[whatpeak]

According to Slate's survey, Peak Oil was voted as a possible scenario picked by 9 percent of user of Pick Your Own Apocalypse feature.

How is America going to end?


I guess some members of this board were busy.

[socrates1fan]

Being raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.
At least in my region people will find ways to deal with such issues.
We have more than enough fresh water, good soil, woodland, railroads, and a culture built greatly around agriculture to survive and even prosper.
I think the countries that would suffer more from peak oil would probably be places in Europe, India, and the middle easy.
The journey for our country towards better energy sources won't be east, but we will likely have it easier than many nations.

[TheDude]

I linked to that in another thread. Fun app.

[dukey]

probably with a dollar crash, u cant print trillions and expect the currency to hold its value

[Gorm]

well the dollar migth crash, but grain will not. The US produces a hole lot of grain.

But, the areas that will be hit hardest by peak oil I think is suburbian US.

[Grautr]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'B')eing raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.
At least in my region people will find ways to deal with such issues.
We have more than enough fresh water, good soil, woodland, railroads, and a culture built greatly around agriculture to survive and even prosper.
I think the countries that would suffer more from peak oil would probably be places in Europe, India, and the middle easy.
The journey for our country towards better energy sources won't be east, but we will likely have it easier than many nations.

[eXpat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'B')eing raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.
At least in my region people will find ways to deal with such issues.
We have more than enough fresh water, good soil, woodland, railroads, and a culture built greatly around agriculture to survive and even prosper.
I think the countries that would suffer more from peak oil would probably be places in Europe, India, and the middle easy.
The journey for our country towards better energy sources won't be east, but we will likely have it easier than many nations.

[hillsidedigger]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eXpat', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'B')eing raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.
At least in my region people will find ways to deal with such issues.
We have more than enough fresh water, good soil, woodland, railroads, and a culture built greatly around agriculture to survive and even prosper.
I think the countries that would suffer more from peak oil would probably be places in Europe, India, and the middle easy.
The journey for our country towards better energy sources won't be east, but we will likely have it easier than many nations.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'B')eing raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.
At least in my region people will find ways to deal with such issues.
We have more than enough fresh water, good soil, woodland, railroads, and a culture built greatly around agriculture to survive and even prosper.

[pup55]

http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/new ... nd2007.pdf

I'm not saying you're wrong, but for further consideration look at the above document which says that the corn yield in Indiana in 1930 was about 25 bushels per acre. Compare this to the modern fertilizer-enhanced, heavily mechanized, irrigated agriculture system which has developed since we started using all of that fossil fuel to power our equipment, about 150. That's about what it is in Iowa too, as I recall generally.

To be sure, we will probably never go all the way back down to 25 because of the modern hybrids and other improvements made to the crops themselves. Then again, as a midwesterner I am sure you have tried to eat feed corn yourself at some point and found it to make you nice and regular, but not too good for people, so to switch to varieties of corn and other crops for people to eat, rather than raw materials for downstream use for feeding animals and other industrial processes (like feed corn and soybeans) will not be the easiest thing in the world either.

One other gap in this post-fossil-fuel scenario is the shortage of people who have, at any time in their lives, worked their asses off in the sun in some hot dry cornfield. You can say what you want about China, but according to the CIA world factbook, 43% of the nation is still employed in agriculture, and most of that is the hard way, where they issue you a shovel and a hoe and a plot of ground and tell you to have at it. In the US, 0.6% of the population feeds the rest of us. that means that 99.4% of us have no clue whatsoever what it is like to go out in the morning and shovel cow shit all day. How you are going to convince some of your squishier suburbanites to do this in order to survive will be a big problem.

The third problem: There is all of this land, and the population density is low, but whose land is it, and will they just let you move out there? Doubtful. A lot of the old homesteads have long ago been folded into giant corporate farms, with political influence and money, and they will be resistant to letting the rabble go out and farm a plot of it. Not to say it won't happen, but that whole system of land ownership will have to be re-thought out.

I suppose there are other problems. I do not know how far west you are, but out in Nebraska and Kansas there is the problem with the depletion of the aquifers, filled by the glaciers and mainly extracted in the last 30 years due to intense well digging and irrigation.... once that water is gone, you're going to have to wait until the next ice age for the deposits to be replenished....

