the amount of oil the US gobbles up every day, our distances are shorter, we have a reasonably well developed railway system and most of our cities have reasonably efficient public transportation. At this point in time, high gasoline taxes really seem like a good idea - thanks to them, Europe didn't turn into this huge gas-guzzling monster the US is right now.

[Big Orange]

This all seems terribly pessimistic and I wonder if the oil shortage crisis would've been avoided decades earlier in the 1950s. And I doubt we would regress as far back as the 1890s: perhaps more like the 1930s.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Regress is too simple of a word. Transit becoming more like it was in 1920, centered around rail and bus lines and not the automobile could be considered regress. The abandonment of many modern methods of manufacturing could also have that label applied. But just because you abandon the oil-heavy machines for making cars (for instance) doesn't mean you go back to building them by hand. You've just replaced the old machines with ones that are much more resource efficient, albeit less time efficient. So you haven't "gone back to the 1930's" when people don't take long distance car trips anymore or turn on their air conditioners when it's 82 degrees F.

[TithonusSyndrome]

We can do worse than that and get by just fine. Nobody actually needs electric power at home, for example.

Anyone who sincerely believes they can't live without their electrical comforts could just save up for at least a few solar panels if nothing else. If I had enough panels to run my amp or computer at any given time, I'd be peachy.

[Crazy_Vasey]

We can do worse than that and get by just fine. Nobody actually needs electric power at home, for example.

Perhaps 'need' is too strong a term but without either a supply of natural gas (which, as far as I know, will go much the same way as oil sooner or later) or electricity very few homes will have the capacity to actually cook anything. Maybe the situation's different in America but I don't see many alternatives to gas-fired or electric ovens in Britain and there's only so much furniture you can burn to get an open fire before you run out and the last thing we need is yet another crimp in the food supply.

[TheMuffinKing]

I've got plenty of "tools" available for any upcoming catastrophe. I just have to hope my friends are willing to join my band of road warriors wearing spiky football gear.

[Tasoth]

We'll survive. It's what we do. I also have a feeling it won't result in some crazy cyberpunk dystopia or other frightening place. It won't be the here and now, but it will be survivalable and probably able to be made comfortable with some work.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I wish my cities public transportation system was better. Damned expensive as is and getting anywhere requires two or more bus rides...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We can do worse than that and get by just fine. Nobody actually needs electric power at home, for example.

Perhaps 'need' is too strong a term but without either a supply of natural gas (which, as far as I know, will go much the same way as oil sooner or later) or electricity very few homes will have the capacity to actually cook anything. Maybe the situation's different in America but I don't see many alternatives to gas-fired or electric ovens in Britain and there's only so much furniture you can burn to get an open fire before you run out and the last thing we need is yet another crimp in the food supply.

Most American and to my knowledge Canadian homes have a wood stove for heat which you could easily place pots and pans ontop of to cook with. Or throw steaks right onto the physical surface to cook them. Not ideal, certainly, but you'll hardly be unable to cook.

[SCRawl]

Most American and to my knowledge Canadian homes have a wood stove for heat which you could easily place pots and pans ontop of to cook with. Or throw steaks right onto the physical surface to cook them. Not ideal, certainly, but you'll hardly be unable to cook.

I suppose that might be true in some areas, but I don't know anyone who has a wood stove in their home. Mind you, I live in a city of 130,000 people, in the shadow of Toronto -- not exactly rural territory.

[Shinova]

There's also the issue of where exactly all that wood would come from. There's a heck of a lot more people now than way back.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I suppose that might be true in some areas, but I don't know anyone who has a wood stove in their home. Mind you, I live in a city of 130,000 people, in the shadow of Toronto -- not exactly rural territory.

I've never lived in a house which didn't have at least a fireplace. It must be an American thing. Well, alternatives are not hard to achieve, regardless.

[Eris]

I've never lived in a house which didn't have at least a fireplace. It must be an American thing. Well, alternatives are not hard to achieve, regardless.

