Death2all wrote:I think this may be the first time I wholeheartedly agree with you. We are WAY past the point where new refineries/platforms/etc should have come on-line. We are also wayyyyy past the point of "should" be building nuke plants. Those fuckers should be coming on-line NOW, not 25 years from now. In 25 years, we won't have the ability to support them, let alone build them.Drill now. Build nuclear plants. Invest in alternatives for the future, but start taking care of the needs of the present. It’s really not brain surgery or rocket science. Even Maxine Waters should be able to understand it, even if she willfully ignores the reality.
The difficulty in this problem also lies with the youth of the United States. Very few college-aged people really "do" anything or have anything resembling hands-on skills. A welder is worth more in the real world economy than the thousand or so twits with liberal arts degrees in bullshit like "Industrial Psychology". We have an obscene deficit in people who have skilled trades, engineers, REAL scientists, chemists, etc. Instead it's dopes with Marketing Degrees and Political "Science" degrees. Hogwash. With a resource of "grey matter" like this, we're going to be hard-pressed to find anyone capable of maintaining and erecting the nuke plants, considering the lack of technical expertise in the youthful graduates.
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MikeLindgren
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The Life After The Oil Crash Lexicon
Compiled by the OldHorseman
Abiotic Oil: The convenient theory that some, maybe even all petroleum was created by geologic processes rather than the collection of solar energy by biological processes in ancient forests and seas. The supposed implication being that petroleum is not a finite resource, but is being constantly produced at the junction of the planet's crust and mantle layers. Somehow, proponents of this theory believe that this means we'll never run out of petroleum... But, even if some or all oil is abiotic in origin, there's no reason to believe that it is/was being produced any faster than it would've been under the Dead Dinosaur theory. Wherever sweet crude comes from, we aren't seeing any fresh gushers popping up, are we?
Asshat: A person who couldn't poor piss out of a boot if instructions were printed on the bottom of the heel.
Aztlan: The legendary homeland of the Aztecs, which some Mexican / Latino folks want to reclaim / recreate in what is now US territory. It is likely that substantial portions of the American Southwest will indeed become New Aztlan, as Global Warming and Peak Oil are rapidly making much of that territory too worthless for the gringos to bother fighting to keep it. As the Mexicans discover that the territories with Spanish and Mexican history previously "stolen" from them by America are actually God-forsaken sandlots, they are moving to absorb areas with no substantial Latin heritage into Aztlan... This won't end well.
Bluepill: A person who is pretty much unaware of Peak Oil and our current proximity to TEOTWAWKI. A term borrowed from the MATRIX motion pictures.
Boy George: US President George W. Bush. Similar in meaning to "Shrub", but also invoking a degree of comparison to the mentally deranged, drug-addicted, homosexual pop star of the same name.
Burbs: See Suburbia.
Captain Planet: A leftist superhero created by cable media mogul Ted Turner in a woefully successful attempt to get into Jane Fonda's leotard. Captain Planet is responsible for deluding a generation of Americans into believing Cornucopia can go on forever if only we work towards World Enlightenment and embrace Magic Bullet technologies. In recent years, having lost Fonda, his media empire, and his freakin' mind, Turner has reportedly been painting himself blue to run around kicking people in the nuts and throwing them out of high-rise office buildings while screaming "CAPTAIN PLANET!!!" at the top of his lungs. His motto is apparently "Save the planet, or I'll fuckin' KILL YOU!"
Chinese Ass-Raping Pirates: With resource depletion and population pressures, combined with loss of income due to fast-declining Plastic Pumpkin sales, making life ever more difficult in Asia, hoards of Chinese Pirates are expected to flood across the Pacific to invade the American Northwest. For some reason, the preferred means of intimidation and domination employed by these pirates is expected to be forced anal sodomy. Considering the relatively puny stature of the typical Chinese compared to the humongousity of the average American ass, this may not be the best thought-out plan to begin with. In any event, the Chinese Ass-Raping Pirate rampage will undoubtable grind to a halt when they reach San Francisco, where the demand for anal sodomy will drain the Chinese forces dry.
Concubine: A woman who lives in carnal knowledge with a man to whom she is not married, often along with his wife. Usually used on LATOC boards to describe something akin to a "junior wife".
Cornucopia: The culture of virtually unlimited abundance and eternal economic growth. Named after the equally mythical, inexhaustible Horn of Plenty.
Cornucopian: A person living in what appears to be Cornucopia, where a flick of the switch brings in unlimited, cheap power, there's always more gasoline at the corner station, and one of your biggest problems is trying not to eat too much.
Cornucopian Age/Era: The petroleum enabled age of abundance which filled most of the 20th Century and continued into the early years of the 21st. Unlike the mythical Cornucopia, the Cornucopian Age isn't inexhaustible, and the depletion of the resources supporting it is now becoming evident.
