[Barbara]

Some months ago I had a dream where my 5 years old and I were desperately running to take a train to go to a country village in order to save our lives. I remember there were soldiers everywhere chasing people and we had to take the train to avoid being sent into a concentration camp.

The dream was very vivid and scaring.
(Keep in mind that we in EU we don't absolutely have those fears of "govt imprisoning us" or whatever. But we have good memories of WWII...)

[sklump]

I had this dream around the US President Inauguration/Coronation hoopla:

January, 2009, a few friends and I got together to watch the World Junior Hockey gold medal game, with the NHL lockout still ongoing. Between periods, the network cut live to the inauguration ceremony for President Schwarzenegger, who had made it a night-time event, in Las Vegas. Garish neon lighting everywhere, with fluoro pink swastikas prominent. The coverage was quick to point out, because the top hook was slightly truncated, this symbol had nothing to do with the Nazi swastika, nothing at all at all. Then Arnold emerged amidst dry ice haze from the mouth of a great neon beast head, flashing the goat horns for the cameras. "Wait a minute", exclaimed K as the penny dropped for her, "Schwarzenegger never went to U of Texas".

[Riverside]

I rarely remember my dreams, but a couple of weeks ago I had one that I think was related to PO anxiety.

All of my husbands family was at my house for a holiday dinner and we were in the living room talking when I noticed a big (big like the size of a cat) spider in the corner of the room. I pointed it out to everyone and they didn't see it. Then they all had a good laugh at my expense, since I was trying to get my kids out of the house, and begging my husband to do SOMETHING. Eventually I gave up and sat on the couch and just kept glancing over at the spider to make sure he wasn't coming closer.

I was a nervous wreck when I woke up. I guess PO is a spider to me. They are the only bugs I'm afraid of, I don't even mind bees which I'm allergic to.

Nighty night.
Carla

[El_Producto]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Schweinshaxe', 'I') have a bad dream which is coming back to me every two months or so. It's about airports and is a bit different every time but the story is basically the same.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', ' ')I had recollections of long forgotten dreams where my dick fell off!

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '
')
Occasionally I would score some grass from somebody and go home on a summer evening and go for walks for miles under the warm summer night moon high as a kite ... One particular night when I did this I was noticing tensions here and there in my body. I did a kind of meditation which I came up with that night where I focus consciousness onto the location of the tension. I found that as I walked I could move this focused consciousness back and forth and around the tense spot until it went away. Then I would search for another tension point to direct the consciousness beam at and dissolve it too.!

[PenultimateManStanding]

Speaking of nostalgia, I remember the first time I ever felt it when I was 19-20 years old. I heard some old song on the radio and realized my childhood was gone forever. Much like Don McClean was singing about in 'American Pie'. Nostalgia will no doubt be the dominant emotion felt by billions of people real soon. Followed by much harsher emotions.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'N')ostalgia will no doubt be the dominant emotion felt by billions of people real soon. Followed by much harsher emotions.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'G')oing back to this thread revealed to me that MikeB, a gay English professor who has long since abandoned this forum was really bugged by this. Killjoy comes to mind as the latest incarnation of the anti-introspection anti-truth poster. That's all Freud was after, the truth. I don't buy certain paranoiac aspects of his dream theory. I now think that in many ways, dreams are just a continuation of our waking thought processes in sleep. i.e. the whole wish-fulfillment thesis is over-rated. I'm not saying it isn't true, just that it isn't always what is going on.

[Jack]

The global economy had been in recession since November, 2005. Most economists had predicted a mild recession followed by more robust growth; and during 2006, politicians had run on a platform of rebuilding the economy through various tax incentives, new energy programs, and low interest rates. Illegal immigration had been a controversial issue, but in the end, the status quo won.

As summer 2007 began, gasoline hit $6.00 a gallon; even at that price, it wasn’t always available. Perhaps more problematic were the rolling blackouts in California, resulting in large economic losses and frayed nerves. Nationally, crime increased as desperate people tried to survive price increases for food, gasoline, electricity, and other needs. In formerly middle class households, discretionary income had become a mere memory. Food banks could not keep up with demand, and social services of every sort failed.

The general population began to accept that Peak Oil was real, and with that realization came anger and panic. The combination of emotion, a hot summer, and power outages resulted in the first oil riots. Mobs attacked anyone in a car, looted stores and supermarkets, and set fires. Police were unable to regain control until the governor approved the use of National Guard troops.

The weeks passed, with a steadily more angry population. Most voters distrusted both political parties, and crime continued to increase. Attempts to set up rationing plans for gasoline dissolved in partisan bickering.

In late 2007, the federal government launched a “Manhattan Project” style search for an energy solution. Top scientists gathered and received essentially unlimited funding to find an answer. The general population mobilized, from schoolchildren to retirees.

Homeowners were encouraged to plant Independence Gardens, the media lionized those who walked or bicycled to work, and breathless newscasters gave daily reports on exciting new energy discoveries that would surely solve the problem. A few doomers on an internet discussion board noted the Saudi fields were declining at more than 17% a year, along with the Cantarell and North Sea fields. They dismissed them as hopelessly gloomy, since a solution must surely be close!

By 2009, matters had gotten worse. Biofuels and coal liquefaction had begun to supply small streams of energy; however, food and fuel prices had skyrocketed. The government had begun giving out a small ration of food to citizens. Outlays for energy programs had swelled, and the budget shortfall had grown to staggering proportions. The various nations of the world had patched together several agreements to keep the various economies going after a fashion.

