If the oil supply dried up tomorrow..............

[Nerdy_Harold]

What would be the outcome?

Would the nation survive?

Could you survive?

 

[semen4her]

http://edge.ebaumsworld.com/picture/lastklaxon/madmax.jpg

 

[Lord_Steve]

http://edge.ebaumsworld.com/picture/lastklaxon/madmax.jpg

time out from making fun of you:

i actually know this guy, he's cool as hell and posts under the handle "micromancer" in somethingawful's tfr forum.

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

What would be the outcome? Chaos

Would the nation survive? Very Very Doubtful


Could you survive?

Maybe for a couple of weeks. I doubt much more.

AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.

Mike

 

[christy1989]

Guess it would be back to horses?
Hey Mike aren't you supposed to be doing something? hmmmm???

 

[Liar]

1/5 of the electricity and heating I use come from oil. And the only transportation I use on a regular basis is electrical and biofuel. Build some nukes and switch to more coal, and I'm good. The big issue is goods distribution. I want stuff in the grocery store. It gets there by diesel truck. Not impossible to solve though. But shit's gonna get expensive.

Flying would be a problem. Are there non oil based jet fuels?

 

[warrior queen]

What would be the outcome? 95% of the world's population would not cope at all.

Would the nation survive? Australia would not, but pockets of resourceful individuals most definitely would.

Could you survive? Yes. I have lived off my surroundings several times in my life, and I have no doubt that I could make a damn good go of it.

Sadly, the world's dependence on oil has created fat, lazy, helpless people who want everything delivered on a platter and have no idea how to function without all the mod cons and convenience that oil and it's derivatives have provided.

 

[ivantheterrible]

i'll survive just fine.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If someone started a rumor that the world was outta, say, peanut butter or soft margarine, life as we know it would abruptly end. Its the nature of people to go batshit crazee rather than think.

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

Guess it would be back to horses?
Hey Mike aren't you supposed to be doing something? hmmmm???

christy if you had posted your pic topless I'd just be here gazing at you longingly thinking all kinds of dirty thoughts.. Would that be enough?

MBG's Mike

 

[trysail]

It is a fine line we tred between being widely understood and technically correct.

When one talks about phase changes and the heat released or absorbed when they occur, most people's eyes glaze over and they tune out. If one says that it takes less heat to boil alcohol than water, they seem to get it.

I don't really know how to deal with the fact that even most "educated" people don't have a solid grounding in math, chemistry and physics. A person can get a Ph.D. today and never even be exposed to the term "heat of vaporization," much less understand the implication of it in practical terms.

Hell, most people don't even have a feel for orders of magnitude - they bandy around millions, billions and trillions like they are about the same. They are just generic "big numbers" in most minds.

The sad result of this lack of well-rounded education among so-called educated people is they (and the people who follow them) are vulnerable to superstition based on emotion.

I'm amazed about how little the average person knows about the "size" of things....I've asked smart people to guess the approximate size of the container that could hold all of the humans in the world, in cubic miles. The guess is always hundreds or thousands of cubic miles....The answer is a little more than a tenth of a cubic mile.

The volume of petroleum produced each year is a little more than a cubic mile.

 87,000,000 	          Barrels/Day 	BOPD
 365 	                  Days/Year	
 31,755,000,000 	  Barrels/Year 	
 1,333,710,000,000 	  Gallons 	42 Gallons/Barrel
 308,087,010,000,000 	  Cubic Inches 	1 Gallon=231 Cubic Inches
 6,603,373,843 	          Cubic Yards 	1 Cubic Yard=46,656 Cubic Inches
 1.21                     Cubic Miles   1 Cubic Mile=5,451,776,000 Cubic Yards

 

[Lord_Steve]

if we ever run out of oil i'm going to use it as an excuse to finally drink myself to death

 

[JohnnySavage]

It is a fine line we tred between being widely understood and technically correct.

When one talks about phase changes and the heat released or absorbed when they occur, most people's eyes glaze over and they tune out. If one says that it takes less heat to boil alcohol than water, they seem to get it.

I don't really know how to deal with the fact that even most "educated" people don't have a solid grounding in math, chemistry and physics. A person can get a Ph.D. today and never even be exposed to the term "heat of vaporization," much less understand the implication of it in practical terms.

Hell, most people don't even have a feel for orders of magnitude - they bandy around millions, billions and trillions like they are about the same. They are just generic "big numbers" in most minds.

