[urlich]

Dear all,

Everyone of us has experienced the difficulty to "convince" others on the inevitability of Peak Oil. "Is peak oil a lonesome journey?" posed the question just a few days before.

But don't think of the others (the not-peakoilers) for now.

Let us suppose that we *are* right, that all the sad and though things happen (shortages, recessions, wars... maybe even die off), how to leave a testimonial for the human beings of the future?

That is: after the crash of course we will deserve some credit, at least from the parents, relatives, sons friends around us. The people we live together and we love.

"you were right! Excuse for thinking that you were mad!!!"

But this is *not* sufficient, even if it will sooth our "ego" a lot! That credit will be limited to our lives, to the short span of a generation.

What will be our mark for the future? A sign that at least a small percentage of the population did not trust the panacea of forever cheap, abundant oil? Maybe all the peak oil sites, of course, maybe even this one, with all the messages.

But prepare for the worst.

What if Internet will die? What if the society as we know it will collapse?


Imagine:

Some part of the world, winter 2079:

Son: Dad, I am cold! Put more wood in the fire!

Father: once apon a time we had gas, people just turned on the thermostat, and they had 18-20 degrees in their rooms. My grandfather told me that they thought it would last forever.

Son: And did they consume it all?

Father: No, not all, there is still a lot left underground, but it is difficult to extract. it is a *long* story.


****

How to tell this story for the next centuries? Maybe thousand of years...

A sort of time-safe. Something durable.

Yes, we could burn some cd-roms, dvds, put them in a safe box underground... but how to read them in the next centuries? Even without using proprietary formats, simple ASCII... how to read them without electricity?

Graffiti on the walls, like paintings of prehistoric human beings, a sort of illustrated history of these times.

Maybe some hologram, with a message inside. We have the energy and time to do it NOW. After the peak we will too busy to fight for our survival to think of these things.

Also poetry is durable.

Maybe we will need a new Homerus, a new epic poem, a new Bible with a new Noe's Arch.



Think bigger. Think longer.

"Once upon a time..."

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('urlich', 'H')ow to tell this story for the next centuries? Maybe thousand of years...

[Doly]

Don't worry. People always remember big events, one way or another. For example, there are still tales of the Flood going around... and only recently scientists figured out what they were about. Southeast Asia was indeed flooded about 10,000 years ago! It used to be a flat peninsula, rather than the collection of islands it is now. See how long folk-tale memory can last?

And if you actually have something written down, it can be a fairly reliable account. We have fairly good knowledge of what the Greeks and Romans were up to 2,500 years ago.

[Aimrehtopyh]

I really like the graffiti idea. Be sure to hit the pylons of some remote train-bridge, if you just do freeway overpasses and such it'll get painted over or defaced.

Clay tablets[ would be cheap and easy to mass-produce. Pottery lasts almost forever under a wide array of conditions, just place dozens of copies underground over a wide area to improve the chances of future archaeologists finding out the truth. It'll only take one copy to rock some future world, look at what the Gospel of Judas is doing to us today!

Some gold LP records placed in a titanium shell and launched into solar orbit would be the ultimate.

Here's an article about the durability of digital media:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/t ... 84206.html

Somebody should just build a printer that outputs onto clay tablets instead of paper.

[Wednesday]

Interesting. I had thought about this a while back, when I first discovered what was coming.

I plan to take a lot of photos and write a documentary-like book.

I am inspired by Thomas Gallagher's Paddy's Lament.

[pea-jay]

THe most interesting idea I have heard about on the net is someone's suggestion to use thin aluminum sheets and etch the info on that is to be preserved long term.

Since etching on aluminum is not quick easy or cheap, probably some discretion will need to be placed on what gets preserved and what will get forgotten. Mankinds great discoveries and inventions probably will make the cut. Who won the third season of American Idol will most likely not.

I am not totally convinced things will come to this, but I have certainly not discounted that possibility either.

[jdumars]

I'm going to engrave this on a copper plate and bury it when TSHTF:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', 'I')'m going to engrave this on a copper plate and bury it when TSHTF:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[jdumars]

Shoot! I was going to engrave my own name... because when they go to dig it up, future generations will say "Damn, that DuMars was one hell of a writer"

[PenultimateManStanding]

Up high in some cave in the Rocky Mountains there is an astonishing piece of engineering which will keep time for tens of thousands of years. Read about it in Discover magazine once. It requires no maintenance or power. Anybody remember anything about that? I forgot the details. As for longlasting records, oil paintings from the Middle Ages will last longer than most of our ephemeral crap (if they are kept in good places).