Darth Cheney: US Vice President Dick Cheney. "Darth" being a reference to the STAR WARS villain "Darth Vader" and other evil Sith Lords.
Die-Off: Before the petroleum-enabled Cornucopian Age, the global human population was around 2 billion persons. It is currently something in excess of 6.5 billion. There is some debate as to how well scientific advancement can offset the Cornucopian era destruction of farmland and natural resources, but in any event, the human population is billions in excess of what can be supported without free-flowing petroleum. The inevitable result is a massive population reduction. The only real questions are; "How soon?" "How quickly?" and "By what means?" See Die-Off Website.
Dim Ages: As the glory of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, the Cornucopian Age will give way to the Dim Ages... A period in which the petroleum-dependent technologies of Cornucopia fail, and the children of Cornucopia, being none to bright thanks to Mtv and other factors, struggle to figure out how to do things that our great-grandparents had mastered as children. (Imagine Beavis and Butthead trying to harness a three-abreast plow team... "Huhuhuhuheehuhuhuh... You said: 'BREAST'!!! Huhuhheehuuha.")
Doomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is fiznucked.
Energy Sink: An "energy source" that consumes more power/resources than it can produce. Energy Sink technologies like solar panels, ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen cells may be somewhat useful for making energy mobile, but are not a solution for the overall reduction of energy associated with Peak Oil.
Farm Stud: A male version of a concubine, usually to be kept by a homestead-owning woman.
Fast Crash: The idea that the Oil Crash will happen quickly, over the course of months or a few years, probably accelerated by one or more SHTF events bringing on TEOTWAWKI. Factors making a Fast Crash possible include the complex, interdependent nature of modern infrastructure, the dependence of modern society and the Fiat Currency on continuous petroleum-fueled growth, and the fact that a number of social and economic mechanisms have been holding back or masking the onset of the Oil Crash for some time now, and the inevitable failure of these jury-rigs could be akin to a dam breaking.
Fedghetto: An urban area run as a Totalitarian Police and Welfare State by the central Government as a way to support the bloated population after the collapse of the Cornucopian Age. These may be called something along the lines of "Emergency Housing Districts", "Enhanced Security Zones", or "Warm and Fuzzy All American Apple Pie and Definitely Not Concentration Camps We Promise Happy Places". For your security, there will be check-points to keep terrorists out. You'll be asked to leave all weapons at home, where they'll be safe as the National Guard watches over your neighborhood. It's only a temporary situation, after all.
Fiat Currency: So-called money which is magically endowed with supposed value by order of the Government and sustained by the hope that the next sucker will take it in exchange for goods and services. This is as opposed to real money, which is essentially a coupon that can be redeemed for a set amount of a commodity. Fiat Currencies rely on constant economic growth to maintain the illusion of worth, and nevertheless suffer from loss of value (inflation). Every Fiat Currency in history has eventually collapsed.
FRN: Federal Reserve Note. The Fiat Currency currently in use by the United States. Somewhat dishonestly measured in "dollars", although the dollar is both by tradition and law a set amount of precious metal, while the Federal Reserve Note "dollar" is backed by wishful thinking alone.
Global Warming: Oversimplified term describing the hyperenergized state of the Earth's atmosphere resulting not just in higher overall average temperatures and polar ice loss, but also erratic weather patterns in general, including (ironically enough) Arctic blasts out of season and in places not usually subject to cold weather. Thus causing Asshats like Rush Limbaugh to make fun of Global Warming when it's unusually cold. Global Warming appears to be the result of both a natural warming/cooling cycle on the Earth and the effect of countless tons of pollution pumped into the atmosphere by humans. It's possible that the human activity has pushed the cycle faster and farther than normal, and will lead to disaster. But most of the "solutions" being pushed are Energy Sinks that will actually make matters worse, and it's probably too late to do anything anyway, so party-on y'all! (The Die-Off will ultimately fix it anyway.)
Great Leader: The heroic, brilliant, revolutionary person who, if elected, would surely get us out of the Resource Wars and find a way to solve this whole Peak Oil mess. The history of Great Leaders who came to power on the promise to solve their countries' problems by force of Government is rather nightmarish, as their solutions are often worse than the problems they were supposed to solve. (See the Holocaust, which is actually one of the lesser examples!)
Green Pill: Taking a Green Pill refers to a Peak Oil aware person temporarily putting TEOTWAWKI out of his/her mind. Taking a break to go play in the garden, walk through the countryside, get laid under the stars, and perhaps to reflect on how the coming changes may actually preserve some of the wilderness and revive old, rural traditions. Avoiding the gloom and doom aspects of the Oil Crash, and news relating to it, at least for a little while.
