bragi

I think you can get a good idea of what would happen in a largely oil-free world by looking at the example of Cuba in the 1990's. They ran out of oil when the USSR collapsed, and the US embargo made it hard (if not impossible) for them to get fuel. Everyone predicted that Castro's government would collapse, but it didn't. They had a rough time at first, but they survived okay, due in large part to a friendly climate and a sudden enthusiasm for farming on every empty lot in the country. (Having an authoritarian government might have been an advantage in such circumstances, too.) The bottom line is that if people are forced to adjust, they will. It not like you'll have a choice, unless you're very rich, or you can provide a service that will allow you access to the by-now precious fuel.

As an aside, a non-US friend of mine recently visited Cuba. He remarked that the people were all remarkably healthy-looking and fit, possibly a result of eating a diet consisting largely of fruits, veggies and grains, with just a small amount of meat every week, and having to walk and/or bike to get anywhere.

bragi

Yes.

Cyclaholic

I think those of us that still hold on to the belief that we can replace oil with 'plug in' solutions are either deluding themselves or are simply unaware of how fundamental oil is to to modern society. Just ponder this - everything, and I mean everything depends on the energy cost/density/portability/availability ratio that only oil provides. There is nothing that can replace it nor is there any technology at any stage of development that promises the ability to replace it. The hardest aspect of the 'doomsday' scenario to accept is its inevitability.

Once the oil wars are fought and the last of the oil supply dries up modern society as we know it will simply collapse. With no effective government, no agriculture, no functional infrastructure or intitutions such as law enforcement it will simply be chaos, followed by famine and disease. Once the population stabilises at a sustainable level I think we'll live mostly as the Amish do, except we'll be very well armed (at first, at least) to defend our agricultural communities against nomadic criminal gangs. They will inevitably die out and we will settle into a pre-industrial agricultural civilisation.

Considering what's to come I don't blame anyone for choosing to ignore it and pretend everything will be OK.

maddyfish

^^^^^^ Sample of your screenplay?

Rollfast

STEAM ENGINE

Just won't do much for subwoofers, working on that thought.

East Hill

'Darfur'.

East Hill

Cyclaholic

I guess you've never heard of Easter Island...

...and please share with me just what you think will yield the energy density, portability, abundancy, and low cost per kilojoule of oil? we do ned a replacement, and soon.

halfro

I completely agree! I've was thinking of this thread last night and everything you said, I believe, is true. I'm car free, but my stove, microwave, computer, lights, water heater, and everything else runs on electricity. I'm not sure on the percentage, but is gas powering most of the united states? I think nuclear energy is a start (kinda like a hybrid car), but Solar and wind is the answer.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer almost two years ago and I saw many people living with no electricity. Most third world countries will not be effected when gas runs out. Life will change on different levels for different places.

scottieie

The cool thing is that after this economic collapse from resource shortage, we won't need to build huge houses, spend money on knick knacks and crap, so we can all work less and have more free time to bike ride. Isn't this what it is all about! We can all work 30 hours a week, gardening, building, foresting, recycling, etc...then spend time riding the single track trails that develop where the roads used to be.

Seriously, the way I see it is you will have a lot less people doing frivolous work like TPS reports, suing people, selling gizmo's at the mall, insurance, advertising, paper pushing, administration type stuff, banking, etc. That will free up like 3/4 of our work force to do things the old fashioned way. Since we won't have the gas to ship over happy meal toys and Malwart junk, we can get back to doing what is essential. Might be a blessing in disguise, taking care of the obesity problem, lead paint in toys problem, crappy urban planning problems (sprawl, etc.), pollution......
-S

Roody

I don't think we'll return to the pre-industrial age.

I think we'll enter into a post-industrial age. We would be foolish indeed to abandon the best of our technology. For example, we'll always want to keep medicine, health care, solar power, and enhanced human power (bicycles and beyond). Organic and integrative farming technology can sustainably feed as many people as our current petroagricultural methods. Switching to sustainable energy and farming will provide a big boost to the world economy and a permaculture philosophy will make these changes long lasting.