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'U')p high in some cave in the Rocky Mountains there is an astonishing piece of engineering which will keep time for tens of thousands of years. Read about it in Discover magazine once. It requires no maintenance or power. Anybody remember anything about that? I forgot the details. As for longlasting records, oil paintings from the Middle Ages will last longer than most of our ephemeral crap (if they are kept in good places).

[Zardoz]

The fairy tale is that we will return to Olduvai, or that the entire world will be reduced to Mad Max-style living.

The reality is that we may very well see starvation by the billions, and we may go through decades of relentless horror as the global population is brutally reduced to a sustainable level. That level could turn out to be just a few hundred million. Hell, if Lovelock is right about runaway global warming, it could be far less than that.

But the survivors will not have "forgotten" all the technological advances we have made. The energy that made them possible, electricity, will still be generated, although at vastly reduced rates, and mostly from solar sources, undoubtedly. "Civilization" will go on, but it will evolve into a form that will be absolutely nothing like what we have today.

I would think "highly disciplined" would be the term that would best characterize it. Wasteful consumerish attitudes will simply not be tolerated in the future. The paradigm of infinite economic growth will be a ridiculed, discredited notion of the past. The ideals of unlimited "personal freedom" will probably be obsolete as well, as authoritarian government will, unfortunately, probably be necessary to enforce sustainable ways of life. Certainly harsh, unyielding limits on population densities will be universally adopted.

But technology will survive, and will continue to be developed, because we will not permit it to be lost. Instead of devoting our creative energies to the development of more and bigger luxury items, the focus will be on using technology to assure our survival. A new ethic of sustainability will arise, because no other paradigm will be workable. We are the way we are now simply because we can get away with it. Kunstler's brilliantly simple line that we will go on like this until we can't, says it all. When we are forced to change, we will.

The survivors of the coming catastrophe will not be a bunch of National Enquirer-reading airheads. Our culture of silliness will be forgotten, replaced by a culture focused on living as simply and efficiently as possible. We'll learn the harsh lessons of the past, and retain the usable technological advances we have made, and do what we have to do to assure the survival of the species.

Forget the clay tablet stuff. We'll never fall that far.

[MyOtherID]

Ye gods, this thread is a case of mental masturbation if ever I saw one.

The membership of this forum largely takes the most extreme and unlikely outcome as a given, and then revels in it, while proclaiming his/her awful regret that it's going to happen.

I suspect the psychological "type" attracted to such forums have been with us through the ages. The Internet gives such people a whole new way of picking at each others' scabs.

[jdumars]

Yeah, all of us doomers are mentally ill. What was I thinking??

Of course the fine people of the United States of America will quickly embrace a radically-scaled back lifestyle requiring self-sacrifice, cooperation and humility. Why on Earth was I so pessimistic? I'm going to go do my part and buy a hybrid.

Uhm... yeah. If you're not worried, you're not paying attention!

[SoothSayer]

The survivors of the coming catastrophe will not be a bunch of National Enquirer-reading airheads. Our culture of silliness will be forgotten, replaced by a culture focused on living as simply and efficiently as possible. We'll learn the harsh lessons of the past, and retain the usable technological advances we have made, and do what we have to do to assure the survival of the species.

Forget the clay tablet stuff. We'll never fall that far.

I suspect that we will always have an 80%-20% ratio between the haves & have-nots.

Societies always need sheep and/or serfs and/or consumers.

The main difference will be that the top 20% will vote themselves the right to have access to energy, education, hot showers, food etc whilst the remainder will simply have very limited access to the "goodies" because of lack of availability / legal restrictions / high prices.

Take a look at some of the more benign current dictatorships for examples.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MyOtherID', '
')The membership of this forum largely takes the most extreme and unlikely outcome as a given, and then revels in it, while proclaiming his/her awful regret that it's going to happen.

[AmericanEmpire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here does seem to be a mood here, a notion that pretty soon we'll see the water rising from below decks and feel the ship start to list and then everybody's going to know as well.

[urlich]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MyOtherID', 'Y')e gods, this thread is a case of mental masturbation if ever I saw one.

[urlich]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', ' ')Forget the clay tablet stuff. We'll never fall that far.

[Atlantean_Relic]

There is always the option of killing them all and letting God sort them out.