The Dividing Line

What Will the Peak Look Like?

2011-07-01T07:37:00.001-08:00

As I began to learn about the science and statistics behind peak oil, it quickly became undeniable to me that civilization is in a bind. We're all addicted to oil, and a painful "detox" is about to be forced on us by our own inability to plan for the future. Oddly, it brought me a sense of comfort to at least see the danger that lies ahead, even as I also realized that peak oil was unavoidable. However, a pair of nagging questions would always pop up in my mind after every article I read or interview I watched. What will life be like as we descend Hubbert's Curve? And when will it become obvious that the collapse has begun? The answers I discovered are what prompted me to turn from investigation to action, from just learning about the upcoming transition to taking concrete steps and preparing for it.

Minor Detour

So hopefully I've already convinced you (with the help of the articles and videos in the Reading Lists) that peak oil is real and that it will affect all of human civilization. I'm not planning to devote a lot of time proving the theory or analyzing current events and their relation to peak oil. Check out my list of MUST READ SITES on the homepage if you need more evidence or just want to stay abreast of recent developments. Don't get me wrong, keeping up with the news is important, but it's not the goal of this site and there are too many other people doing a great job at it already.

My mission is to give you practical advice on changing your lifestyle and preparing now so that the shock of post-peak life won't be quite as great for you as it will be for others. That's an area that seems to be seriously lacking online, or more accurately it's where the free information usually stops and site owners ask you to open your wallet. Not so here. The Dividing Line is, and will always be, 100% free. I hope the quality of articles available here will be good enough to attract a large crowd and get some word-of-mouth going. Again, it's not for my financial benefit - I don't even put ads on the page. It's just my way of trying to give something back and help good people out there to prepare if I can. But before we get to the survival skills, we need to answer those nagging questions.

The What

I need to be clear right from the start: I don't know what specific events are coming. If you hear anyone claiming "X, Y, and Z are guaranteed to happen, and they will occur in that order or on this date", it's safe to remain skeptical. What we can be sure of is that cheap oil is running out and that certain generalities will apply as we cross that threshold.

The most obvious phenomenon we can link to peak oil will be an increase in the price of oil itself. Expect gasoline, kerosene, motor oil and other refined products, as well as natural gas to become more expensive from here on out. This is not to say prices will go straight up from here. There will be ups and downs as always, as supply and demand fluctuate due to natural, economic or political factors. And as the world awakens to peak oil, this price volatility will become more pronounced. However, a long-term trend of higher prices year over year is a solid assumption to make.

Also fairly straight forward to predict are price increases in oil and natural gas-derived products including plastics, medications, fertilizers, paints, cosmetics, inks and adhesives. As manufacturing costs rise, retail prices will follow eventually; this is simple economics.

Third-order effects are where the real heartburn sets in. When food and vital medicines start to become much more expensive and even unavailable for short durations, calling peak oil a "theory" will be a small comfort to the masses. At the same time, money to buy even essentials will be a vanishing commodity itself as our economic machine sputters and stalls. Unemployment, homelessness and poverty will all reach record highs. Consumer credit will either be abused out of necessity until it implodes or will simply be denied to the majority of the populace.

Walking hand-in-hand as always with misery and despair we'll get an unhealthy dose of anger, frustration and violence. From peaceful, organized demonstrations to riots and heavy-handed responses, we'll see the full spectrum of people on opposite sides of the dividing line fighting each other. Crimes of nearly all types will rise as people lose their civilized ideals in a literal fight for survival.

Police and military forces will most likely be granted sweeping new powers to address the chaos, but this will only make life more perilous for the average citizen. Americans will be forced to choose between holding onto an "illegal" firearm for protection and possibly being arrested, or handing their guns over to the state and leaving themselves vulnerable to criminal attack.