You still have the sun. For now, that's free, but there are a few other problems that are going to make it really difficult to get to some other normal state than what we are right now.

I just hope it happens gradually enough for the farmers to adapt, and for the system to get to some stable state. The bright side of the whole ethanol disaster was that it showed the willingness of the farmers to do something different if properly incentivized. Maybe it will all work out. I hope so.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ch.html

[eXpat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hillsidedigger', '
')They say one person working full-time all year can turn, plant, cultivate and harvest up to 5 acres with only a shovel and hoe (of easy enough to work ground) which should be enough for the farmer and a couple or 5 more people. I use this technigue although only work at it about 2 hours a day and work quite effectively over a half of an acre of extremely difficult ground. I'm clearing more land here and hope to be working 2 to 3 acres in a couple years, again with only a shovel, hoe, a few incidental small tools and organic methods.

It's easy to grow seasonal produce but growing a year-round diet is challenging. I also have a chicken run with a few dozen birds and try to grow their feed as well.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he most popular scenario—"Loose Nukes," chosen by 10.5 percent of Slate readers—combines modern and old-fashioned anxieties. "Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia," the scenario description embedded in "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" reads. "The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11." The presence of terrorists at the top of the charts indicates that we're still smarting from al-Qaida's 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon—perhaps the most recent event that raised momentary doubts about the country's continued existence. The fact that we envision those terrorists hitting us with nukes indicates that we have the same fears as the World War II generation. In the last 65 years, nothing has come along to supplant the scariness of a mushroom cloud.

[Gorm]

Fertilizers can be made with electricity, and diesel can be bio-diesel.

A lot can be done, and will be

[surfzombo13]

A few nuke tipped Scud missiles launched from a freighter in the Gulf of Mexico and detonated about 200 miles up would set off an EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) that would shut down all but the most sheilded electronics. America would, in a matter of seconds, be crippled beyond repair for at least a couple years and would probably not survive. And if it did, it would never ever be the same.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('surfzombo13', 'A') few nuke tipped Scud missiles launched from a freighter in the Gulf of Mexico and detonated about 200 miles up would set off an EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) that would shut down all but the most sheilded electronics. America would, in a matter of seconds, be crippled beyond repair for at least a couple years and would probably not survive. And if it did, it would never ever be the same.

[kjmclark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('socrates1fan', 'B')eing raised in the midwest, it makes it hard for me to believe that peak oil will be the end of America.

[kjmclark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hillsidedigger', 'T')hey say one person working full-time all year can turn, plant, cultivate and harvest up to 5 acres with only a shovel and hoe (of easy enough to work ground) which should be enough for the farmer and a couple or 5 more people. I use this technigue although only work at it about 2 hours a day and work quite effectively over a half of an acre of extremely difficult ground. I'm clearing more land here and hope to be working 2 to 3 acres in a couple years, again with only a shovel, hoe, a few incidental small tools and organic methods.

[kjmclark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', 'I') linked to that in another thread. Fun app.

[hillsidedigger]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kjmclark', 'Y')ou, my friend, must have some awfully whussy weeds. I have ten acres and I'm busting my butt at least 6 hours a week fighting off giant ragweed, canada thistle, musk thistle, burdock, smartweed, ragweed, lambsquarter, etc., etc. Whoever could work 5 acres must have had sand for soil. We could spend 2 hours a day harvesting in our garden.
Come to think of it, that must have been in sand, in the south somewhere. Where else can you work "full-time all year" turning, planting, and harvesting? Around here there's snow on the frozen ground for four months of the year, and most of our soil is clay and gravel. I remember seeing lots of sandy soil on visits down south, though.

[OutOfGas]

Peak oil will destroy global trade and the standard of living will decrease in the US.
There will still be oil, but if will be used for food production and the military.
Only the very rich will have autos.

Manufacturing will be on a more local basis and people will walk to work or use mass transit.
Since we still have coal, electricity will still be avalible, but probably on a limited basis.

When the electric grid fails, the zombies will pour out of the cities and TSHTF.