I just read an article about life after there's no oil

[Critters2]

This is some scary shit. I'm thinking of just crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head.
Or buying a solar oven. One or the other.

[Nicole]

1. Buy the solar oven.

They are great for camping trips & picnics.

[Critters2]

2. It would come in handy for that. Seems like a great idea.

And I'll be eating when the rest of you are fighting over food and fuel. In fact, I'd invite you over once in a while.

[Nicole]

3. Thanks!

When you invite me over, I'll bring my solar oven. We can cook twice as much. :)

[mentalsolstice]

18. Ya' know it's sad, but true!

We're campers...we have a pop-up, and we also do tent camping. Every time we make a "camping" purchase, we justify the cost based on the possible anarchy we believe we'll possibly see in our lifetime.

[Nicole]

19. I hear ya!

I do the same when buying emergency supplies for tornado season. I think it might be come in handy later so I buy extras.

[Critters2]

23. I never buy supplies for tornado season. Never even think of it

I probably should. There was a tornado 5 miles west of here that killed 7 people in 2004. And I've been through three tornadoes.

What supplies do you get?

[Nicole]

27. I always do.

I've been through several here. Last time we lost power for almost 2 weeks because lines & poles were blown down. That was the F5 tornado that hit Moore, OK. in 1999. They had priority with the repair & emergency crews.

Propane & charcoal for the grills. Matches.
Oil & wicks for the oil burning lamps. More matches.
Batteries for the radio & flashlights in case the recharge-ables can't be recharged.
Bottled water for the freezer. It helps keep the food from spoiling a little longer plus I can drink it after it thaws.
Extra bags of ice to use in the ice cooler for drinks.
Canned fruit & veggies for when I can't keep fresh ones refrigerated. I don't normally buy those.


I also keep an overnight bag packed with a few days worth of clothes, meds & personal hygiene products in case I have to leave here in a hurry. Extra box of contacts & saline solution since I wear disposables. Plus enough money to pay cash for hotels, gas, etc. if needed.
The overnight bag I keep packed year round & it has been handy on more than one occasion.

[Louis Cipher]

20. Heck yeah, me too. My life style is migration friendly.

Me and my wife both backpack so we got everything we need to migrate wherever we have to to find food, water, or simply to get away from the roving zombies.

[marzipanni]

4. You can make your own solar oven

There are quite a few websites with solar cooker making/using information.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2083_make-solar-oven.html

[patricia92243]

15. Thanks!!

[cobalt1999]

5. Don't fret it too much.

Civilization has transitioned energy sources successfully before. Wood to Coal to Oil. We're just transitioning from Oil to Renewables/Nuclear. Maybe one day we'll get to fusion power.

True change is tough, but it doesn't have to traumatic.

[Deja Q]

7. Exactly.

[DS1]

6. magazine or a link?

[Critters2]

8. Here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html

[liontamer]

9. humans are more adaptable than we pretend

if all the oil disappeared tomorrow, it's true that things would be miserable for a few months. Then we'd all adapt. Suddenly we'd have new efficient energy sources.

[Pierre.Suave]

10. It isnt that easy

everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is oil dependent in this world.

Producing, shipping, everything is oil related. Your computer, the energy to run it, the trucks that transport food to the store, the farm equipment that operates on the farms making the food...

Unless you grow a garden, have a solar house, make your furniture from trees by hand, hunt and fish for meat, etc.. you will be severely effected, as will everyone else not just in the US, but worldwide. Economic collapse will happen as well.

if you want to be megarich in the future, start figuring out how to provide energy for ALL these things when oil runs out.