Finally, once the oil decline begins in earnest there will be deaths on a scale that is presently unimaginable to most people. Many will choose to end their lives in despair or sheer terror of what they see unfolding around them. Millions will be killed during violent conflicts with the "authorities", criminals or even their own friends and neighbors. And perhaps most depressing, a staggering number will die from starvation, disease, accidents or exposure to the elements.

Wars will erupt over resources and the world will be thrown back from the global "utopia" we currently enjoy to a more ancient time of fierce nationality, armies of conquest, and wholesale slaughter of enemy populations. The end of oil has the serious potential to undo centuries of progress in human civilization within the span of a single lifetime. As I said earlier, I cannot predict whether all of these events will come to pass. Mankind has both good and evil in our nature, so there will also certainly be acts of kindness and love. But given a world society that will soon exhaust it's most valuable physical energy resources, my unfortunate prediction is that the negative may vastly overwhelm the positive, at least for a few generations.

The When

So how much time do we have left - 5 years, 10, 20? I'm sad to say, that this is a loaded question with a false premise. It's a question people in situations of comfort, such as my own, ask because they are unaware that the world is flashing warning lights as we speak. The system has been cracking under the weight of demand overshoot for years already, but the world is only now feeling the effects trickle down into daily life. Like Wile E. Coyote when he runs off a cliff and hangs in mid-air for half a second, we're all attempting to deny reality until sooner or later we look down and notice the ground is a mile below...and fall.

Consider that economies of the world are a good reflection of oil supply and demand. As I explained in the previous post, nearly every facet of modern financial systems are based on supplies of cheap, abundant energy. As the supply becomes more expensive and harder to obtain, the financial house of cards built on the foundation of oil must fall. We can use this cause and effect relationship to confirm the supply shortfalls that appear to be forming (see chart below) and know that the potential for devastation is real.

What I see nearly every day is evidence that the global economic "recovery" has failed despite trillions of dollars spent to ensure its success. What does that tell me? As I stated previously, debt has continued to grow at an exponential rate over the past decade, while oil production (the life blood of the world economy) has not. We are witnessing the beginning (or possibly the middle if you look at the crash of 2008 as the beginning) of the end today. The answer to the question of "When does it start?" is "Yesterday".

For that reason, I'll get right into what you can do to prepare for the collapse in my next post.

Know Your Enemy - pt 2

2011-06-24T09:22:00.001-08:00

Let's state a couple of facts:

The United States of America is financially insolvent.
The European Union is bankrupt.

Are you shocked to hear it? If not, congratulations. You have a leg up on this discussion. Please skip down to the second half where we'll discuss how this mess is the product of peak oil. All you doubters, sit up straight and pay attention.

Please Don't Shut Off My Cable!

Bankruptcy or insolvency is the legal status of a person or an organization that cannot repay the debts it owes to its creditors.

Why do I say the US and Europe are bankrupt? They haven't defaulted yet. They borrow and spend, but they always repay. There's a man who is $500,000 in debt who earns $60,000 a year and he hasn't defaulted yet either. He has multiple credit cards and he uses one card to pay the interest on another each month in order to free up his income to cover the mortgages on his McMansion and luxury SUV. He's making all his minimum payments on time. He has the best of intentions to pay off the debt he owes. And most importantly he's a hard-working fella and all-around-nice-guy. What do you think will happen to this man - sooner or later?

When you add up our real-world situation, between outright government debt in the form of US Treasuries and unfunded liabilities in the forms of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the mind-blowing total is over $120 trillion...that's not a typo...$120,000,000,000,000! Our GDP is about $14.7 trillion. So the analogy with my hypothetical debt-slave above is pretty accurate. Of course the man can't print his own money to pay his debts like the government. But that's not a long-term solution, it's called hyperinflation (it's also what Chairman Bernanke was fantasizing about when the photo above was taken).

I'm not intimately familiar with the details of European debt, and I don't really need to be. Take a look at the world debt clock. Can you guess what all the countries (excluding the US) with External Debt to GDP totals greater than 100% have in common? Why they're all in Europe or on that island across the channel! Hey, where's Greece? I guess the makers of this site couldn't get the clock to update fast enough to keep up with their debt...