Happy Doomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is fiznucked, but doesn't mind this too much because he/she is already pretty much weaned off of industrial civilization, and won't miss it when it collapses.
High Fructose Corn Syrup: A hyperaddictive form of diabetes-inducing, semi-liquid crack.
Hubbert: Dr. M. King Hubbert, the Shell Oil geologist who calculated in 1956 that the US would reach Peak Oil around 1970 (which it did). He also calculated global Peak Oil for the turn of the new century, but didn't have data for the North Sea fields and didn't factor in the political-economic factors that temporarily reduced consumption in the 1970s, which combined to delay global Peak Oil for about half a decade. Peak Oil is also known as "Hubbert's Peak".
Infrastructure: All the things people take for granted that make modern living possible. The electric grid, water treatment, fuel distribution, communications networks, etc., etc., etc... All of these things rely directly or indirectly on petroleum and a whole lot of people showing up for work every day. Should the petroleum supply (and the Fiat Currency it supports) falter, infrastructure would collapse, taking modern civilization with it. Complicating matters further is the fact that the various segments of infrastructure are dependent upon one-another, so that failure of one could cause cascading failure of all.
Inside: The active jurisdiction of the United States, streamlined in LATOC down to the Fedghettos, Government-run industrial farms, mines, factories, military bases, and the road, rail, and skyways binding them together. People living Inside will retain many modern conveniences, but effectively lose their civil rights. The vast majority of Americans will probably go Inside willingly when SHTF.
Kool-Aid: America's favorite way to start children on the path to sugar addiction and diabetes since 1927. References to "drinking the Kool-Aid" as shorthand for adopting non-mainstream beliefs began in the 1960s when the beverage was used to administer LSD. The term took on a new meaning, describing false teachings or misinformation that could lead to a follower's misfortune, after the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which hundreds of cult members died from ingestion of poisoned grape Flavor-Aid. (Actually a lesser-known competing brand, and not Kool-Aid at all.)
LATOC: Life After The Oil Crash. (Duh!) Life goes on, at least for some of us. Exactly how and where, and what we can do to have the potential for a decent LATOC, is the subject of this forum.
Long Emergency: Title of J.H. Kunstler's book about the Oil Crash and related intersecting disasters of the early 21st Century. The term refers to a state of emergency, similar to that following a natural disaster, but which lasts for years... Perhaps indefinitely. Generally refers to the Peak Oil, the resulting Oil Crash, and perhaps TEOTWAWKI. (Keep in-mind that Kunstler is a hopeless optimist who appears to soften his message to avoid spooking readers too much.)
Magic Bullet: The pipe-dream invention or discovery which Purplepills hope will mitigate the effects of Peak Oil. Most Magic Bullets turn out to be Energy Sinks (ethanol, PV solar, wind farms), unexploitable theories (cold fusion, zero-point), scams, or can be employed only at catastrophic environmental cost (Alberta tar sands, coal).
McMansion: A mass-produced, usually plastic-clad, and utterly charm-free house in Suburbia. Following the McDonalds 'Restaurants' tactic of trying to create the impression of enhanced 'value' by supersizing unhealthy crap, slash and burn developers added rooms, stories, and features to their poorly designed, slapped-together houses, and began alternating between three or four slightly different facades so the subdivisions would look slightly less like prison camps. None of this actually turns a few thousand dollars worth of particle board and vinyl siding stuck together on a fraction of an acre of de-soiled former cow pasture into a half-million dollar estate, as many folks are now discovering the hard way.
Meatspace: The real, physical world, where you can get punched in the nose. The opposite of cyberspace.
Megadoomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is not only fiznucked, but totally, absolutely, and royally fiznucked in every available orifice and a few new ones that will be created just for the purpose as well. Think global thermonuclear war, Omega Strain biological attacks, and total infrastructure collapse, all before folks finish eating their babies for breakfast.
MZB: Mutant Zombie Bikers who are expected to go about raping, looting, killing, and burning their way through the post-collapse world.
Oil Crash: A rapid rise in price, and decrease in availability of petroleum. This will result from geological and political/economic factors, and will cause price inflation and shortages of everything made from or dependent upon petroleum... Which is pretty much everything.
Olduvai Gorge, Theory, and Cliff: The Olduvai Gorge is a place where anthropologists made significant discoveries about the origins and early development of mankind. Olduvai Theory, named for the gorge, is a calculation that predicts the lifespan, and approaching fall, of the current industrial human civilization. The Olduvai Cliff is a term coined by those who expect the fall of industrial civilization to be rather abrupt.
Outside: The small towns and countryside not actively controlled by the Government in LATOC. People living Outside may have relative freedom, but will have little access to modern Infrastructure. Probably localized rural towns ranging from libertarian to theocratic, small farms, and cottage industries all at roughly 19th Century levels.
Paranoia: The mental and psychological condition which results from paying attention to the reality of the modern world.
