[Pops]

Mad Max Vs. Dirt Farmer
So which are you?
Personally, I’m a dirt farmer with a good scope.

[Cool Hand Linc]

I am a heavily armed dirt famer with a few chickens and a few ducks or geese. A friend told me them chickens of his. He never feeds em. Uses them to keep the little varmin like ticks and flees and all that other stuff including snakes down. He said they will kill little baby snakes but not big ones of course. Don't even feed them at all! So I'll be a little of both but will do my best to look like just a dirt farmer!

[TheSupplyGuy]

I'm a really poor dirt-farmer at the moment, but hoping someday to have the tools required to go Mad Max if it become necessary. Or is that cheating?

[Carrie]

I'll probably end up being the dirt farmer, and Hubby will be Mad Max.

[MadScientist]

I plan to rule Bartertown with my massive pig farming henchman upon whose shoulders I ride.

[Carrie]

Can I be Tina Turner? :D

[OilBurner]

Whilst I've been lurking here I couldn't help but notice that most people posting are either aware of the Max Max films or have watched them - probably several times, like myself.
Although brutal and pessimistic, these films can't help but romanticise the fall of western civilisation. For instance, there is no real indication of famine, disease and other hardships. Most of the focus is on lawlessness, which Max resists, with some success. Similarly, most conversations about post peak survial here are concerned with lawlessness rather than basics like fresh water supply or access to wild game.

I can't help but wonder if there are many people on this board who are dissastified with modern life (who wouldn't be?) and envisaging the future through the Mad Max fantasy rather than the even harsher potential outcome.

My point is, could such rose tinted spectacles be distorting peoples view of the facts and not leading to enough questioning of the idea of Peak Oil? Are some of us falling into the trap of distorting and filtering the things we see around us to re-assure ourselves that the daily grind might soon end and be replaced with something (dare I say it) more exciting?
I find evidence for this way of thought in the way people love to talk about a post peak world and preparations for it. Even to the extent of talking about what weapons they might require.

Preparedness? Maybe. Or is it simply a desire to think ahead to a world changed from the boredom and lack of risk that fustrates our basic instincts?
I don't mean this post as an attack on anyone here - in fact I've rarely come across a forum of such well-informed and polite people. I'm just intuitively aware that there is an atraction to the idea of rapid, overwhelming change - that might lead people to take their eye off the ball.
For example, perhaps we should be more concerned with the long term effects of global warming than peak oil? I appreciate however, that this forum is all about peak oil and not global warming!!

Please try to refrain from flaming me - I'm just trying to provoke thought and examine my own motives for an almost obessional interest in peak oil..

[Pops]

No, OB, I think that exactly what you are saying permeates every End OF The World scenario. I’m not a Mad Maxer, more of a late blooming Back-To-The-Lander. The biggest worry I have IS Mad Max. I have many basic skills needed by a BTTLer, of course it will take time and work to be successful.

I am, for one, using peak oil as an excuse for unplugging myself as much as possible from the plastic pusher down at wallyworld. This is a conscious decision.

Having said that, there are a huge variety of flavors available if one is looking for TEOTWAWKI fantasy. Not many seem so logical on the face and inevitable as oil depletion; it’s not if, it’s when. I do frequent boards where survival after any number of these scenarios is discussed; there is a huge amount of knowledge there if one is interested in a less “modern” lifestyle. The interesting thing I have found on those sites is that Peak Oil is pretty well dismissed out of hand. That is why I value this site; the specifics of resource depletion make it very different from many other Internet calamities.