Hundreds of billions of dollars had been invested in fusion, and more hundreds of billions had gone to research in alternative energy sources. NASA spoke of creating a complex of space stations with massive orbital solar collectors. None of the ideas had proven viable, but the populace continued to look to the future with confidence.

The rest of the world had faced worse problems than the U.S. and Western Europe, and illegal immigration had finally reached the point that politicians acted. Unfortunately, this resulted in several governments dissolving into chaos – or, worse, into angry populations lead by demagogues. Mexico and Venezuela had begun selling their oil to their Companeros – other Caribbean, Central, and South American nations. The U.S. simply did not have the troops or the money to do anything about it.

In the Middle East, oil reserves proved to be much less than expected. The great Saudi fields no longer bubbled, and the desert gave up additional oil only grudgingly. China and India began to implode, as they were no longer able to feed their population.

The U.S. dollar continued to decline as the Fed cranked up the printing presses to finance the national spending while keeping interest rates low. By now, gasoline was up to $15 a gallon in 2005 prices.

The breakdown had been advancing slowly, but the U.S. now began to dissolve. Coal miners struck for more money, and got it; soon, an endless round of strikes paralyzed most production. Fusion and the other grand projects had failed; but, in the process, they had consumed the last of the world’s capital.

In 2011, the world was hungry and cold in the dark. Governmental services in the U.S and Europe were sporadic at best, and calling the police was futile. Those with government jobs showed up to get the federal meal ration; they no longer had work to do, nor supplies to work with, nor pay for doing their work. Soldiers sold their weapons for drugs – or for food.

The population realized the grand projects that so many had believed in had failed. Every one of them. There were great piles of useless equipment – all worthless. In a few places, law and order broke down and the mob ruled for a time. In most places, people coped. Life expectancy declined to 50.

And so, humankind faced the future. The environment had been badly damaged, and global warming had reduced crop yields. The old killers – famine, pestilence, and war – returned with a vengeance and began reducing the global population to a bit more than a billion. Learning crumbled as men and women bent their will to mere survival. A strong few lived well. The masses endured in a brutish manner.

A thousand years later, people would look back on that Dark Age and marvel at the strength of those who had endured – and at the foolishness that brought them to that grand tragedy. Eventually, humankind found solutions to the problems of energy and population, though not of a sort the people of the twenty-first century could have understood.

[PenultimateManStanding]

This kind of writing is a real art form. Whoever wrote this one was pretty good. Not bad. My favorite was one with a similar title that Liam and Bart linked to over at Energybulletin.net. Something like 'a midwinter's nightmare' as I recall. That one was bone chilling. I'll go see if I can find it and post it here. Anybody know of any others? We could post them all here and freak ourselves out.

[PenultimateManStanding]

A Midwinter's Nightmare:
I'm normally proud of the four-billion year long slog our lineage has made out of the Archeaen depths, into the Devonian shallows, onto the Permian wilderness and beyond, and I'm all too often self-congratulatory for my unearned status as the current living legacy of one of evolution's many winners. But as of late, when I'm caught in the delirium between sleep and consciousness at 3: 00 AM, I'm haunted with a darker moment of dreamlike clarity: It's then that I realize how little we, as a species, have changed. Can I invite you to keep me company for a few minutes in my dark vision? Let me show you my midwinter night's mare ... link

[savethehumans]

Nice piece, Jack. Did you write it, or find it somewhere? Where, if the latter? This is pretty solid conjecture, IMHO. We need a lot more like it to get the point across to any sheeple who still have at least half a brain cell left! Thanks!

ETA: From Texas, huh? Whereabouts? I'm in Denton, myself.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'N')ice piece, Jack. Did you write it, or find it somewhere? Where, if the latter? This is pretty solid conjecture, IMHO. We need a lot more like it to get the point across to any sheeple who still have at least half a brain cell left! Thanks!

ETA: From Texas, huh? Whereabouts? I'm in Denton, myself.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'T')his kind of writing is a real art form. Whoever wrote this one was pretty good. Not bad. My favorite was one with a similar title that Liam and Bart linked to over at Energybulletin.net. Something like 'a midwinter's nightmare' as I recall. That one was bone chilling. I'll go see if I can find it and post it here. Anybody know of any others? We could post them all here and freak ourselves out.

[Doly]

You can find more at:
link
There's one of mine in the second page.

[Trindelm]

This is more of a doomer's wet dream.
This is good writing though Jack.
More prosaic then the rambling diatribe of a sleep-deprived doomer.

[4StringSlinger]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'N')ice piece, Jack. Did you write it, or find it somewhere? Where, if the latter? This is pretty solid conjecture, IMHO. We need a lot more like it to get the point across to any sheeple who still have at least half a brain cell left! Thanks!
ETA: From Texas, huh? Whereabouts? I'm in Denton, myself

[chuck6877]

Savethehumans, I grew up in Denton and graduated from Ryan High in '95. I'm now a pilot with a regional airline associated with Delta(soon to be unemployed I'm sure) living in Lewisville.
There seem to be many in Denton that are PO aware, even besides yourself. They built that plant at the Landfill to convert vegetable oil into biodiesel, and they're building that Dart train to Dallas.
Do you have anything to do with those projects??

[julianj]

Nice post Jack, my compliments. Maybe you should become an SF writer when your normal occupation succumbs to what you just described