Peak Oil: The point at which a given oil field, country, or planet produces oil at its maximum rate, after which production must decline. This doesn't mean that wells suddenly start belching up dust. Just that more and more effort has to be spent to retrieve less and less oil until it is no longer practical to pump the remainder up. US Peak Oil occurred around 1970. World Peak Oil appears to have been passed recently, but fudging of numbers by various oil producing parties makes it difficult to establish exactly when. While post-peak oil production is normally expected to be a decline curve reflecting the increase curve before Peak Oil, demand is not expected to decline along similar lines. It is also coming to light that "improved" oil extraction approaches may result in oil fields declining at a rate much steeper than originally envisioned. The decline in global petroleum production is expected to trigger Resource Wars, the collapse of growth-dependent Fiat Currency economies (such as the US), an Oil Crash, the Die-Off, TEOTWAWKI. Other than that, it's no big deal.
Plastic Pumpkin: An item of little or no practical use, usually made in China and purchased by Americans for little or no reason. Such items include over 90% of what is sold on Home Shopping Network and similar channels, 75% of what is sold on eBay, and well in excess of 50% of what is sold in department stores.
PTB: Powers That Be. The forces actually pulling the strings of the economy, media, and politicians. This may refer to an Illuminati group, having secret meetings in a star chamber somewhere to decide who will win the next election and when to have Elvis reveal himself to the masses. It may refer to more mundane, but equally evil players like Cheney and Rove. Perhaps most significantly of all, it can refer not to a group of elite players, but to the natural inclinations of the masses manipulating events in ways individual members of the masses would never have imagined.
Purplepill (or just Purple): A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications, but is mentally and emotionally unable to accept the reality. Usually grasps desperately at the hope of a Magic Bullet, Great Leader, Slow Crash, or World Enlightenment to allow them to believe Cornucopia will go on. Extrapolated from the Blue/Redpills of the MATRIX motion pictures.
Redpill: A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications. Term borrowed from the MATRIX motion pictures.
Research / Development: A euphemism for booze and hooker money. After all, Magic Bullet tech is already well-understood, and known to be pretty much useless in the big picture.
Resource Wars: Wars, regardless of the stated reason or supposed provocation for fighting, which are actually fought to secure resources, or to control the flow of resources, especially Petroleum. (Although water may soon come to the fore.) See Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Iranian Liberty, and World War III.
SHTF: The fecal matter initiates contact with the proverbial rotary device. Describes the event or series of events that lead to TEOTWAWKI.
Shrub: US President George W. Bush. A reference to him not living up to the stature of his father, US President George H. Bush... Which wasn't exactly setting the bar very high to begin with!
Slow Crash: The idea that the Oil Crash will actually be a slow decline over the course of several years, perhaps decades. Proponents of this idea support it with the claim that civilizations historically collapse over the course of generations rather than virtually overnight. While it is true that the decline of civilizations tends to be a long process, the ultimate collapse tends to happen rather suddenly. For instance, the Roman Empire may have been declining for over a century, but to people living in Rome who suddenly found themselves dodging barbarian sword tips in their own neighborhoods, the collapse seemed pretty abrupt. The Soviet Union was essentially in decline from at least WWII, but in the later 1980s almost no one imagined it would dissolve before the dawn of the 21st Century. (See various pre-1990 science fiction movies.) The fact that there has never been a civilization with so far to fall, supported by such fragile, interdependent Infrastructure, tends to invalidate the historical support for a Slow Crash, as does the fact that the slow phase of the Oil Crash has already been going on for over 35 years, and has arguably run its course.
Suburbia: The vain attempt by many Americans to have the peace and tranquility of rural life combined with the convenience and economic opportunities of urban living, resulting in the devastation of actual rural life and the decay of urban centers. Not to mention ghastly, soulless 'neighborhoods' of plastic-clad, cookie-cutter houses. Suburbia was made possible by free-flowing, cheap petroleum, which enabled suburb-dwellers to make long commutes to their workplaces, and made it feasible to replace the produce of the many small farms destroyed by suburban sprawl with foodstuffs grown far away on petro-intensive industrial farms and trucked in via petroleum fueled rigs. There is some debate about where "town" ends and suburbia begins. A simple gauge is that, if you don't live on a farm, and you cannot imagine walking or riding a bike daily to where the businesses and markets you need are located, you're in Suburbia.
TEOTWAWKI: The End Of The World As We Know It. This doesn't mean the end of life on Earth, or even human extinction. Just that the world will be very different from what we are accustomed to now.
Thunderdome: An arena for post-apocalyptic gladatorial combat seen in the Mad Max motion pictures. Also the LATOC Forum section reserved for more controversial topics and confrontational posts (flame wars).
