[korosten]

When I learned about PO last summer, I was shocked and thought THEOTAWKI (including economic collapse, famine etc) was just around the corner and thought it could literally happen within the next few days/weeks.

In fact we started investing in gold immediately, put our house on the market, and decided to relocate, bought books on permaculture/gardening etc (you name it).

Now 6 months later, while I still believe that PO is going to be bad and will cause a collapse, I now think this will happen much *slower* than I originally thought, and I think we still have a few years probably until PO becomes really noticeable. I also think now that poorer countries will be hit first (because they can't afford expensive oil), which will dampen the effect a bit for other countries.

I think the collapse will happen over many years (maybe even decades).

I was wondering what *your* reaction was at first, and how it evolved.

Did you become more pessimistic or optimistic as time went by? Did you make any (drastic) decisions and maybe regret them later? Or do you still feel the exact same way?

It seems like whenever I read about it in detail, I feel quite doomerish and feel a sense of urgency to act, but this feeling goes away as I continue to live in this "society". I wonder if this is a psychological effect of some sort, maybe a disconnect between what we feel, and what we logically know to be true.

Chantal

[mark]

I discovered peak oil in the summer of ’04. Like you, my early reaction soon faded but I was initially optimistic. After about a year of intense study, I came to the conclusion that we were truly fucked. I changed because I became aware of too many things that were rushing at us and that we (humans) were totally unprepared. Everywhere I looked; from resource use to economics to culture was mounting bad news. Then I realized that all of the above were merely symptoms, but symptoms of what. That occupied more time before arriving at the answer. That’s why I remain a doomer.

I have no idea how this is going to play out nor am I too concerned. Nor have I divined a workable timeframe for whatever is coming. It will come of its own accord and I’ll handle it then, or not. In either case, I’m doing what I should be doing so let it come.

[vision-master]

Regret the past & fear the future.

How about living within the moment instead.

Zen..............

[Kingcoal]

Just look at the depletion curve. It has a plateau leading into a slope which is gentle at first, but becomes exponentially steeper. I think we are at the plateau right now. We should have several years of increasing prices, but still readily available oil. As the huge wells dry up, one by one, things might get non linear, however. Towards the bottom of the curve, all the big wells are dry and we are left with millions of trickles. Of course the shale and tar sand oil will be still there, but it seems to me that we will never get a positive EROEI out of those.

However, if we somehow quit using oil for transportation, that would reduce our present consumption by something like 70%.

[Ferretlover]

I was concerned at first, but kinda had an idea what was going to happen...
Then, when I discovered PO.com last summer, I began to get a better perspective on not only what was (probably) going to happen, but, also what it really took to live the way most of us do, and how much time it was going to take to make necessary changes to even come close to the present.
99.99999999999999999 % of the world is not prepared, and, I don't think there is time to motivate most to understand, let alone make the changes...
I am not a happy camper....

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'J')ust look at the depletion curve. It has a plateau leading into a slope which is gentle at first, but becomes exponentially steeper. I think we are at the plateau right now. We should have several years of increasing prices, but still readily available oil. As the huge wells dry up, one by one, things might get non linear, however. Towards the bottom of the curve, all the big wells are dry and we are left with millions of trickles. Of course the shale and tar sand oil will be still there, but it seems to me that we will never get a positive EROEI out of those.

However, if we somehow quit using oil for transportation, that would reduce our present consumption by something like 70%.

[Ferretlover]

Now, some days, it is twenty minutes between the lights!

[frankthetank]

My doom was bad to begin with (when discovering this site), then i became a little more optomistic, and now i've just given up completely. I'll let the cards play out how they are dealt, because i really don't have any choice in the matter. You need to have serious wealth to get around this and its something i don't have. I think a LOT of people that think they are wealthy are going to be as fucked if not more fucked then poorer people (lifestyle change).

Vision-

Do they still have that homeless park right off one of the main highways up there in the cities? I remember seeing it a long time ago when i was going up to Anoka/Ramsey/Elk River area. Traffic up there is nasty. Last time i was just going to the airport (during an icestorm/snowstorm) and that blew ass. I was close to strangling a hotel worker because she was the biggest bitch i've ever dealt with. I haven't stayed in a hotel since and probably never will!

[mkwin]

Started off denying the any problem existed. Then became a hardcore doomer perspective of collapse and die-off so focusing on guns, gold, and land etc.

Following further reading and understanding, I am now more optimistic. After reading the Hirsch report and other US government reports on alternatives plus hundreds of other articles, I can see a situation where there will be declining oil resources but there will be alternatives to plug the gap to a certain extent.
The price mechanism will limit demand and economic growth and will also make it viable to EOR almost every field in the world. There is also no immediate sight to the end of new supply coming online. Circa 8 million barrels of capacity will be added in 2008 and the forecasts tend to be conservative from a couple of years out so the ones for 2009 onwards may increase from there current levels also. I think 2008 will be a surprising year for the people who have been arguing 2005 was the year of peak oil.

I now have the opinion that life will get a harder for us westerners, especially Americans as Europeans are far more energy efficient and have good electrified rail networks already, we will have less spare money and more people will be unemployed but we won't face a collapse and die-off. There will be a difficult transition to electrified transport and high efficiency vehicles and eventually a renewable/nuclear dominant energy system when gas/coal/climate issues begin to make them more competitive. I am less optimistic about the developing world though. Still under going rapid population growth and consuming land and resources at an ever-increasing pace will lead to a situation where either we may not want to or cannot support them and there will be a massive collapse, most likely in Africa but possibly in India and China as well.