[liontamer]

11. I'm not saying that it will be easy

just that we're so dependent now because we can get away with it. When we don't have that option, we'll be forced to make do. For example, i don't hunt and fish for meat now, but largely because I'm lazy and can just go to the store instead. without that option, I would suddenly learn to 1) eat less meat and fish 2) become more self reliant. When we use up all of our fresh water, we will learn to recycle our water supply instead of just saying, "eww that's gross". My computer uses a lot of energy, but how much time do I need to spend on it? If I treat energy like a valuable resource, I'll suddenly find that the hours I spend on DU/youtube/assorted mindless entertainment/ would be better spent elsewhere, like on my garden. The same with most things. We have landfills full of perfectly useful things that we threw away because we're overwhelmed by abundance. We'll stop doing that when we're forced to stop. And we'll probably start scavenging then too.

[billyskank]

12. I hope you're right

'cause if and when the oil does start becoming scarce, I think we're going to go to war over it. Nothing like what we've seen already.

:scared:

[Pierre.Suave]

14. Just using the comp is not the whole story

Producing the comp takes energy, the plastics are petrochemicals, it is shipped to the store by a vehicle that runs on petrochemicals.

I dont think you fully understand the pervasiveness of oil in our society if you think it will be easy. Unless you have solar power, water power, wind power, or nuclear power, you wont have the electricity to use your computer anyway.

I hope you have a fireplace, or live in the tropics where it is always warm as well with a year round growing season.

[liontamer]

17. i do have wind power

it costs more, but the option is there and i take it. If it were the only option everyone would use it. Just because we live one way doesn't mean we can't live another. I don't think you understand that we don't have to do everything the exact way we do things now. Currently petroleum is cheap and plentiful so we exploit it (despite the damage it does). We don't have to. We could run our society differently. We just don't, largely out of laziness in both thought and action.

[Pierre.Suave]

21. I applaud your use of wind power, but

your use of wind power for electricity is one very tiny part of your total oil use.

Everything in your house has oil in its production/use somewhere. EVERYTHING!

How will we ship things if we dont have oil? How expensive will everything get when oil is scarce and we have to import it from china and due to regulations and cost, the shipping companies refuse to build ships that run on nuclear power, not to mention the trucks that take it from the port to the store, and then to your house.

To switch from oil to another energy source will be a monumental task, and I think the overwhelming majority of people simply have no idea how pervasive oil is.

Even the value of the dollar is based on oil. As that runs out, the dollar will drop in value at the same time everything is getting more expensive.

[cobalt1999]

13. Just because everything is dependent on oil now doesn't mean they have to be in the future.

There are lots of energy sources that are not currently cost competitive with cheap oil. That's already changing. Besides, it's not like the oil is going to stop suddenly, there will be a decline over a period of time allowing alternatives to fill the void.

[Pierre.Suave]

16. exactly

but as the oil declines, EVERYTHING will get more expensive.

plastic is an OIL product. What do you think the comp will cost when oil is scarce? How will the food get to the store, but in the back of a truck that runs on oil?


There is no other alternative to oil right now that doesnt use oil somewhere in the production cycle. Seriously, name any you want and I will point out the ways oil is used in its production/transport/use.

[cobalt1999]

22. Yes, it will be more expensive.

However, civilization won't collapse.

200 years ago the exact same doomsday articles were written in Europe. The entire world was based on wood and the forests were being depleted very quickly. At that time, wood was used to build homes, carts, cooking, heating, tools, furniture,...well, in fact almost everything (more-so than today's oil based world). As wood became more scarce and expensive, prices rose until people turned to burning that nasty substance Coal. It became economically viable to build coal mines. Once the world switched over (painful as it was), wood was used only when it was needed.

I suspect the same thing will happen with oil. It won't totally go away and when it is not used as a primary energy source, it will still be used in areas were it is required such as plastics.

[Critters2]

25. Except that, unlike wood, it will all go away

Wood is renewable. Oil is not. Once it's gone, it's gone.

[Critters2]

24. This is exactly what worries me. Oil is more than fuel.

I think it will be a crisis.

[Threedifferentones]

26. Well I guess you should just do what everyone else does

and not think about it :).