Turnip: A formerly harmless veggie which has somehow become a LATOC slang term alternately used in reference to payment for sex and as a euphemism for sexual organs. Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.
Uberdoomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that Megadoomers are optimists and Doomers are Pollyannas.
World Enlightenment: The notion that everyone is somehow going to realize how the Cornucopian way of life is leading us to SHTF, and willingly change their ways to become eco-friendly, energy-efficient citizens of the new, gleaming, Socialist World Utopia. Espoused by Purplepills who want to see Peak Oil as a "cause" or movement". Basically flies in the face of everything we've ever learned about human history and the nature of the species.
Compiled by the OldHorseman
Abiotic Oil: The convenient theory that some, maybe even all petroleum was created by geologic processes rather than the collection of solar energy by biological processes in ancient forests and seas. The supposed implication being that petroleum is not a finite resource, but is being constantly produced at the junction of the planet's crust and mantle layers. Somehow, proponents of this theory believe that this means we'll never run out of petroleum... But, even if some or all oil is abiotic in origin, there's no reason to believe that it is/was being produced any faster than it would've been under the Dead Dinosaur theory. Wherever sweet crude comes from, we aren't seeing any fresh gushers popping up, are we?
Asshat: A person who couldn't poor piss out of a boot if instructions were printed on the bottom of the heel.
Aztlan: The legendary homeland of the Aztecs, which some Mexican / Latino folks want to reclaim / recreate in what is now US territory. It is likely that substantial portions of the American Southwest will indeed become New Aztlan, as Global Warming and Peak Oil are rapidly making much of that territory too worthless for the gringos to bother fighting to keep it. As the Mexicans discover that the territories with Spanish and Mexican history previously "stolen" from them by America are actually God-forsaken sandlots, they are moving to absorb areas with no substantial Latin heritage into Aztlan... This won't end well.
Bluepill: A person who is pretty much unaware of Peak Oil and our current proximity to TEOTWAWKI. A term borrowed from the MATRIX motion pictures.
Boy George: US President George W. Bush. Similar in meaning to "Shrub", but also invoking a degree of comparison to the mentally deranged, drug-addicted, homosexual pop star of the same name.
Burbs: See Suburbia.
Captain Planet: A leftist superhero created by cable media mogul Ted Turner in a woefully successful attempt to get into Jane Fonda's leotard. Captain Planet is responsible for deluding a generation of Americans into believing Cornucopia can go on forever if only we work towards World Enlightenment and embrace Magic Bullet technologies. In recent years, having lost Fonda, his media empire, and his freakin' mind, Turner has reportedly been painting himself blue to run around kicking people in the nuts and throwing them out of high-rise office buildings while screaming "CAPTAIN PLANET!!!" at the top of his lungs. His motto is apparently "Save the planet, or I'll fuckin' KILL YOU!"
Chinese Ass-Raping Pirates: With resource depletion and population pressures, combined with loss of income due to fast-declining Plastic Pumpkin sales, making life ever more difficult in Asia, hoards of Chinese Pirates are expected to flood across the Pacific to invade the American Northwest. For some reason, the preferred means of intimidation and domination employed by these pirates is expected to be forced anal sodomy. Considering the relatively puny stature of the typical Chinese compared to the humongousity of the average American ass, this may not be the best thought-out plan to begin with. In any event, the Chinese Ass-Raping Pirate rampage will undoubtable grind to a halt when they reach San Francisco, where the demand for anal sodomy will drain the Chinese forces dry.
Concubine: A woman who lives in carnal knowledge with a man to whom she is not married, often along with his wife. Usually used on LATOC boards to describe something akin to a "junior wife".
Cornucopia: The culture of virtually unlimited abundance and eternal economic growth. Named after the equally mythical, inexhaustible Horn of Plenty.
Cornucopian: A person living in what appears to be Cornucopia, where a flick of the switch brings in unlimited, cheap power, there's always more gasoline at the corner station, and one of your biggest problems is trying not to eat too much.
Cornucopian Age/Era: The petroleum enabled age of abundance which filled most of the 20th Century and continued into the early years of the 21st. Unlike the mythical Cornucopia, the Cornucopian Age isn't inexhaustible, and the depletion of the resources supporting it is now becoming evident.
Darth Cheney: US Vice President Dick Cheney. "Darth" being a reference to the STAR WARS villain "Darth Vader" and other evil Sith Lords.
Die-Off: Before the petroleum-enabled Cornucopian Age, the global human population was around 2 billion persons. It is currently something in excess of 6.5 billion. There is some debate as to how well scientific advancement can offset the Cornucopian era destruction of farmland and natural resources, but in any event, the human population is billions in excess of what can be supported without free-flowing petroleum. The inevitable result is a massive population reduction. The only real questions are; "How soon?" "How quickly?" and "By what means?" See Die-Off Website.
