[Flint749]

THE WHOLE POINT IS THE GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR!

Didn't anyone here read Matt's book? It isn't the peak of oil production or consumption that is so dangerous to us. Whether you agree or not that the world has peaked or will peak in production in the next few years, the most important thing to you and me is that the President of the United States is willing to stage terrorist attacks and launch wars because of it.

I don't care if the belabored "peak" is today, next year or in 2310. It doesn't matter a whit against nuclear weapons. My guess is there will be a good twenty or thirty years of oil left in the ground when we become virtually extinct.

I know crunching numbers and arguing over when and how things are progressing is comforting in a way. If we can quantify the measurable portions of our doom, we can distract ourselves from the unimaginable.

But we must face the unimaginable or die. Stop quibbling over whether the peak will be Thanksgiving of 2005 or Valentines Day of 2008. Use the time you have to put back food and water in a defensible place. Don't let your sons and daughters register for the draft, because you're going to need those young people to defend your resources when the time comes. Find a way to let the government think they are dead. Learn to farm in a defensible area.

Learn skills! Electronics, machining, farming, first aid. Learn anything that will make you valuable to a strong community when you show up at the gates. If you are an accountant, a lawyer or a telemarketer, learn some skill that adds value to resources. Knit if you have to.

People who know how to make phone calls, arrange spreadsheets and cap off big deals are going to be useless to a society that has to do and make everything itself.

Above all, GET OUT OF URBAN AREAS, particularly cities that have NFL teams. Don't laugh, think. The American cities that are the most likely targets of enemy nukes are the ones the enemy has heard of. Lansing is safer than Detroit. Columbus is safer than Cincinnati or Cleveland. Fresno beats LA or San Francisco hands down.

There will be safe places on the planet. Islands. Australia, maybe. If you go there and take with you some solar panels, you might save your family and civilization at the same time.

THE WHOLE POINT IS THE GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR! It's right here and right now.

[pip]

Who is the other side in this big nuke war? How many nukes do they have?

[Specop_007]

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[Such]

Didn't that "Day After" movie in the 1980's pretty much point out the futility of trying to scrap by after a global nuclear war?

I thought that this was all established... there are no survivors in a nuclear war.

[Chicagoan]

In the event of a nuclear war, I would rather be killed in the initial blast. A sudden death would be better then a slow lingering death by radiation poisoning.

[Geology_Guy]

In the affairs of humans perception is often more powerful than reality. When the public worldwide wakes up to the idea of peak oil then the true peak will matter less because everyone will start making moves (wars) for the remaining oil. Also hoarding ect. will occur. Thus the true physical peak will be clouded by human actions (economics).

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')the President of the United States is willing to stage terrorist attacks and launch wars because of it.

[arocoun]

Yeah, I hope we use those nukes to kill all the inferior people. You know, the people of the inferior races, inferior economic classes, and inferior cultures. It'd be so humane to kill all those inferior sub-human beings in a single blast, than taking food away from them and letting them slowly starve. And believe me, the US will be aiming for those kinds of non-American inferior people. Isn't that great?!

I also want forced lethal injections for poor, old, and disabled people. Because it really doesn't matter if they want to die; what matters is, would I want to die if I were in their situation?

Besides, life is nothing but a big, scary nightmare that should be ended immediately if anything bad happens at all. I know I'd rather die a quick, painless death by the hands of others, in the method and at the time of their choosing, because thinking and acting (and if things get a little bad, commiting suicide) for myself can be soooo difficult! Just as I wish to live my life, I also wish to die: In the service and under the control of the government, and other people.

[/sarcasm]

Honestly, though, try to think a little about the implications of accepting a nuclear holocaust.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')onestly, though, try to think a little about the implications of accepting a nuclear holocaust.

[Olaf]

While it would be preferable to die quickly than slowly if those were the two choices, I would say that a global nuclear war would be, potentially at least, far more tragic and devastating to the rest of the environment. We have the potetnial to strip the world of habitat and so forth with global starvation, but nuclear war guarantees it.

I'll plan to stay alive, barring a nuclear attack. If there is one, I live only 10-12 miles from a fairly good sized city, that would likely be a target. So I probably wouldn't have to worry about much else.

I remember reading somewhere, sorry no source, that some 250 cities within the continental U.S. are targets for nuclear weapons.

Olaf

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hile it would be preferable to die quickly than slowly if those were the two choices, I would say that a global nuclear war would be, potentially at least, far more tragic and devastating to the rest of the environment. We have the potetnial to strip the world of habitat and so forth with global starvation, but nuclear war guarantees it.

[Marco]

Well a couple of points,

The tests in the previous decades did not target urban areas. Imagine if 50-60 nukes went off over US cities? Well you can imagine. In a full scale exchange we are all stuffed. You might not get a nuclear winter, but that would be small consolation to the survivors.

Forget about coming to Australia. While we were supposed to have been taken off the Russian target list after the cold war, we could easily be put back on. Cities like Sydney and Perth would be fried- since these have big naval facilities the US Navy can use. Places like the US tracking station at Northwest Cape in WA could get nuked and no one would notice, its so remote. But the urban areas would likely get it. Mad Max was filmed in the NSW outback- and it is not a place you want to hide out in.

lastly, just who is the US going to go nuclear with??? North Korea? That would take about one US sub lobbing a dozen nukes into.

Russia and China are the likely ones. Russia must still have a few thousand usable nukes. No idea what CHina has though.

Personally I cant see a nuclear war at all. But it is possible. There is the possibility of a collapsing US pushing China to the wall over ME oil/gas.

Cheery subject.

Marco