The wild-card for me is climate change. You read James lovelocks opinion and you get the impression we are all going to die in the next 30 years but then again he has been wrong about almost everything else. Who knows, time will tell. I think that sums up my attitude now. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

[one_more_day]

I think malaise is where I am now. At first I was all into planning and stuff. I have to say that I do not regret it. I have a good supply of food, tools, etc. that would be useful in any situation. I also got into food production and have tried to establish a certain level of physical fitness.

Coming from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, honestly this feels like sitting around waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ!

Granted that PO has a certain "in our lifetime" urgency to it. However, it looks like it will take awhile for the real melt-down to occur.

At this point, I am taking the "la-di-da" approach. I would like to live to see old age, but I'm not willing to go all commando-style to do it. I have no desire to hole up in a bunker and try to out-live my starving neighbors. I will continue to maintain my current preparations, but I'm not going to worry about the worst-case scenario. If that lack of worry ends up killing me...well, at least I enjoyed life while I could.

Honestly, I think that we were all very lucky to be born in such a time of ease (compared with previous centuries). I can't imagine that ancient peoples would have much sympathy for the problems we face today! At least in America, your basic needs for food and shelter are usually met.

The only people I actually feel sorry for are my kids. They will inevitably face a shit-storm just as they are reaching adulthood and probably before.

[billp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t was faster to get from Downtown Minneapolis to downtown Saint Paul over a 100 years ago than present day.

[billp]

Let's move back 90-100 years to Ft Snelling in Minnesota.

Father

My father recounted tales of those who were present when soldiers returned from the battle of the little big horn.

New history.

[vision-master]

What are you saying?

I'm related to the "Pond" family. 1st white settlers in the area.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('one_more_day', 'C')oming from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, honestly this feels like sitting around waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ!

[mos6507]

I still believe in die-off if you combine PO with GW. GW is causing a mass extinction event and I don't think we are completely isolated from that. There is no way of knowing how this will bubble up the food chain.

[Pops]

We’ve changed our lives completely, PO and the housing bubble in CA was the prompt but the urge had always been there. Sitting on the porch in Missouri a couple weeks ago looking at our little farm I felt fairly optimistic.

But being back in Central CA last week for a funeral was scary. The difference there in just 3 years is amazing. Trying to keep people from committing suicide at my expense on I-5 or going down a familiar little country road and finding miles of new tract houses and huge shopping centers plopped down for no apparent reason in the middle of the most productive cropland in the world was quite disconcerting.


I had become somewhat complacent, due I think, to our slightly less dependant new life.

After that trip I’ve had a relapse of the Dooms and will be working a little harder.

[vfr]

Yea, very easy to be a doom and gloomer when you life is engrossed with such preparations.

When I first realized how PO would change the world I was depressed as hell. Then I adapted to it within a week or so and beagn work to change the spects of my life that could be changed.

Have come to accept PO and live my life pretty much as normal - but still work on preparedness almost every day in some fashion.

Sometimes we jump the gun with survival mania and do it in an unbalanced way.

The way I work my survival preparedness is to do the footwork, prepare, educate and hold it on the back burner unless needed. Until that need, I just live life the best I can.

Without that mindset one cannot be at peace with life, as we are always looking for doom and gloom every day...every hour...every minute. And some survivalists seem to be disappointed if the don't get disaster!




Take care,


V (Male)

Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
Futurist
Urban Homesteader

[Dan_Browne]

My problem is the opposite.
I read the original article in Scientific American in 1997 and thought "yeah right, who cares 2030 is 30 years away".

So I basically had the concept in the back of my mind but I ignored it and bought myself an SUV.

It wasn't until 2003 and the gulf war that I started to wonder.
At that point I considered myself pretty smart because I knew about peak oil for six years already so I decided to do a bit of googling.

I found www.dieoff.com

I was floored and have been in an up and down denial acceptance despair cycle pretty much ever since.

It's difficult to get my brain to override the gut-wrenching fear I sometimes feel because I'm not yet convinced it's going to be a slow decline.

I think it *could* be a slow decline if we all do everything just right.
Since there are many differences of opinion, however, I doubt that we *will* do everything right and will require to be coerced.
Hell, I *KNOW* about peak oil and I won't give up my car unless I am forced.

The only consolation I have is that I have concluded after five years of solid googling that we're not facing a dieoff down to the olduvai gorge unless we fight a nuclear war.
And even if we do fight a nuclear war it's not the end of technical civilization unless they take out the few places that are sustainable also.

The most likely scenario I see is a relatively fast grinding 1930s style depression but with hyperinflation instead where the population of most of the first world is ground down to third world levels and stay there for at least a generation.
At the end of it if we haven't fought nuclear wars over it I think we climb back up out of the hole with a mass-transit oriented electricity based economy with only say 10% of the cars we have now. I suspect that we may see a decent sized drop in the population too during this period but I think it will be from poor health and alcohol, among other things, rather than a death by zombie hordes (though I don't rule that out entirely).

But personally I fear a nuclear war the most and I can't rationally assign it a zero probability either.

[Cloud9]

Anything is possible but most things are not probable. Be mindful of the exits, but enjoy the party.

[alokin]

I was always worried about climate change environmental issues etc. It was not until last year maybe September when I got aware of PO.
My reaction was far too much reading on hte internet, which still persists, which led yet to a neglecting of my garden.
I monitored the oil price every day etc.
It's a bit like sitting on a packed suitcase - and nothing happens.
Or nearly nothing.
As PO has so much influence on our live and decisions on job houses are different with PO we all want to look in the future. But we can't.

You can prepare, but only within your means and abilities. It makes no sense buying a big garden when you hate gardening, you're better off learning something practical.

The bad thing with PO is that I really spend too much time reading and reading