[OilBurner]

I appreciate what you're saying Pops. Peak Oil really has legs, unlike some of the fairytales that people have been attracted to. For instance, I remember studying the UFO pheonomenom in the mid-90s and becoming increasingly incredulous of the daft claims people would make with little or no real evidence behind what they're saying. Most of the ideas that people adopted as fact appeared from a small group of individuals who had an axe to grind or were seeking publicity. This group growing ever bigger as others hijacked the ideas and started going on about abductions and meetings with alpha centurians etc etc etc. I remember specifically, that one group of people were convinced that Nostradamus had predicted that proof of aliens would be videotaped and made public in 1998. It's now 2004 and I'm still waiting..
Obviously Peak Oil is based on science, economics and politics. Things that have real meaning to everyones daily lives. Still,the worrying thing (for me) is that the number of genuine experts who are the source for many of our facts and theories is few - just like the UFO thing. Basically we have to rely on Colin Campbell and Matt Simmons. Everybody else just seems to be hi-jacking what they're saying and repeating it nearly verbatim and then extrapolating these ideas into various exciting and challenging scenerios.
Then more people jump on the bandwagon, quoting the "experts" who only originally quoted the few anyway and make it look like there's a serious body of people behind the idea.
Before you know it, there's a flood of people, all convinced the world will end in a blink of the eye.

Personaly, I think it's great to go back to the land and live a simplier life - I wish I had the guts to do it! But many people here just seem to be indulging their fanatasies and the need to believe in stimulating risky futures. How many others are actually doing anything useful? And I don't mean stocking up on weapons and tinned fruit!! I'm talking about the prime example set by you, Pops.
I'm not saying people *have* to do anything - we all make our own choices. It just strikes me as indicative that people appear to prefer talking rather than doing.
P.s. if people here wish to debate the UFO thing, send me a personal message - this forum isn't the place to do it! Thanks.

[EnviroEngr]

Where would be a good place to start collecting theories, research and ideas about the rise and perpetuation of "End Of The World" myths, legends and prophecies?
I have been sporadically getting clearer insights about this phenomenon since Mike Ruppert took up with it a few years ago. Somehow, to me it seems archetypal and has to do with a level of play too wide in time and scope to understand as an individual person. {Remember the blind group and the elephant?}
I am getting very fascinated by this. Let me know. Thanx.

[smiley]

Interesting thought OB. I’ll try to explain my position.
Although I enjoy films like Waterworld and Mad Max, I’ve never seen them as realistic, let alone desirable.
I’m not a Mad Maxer or a Back-to-the-Lander. The reason I’m here is because peak oil is (as Pops stated it) unavoidable and I think its important to discuss the implication of peakoil and to spread the awareness before it hits.

The attitude of ignoring a problem until it hits you has never worked well for humanity, and in the case of Peakoil I can see it leading to an unprecedented economic and humanitarian disaster, war etc.
That doesn’t mean I think it is unavoidable. I think the Uppsala protocol is a very good start.

We further have to reduce our energy consumption, to find alternative durable energy forms, and increase the efficiency of our energy usage. As a society that means that we have to take a big step back when it comes to luxury, but I can do without that.
Except for the social challenges the reshaping of our society presents tremendous technological challenges. Technological science has in my view degraded to inventing electronic gadgets for the rich and the spoiled (route planners, palmtops, plasma tv's, mp3-players etc). Here is an opportunity for science to do something really useful and important for the society, perhaps like the medical science did during the plagues.

For me as a scientist I must confess that that is one attractive aspect of peakoil, although I would rather have that peakoil would never come at all.

[Ardalla]

I have certainly put out some gloomy scenarios here, but, realistically, I have at least some doubts concerning the Hubbert model. Chief of which is the failure of endorsement by any reputable scientific organization such as the AAPG. I admire Campbell for sticking by his guns. He's not backing down a bit. In fact he has revised his estimate for the date of POil from 2010 to 2008.
I am also closely watching the NA natural gas situation, mainly because it is at a more critical stage of depletion than crude oil. If there is no gas crisis soon, my suspicions will be enhanced.

One of the results of my getting older is I've had more time to make mistakes. I was wrong about so much in the past. One of the men I used to hate, Carl Sagan, I now realize was largely right, and I was mostly wrong. When I was younger I could make mistakes of judgement and there was time to recover. At my age I can't afford to do that. There are serious consequences if I sell my house and move to the hills. I spent the 70s and most of the 80s living in a back-to-the-land commune. I had some good times ... but it was a waste of time, a serious misjudgement on my part.

