Thread: Modern civilisation will be destroyed in a matter of years

Yes, I realise that I am posting a thread about the apocalypse in goddamn Extended Discussion, but over the past few days, I have emerged from a state of contented apathy to a solid realisation about the state of modern civilisation. This forum is exceptionally full of intelligent people, and so a fair number will probably have come to the following inescapable conclusions by themselves; however, the vast majority of people will likely have never either thought or heard about this; this includes businessmen and politicians. It's just a tragic part of the modern, ignorant human condition; as I said, I am just as guilty.

This is the last recession. It will become a depression. Then it will become a collapse. Billions will die. This is the blatant mathematical solution to the probabilistic Doomsday Argument.

The reason is peak oil. It's extremely simple: oil is a finite resource. Its production follows a bell curve. Demand has increased with production over history, as population and industrialisation has increased.



The data shows that we're on top of that bell curve for world production right now. It is possible we passed it already; the standard estimate now is 2010.

The problem is that, as oil production starts to decline, demand follows no such trend; it simply keeps going up. This deficit between demand and supply causes prices to sky rocket. This is exactly what was happening before the recession and why we are here now (the press are either too ignorant or too scared to even speculate this). Decades past things have been okay; sure, panic and recession has followed, but at the end of the day, oil production still kept rising; and the deficits here were miniscule.

That's not going to happen this time. It is simply a physical impossibility; there will be no rise up to cancel the deficit. Production will just keep on falling. And falling. And falling. Prices will become impossible, and economies will collapse.

Every single aspect of modern society is built entirely upon oil. That's the whole reason there are billions of people alive now instead of thousands, as nature would have it; we discovered oil, a miraculous supply of potential work. Nothing more.

Transportation. There will be no transportation. If you can't walk it, forget it. The modern infrastructure of jobs will entirely disappear.

Technology. All developed and created with and powered by oil. No more. Plastics. Gone.

Freely available power. Gone. What about renewables? It's far far too late. We haven't researched and we haven't built whilst we've had the opportunity. Now we can't research; research runs on oil. We can't build or even get the materials; runs on oil. We'll need about 20 years to set it up and we'll have about 2.

Food. 10 units of energy from crude oil go into every 1 unit of energy in the food you eat. What happens when there's no oil? Simple; there's no food. People will starve and people will die. Most people. You can't run machinery. You can't make fertilisers or pesticides or herbicides or fungicides, you can't transport it, you can't store it; you can't do anything. What the hell are you going to eat?

I imagine this will be World War III. All the crap with the USA invading Iraq over WOMDs was barely even a precursor. There won't even be any excuses this time, it'll just be a flat out battle over the dwindling resources. Although of course, this time we've got nukes.

Economies will disintegrate and there will be social mayhem; ironically developed countries will probably be worst hit.

I'd be surprised if this isn't happening flat out in five years. There's no use denying it; oil will peak, it will peak soon, and there is absolutely nothing in place to save us.

This thread is here for serious discussion. It is not here for quote chains or petty squabbles or one-upmanship; if you wish to do that, please go to one of the many other places you can do that in this forum. Thanks.

There's an outstanding site on the web about this with completely lucid reasoning and ample citations at this link: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/