Okay I mentioned this book in the news forum when I did that picture post about people not being encouraged to grow their own vegetables.

Its been a long time since a book has made me think about world issues. Ok so the book got a bit conspiracy theory at the end maintaining that a few families control everything.

But the core storyline was something that has dwelled on my mind for most of the week. What if we did suffer from some catastrophic event that crippled the flow of oil? Everything shuts down in a very short space of time, and riots break out in every major country.

We see ourselves as a civilized culture, okay we do have our problems. However it’s because we get everything handed to us on a plate, electricity, water, food etc. We view people in the third world with a scornful view relying on hand outs from richer nation.

It is disturbing to think that it’s the people in the third world and poorer nations that would fare better than us poor saps who would struggle survive, because there are not as reliant as we are on the things we take for granted.

Let’s hope the powers that be won’t let it go this far, and start turning to new technologies which don’t rely on fossil fuels.

It may just return to a age of the 1800's. Where a strong monarch is needed to control the feudal system.

Are you asking us to say what we think would happen in the event of Oil no longer being available?

That might be very interesting. I've had a few thoughts on that scenario.

Pease share with us your wisdom, this is something I really want to discuss.

Wisdom!..BLOODY WISDOM!! WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT NOW!!!

I just had a few thoughts about the matter and the pitfalls.

Such as we can't all do the subsistence farming bit. That's why civilisation happened. Someone has to dig the raw materials out of the rock to make the tools to farm with. Cannibalising the wreckage of civilisation is ok for a while, but rust and rot take their toll, sooner or later someone is going to have to get that tin and copper out of the ground.

Ugh...just remembered, The UK was one forest once, from Dover to The Hebrides. Mankind has ended THAT situation, and 60million people all trying to keep warm through the first winter?...there won't be an upright twig come spring. So we can forget charcoal production and Iron production.
(I know how to make charcoal, but I bet most don't)

Seeds are another problem. I'll come to that problem later.

I read a fiction book called exodus. And it was about us trying to survive a catastrophic event. And on reading it, it made me think no I don't think we could survive a catastrophic event.

You’re absolutely right, there won’t be a single tree left standing after the first winter, or people would just raid everything, timber frame from ransacked houses etc, I think the manufactured stuff would be the first to go anything that can be burned will be burned. It’ll make the book burning by the Nazis look like a small camp fire. And the disturbing thing is, some people won’t have a clue what they’re burning, poison fumes from different things being burned. Which would you put on the bonfire first, the sofa from DFS, or the Playstation 3

The book I have just read does paint a grim picture of life in the first few weeks, although I accept it was a bit blown up. First of all the electricity goes, which means people are left in darkness, how many people out there have wind up lanterns and radios, I have camping equipment but I don’t have one of those, but I am off camping soon and I will invest in both.

When the lights do go out and the news spreads that there won’t be any power any time soon, that’s when the looting will start, and a lot of other things, when the shops have been ransacked, people will start fighting amongst themselves neighbour against neighbour raiding each other’s houses. Law will break down, and the worst nightmares of society, gangs etc will take advantage of that and just go on the rampage. However how long will that last for? When there’s nothing else to take or eat in the larger towns and cities, what the people do then? including these gangs.

Enter the government and their emergency muster points for the general population, a place where emergency shelters have been set up to feed the population. Stadiums, and other large venues all over the country will be requisitioned in order to cope with the influx of people, and that’s when the real problem starts. We all saw the problems in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, all those people packed into that stadiums, the horror stories of rape and murder, and that was in country that had the resources to help those people. After a few months these emergency centres would be little than death camps, on imaginable proportions, so would you try to get to one of them, I certainly wouldn’t.

How many people would try to get out of the UK when something like this kicked off, don’t forget with the breakdown of law comes the breakdown of border control. Many people would probably try and leave this island of ours, and head for the wide open spaces of Europe in the hope of finding food.

Over to you H

All the elecricity in a few weeks???...why?

The Government have been in energy poor situations before. The Miners strike? I remember doing homework by candlelight, three day weeks and power being reserved for industry, and hospitals etc.
I'm sure that the first thing the government would do is switch all industry over to making wind farms..rapid! Without electricity the UK is dead in the water. If we can get by with less, then we've a chance, only a slim one, but a chance. Energy management would be 100% of the governments priorities. Without that bare essential of energy, we've no communication and cannot get resources to where they are needed to save the situation.
What good is two thousand tons of coal in Yorkshire, if the power station is in Dorset and we can't get the coal there.
Oil wouldn't just "go" it's only certain types that are needed for certain things. I'd suggest we stick with the loss of Oil that goes to make petrol/diesel. That would be enough to make the dominoes tumble, we don't need to go into plastic production oil...forget plastics....just don't bother.



Forget how many would get out. However many it was. The attrition from other other reasons would make those that did manage to get out a mere side issue.......think pharmaceuticals?

I guess after Hurricane Katrina a lot of other governments sat up and took notice, particularly on how not to handle a situation like that. Of course it wouldn’t be as bad as what the book I read made out. Those who rely on nuclear power and wind power would still be able to keep their lights on, and yes the government would implement an emergency plan to build wind farms, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised some where if up and down the there are store house with parts for these turbines.
I don’t think any government wants to see their population go down the toilet. No population = no government, simple as.

The thing that annoys me is that the government are moving toward renewable energy, but they seem to be timing it to coincide with when oil starts to get short, so it’ll be a gradual change over. And we are at the level of technology where we can generate our own electricity, mini wind turbines, thermal piping and solar panels. That idea on the news forum the other day double glazing that also acts as solar panels is brilliant. But we the general public get told that these things aren’t viable and wouldn’t create enough energy. I think that’s a load of bollocks.