The sad result of this lack of well-rounded education among so-called educated people is they (and the people who follow them) are vulnerable to superstition based on emotion.

I'm amazed about how little the average person knows about the "size" of things....I've asked smart people to guess the approximate size of the container that could hold all of the humans in the world, in cubic miles. The guess is always hundreds or thousands of cubic miles....The answer is a little more than a tenth of a cubic mile.

The volume of petroleum produced each year is a little more than a cubic mile.

 87,000,000 	          Barrels/Day 	BOPD
 365 	                  Days/Year	
 31,755,000,000 	  Barrels/Year 	
 1,333,710,000,000 	  Gallons 	42 Gallons/Barrel
 308,087,010,000,000 	  Cubic Inches 	1 Gallon=231 Cubic Inches
 6,603,373,843 	          Cubic Yards 	1 Cubic Yard=46,656 Cubic Inches
 1.21                     Cubic Miles   1 Cubic Mile=5,451,776,000 Cubic Yards

It would depend on the size of the hydraulic pump. If a pressure is exerted on the surface of an enclosed fluid, that pressure is transmitted equally and undiminished through out the fluid and the walls of the container.

 

[trysail]

It would depend on the size of the hydraulic pump. If a pressure is exerted on the surface of an enclosed fluid, that pressure is transmitted equally and undiminished through out the fluid and the walls of the container.

Dayum. I am impressed; you remembered your high school physics!


Every time I see the hydraulic piston that controls the blade of a Caterpillar 'dozer or the boom of a Manitowoc crane, I think of that law.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Dayum. I am impressed; you remembered your high school physics!


Every time I see the hydraulic piston that controls the blade of a Caterpillar 'dozer or the boom of a Manitowoc crane, I think of that law.

So humans are 70% water, which can't be compressed. But the other 30% can probably be squished in half. An original sized human could realistically be compressed to about 85% of the original volume. Additionally, you will receive some economy because the human body is a fairly inefficient shape. Compressing to a more pancake shape would save room.

Have you considered the difference in average sizes depending on geographical location?

 

[Sean]

It would depend on the size of the hydraulic pump. If a pressure is exerted on the surface of an enclosed fluid, that pressure is transmitted equally and undiminished through out the fluid and the walls of the container.

Which is, of course, how brake cylinders work.

 

[trysail]

So humans are 70% water, which can't be compressed. But the other 30% can probably be squished in half. An original sized human could realistically be compressed to about 85% of the original volume. Additionally, you will receive some economy because the human body is a fairly inefficient shape. Compressing to a more pancake shape would save room.

Have you considered the difference in average sizes depending on geographical location?

I can't go there; it would be politically incorrect.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Sadly, the world's dependence on oil has created fat, lazy, helpless people who want everything delivered on a platter and have no idea how to function without all the mod cons and convenience that oil and it's derivatives have provided.

Every generation has done something similar. This is like saying sadly the worlds dependence on domestic animals has created fat lazy helpless people who expect their meals to hold still and have no idea how to function in the "real" world. Sure it's true but that doesn't make it any less of a bullshit statement.

I'm amazed about how little the average person knows about the "size" of things....I've asked smart people to guess the approximate size of the container that could hold all of the humans in the world, in cubic miles. The guess is always hundreds or thousands of cubic miles....The answer is a little more than a tenth of a cubic mile.

Why would you ask such a question? It has absolutely no logical reason to exist as anything other than trivia and no reasonable person would have ever given this any serious thought in the past.

How did you come to that conclusion anyway, is this human puree or actual people people who in real life don't stack like corkboard?

 

[1sickbastard]

Sadly, the world's dependence on oil has created fat, lazy, helpless people who want everything delivered on a platter and have no idea how to function without all the mod cons and convenience that oil and it's derivatives have provided.

No, that would be a consumer society that's done this.

Oil happens to be the most expedient energy form, and has been for nearly a century now.
Synthetic oil can be made from coal. Cost of transporting ggods will rise sharply, causing a collapse in international trade, and a subsuquent collapse of the world economies. Food prices will spike sharply (most fertilizers and herbicides/pesticides are made from petroleum) as food production falls. Estimate half the world's population will die within a 18month period.

There are those who've said we've already reached "peak oil", and no matter what we do, the oil-based economy is doomed in a few decades.