Dim Ages: As the glory of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, the Cornucopian Age will give way to the Dim Ages... A period in which the petroleum-dependent technologies of Cornucopia fail, and the children of Cornucopia, being none to bright thanks to Mtv and other factors, struggle to figure out how to do things that our great-grandparents had mastered as children. (Imagine Beavis and Butthead trying to harness a three-abreast plow team... "Huhuhuhuheehuhuhuh... You said: 'BREAST'!!! Huhuhheehuuha.")
Doomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is fiznucked.
Energy Sink: An "energy source" that consumes more power/resources than it can produce. Energy Sink technologies like solar panels, ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen cells may be somewhat useful for making energy mobile, but are not a solution for the overall reduction of energy associated with Peak Oil.
Farm Stud: A male version of a concubine, usually to be kept by a homestead-owning woman.
Fast Crash: The idea that the Oil Crash will happen quickly, over the course of months or a few years, probably accelerated by one or more SHTF events bringing on TEOTWAWKI. Factors making a Fast Crash possible include the complex, interdependent nature of modern infrastructure, the dependence of modern society and the Fiat Currency on continuous petroleum-fueled growth, and the fact that a number of social and economic mechanisms have been holding back or masking the onset of the Oil Crash for some time now, and the inevitable failure of these jury-rigs could be akin to a dam breaking.
Fedghetto: An urban area run as a Totalitarian Police and Welfare State by the central Government as a way to support the bloated population after the collapse of the Cornucopian Age. These may be called something along the lines of "Emergency Housing Districts", "Enhanced Security Zones", or "Warm and Fuzzy All American Apple Pie and Definitely Not Concentration Camps We Promise Happy Places". For your security, there will be check-points to keep terrorists out. You'll be asked to leave all weapons at home, where they'll be safe as the National Guard watches over your neighborhood. It's only a temporary situation, after all.
Fiat Currency: So-called money which is magically endowed with supposed value by order of the Government and sustained by the hope that the next sucker will take it in exchange for goods and services. This is as opposed to real money, which is essentially a coupon that can be redeemed for a set amount of a commodity. Fiat Currencies rely on constant economic growth to maintain the illusion of worth, and nevertheless suffer from loss of value (inflation). Every Fiat Currency in history has eventually collapsed.
FRN: Federal Reserve Note. The Fiat Currency currently in use by the United States. Somewhat dishonestly measured in "dollars", although the dollar is both by tradition and law a set amount of precious metal, while the Federal Reserve Note "dollar" is backed by wishful thinking alone.
Global Warming: Oversimplified term describing the hyperenergized state of the Earth's atmosphere resulting not just in higher overall average temperatures and polar ice loss, but also erratic weather patterns in general, including (ironically enough) Arctic blasts out of season and in places not usually subject to cold weather. Thus causing Asshats like Rush Limbaugh to make fun of Global Warming when it's unusually cold. Global Warming appears to be the result of both a natural warming/cooling cycle on the Earth and the effect of countless tons of pollution pumped into the atmosphere by humans. It's possible that the human activity has pushed the cycle faster and farther than normal, and will lead to disaster. But most of the "solutions" being pushed are Energy Sinks that will actually make matters worse, and it's probably too late to do anything anyway, so party-on y'all! (The Die-Off will ultimately fix it anyway.)
Great Leader: The heroic, brilliant, revolutionary person who, if elected, would surely get us out of the Resource Wars and find a way to solve this whole Peak Oil mess. The history of Great Leaders who came to power on the promise to solve their countries' problems by force of Government is rather nightmarish, as their solutions are often worse than the problems they were supposed to solve. (See the Holocaust, which is actually one of the lesser examples!)
Green Pill: Taking a Green Pill refers to a Peak Oil aware person temporarily putting TEOTWAWKI out of his/her mind. Taking a break to go play in the garden, walk through the countryside, get laid under the stars, and perhaps to reflect on how the coming changes may actually preserve some of the wilderness and revive old, rural traditions. Avoiding the gloom and doom aspects of the Oil Crash, and news relating to it, at least for a little while.
Happy Doomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is fiznucked, but doesn't mind this too much because he/she is already pretty much weaned off of industrial civilization, and won't miss it when it collapses.
High Fructose Corn Syrup: A hyperaddictive form of diabetes-inducing, semi-liquid crack.
Hubbert: Dr. M. King Hubbert, the Shell Oil geologist who calculated in 1956 that the US would reach Peak Oil around 1970 (which it did). He also calculated global Peak Oil for the turn of the new century, but didn't have data for the North Sea fields and didn't factor in the political-economic factors that temporarily reduced consumption in the 1970s, which combined to delay global Peak Oil for about half a decade. Peak Oil is also known as "Hubbert's Peak".