What can we do to fix this pathetic state of affairs? I'll focus on the US, but the analysis applies to Europe as well. We can either raise taxes substantially, cut spending to the bone, or give up and default. Our political leaders may experiment timidly with the first two options in the near future, in order to show that they're trying something. The Elephant will cut spending, the Donkey will raise taxes. However, they won't implement either one in a big way because it would be political suicide and they know that. Heck, right now we've got low taxes and enormous government spending together and the economy is barely breathing - it's on life-support. You take those away and it's the 1930s all over again, I guarantee it. So forget the difficult, painful choices. What's behind door #3?

Why it's our two old friends, Extend and Pretend! Mark my words, these two jerks will be around past the point when creditor nations stop showing up for Treasury auctions and the Federal Reserve or the IMF is "forced" to purchase every penny of new national debt. Past the point when 50, 60 then 70 million Americans are on food stamps because inflation and unemployment are rampant. Will another earthquake/tsunami be the final straw that brings our termite-ridden house to the ground? Or perhaps an overthrow of the House of Saud will do it? Dissolution of the European Union? How about ______ and Israel going toe-to-toe? All viable candidates at this point. Whatever form the triggering event assumes, the endgame of debt collapse is almost a given now. We need a miracle. We need God Himself to intervene and save our sorry butts, because otherwise the future that we've created will be neither unicorns nor rainbows.

Oil and the Non-Linear Function

The connection between peak oil and unsustainable debt is very simple at its core, but also easy to overlook because we've grown so accustomed to cheap oil that we take it for granted. Modern economies are based on a paradigm of perpetual growth. GDP must grow at a certain rate each year to keep up with two factors: inflation and rising debts. We all know what debt is, but what is inflation on a national level? Quite simply, it's a sneaky way of reducing the impact of debts by printing more of the currency used to pay them. Westerners have grown up accepting this as normal. Your money never buys as much as it used to. I bet you've chuckled at the quaintness of earlier generations for spending a nickel on a loaf of bread or $10,000 for a house. How adorable! But don't forget that while inflation helps us pay off the debts of last year, it makes the debts of next year always more expensive. Hmmm, well as long as we keep inflation at the 2% "healthy" rate sanctioned by the Federal Reserve things will be fine...right?

Yes. The master plan is to keep GDP always growing faster than debt plus inflation. To ensure that GDP grows each year, we need responsible government policies that encourage businesses to expand and produce more goods. As businesses grow, we must root out evil speculators looking to drive up the price of oil and other commodities that our patriotic industries depend on. The best way to foil the market manipulators is to increase supply constantly and flood the market year after year with cheap resources. We need to drill, baby, DRILL and get more oil faster! We need the Earth to continue creating oil each year through abiotic processes, and at an ever increasing rate!! We need to... Earth? Why are you laughing, Earth...? We need you to step up and start making us more oil please so we can slurp it up even quicker tomorrow. You've got a really important part to play in all this, Planet Earth, I'd think you would take your responsibility to the human race a bit more seriously. No, I don't particularly care about your "limits", I've got bills to pay. Damn, the Earth doesn't seem to be listening...what's our plan B?

OK, thanks for indulging me in a little role playing. But just what I'm I trying to subtly imply here? That we can't keep this flea circus running forever? Bingoooooo. On one side of the equation we have limits. Limited supplies of oil. Hard limits to how far businesses can expand and how big our economy can get. On the other side we have no such caps. Debt can grow forever, especially when it's refinanced at higher rates with penalties and interest is compounded over time. Yes almost forever - it can grow until it's unpayable, then it must collapse in on itself in The Great Unwinding. When does that happen? Just as soon as we reach the peak of oil production and the growth in world economies starts to seize up like a car's engine without enough...well, oil. In other words: Right. About. Now.

