Why America will break apart-What Cheap energy has done..

dunewalker

General Green reminds me of our recently retired Cid-Yama. Anyone else notice this?
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"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
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Ludi

Itsallcomindown · Tar Sands Joined: May 25, 2008 Posts: 30

Yes I agree that people will have to help each other but with a dwindleing amount of resources it will not be possible to help everyone. If you give everything you have to those who don't have anything then eventually no one will have anything and there will always be people who want to take what you have. It will have to be defended and the only way to defend it is to rally like minded people to your cause. Apply this on a global level. If we as Americans, or as the west, come to the realization that there are only a certain amount of resources left, and that the amount of people on the planet are contributing to the destruction of the planet, then it is only logical to conclude that it is inevitable that some of these people are going to have to die, whether it be through starvation, war, sickness and disease, or weather annomolies created by climate change. If you believe in global warming and you believe that it is man made, then you would also have to agree that a massive reduction in the world's population would greatly reduce the damage being caused to the environment. As I see it, we have basically two options: We can wait until the world reaches a boiling point and cultures around the world all begin taking action to insure their own way of life survives. Or we can begin taking steps now to ensure our own way of life survives. If we choose option number two and do it rapidly, then we can secure the resources we need to sustain our way of life well into the future. If we continue to wait then we run the risk of losing our ability to execute option number two there by becoming the culture that is stamped out by the culture who wants to sustain its way of life more than we do.

mos6507

socrates1fan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 04, 2008 Posts: 284

After reading more of the posts on here I can't help but feel that this isn't based off of modern social construction but rather wishful thinking.
0_o
I could be wrong but from the way many of the posts seem it is as if many here WISH for racial divisions, wish for all the 'different' folks to die off, and wish for the worst of social culture.
Its really quite sick but this is based on my own observations.

dunewalker

GeneralGreen

First off I don't know this 'Cid' poster...The mods can do an IP check and see were are in two different nations.. anyway I checked his site..and I do find it quit interesting..so thats for the link.

manu · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 760

I think that the U.S. will start the next nuclear war. So they will cause their own breakup. Don't think they will come out of that unscathed. For those of you who always say, they will never use them because both sides lose, they already have used them! The time will come when they think it will be useful in a first strike, because if they don't, the other side will use them first. Do I wish that people could live in peace, yes. But that takes a certain type of mentality which I don't see in very many places. So as the world economy collapses everyone will be in a third world country. There will be no big armies left after the next war.

btu2012

wisconsin_cur

btu2012

btu2012

Cloud9 · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 1162

Gotterdammerung fantasies are fun. Those of us who are relatively insignificant see chaos as the opportunity to thrust ourselves on the stage and assume roles that are denied us under the status quo. Changing times will present opportunity and those with luck and pluck may advance themselves.

Outside an EMP burst from the sun or Yellow Stone blowing its top, those that wish for a demise of the United States and a total collapse of social order are succumbing to wishful thinking.

I admit what we are facing is unlike any panic or depression we have seen in the past. This current condition is based on resource depletion. We have built a society and infrastructure around the automobile. Cheap energy has allowed us to import huge quantities of goods and services from half a planet away. That may change.

Cheap oil has caused us to channel our engineering along specific lines for a century. If you look at the drive train of an automobile today, they are not markedly different from the drive trains under vehicles made in 1914.

It would be a mistake to discount the abilities of the world’s tinkerers. I know a couple of plumbers that are building a hydrogen generation system as we speak.

Solutions may not manifest themselves when needed but solutions will come and we will adapt.

As the price of energy goes up, I suspect our economy will become more labor intensive. The labor that has been siphoned off into the burgeoning bureaucracies of city, state and federal agencies may decline. With that decline, the intrusiveness of government will decline. More and more, people may discover that the solutions to their problems may have to be obtained locally and not from some far of government agency. I imagine a world similar to the 1930’s.

Back yards will in many cases give way to gardens. Chickens will keep down the insects and goats will mow the lawns. People will open their windows and get to know their neighbors. The front porch may come back in style.

If thousand mile transport systems break down, drugs will be manufactured locally. Street gangs will lose a primary source of revenue as producers go back to traditional production of weed and moon shine.

Southern states may adopt the Texas code that allows the use of deadly force to protect private property. It is one thing to have a car stolen knowing that it will be replaced by an insurance company. It is quite another to have your pig stolen and your family face starvation.

Minus interference from law enforcement vigilante justice will take care of most of the violent gang outbreaks. Three or four fellows with good rifles can settle a lot of potential problems if left alone. The justice may be rough, but similar systems worked on the American frontier for a couple of hundred years.

Most who rise in the new economy will find ways to integrate themselves with traditional sources of power. Religious institutions and centers of government will still exist when the last drop of gasoline has been burned. Those that do not wish to find a noose around their necks may be wise to wrap themselves in the traditional trappings of power. Small towns have a way of disappearing local tyrants and war lords if left to their own devices.

Aside from religious fanatics, no one sees an advantage to a nuclear war. The true believers are the one contingent outside of nature that could thrust us back into to dark ages. Those are the black swans that could change everything.

Baring those catastrophic events, people will pretty much stay at home, tend to business and find ways to survive. Beans, booze, babes, bibles and bullets always sell well in hard times.

EnergyUnlimited · Fusion Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 3312

btu2012

50% might be the case for Russian nukes, doubtless it's higher than that on the US side.

You don't need 2000 nukes to play MAD. Annihilation of a country's food or industrial base is sufficient for that and you could achieve that with fewer nukes. There are disarmament protocols (frozen for the moment) meant to address your fears.
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