Infrastructure: All the things people take for granted that make modern living possible. The electric grid, water treatment, fuel distribution, communications networks, etc., etc., etc... All of these things rely directly or indirectly on petroleum and a whole lot of people showing up for work every day. Should the petroleum supply (and the Fiat Currency it supports) falter, infrastructure would collapse, taking modern civilization with it. Complicating matters further is the fact that the various segments of infrastructure are dependent upon one-another, so that failure of one could cause cascading failure of all.
Inside: The active jurisdiction of the United States, streamlined in LATOC down to the Fedghettos, Government-run industrial farms, mines, factories, military bases, and the road, rail, and skyways binding them together. People living Inside will retain many modern conveniences, but effectively lose their civil rights. The vast majority of Americans will probably go Inside willingly when SHTF.
Kool-Aid: America's favorite way to start children on the path to sugar addiction and diabetes since 1927. References to "drinking the Kool-Aid" as shorthand for adopting non-mainstream beliefs began in the 1960s when the beverage was used to administer LSD. The term took on a new meaning, describing false teachings or misinformation that could lead to a follower's misfortune, after the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which hundreds of cult members died from ingestion of poisoned grape Flavor-Aid. (Actually a lesser-known competing brand, and not Kool-Aid at all.)
LATOC: Life After The Oil Crash. (Duh!) Life goes on, at least for some of us. Exactly how and where, and what we can do to have the potential for a decent LATOC, is the subject of this forum.
Long Emergency: Title of J.H. Kunstler's book about the Oil Crash and related intersecting disasters of the early 21st Century. The term refers to a state of emergency, similar to that following a natural disaster, but which lasts for years... Perhaps indefinitely. Generally refers to the Peak Oil, the resulting Oil Crash, and perhaps TEOTWAWKI. (Keep in-mind that Kunstler is a hopeless optimist who appears to soften his message to avoid spooking readers too much.)
Magic Bullet: The pipe-dream invention or discovery which Purplepills hope will mitigate the effects of Peak Oil. Most Magic Bullets turn out to be Energy Sinks (ethanol, PV solar, wind farms), unexploitable theories (cold fusion, zero-point), scams, or can be employed only at catastrophic environmental cost (Alberta tar sands, coal).
McMansion: A mass-produced, usually plastic-clad, and utterly charm-free house in Suburbia. Following the McDonalds 'Restaurants' tactic of trying to create the impression of enhanced 'value' by supersizing unhealthy crap, slash and burn developers added rooms, stories, and features to their poorly designed, slapped-together houses, and began alternating between three or four slightly different facades so the subdivisions would look slightly less like prison camps. None of this actually turns a few thousand dollars worth of particle board and vinyl siding stuck together on a fraction of an acre of de-soiled former cow pasture into a half-million dollar estate, as many folks are now discovering the hard way.
Meatspace: The real, physical world, where you can get punched in the nose. The opposite of cyberspace.
Megadoomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that modern industrial civilization is not only fiznucked, but totally, absolutely, and royally fiznucked in every available orifice and a few new ones that will be created just for the purpose as well. Think global thermonuclear war, Omega Strain biological attacks, and total infrastructure collapse, all before folks finish eating their babies for breakfast.
MZB: Mutant Zombie Bikers who are expected to go about raping, looting, killing, and burning their way through the post-collapse world.
Oil Crash: A rapid rise in price, and decrease in availability of petroleum. This will result from geological and political/economic factors, and will cause price inflation and shortages of everything made from or dependent upon petroleum... Which is pretty much everything.
Olduvai Gorge, Theory, and Cliff: The Olduvai Gorge is a place where anthropologists made significant discoveries about the origins and early development of mankind. Olduvai Theory, named for the gorge, is a calculation that predicts the lifespan, and approaching fall, of the current industrial human civilization. The Olduvai Cliff is a term coined by those who expect the fall of industrial civilization to be rather abrupt.
Outside: The small towns and countryside not actively controlled by the Government in LATOC. People living Outside may have relative freedom, but will have little access to modern Infrastructure. Probably localized rural towns ranging from libertarian to theocratic, small farms, and cottage industries all at roughly 19th Century levels.
Paranoia: The mental and psychological condition which results from paying attention to the reality of the modern world.
Peak Oil: The point at which a given oil field, country, or planet produces oil at its maximum rate, after which production must decline. This doesn't mean that wells suddenly start belching up dust. Just that more and more effort has to be spent to retrieve less and less oil until it is no longer practical to pump the remainder up. US Peak Oil occurred around 1970. World Peak Oil appears to have been passed recently, but fudging of numbers by various oil producing parties makes it difficult to establish exactly when. While post-peak oil production is normally expected to be a decline curve reflecting the increase curve before Peak Oil, demand is not expected to decline along similar lines. It is also coming to light that "improved" oil extraction approaches may result in oil fields declining at a rate much steeper than originally envisioned. The decline in global petroleum production is expected to trigger Resource Wars, the collapse of growth-dependent Fiat Currency economies (such as the US), an Oil Crash, the Die-Off, TEOTWAWKI. Other than that, it's no big deal.