~~Reading~~ Video List

MANDATORY - The Crash Course

The Most Important Video (Series) You'll Ever See

crystalmicrophone@gmail.com

VW3T2MX55RSP

Know Your Enemy - pt 1

2011-06-23T10:36:00.003-08:00

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be in a coma for several years and suddenly wake up? Pretend for a minute that you hit your head in 2001 and when you open your eyes again, a doctor is telling you it's 2011...ten years have passed. Here's what your conversation might sound like:

"What happened while I was asleep?"

"Well...", he thinks for a second, "A few months after your accident, radical Islamic terrorists destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center. We responded by invading Afghanistan and later Iraq...over 7,000 soldiers have been killed so far."

"Wait, what do you mean 'so far'?"

"Oh, well the wars are still going on. Anyway, Saddam Hussein was captured back in 2003 and executed three years later. Since 2001 there have been other major terrorist attacks in Bali, Madrid, London and Mumbai. The CIA now operates remote controlled planes that fire missiles at suspected terrorists hiding in Pakistan and Yemen, even though we're not at war with those countries. This other agency, the TSA, do you remember them? Well, they're in charge of keeping us safe on airplanes, so now when you go on vacation you either have to let them take naked pictures of you or feel around your crotch to make sure you don't have a bomb in your underpants. Bush was re-elected in '04 and in 2008 Barrack Obama became the first black president. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and today he's funding a brand new war in Libya."

"Wow, I sure missed a lot..."

"Hold on a sec, we're not finished yet. The stock market tanked hard while you were out and the country went into a huge recession."

"Actually that started to happen before my accident, but I'm guessing it got worse?"

"Huh...? Oh you mean the dot-com bubble? I forgot about that one. No, I'm talking about the crash in 2008. This will be hard to understand, but between 2001 and 2005 millions of people were able to get rich selling houses to each other and yet somehow by 2007 most of that money had evaporated into thin air. The situation got pretty ugly by 2009, but luckily the Federal Reserve stepped in to print lots more and saved the day."

"So we're all rich again?"

"Hmmm, your chart says you were a construction supervisor before your accident...I'll make a note to have one of our grief counselors stop by for a chat later. Also, did you have any friends in northern Japan? No? That's good. But where were we? Europe is still trying to get on-board the economic recovery - they'll be alright if Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy don't go bankrupt. Gas is fairly expensive today so you may want to trade in whatever old 90's car you have and get a hybrid. I'd suggest either Chrysler or GM. Since they're both heavily subsidized by the federal government now you'll get an amazing deal."

"Doctor, stop...my head is spinning. Just tell me what caused all this?"

"Oh, well other than Obama's Peace Prize - which is still sort of a mystery - most of it was caused by Peak Oil."

Stop, halt, desist. That's the second time I've brought up peak oil on this site, and now I'm claiming it's responsible for most of the major problems of the past decade? How can that possibly be true? It's true because of something people have been taking for granted for the past century; that oil is the foundation for everything else in our modern society. If you don't believe me, try to go one month without visiting a gas station. Your productive activities will soon be limited to what you can accomplish around your neighborhood. Your world will shrink to the places you can get to by walking or riding a bike. Most of us can't do our jobs if we can't drive our cars to work, and the people who depended on the goods or services we had been producing will begin to feel the effects.

Now stretch your imagination further and pretend that all the oil on Earth suddenly vanished. What would happen? There would be almost no transportation. Only a very few electricity providers - mostly wind and solar-based - would be operating since even coal power plants depend on diesel fuel to operate the machines that mine the coal and the trucks or ships that move it. Modern agriculture would cease to exist, period. No oil to power the drills that extract natural gas or the plants that extract hydrogen for chemical fertilizers. No oil to transport those fertilizers to farmers or crops to the grocery store. By the end of Day 1 without oil our lives would already resemble life at the turn of the twentieth century. Except that in those days about 80% of the American population still grew at least some of there own food. What I'm talking about is a very fragile system. If the world as we know it today is a Jenga tower, then oil is the only block on the bottom row.