The biggest hindrances are the same as they've always been, namely human greed and fear. These must give way to social justice and realistic optimism, or our species and the biosystem are doomed.

I think we can do it, and we'd better start now.

makeinu

I don't think the oil is going to run out.

Look at the biofuels that many companies are developing. They are expensive and they pollute worse than the petrol in the ground, but they can be manufactured. Mankind will run this planet into the ground before giving up the convenience of oil.

Nevertheless, I don't want to be one of the people responsible.

Nightshade

Can anyone here remember just how quickly social order collapsed
during.......Katrina?

Platy

With zero motor fuels available, electric bikes will be king.

Nightshade

Let us not forget the million & one uses for oil that are not fuels for vehicles

Newspaperguy

This would be the case if oil were to suddenly run dry. But that won't happen. Resources don't run out in an instant. We're dealing with depletion here, not an instant shut-down. Depletion means prices will continue to rise as it becomes more and more difficult to extract crude oil. Eventually, it will not be feasible to produce oil.

If the oil were turned off tomorrow, then I'd expect to see something akin to the scenario Cyclaholic describes. But if oil depletes over a period of years, we will watch something entirely different unfolding. Under a depletion scenario, it's much more likely we'd see alternate forms of transportation — cycling, electric vehicles, horse-drawn buggies, alternate fuel motors, etc. — gaining acceptance over a period of time and becoming mainstream. Automobile use would eventually fall out of favour as it would be much simpler and cheaper to use other forms of transportation.

The only question with my description is how fast oil will be depleted. If we have a few decades, no problem. But if it happens in just a few years, we will have trouble making the transition in time.

Smallwheels

Oil won't run out. Only cheap oil will run out. There is plenty of oil shale in the Rocky Mountains and Canada has as much oil as Saudi Arabia tied up in oil sand. Both of those forms of oil production became profitable when oil prices went above $40 per barrel. Those forms of oil will eventually be a large part of the worlds oil supply, but not until the cheap liquid oil begins to run dry in fifty years.

It is more likely that before oil runs out, solar and wind energy production will be in greater use. Maybe even the low yield nuclear power production will be perfected. There actually is a process of extracting nuclear energy without producing radioactive waste that has a 200,000 year half life. It has about one third of the yield of the current nuclear power plants but the radioactive waste products only have a half life of seven and a half years!

Energy Combustor power plants are now coming online. They take waste materials and garbage and burn them for fuel. It is the ultimate recycling solution. The plant works at extremely high temperatures and separates different materials out of the waste stream like metals and recycles them. The extreme heat breaks down the chemical bonds of the most toxic materials and renders them inert. The entire smoke output for each stack is about the same as a tractor trailer rig.

The U.S. government has done a lot to prevent these from coming online because they compete with other power plants. Fortunately the producers of these types of power plants have been able to jump through all the hoops and over barriers the EPA has used to prevent them from coming into existence. Corruption is everywhere in the U.S. government.

Instead of garbage trucks bringing their waste to land fills they will bring it to these combustor power plants. I'm eager to hear how the one in Nevada will do once it is finished.

shumacher

I'm work in IT, so I doubt that will change. My employer is a bank. I can't imagine banks giving up computers. I'm trying to think of a way that this would hurt me. I'm sure it would, but I'm really not sure how. I hate having to pay shipping on mail order items, and I know that would change. I love overnight shipping. That would disappear. I'd probably finally get a bike shop in town. I think my food expenses would go up, and I might not be able to enjoy setting my thermostat wherever I want during the hot Louisiana summers. Because this is Louisiana, I'd enjoy more seafood, less beef. More strawberries, fewer apples. I don't really need my car now, so I'd have to adjust, but not much. Add a trailer, a decent headlight, and some rain gear, and I'm golden.

OTOH, an old Mercedes diesel wagon and a backyard biodiesel setup, and I might have transportation for that occasional trip to the McDonald's drive thru.

StephenH

I'd be out of work, for one thing. After a bit, we'd all be out of bicycle tires. Not to worry, we'd be out of food before then.