Plastic Pumpkin: An item of little or no practical use, usually made in China and purchased by Americans for little or no reason. Such items include over 90% of what is sold on Home Shopping Network and similar channels, 75% of what is sold on eBay, and well in excess of 50% of what is sold in department stores.
PTB: Powers That Be. The forces actually pulling the strings of the economy, media, and politicians. This may refer to an Illuminati group, having secret meetings in a star chamber somewhere to decide who will win the next election and when to have Elvis reveal himself to the masses. It may refer to more mundane, but equally evil players like Cheney and Rove. Perhaps most significantly of all, it can refer not to a group of elite players, but to the natural inclinations of the masses manipulating events in ways individual members of the masses would never have imagined.
Purplepill (or just Purple): A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications, but is mentally and emotionally unable to accept the reality. Usually grasps desperately at the hope of a Magic Bullet, Great Leader, Slow Crash, or World Enlightenment to allow them to believe Cornucopia will go on. Extrapolated from the Blue/Redpills of the MATRIX motion pictures.
Redpill: A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications. Term borrowed from the MATRIX motion pictures.
Research / Development: A euphemism for booze and hooker money. After all, Magic Bullet tech is already well-understood, and known to be pretty much useless in the big picture.
Resource Wars: Wars, regardless of the stated reason or supposed provocation for fighting, which are actually fought to secure resources, or to control the flow of resources, especially Petroleum. (Although water may soon come to the fore.) See Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Iranian Liberty, and World War III.
SHTF: The fecal matter initiates contact with the proverbial rotary device. Describes the event or series of events that lead to TEOTWAWKI.
Shrub: US President George W. Bush. A reference to him not living up to the stature of his father, US President George H. Bush... Which wasn't exactly setting the bar very high to begin with!
Slow Crash: The idea that the Oil Crash will actually be a slow decline over the course of several years, perhaps decades. Proponents of this idea support it with the claim that civilizations historically collapse over the course of generations rather than virtually overnight. While it is true that the decline of civilizations tends to be a long process, the ultimate collapse tends to happen rather suddenly. For instance, the Roman Empire may have been declining for over a century, but to people living in Rome who suddenly found themselves dodging barbarian sword tips in their own neighborhoods, the collapse seemed pretty abrupt. The Soviet Union was essentially in decline from at least WWII, but in the later 1980s almost no one imagined it would dissolve before the dawn of the 21st Century. (See various pre-1990 science fiction movies.) The fact that there has never been a civilization with so far to fall, supported by such fragile, interdependent Infrastructure, tends to invalidate the historical support for a Slow Crash, as does the fact that the slow phase of the Oil Crash has already been going on for over 35 years, and has arguably run its course.
Suburbia: The vain attempt by many Americans to have the peace and tranquility of rural life combined with the convenience and economic opportunities of urban living, resulting in the devastation of actual rural life and the decay of urban centers. Not to mention ghastly, soulless 'neighborhoods' of plastic-clad, cookie-cutter houses. Suburbia was made possible by free-flowing, cheap petroleum, which enabled suburb-dwellers to make long commutes to their workplaces, and made it feasible to replace the produce of the many small farms destroyed by suburban sprawl with foodstuffs grown far away on petro-intensive industrial farms and trucked in via petroleum fueled rigs. There is some debate about where "town" ends and suburbia begins. A simple gauge is that, if you don't live on a farm, and you cannot imagine walking or riding a bike daily to where the businesses and markets you need are located, you're in Suburbia.
TEOTWAWKI: The End Of The World As We Know It. This doesn't mean the end of life on Earth, or even human extinction. Just that the world will be very different from what we are accustomed to now.
Thunderdome: An arena for post-apocalyptic gladatorial combat seen in the Mad Max motion pictures. Also the LATOC Forum section reserved for more controversial topics and confrontational posts (flame wars).
Turnip: A formerly harmless veggie which has somehow become a LATOC slang term alternately used in reference to payment for sex and as a euphemism for sexual organs. Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.
Uberdoomer: A person who, having evaluated all available data, has come to the realization that Megadoomers are optimists and Doomers are Pollyannas.
World Enlightenment: The notion that everyone is somehow going to realize how the Cornucopian way of life is leading us to SHTF, and willingly change their ways to become eco-friendly, energy-efficient citizens of the new, gleaming, Socialist World Utopia. Espoused by Purplepills who want to see Peak Oil as a "cause" or movement". Basically flies in the face of everything we've ever learned about human history and the nature of the species.
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