Luckily, oil will not suddenly disappear. There's at least enough oil in the ground today that people will probably be pumping it for another 80 to 100 years. So what's the big deal? First of all, oil production over the past century has matched population growth almost exactly. Or was it that population growth has matched oil production...? Actually it's neither. Oil production has caused population growth. You see, in the year 1900 world population was about 1.5 billion people and almost no oil was produced. Sometime in 2011, world population will pass 7 billion people because we now produce around 88 million barrels of oil per day. As I said earlier, without oil we wouldn't have cheap, abundant food, or any petroleum-based medicines, or any of the helpful everyday items made from plastic. Cars, airplanes, huge container ships filled with Chinese goodies bound for your Wal-Mart? Nope, nope and nope. If oil had never existed in the first place, would we have 7 billion people alive today? I'd guess more like 2 to 3 billion.

Now flip back to my prediction of 80 - 100 years more oil production. If you look at the Hubbert's Curve cartoon at the top of this post, we're not quite as far to the right as the dialog bubble would imply, but probably somewhere right around the middle. I've said that increased oil production is what caused the world population to grow, so therefore decreased oil production in the future should cause the world population to _______? And the answer is not "party like it's 1999". How does a world population of 2 to 3 billion in the year 2100 strike you? All we need is for 4 or 5 billion volunteers to die off in an orderly fashion over the next century (90% of them will have to make their exit between today and 2050 for us to stay on track), with no more births along the way and whoever's left can still have plenty to eat! Any takers?

As depressing as that is, it still doesn't explain why I'm blaming the wars and financial crises of the past decade on peak oil. Or does it? What if industry and government experts had known about peak oil theory since, let's say 1956 (they have), and they'd seen concrete evidence to back it up since maybe the early 70s? (ok) And what if, by chance we knew where in the world most of the remaining oil was located? (right here) Would we be more or less interested in exerting American "influence" (military) in that region? Would the government go so far as to start a war by allowing terrorist attacks on American civilians? (surely not)

I'll stop right there for now and allow you to draw your own conclusions. In part 2 we'll explore the ongoing financial nightmare and discover that it too is related to peak oil.

Reading List

Population, the Elephant in the Room

The Peak of World Oil Production

crystalmicrophone@gmail.com
VW3T2MX55RSP

Step 1: Remove Head From Sand

2011-06-23T06:03:00.003-08:00

The first step across the dividing line is always the hardest. When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, our instincts are to fight or flee. This is natural. In western society, and American society in particular, we are trained from birth to avoid unpleasantness if possible and to kick its ass if it won't leave us alone. Many of the people who find this website will read a post or two and click away in a) disgust/anger/annoyance, b) confusion, c) fear or d) apathy. That's to be expected because the ideas we're going to discuss here are not warm and cuddly - but I think they're important. So before we dig in, I'd like to give you a few tips on how to read my posts without feeling the urge to launch yourself off the nearest tall building.

Take a Deep Breath

If anything you read on these pages or the links I provide makes you feel terrified, depressed, violently angry, panicky or otherwise not well, please take a few minutes and move away from the computer. I realize that may sound absurd but understand that these subjects have the capacity to produce extreme emotional reactions, especially in people who are already upset about something else in their lives.

Here's the type of response I'm NOT hoping to receive:
Man sets himself on fire outside NH courthouse

Get Introspective

Know thyself. This is surprisingly tough for a lot of folks, but sometimes you'll need to take a walk inside your own brain to figure out why a certain topic is bothering you. In fact, it's something we should all do from time to time. So channel your inner Freud and ask yourself some probing questions like: "What scares me the most, and why?" "What am I most afraid of losing?" "Can I be happy if the world turns out to be drastically different than I had hoped?" etc... This quickly becomes a very personal exercise and I'll leave it mostly up to you, the reader, to figure out on your own. Just remember that everyone has hidden demons - don't be too startled if you find the answers to these questions to be even more disturbing than the posts on this site. After some practice it does get easier.

