[NeoPeasant]

Tonight I got this nutty idea. I took all the paper currency out of my wallet and wrote:
google "PEAK OIL"
neatly in the white margin above the president's head on each bill with a fine tip pen. Maybe I'll wake up a random person or two and they'll take some steps to weather the coming storm.

[savethehumans]

Not that I think the Feds would actually do anything about it--I've seen enough scribbles on money to believe THAT--but I think there's a law against writing on legal tender. Could someone check that out? As the police-state grip on this nation gets tighter, the Feds may decide that such enforcement might get some "undesirables" locked up. (And don't think they can't do a handwriting analysis on you! I'm sure they have samples of everybody's, somewhere.)

[PenultimateManStanding]

Paranoia Strikes deep
Into your heart it will creep
Starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line and the Man will come

To take you Away!

[Howard]

What is your purpose in alerting the masses to the coming doom?

Food production is falling now and will fall very dramatically beginning just a few years after peak. Your family and your survival will depend on getting an adequate amount of nutrition from an inadequate common supply. Your survival will depend upon keeping yourself warm when there is not fuel to fire the many gas and electric heating systems.

Starvation should be a major factor in the HUGE decline in human population back to the levels that can be sustained without this oil input into agriculture.

You have some advantage now because you have fore-knowledge and if you can manage to use that knowledge correctly, you will increase your odds of survival. Alerting every Tom, Dick, and Harry just makes for more occupants jumping into the limited number of lifeboats, and just maybe there will not be room for you.

My suggestion is to position your family and yourself to survive, which is your first obligation, and then you might be able to later, from that position of advantage personally help a few; it is in impossible task to save the many. Leave the evangelism to the religious right.

[Mehong]

I too notice selection already at working. The person own knowledge already compete for better survival from the reachback of the future events rippling back in shadow way, speaks to us very little whisper now letting us get away to safer place with own garden own animal simple life more for simple time.

The person no hearing the whisper does no make the good decision until late so they die in our place, elsewise we die. Nature make the selection and we help her in her choosings.

I affirm we have first obligation to family and selfs. Only to good friend if we only no make own chance bad by help.

[jesus_of_suburbia_old]

^You are right. If there is one thing that got us into this mess, it is compassion. The more information we hold to ourselves, the better we will be as a race.

[Howard]

It is not a matter of compassion. It is a matter of too few lifeboats on the Titanic.

If you choose selfabnigation then you are an evolutionary dead end. When I was a kid my parents forced me to go to Sundayschool and the only thing I remember them teaching was god first, others second, self last. This has got to be the most out of touch with nature philosophy that anyone can adopt. It is a sure path to self destruction, and if adopted society wide, it is a sure path to maximum destruction.

No species can survive if its members are programed to deliberatly not put their own genetic material first and foremost. It may make you feel good to think you are compassionate, but it does little to create a species that is driven to survival.

Actually when you think of it, those with an anti-personal-survival philosophy are probably on natures hitlist already.

Barry Commoner of "The Tragedy of the Commons" fame once said something to the effect that if you help a starving society with gifts of food when that starving society had a permanent long term food production problem you were only magnifying the human suffering, because with infusions of aid you only kept baby producers alive and eventually when you can no longer help that the number of deaths by the suffering of starvation would be greated in number. This is a case where compassion is down right cruel.

If peak oil is not a terminal case for most of mankind then there is no need to sound the alarm bell. If it is terminal, then you are just wasting your time anyway since the terminal case requires a significant population reduction, and you are only doing your family and yourself a disservice by taking away what little survival advantage your knowledge might give you. (I say might give you, because there are plenty of people posting on this site that either can't or will not take any action at all and when the lack of energy tsunami hits they will be swept away, just a easily as those without this foreknowledge.)

Selfishness, contrary to common belief, is a high value, without which our species would long ago joined the ranks of other extinctions.

[gg3]

Jrob and Howard, you're both wrong on facts, and wrong on ethics.

Social animals including humans thrive best when there's a balance of competition and cooperation. Lone humans die off easily, and predatory and/or parasitic ones get taken down by the defense systems of whatever societal groupings they're trying to prey upon or parasitise.

The so-called compassion of crisis-feeding hungry humans in an overpopulated ecological niche is nothing more than short-sightedness. Real compassion includes condoms and birth control pills along with the food packages, and development aid including electrification & education of women, to bring the birth rate down to a sustainable level.

Meanwhile the thing that's killing us is not compassion but greed, abject selfishness, and lazy-assed self-indulgence.

Do not confuse indulgent patheticism (the weepy garbage that passes for compassion on the nightly local news) with real compassion. If you want to learn something about compassion, ask a Buddhist monk.

Last but not least, (since this is the open topic forum, I suppose I can cuss here) what the flying fuck is so special about *your* fucking DNA?

[Howard]

In absolute terms there is nothing special about my DNA or yours. From my point of view there is nothing more important than mine and nothing less important than yours. From your point of view there is nothing more important than yours and nothing less important than mine. This is what nature commands. Otherwise we would not act to preserve ourselves and our progeny, and we long ago would have become an extinct species. The drive to self preservation is mandatory for survival, only to be exceeded by the drive to preserve one's children.