Newspaperguy

Back to the original question, in the U.S. the flow of fuel was turned down twice in the 20th century, during World War II and during the 1970s. Gasoline rationing was imposed in both instances. (In Canada, rationing was imposed during World War II but not in the 1970s.)

If I recall correctly, most Americans could purchase three U.S. gallons of fuel a week under the most stringent World War II rationing. That's about 11.3 litres. Additional fuel was available for those who needed to use vehicles for business or to provide essential services (doctors, for instance) but it was still rationed.

Today, anyone using 11.3 litres a week or 45 litres a month would be considered extremely car-light. However, in the early 1940s, people found all sorts of ways to cope with the restrictions.

dauphin

Smallwheels

"What is this grand power called? Fusion power. What do we need to make it work? Helium-3
Where can we get it? The moon, comets."

Fusion power does not give off any radiation or pollution. You are thinking of something else.

Low power nuclear reactions have been successful in Canadian University research projects. The Canadian and US governments pulled the plug on the research once the theories were proven to work. Such research takes considerable money.

To be brief, low level nuclear fuel is used instead of enriched uranium. It produces only one third of the power. The reaction chamber is not under high pressure and therefore can't explode. The radiation level is so low that it would be impossible for a melt-down to occur. The spent fuel and waste products are radioactive for only seven and a half years.

Since I don't believe the oil spigot will be turned off any time soon, I don't think there will be a problem getting by for a long time.

As fuel gets more expensive more people will drive less. Car pooling and mass transit will expand in reaction to it. We can only hope that the current local governments around the country will recognize this situation and start planning to expand their local public transit systems.

Sianelle 

I would imagine that I would carry on much as I do now. Most probably I would work harder at maintaining my vegetable garden, improve my composting methods and start to learn how save seeds from my own plants. I live in a rural dairy farming district so in some ways I'm most probably better off than a city dweller, but I think it would be smart to have a couple of chickens to make sure of having eggs. I don't like guns, but I guess I could get myself back into practice with my vintage recurve bow even though hunting for feral rabbits would be pretty low on my list of things to do.
I already have my very useful utility tricycle as well as my bicycles. Going out of the district doesn't interest me much, so I don't have a use for a car anyway. More than likely I'd setup a wind generator like the one I built when I was a hippie alternative lifestyler all those years ago. Though electricity is not such an issue here in NZ since most of it comes from renewable sources, but it would still be a good standby.
Wooden bike tyres are quite possible by the way, - they were used in wartime when there were shortages.

In my alternative lifestyle days it was my great privilege to live on an island. It was a pretty small close community, - only the truly keen to be there lived there because the ferry service was based around converted ex WW2 naval patrol craft and the trip to the mainland was fairly intrepid. My wee cottage on 10 acres of land had no connected power and we cooked on a woodstove. I spent one day a week fully occupied with cutting and preparing firewood. Lord above I was fit in those days! I didn't have a car either, just a sidecar outfit which my kids loved. Oh and I rode a bicycle too. I had friends who rode horses as serious transport and there was a family who had a delightful pony cart that they used as their 'car'. It was impossible to buy petrol on the weekends because the one petrol station on the island was closed because the owner considered it only fair that he should have the weekend off too. Sometimes if the weather was bad and the cargo ferry was having trouble getting through the petrol ran out and there would be none. I don't remember anyone being that bothered about it except for the odd tourist/visitor from the mainland who would of course complain loudly to anyone within earshot.
Of course all this had to end (sigh). The ferry company changed hands, new flash ferries turned an intrepid sea journey into a bus ride and the place became a fashionable place to be. It wasn't long before the first million dollar house was built and of course it all went downhill from there

Platy

How were they constructed? How are they attached to the rims?

East Hill

https://www.afrigadget.com/2006/05/29...or-everything/

Wooden tyres, and stuffing rubber tyres with grass when the tubes go.

Don't forget, rubber does not need to be produced by using petroleum products.

East Hill

bhchdh 

I'm hard pressed to think of a single product that is not dependent in some way on motor transport.