Find God

No, I'm not kidding. If you think you're going to handle the rapid decline of civilization (and all the violence, poverty and hunger you're likely to see around you) with a whistle and a song then it's you who's kidding yourself. You'll need faith in something greater than this world if you want to get through what's coming soon.

No Man is an Island

Don't let the fear, anger or sadness you're going to feel as you come to grips with these changes isolate you from friends or family. As we'll discuss in a later post, small communities are going to be hugely important during and after the collapse. Get a head start now and strengthen the relationships you already have or make new ones. Pretty soon real friends, especially those with useful skills, will be a hot commodity.

Prepare Now

One of the strongest medicines against anxiety is preparedness. If you don't have a plan yet, start making one. The bulk of the articles on this site will be dedicated to developing the skills and gathering the resources you'll need to live comfortably. Once you have a plan, put it into action. There's no point writing down a list of essential supplies and then waiting until tragedy strikes to go shopping. Be an early bird and avoid the long lines and shortages that will occur when most people decide it's time to stock up. This includes valuable knowledge - learn to be resourceful now so you don't have to learn when you're panicking later.

What Not to Do

As I mentioned before, suicide or violence to solve problems is not something I'll be recommending here. A few other bad ideas:

Avoidance - Normally it's a good idea to minimize situations that stress you out too much. Unfortunately I believe this is an exception to the rule and something you can't afford to ignore.
Obsession - Preparing for the bad times at the expense of today is no good either. Strive for balance if you want to keep your sanity and the sanity of those around you.
Despair - It sounds ridiculous, but try to maintain a positive attitude about all this. Even when our society begins to crumble, the world will go on turning and the sun will rise every morning. Remind yourself that this will be one of the most important changes in all of human history, and you have the "good fortune" to be a part of it.

So What's Next?

Before we can talk about how to prepare, we need to review what we're preparing for and why it matters. Stay tuned for summaries of the biggest threats to civilization.

Reading List

How to Handle Stress

Building Your Faith

Maintaining Friendships

crystalmicrophone@gmail.com

What line and why?

2011-06-22T14:02:00.003-08:00

About 7 months ago, in the process of filling up our Netflix queue, my wife picked a movie called "Collapse". I think it's fair to say she has regrets about that decision now.

If you haven't seen the movie:
1) I recommend it.
2) It's about peak oil.

At this point I'll assume the majority of people still reading have never heard of peak oil, and that the majority of those people will soon find themselves using terms like "doomer" or maybe "whacked-out-nut-job" to describe me and/or this website to their friends. That's ok. The posts that will appear on this site are almost guaranteed to either baffle, offend or bore you to tears if you're part of that majority. If nothing else, reading this website occasionally and laughing at it could help you verify that you're still in the "normal" bucket.

This site is for the two minorities I implied above: First are those who have heard theories about peak oil, financial collapse, climate change or the precarious state of our society in general and either agree with those ideas or at the very least control the urge to roll their eyes and sigh audibly whenever they encounter them. Secondly, those who are still blissfully ignorant of the world's growing problems, but will eventually land somewhere between simply being open-minded to the possibilities and a die-hard believer. To anyone in those two groups, "Welcome". I hope you find something in these pages that is helpful.

Now as far as the line goes (that's the "Dividing Line"...you know, the title of the blog?), the image I used at the top captures it almost too perfectly. I can hear the woman saying to herself, "Wait a minute, this wasn't here yesterday..." I can feel her surprise and confusion. The day is coming (and for some is already here) when you will see or hear something that makes you think, "This isn't what the world looked like when I went to bed last night." The change you see that day might be a consequence of one of the topics I mentioned earlier, or it might be something else - something totally unexpected. That event will be the first dividing line in your life after which you will never see our world the same way. For me the dividing line was watching this movie in November 2010.