I was wrong about religion, ufos, radical politics, on and on. I could be wrong about peak oil happening in this decade. What particularly attracts me to the idea is Campbell's statement that production peak follows discovery peak by about 30 years. I look for evidence that this is true, and, so far, it appears to be.
I'm already a cheap person . I don't have to make too many adjustments in my lifestyle. I'm just in wait and see mode at present.

[RonMN]

This is what scares me the most...if kids can kill kids over a friggin IPOD then how do you think they'll act after PO? When they're cold & hungry? They already think they've been jipped because they don't get everything for free...how do you really think they'll react when TSHTF?:
NEWS QUOTE Updated: 05:16 PM EDT
Boy, 15, Dies in Dispute Over an iPod
NEW YORK (July 3) - Two teenagers were under arrest Sunday on suspicion of killing another teen for his iPod portable music player, police said.
The boys were facing charges of murder, robbery and weapons possession in the death of 15-year-old Christopher Rose, police said.
Rose and three friends were accosted by a group of young men Saturday evening in Brooklyn, police said.
Members of the group demanded Rose's iPod and stabbed him twice in the chest when he resisted. The group fled, taking Rose's iPod and a backpack, police said.

[Jack]

But none of this is really surprising, is it?
I live in San Antonio, Texas - 8th largest city in the nation. It isn't at all unusual for a murder to occur over some perceived slight, or an argument over a girl. Perhaps the cheapest murder was one over fifty cents. I kid you not.
One time, decades ago, I spent a Friday evening riding around with a police officer. The call went out for a family disturbance...so, at around 1 AM, we arrive. I notice there were quite a number of children around from several apartments. I wondered then and now why they weren't indoors and asleep.

The male is lying on the floor, unable to get up. He had been drinking vigorously since 10 AM that morning. He was quite convinced that his wife had poisoned him, since he was unable to get on his feet.
We nodded sagely, wrote some notes, and departed.
This was not, BTW, in the projects. It was a normal working-class area; the kind where most assume that people act rationally.

That's all quite normal. It's probably the same in your city, your town - or among your rural neighbors.
And that's a small part of why I expect the worst as Peak Oil's privations hit.

[Ludi]

Luckily, I think, that kind of idiocy is represented by a (relatively) small proportion of the population.

[RonMN]

Ludi...I pray you're right! But when you read crap like this it tends to make you look at the "worst" side of things.

I agree this is nothing new...but it should be an "eye opener" to those who are PO aware...and should be a premace for what is to come.

[Ludi]

Peoples' behavior is really quite difficult to predict. After the Northridge earthquake, with widescale power outages, there was relatively little looting or other crime because people were so damn scared. The riots, they were another thing altogether. People were angry, and some people were looking for trouble. Will people be scared by post peak conditions, or angry?

[Eli]

Ludi they may well very be scared, angry and starving and suffering crushing poverty.

In the US there will be racial tensions as people clamer for the deportation of all the illegals. That happened in the 30's and will happen again if things get bad.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')HE DISASTER RESPONSE
Time course: Although individual patterns of response vary, several phases generally emerge over time.72 Cohen and colleagues73 have identified four phases in the response to disaster. The first, immediately following a disaster, generally consists of strong emotions, including feelings of disbelief, numbness, fear, and confusion. People tend to cooperate, and heroic deeds are sometimes seen. These reactions are best understood as "normal responses to an abnormal event." Rescue personnel, family, and neighbors are generally the support systems that are most heavily used.
The second phase usually lasts from a week to several months after the disaster. At this juncture assistance flows in from agencies external to the community, and the cleanup/rebuilding process begins. In this phase of adaptation, denial alternates with intrusive symptoms. The intrusive symptoms generally arise first and consist of unbidden thoughts and feelings accompanied by autonomic arousal (e.g., a heightened startle response, hypervigilance, insomnia, and nightmares). Toward the end of the adaptation phase, denial is more prominent. This is often accompanied by an increase in visits to physicians for complaints of somatic symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, headaches, and nausea.74 Anger, irritability, apathy, and social withdrawal are often present.