This is exactly my point. Self and family preservation is our drive and when the Titanic sinks and there are limited lifeboats (limited food, limited adequate shelter, limited freedom from violence and disease) then it defeats self preservation to be "compassionate" and alert competetors for the lifeboats as to the need to get their first. Were it possible for sufficient lifeboats, then I would agree with the idea of sounding the alarm, but my judgement is that there is no way to make this planet support 6 billion people without oil and that we are on a fast path to 1 billion.

I have nothing against cooperative efforts for survival with other persons, and in fact have such a plan with family and close neighbors. I am for generosity to the extent that it might be possible in the dire times I imagine.

Fortunately the peak oil evangelistic efforts will probably amount to nothing until the tsunami is on the beach, and then it will be too late for the masses to effectively take what they will not have to survive, and this is the way it should be; survival of the fittest in action.

[PenultimateManStanding]

So the big question becomes not whether to tell or not to tell but how much to budget for guns and ammo. Gotta protect the sacred chalise with the genetic material!

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after you!

A large number of people (read: majority) won't believe or listen anyways. No matter what you would like to say or how you approach them, they won't listen. If you put each of the reasons why on a stickie note you'd look like Jim Carrey in "Bruce almighty". they will ahve a much harder time in the die off, by then when the ship is sinking it will be too late.

but that doesn't mean that we can't tell some in the hopes they will listen. It might make what a whole 1%-2% difference? those that will believe will and will listen when told. those that won't won't listen to god or a burning bush, so what the hell. gg3 is totally right on about your concepts of right and wrong though.

selfishness is what got us here in the first place. sparrows survive the hawks attack becuase they stick together in numbers. people are not bears, lions or tigers no matter what your ego would like to think. we will always stand a better chance of surviving whether its a die off, earthquake or tsunami.

[Howard]

So, what is the point of evangalizing? Even if everyone understood and reached the same conclusion (which they will not), do you western portion of the human population is going give up the "good life" voluntarily and immediately? Think 5 billion will join some mass suicide cult? Is new energy suddenly going to appear out of thin air? With the maximum conservation effort, how many months will peak be posponed? How many would die immediately from a sudden reduction in oil usage to a sustainable level?

I think that any of your grand plans for a green life are just wishes in the cheap and easy furtherance of your own existences. There is no solution that can likely be invented by mankind, and that is why nature is going to step in a terminate the excess population; always has worked that way and always will. The fundamental problem is overpopulation supported artifically by stored hydrocarbons. The storehouse starts to decline and the table can no longer feed the masses. Something must give and what will give is 5 billion lives over some period of time, probably 100 to 300 years.

Those farthest out on a limb are those most dependent on the oil lifestyle, so contrary to the wishful thinking of westerners, the carnage will be heaviest in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and those portions of South America most industrialized. Those with the least distance to fall will feel the impact the least.

And yes, weapons for self defense have always been an important part of civilization, and will particularly be important in the coming violent times. Didn't you see the frenzy when some of the Asian tsunami survivors who hadn't eaten for a week finally were found by a truck with some food? The drive to live is strong (except apparently for some of the passive types on this site) and whatever morals restrain us in good times will quickly evaporate in a you or me survival situation. I imagine even this mask of compassion will be thrown in the trash can in favor of the more true nature of mankind under stress.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('uNkNowN ElEmEnt', 'J')ust because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after you!

A large number of people (read: majority) won't believe or listen anyways. No matter what you would like to say or how you approach them, they won't listen. If you put each of the reasons why on a stickie note you'd look like Jim Carrey in "Bruce almighty"

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

once the seed is planted, it runs around in the mind. its source will be forgotten and the message remains. that is part of the point.

I have no intention of running around evangelizing. I also have no intention of only telling people I think are worthy of saving. (who am I to judge?) but as with other issues I will speak up and put forth my limited knowledge in the hopes of improving or adding to others lives.

Why? because someone who survives this might be important to my survival even if I don't know it yet. One of the dumpster divers I see each week might show me how to fend for myself and my family if all hell breaks loose, or show me a way to get out of this city, or jsut share a meal with us.

we are all human and by denying them this knowledge (whether they will listen or not) is denying that we are all the same, all worthy of the same consideration and respect and the chance to live.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Its important to keep our humanity. Howard may be right that it will get real ugly; I sure as Hell am not looking forward to it. I remember back to Y2K. I put a lot into preparations. On January 1, 2000, my ex-wife said, Are you disappointed? I said sure, I was looking forward to fending off all my desparate dying neighbors.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

How fast do you have to run to outrun a bear?

faster than the guy beside you.

think of it this way howard. the more prepared people there are, the more there are to kill off some of the nasties before they find your hidey hole and stash.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Speaking of bears, here in my neck o' the woods, there used to be little worry about mountain lions (Cougars). But the enviruses, excuse me, I mean the environmentalists passed ordinances protecting these predators and now we have the occasional person eaten by mountain lions. If things get real bad they'll probably let the predators out of the zoo because that is their mindset. Nature good, humanity bad. Four legs good, two legs bad. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Personally I hope they do let them out of the zoos. then we'll have more food to hunt. I mean really, if people are starving, they won't look at the zoos as a new kind of supermarket?

[KiddieKorral]

Here ya go.

[KiddieKorral]

Crap, that was supposed to be in the MasterCard thread. Can we get some mod action?