Hopefully it won't ruin the film for anyone who's interested, but I need to give away a few of the key plot points. The film is an interview with Michael Ruppert, an investigative journalist, former LA police detective, and "whacked-out-nut-job". He talks for a few minutes about investigations he conducted into the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling, then abruptly switches gears to focus on the main theme - the impending collapse of modern civilization following peak oil.

For complete beginners, peak oil refers to the theory that individual oil fields, countries and the entire planet all trace out an oil production curve over their lifetimes known as Hubbert's Curve. On the left side of the curve, oil production expands steadily at first and then goes parabolic until it reaches the peak. At this point, approximately half the oil in the field, country or planet (depending on what the curve is measuring) has been used and half is still in the ground. The right side of the curve has a sharp drop-off after the peak which turns into a slow decline approaching zero. Right now the world as a whole appears to be at or just past peak. We won't know where the peak is for sure until it's in the rear-view mirror, but the theory has proven reliable in terms of single fields and countries many times.

Michael Ruppert makes the case that the global down-slope of Hubbert's Curve will be a time of extraordinary suffering and hardship for mankind since nearly everything (and everyone) we see around us is directly or indirectly a product of cheap, easily accessible fossil fuels. Oil is obviously used to power nearly all the world's vehicles, but don't forget about the coal we use to generate the bulk of our electricity, and natural gas which is the basis for modern chemical fertilizers. The list goes on. Future shortages of these resources won't just mean making fewer trips in your gas-guzzler to Wal-Mart...it means that if and when you get there, you might find nothing on the shelves to buy and no money in your pockets to buy what you need anyway. It means the world will change in a big way.

I'll stop there and save the rest of the terrifying implications for a later post, but I want to mention the second part of the movie's message. In the second half of the interview, Ruppert is asked what we can do to prevent all this from happening. Should we all drive less? Switch to solar or wind power for electricity? What about organic farming? His answer, and one that I've come to accept as the truth, is that we can't prevent it. So if you're already a bit nervous thinking about how running out of fossil fuels has the potential to devastate human society, you might want to take some deep breaths or go get a glass of water before you attempt to digest that it's more than just a possible outcome. Again I'm going to save the specifics for another post (or more likely series of posts) because it's not a short topic to discuss. Suffice it to say "we", as a global civilization, are likely to arrive both a day late and several bucks short.

So finally, the interviewer comes to the only question left to ask, "What can we do?" Prepare. The only way will be to learn to live without things that won't be available anymore. Believe it or not, this is actually the bright spot in "Collapse". Really. Yes, we've fooled ourselves into thinking that life on Earth will always be the way it is today and no, it turns out our planet doesn't care if we really really need those resources to survive. When fossil fuels run out, they're gone - at least until somebody puts some fossils in the ground and lets them cook for a few million years. Pleasant thoughts, huh? Oh and don't forget that peak oil is just one scenario on the horizon ready to wipe that grin off our faces. There's also financial collapse (hopefully at least some readers will accept this one as plausible after 2008), environmental catastrophes due to climate change and a handful of other slightly less-likely candidates.

The (relatively) good news is, we don't have to curl up and die just yet! Humans were around for a long time before fossil fuels were discovered and before exotic financial derivatives were created. We've survived to see the rise and fall of many civilizations over the ages, and we even made it through the ice age...well some of us did. Care to guess which two groups of people have had the privilege of passing on their genes following each and every previous collapse? Most of them realized that something bad was about to happen, they accepted that fact AND they did something about it. The second, smaller group of people just got lucky. Odds are better if you at least try to make it into that first group.

That's the second dividing line, the line that will one day exist between those who have something approaching a comfortable, happy life and those who suffer. This blog is all about giving you the information you need to see the problems we face, come to terms with them AND do something to help yourself make it through. We've got a lot of ground to cover.