 

[trysail]

Why would you ask such a question? It has absolutely no logical reason to exist as anything other than trivia and no reasonable person would have ever given this any serious thought in the past.

How did you come to that conclusion anyway, is this human puree or actual people people who in real life don't stack like corkboard?

The answer is very simple; the "Average Joe/Jane" is basically clueless about just how big the earth is. "Average Joe/Jane" lives cheek by jowl to his neighbors and his weltanschauung is influenced by it. That, in turn, influences how he "feels" about a whole host of things— from population to resource sufficiency. Unfortunately, "Average Joe/Jane" tends to "feel" rather than "think." That's how "Extraordinary Popular Delusions" begin.


Get on a 40' sailboat and sail into the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific and you'll begin to comprehend that it's a big, big world— far larger than you think.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I get that the world is a big place but that doesn't change the fact that proving how much humanity you could cram into a box doesn't really mean anything. Also the overall size of the earth doesn't mean a whole lot for population or resource distribution since you still need the resources and a way to get it to the people etc etc. Until someone figures out an economically sound (or some government/governments just decided they don't care about how much it costs as long as it gets done) way to desalinate water it doesn't matter how much ocean we have. There is limited drinkable water. Us throwing away food in the US doesn't actually prevent starving around the world etc etc.

I completely agree that people throw around million, billion, trillion like they were the same word. I don't think that's so much about ignorance as it is the human mind really isn't properly equipped to deal with numbers significantly over a few hundred. There is a reason why when you get the estimate for how big an event was (that's not in an Arena and thus already has a fairly accurate count) that you'll get reports ranging from two hundred to nine hundred and it's not because everybody is lying it's because if the number is too large to be quickly counted our brains just seem to go "man that's a lot." We then proceed to pull a number from the air.

 

[JohnnySavage]

I get that the world is a big place but that doesn't change the fact that proving how much humanity you could cram into a box doesn't really mean anything. Also the overall size of the earth doesn't mean a whole lot for population or resource distribution since you still need the resources and a way to get it to the people etc etc. Until someone figures out an economically sound (or some government/governments just decided they don't care about how much it costs as long as it gets done) way to desalinate water it doesn't matter how much ocean we have. There is limited drinkable water. Us throwing away food in the US doesn't actually prevent starving around the world etc etc.

I completely agree that people throw around million, billion, trillion like they were the same word. I don't think that's so much about ignorance as it is the human mind really isn't properly equipped to deal with numbers significantly over a few hundred. There is a reason why when you get the estimate for how big an event was (that's not in an Arena and thus already has a fairly accurate count) that you'll get reports ranging from two hundred to nine hundred and it's not because everybody is lying it's because if the number is too large to be quickly counted our brains just seem to go "man that's a lot." We then proceed to pull a number from the air.

Have you ever looked into renting bulldozer to pull the stick out of your ass?

 

[garbage can]

What would be the outcome?

Obama would win next November.

 

[Shagly]

There is a large oil supply surplus, a World War would bring the oil wells back.

 

[warrior queen]

Every generation has done something similar. This is like saying sadly the worlds dependence on domestic animals has created fat lazy helpless people who expect their meals to hold still and have no idea how to function in the "real" world. Sure it's true but that doesn't make it any less of a bullshit statement.

No, that would be a consumer society that's done this.

People have become accostomed to not having to work to exist.
They like that they can go to the corner store and buy their milk in a plastic carton.
How many know how to milk the cow? And how many bitch about having to drive an extra 5km when their corner store runs out of their fave milk? How many would be willing to walk that extra 5km (and given the obesity and ill-health, how many could actually walk that far in the first place?)

My point here is that most of the populations have become reliant on having the benefits that oil has provided...
They enjoy having their heat delivered in pipes, their water and electricity on tap, their waste products conveniently piped/trucked away.
They like being able to bring home food that's canned, processed, packed and not going to spoil in 24 hours, that they can keep in their fridges and freezers for some time (running on that convenient electricity that is produced with oil and runs into their homes in plastic-wrapped cables).
They enjoy the use of a car or public transport, and wouldn't dream of walking to work.

Plastics, transport, processing, emergency help, chemical germ control, you name it - almost everything in the modern world has some roots in the oil industry.
If you lost all oil in an instant, which is what I think the OP was getting at, a very large proportion of the population simply wouldn't know what to do or how to cope.