The one thing over all that is stunting our growth is greed. Those who have it all don’t want any of us poor sods at the bottom to have anything, that way their narrow minded status quo is maintained. But it is greed that will be their undoing, because sooner or later the powers that be will be faced with a stark choice. Either let people live their own lives, generate their own power etc, or watch the world fall apart to such a level it won’t be able to be fixed.

No argument here with that.

I'm working on a piece about food and the downfall, because that is the kicker, and the one that would really make a difference, because no-one in the UK has ever really known hunger. We think food grows in shops.
We might, if we work at it, keep enough power to retain the status of a country, and eventually reach an equilibrium that allowed progress.
But if we get hungry, all that goes out the window, and the decline into "Mad Max" territory happens virtually overnight. (I'll get back with my wafflings on food maybe tomorrow)


Have you been listening to the pope???

Funny you should mention the mad max type situations over food because I wrote a long piece this afternoon about how people would cope in rural areas, but I thought it went on too long so I didn’t post it. But I will quickly sum up what I wrote.

The Farmers would be top of the food chain, definitely faring better than people in large towns and cities. However they would have a hard time from marauding gangs in search of food, but they would know the layout of the land better so they would probably set up some sort of defensive barrier.

Then you have people in small villages, into growing vegetables, and having a well at the bottom of the garden as well and a few chickens and a goat, and a large green house. As long as you were far enough from a major motorway or A Road in an elevated position so you could see people coming you might fare quite well compared to those living in the valleys where you could be more accessible.

At the bottom of the country food chain would be the posh people, who have moved away from the big cities for some fresh air, but who are still 100% reliable on their nearest Tesco, you know the sort, wouldn’t know how to plant anything even if they tried. My girlfriend’s uncle is exactly like that, he’s got a stunning five bedroom house out in the sprawling country side, at least an acre and a half of land, and what’s we done, turned it all into a lawn, put fir trees everywhere and a stupid water feature. It’s such a waste of land. If I got the chance to move to the country with that much land I’d certainly give the green thing a go, chickens, vegetable garden and a well.

I guess I’m living in the past too much because my late grandfather used to have a small holding two orchards, apple and plum, plus a football field sized plot, strawberries and lettuces as far as the eye could see, it was absolutely heaven in the summer. I visited there last year, my uncle still owns the land, but all he has done with it is allowed a load of old rusty cars to be dumped, very upsetting to see, my grandfather would be spinning in his grave.

I'll be even quicker. The cities emptying of people all hungry all heading to every compass point known, eating all in their path with no thought for the future. Human locust. Forget neat defences, they'd just swarm all over them.

With no power the would be no water being pumped you can live longer without food than without water.

That's why the cities would empty

Food would be an incentive to leave...but lack of water (clean) would force them to.

D'oh! I missed that.

I'm just thinking about all those posh buggers trying to survive...all the management consultants etc.

What's that bit from the hitchhickers guide?...where the "B" ark crashes and they've got a commitee trying to invent fire?

I'll type it out tomorrow.

One word. 'Containment'

It could be that the Government, wouldn't want something like this to happen, the cities themselves could become emergency shelters. Block every major and minor road out of the cities. Put up concrete blocks on the motorways to prevent movement up and down the country. But this still wouldn't be enough to contain people, there are plenty of ways out of a town other than roads.

Erect a fence around these cities I don't think so, don't forget this crisis effects every one, those in the police and army are just human, in the end human instinct would take over, protect your family and sod those giving the orders.

There's a part in this book I read where at the beginning the Prime Minister is giving a speech on how to handle this crisis, he says we should all stick together like World War Two. I’m sorry but we live in a world away from the Dunkirk Spirit. If you look at a cross section of our society today you can easily see that there’s no way people would stick together. Racial tension in these inner cities is already critical, an event like this would just push the launch button. Its not just Upper, middle, working and lowers classes any more.

There are classes within classes now, we saw that during that fiasco with Shannon Mathews, the family being looked down on by other members of the estate who were no better off than they were, and it wasn’t just because of what they did.

Unless the government has got something up their sleeve that would save us all from this hellish nightmare it’ll be worst case scenario at best.

I've not done with this thread yet, I'm just a tad snowed under here.

I'm trying to figure out whether the armed forces would stay loyal. You can get soldiers to do some pretty nasty things to your own populace.
Tricky...very tricky question is that.


Ever read a book called 'Lucifers Hammer'? the military (or a small faction thereof) join up with some religious nutters and make life hard for survivors. Good book.


Hollywood never really tells the whole story, it always finds a way to get rid of the panicing population with a nasty virus, or some massive disaster. They've yet to address the subject of a whole country on the rampage and hungry.

(we might see some 'fun' here in the UK when winter arrives and all these fuel/gas/electricity price rises take effect. I've noted that all the rises are arriving in summer.)

In this book the Prime Minister is a bit of a wimp, if I was the Prime Minister, and this situation arose I would be blunt with the population. I would offer them two choices.

Either you can go out panic buy, strip the supermarket shelves bare within a few hours. If you do this then within three weeks you’ll be slitting each other’s throat for the last tin of baked beans. Are you really ready to start invading other people’s homes and killing for the sake of survival.

Or we can stick together and see this through, and its got nothing to do with world war two spirit. It’s a case of sticking together for survival.

I would lay the first choice down thick, and really scare the population shitless.

As for the army and police, yes how long before they start to show their human side, bugger off home to protect their families.

A very interesting thread you have got going here guys, i cant wait to read your final conclusions.

We're just deconstructing civilisation.

isn't that what you guys always do?

You hurt me Rach...you cut me deep.

We'll find an answer though. There's one out there, but it so far seems well hidden. The tricky bit seems to be getting past the barbaric nature of humans when the thin veneer of civilisation/law and order are no longer there to keep us in check.