That's a definitely regional thing. In the Northeast it's very common, but down here in Arizona it's downright unheard of. I've seen all of two houses with wood burning capabilities, and beyond that we don't have much wood to burn off the mountains.

However, this is not a decisive criticism, since as you motion towards, it's not hard to patch up the plan with something. Worse comes to worse, we start centralised soup kitchen style buildings, which while not ideal would keep people alive.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There's also the issue of where exactly all that wood would come from. There's a heck of a lot more people now than way back.

You don't have to burn wood. One excellent alternative would be waste material from farming activities.

[tim31]

Most American and to my knowledge Canadian homes have a wood stove for heat which you could easily place pots and pans ontop of to cook with. Or throw steaks right onto the physical surface to cook them. Not ideal, certainly, but you'll hardly be unable to cook.

In this country we've been encouraged to shun woodfires in the last ten years in an effort to try and keep certain towns and cities from being blanketed in a smoke that doesn't dissipate due to geographic/microclimatic conditions.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

If everyone started burning wood for all their cooking and heating needs, the forests would disappear so fast it would make your head spin. I think the thing to remember is that being past peak oil doesn't mean the oil production drops off a cliff. It tapers off over decades, and efforts to become more efficient will counterbalance the price of oil skyrocketing too high, too fast. We're looking at a major economic depression for sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if the US went to war more than once over oil, but all of the talk of billions of deaths and permanent lifestyle changes is total bullshit. I think so many people are inclined to believe it because they want to think that first worlders will be punished adequately for being lazy slob assholes who would rather ruin the planet than walk two blocks. Part of me feels the same way. Yet as every atheist should know, it is not valid to believe something because we want it to be true.

[Enforcer Talen]

I might anticipate a billion dead, mostly from famine and war in the 3rd world - I wouldnt expect more then 15 mil worst case scenario in the states.

Keep in mind that energy demands are going up even as new fields are found less often. IE, we're spending our savings instead of matching our income. That would produce a much more slanted graph, possibly approaching cliff, depending on how it goes.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If everyone started burning wood for all their cooking and heating needs, the forests would disappear so fast it would make your head spin. I think the thing to remember is that being past peak oil doesn't mean the oil production drops off a cliff. It tapers off over decades, and efforts to become more efficient will counterbalance the price of oil becoming skyrocketing too high, too fast. We're looking at a major economic depression for sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if the US went to war more than once over oil, but all of the talk of billions of deaths and permanent lifestyle changes is total bullshit. I think so many people are inclined to believe it because they want to think that first worlders will be punished adequately for being lazy slob assholes who would rather ruin the planet than walk two blocks. Part of me feels the same way. Yet as every atheist should know, it is not valid to believe something because we want it to be true.

It would be a temporary measure to cope with the blackouts while we were using the power to build equipment for generating more power. In a few years, electrical usage in homes would be able to resume.

[Darth Wong]

Among other changes, people would have to learn how to cook with microwave ovens. The gas oven requires natural gas (obviously), and the conventional electric oven is hideously inefficient compared to a microwave oven. Hell, the goddamned thing doesn't even directly heat the food! It heats the air inside the oven, which in turn heats the food. That's a big fat volume of air that you're heating up to high temperature for no reason other than the fact that some of this heat will eventually make it into the food.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Among other changes, people would have to learn how to cook with microwave ovens. The gas oven requires natural gas (obviously), and the conventional electric oven is hideously inefficient compared to a microwave oven. Hell, the goddamned thing doesn't even directly heat the food! It heats the air inside the oven, which in turn heats the food. That's a big fat volume of air that you're heating up to high temperature for no reason other than the fact that some of this heat will eventually make it into the food.

I'd love to finally stick it to those people who think microwaves are unsafe.

Anyway, yes, in the long term that's correct.

My own talk was talking mostly about the temporary shortages, during the period when we're having to use that energy to build the equipment which will later produce more energy for us, and while we're upgrading our electrical grids to handle that. The possibility of sustained blackouts in many areas in such circumstances is hardly impossible, but it's not like they're be a permanent feature of the future.