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There's a book.

Here's an accurate review from DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.

Apocalypse, Daily Mail style, 15 Feb 2011
By Umm0n - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Light (Hardcover)
'Last Light' is the story of a plucky middle-class family's fight to survive in a world which has descended into chaos and barbarity. Things get so bad they are forced to deal with all manner of danger including the feckless, ill-prepared scum from bad housing estates, starving to death after 3 days. Worse still are the marauding gangs of raping, murdering "chavs", half of whom don't realise there is a crisis going on. At one point they even encounter a black thug (he looks a bit like a little '50 cent' in case you struggle to visualise it).
The Peak Oil issue / subsequent collapse of society (the interesting bits) are very much under-explored. The Illuminati plot is just pointless and silly. I would have been kinder but the bigoted, patronising style of writing really wound me up.

Chilling video... perhaps this isn't the best material to introduce people to resource scarcity issues!

But in the space of only a few days, the world's oil supplies have been severed and at a horrifying pace things begin to unravel everywhere

Hmmm, within a few days huh?

From the UK's perspective what about the oil in storage and from the North sea?

Or have they been conveniently blown up too?

Yeh, nice one Alex. Bring it on!

That's all we need - more sensational bullsh*t.

Aurora wrote:Yeh, nice one Alex. Bring it on!

That's all we need - more sensational bullsh*t.

I am not sure it is as sensational as you might think. The sudden unavailability of oil and the run on petrol and diesel that automatically follows leaves a lot of problems in its wake and if it is anything other than temporary/ just a few days, the impacts could be very considerably! Think back to the last petrol/fuel blockade just a few short years ago and then consider what would have happened if it had kept going for weeks then months.

Oil makes the world go round. No oil - no BAU - no travel. Within a short space of time no food in the shops, no anything of use in the shops. Then collapse.

Think back to the last petrol/fuel blockade just a few short years ago and then consider what would have happened if it had kept going for weeks then months

.

It would not of been allowed to go on for months, the protesters would of been moved on by force, and quite rightly so.

Snow , you know as well as I do , that the fuel blockades are not comparable to PO.

PO = x% depletion per year, not 100% - 0% of refined products due to a blockade of UK oil refineries!

As mentioned before , in the case of most industrialised countries there is x amount of oil inventory, which in a prolonged emergency could be made to last months if rationed etc.

On top of that you have the fact that the UK , US , etc have there own oil reserves. Production maybe in terminal decline, but 300kpd to 1.2mpd could easily keep the country going.

FFS , if 47 million Britains can survive on no north sea, the blitz, and being cut off from international shipping/trade for 4 years Im sure we can survice 3%-5% global oil depletion for longer!

Get over the sensational mad max bullshit already!! (rant, but in the nicest possible way, mode off)

TB I take your points entirely, BUT ......

We are considerably further along the route towards a top heavy civilised society than we were before WW2.

If a "back to the land" movement were called now there would be a collossal no. of folk who wouldn't have a clue about growing anything.... and who are several generations distant from anyone in their family who ever grew anything.

Our supply lines are much longer for many of our basics. Many of the shorter local supply lines that existed around the time of WW2 are deceased making their restoration difficult.

We are a society of "rights" and many will be very angered by the removal of any of those rights. Imagine if a water shortage not only banned hosepipes but asked folk to flush less often? (If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down.) I imagine WW2 Londoners would have taken that much more in their stride than today's Londoners. It's a single example but you get my drift. People angered by violation of their rights do daft things.

Also as PO descends we are not doing this for a short time in a massive effort to secure a better future. We would be loosing what ever facility we relinquish for good.... (or more than likely for good).... meaning that we will want to cling to it all the more.

And all the oil in the North Sea will quickly become useless if what ever widget required to remove it from the NS needs to be sourced elsewhere. Are we sure we can make every single critical item required to keep the pipelines flowing (and to prevent other countries intercepting the lines????)

I have been reading Jared Diamond's books lately - working my way through Gun Germs and Steel, then The Third Chimpanzee and now reading Collapse. It seems many societies do indeed collapse suddenly - far more suddenly than they built up. Population curves do not follow a bell shape matching on both sides, it seems some critical factor causes a crisis and a steep descent. Scarey reading.

I will not read Last Light - it sounds all to thriller like for me.

I hope we will have a gentle decline with a civilised return to a more ecofriendly way of life. But I hold out little hope of our achieving that - we simply number too many and each want too much.

If we were fewer, I think we would have more of a chance of coping. But we are not and that is why it is likely to become a crisis one day.

When? Who knows?

TB, Sally - I think the idea of symmetry before and after peak is a flawed one. Even if (and it's a very big if) oil production rates are roughly symmetrical I see no reason why anything else should be. I think analysis comparing what it will be like 30 years after with what it was like 30 years before peak with the same oil supply isn't useful at all.

Book comes out in July, I'll read it and let you know

I did, it's complete wank!

clv101 wrote:TB, Sally - I think the idea of symmetry before and after peak is a flawed one. Even if (and it's a very big if) oil production rates are roughly symmetrical I see no reason why anything else should be. I think analysis comparing what it will be like 30 years after with what it was like 30 years before peak with the same oil supply isn't useful at all.

In the space of a week, London is transformed into a lawless and anarchic vision of Hell.

Sally/Chris

Fair comment(s) -But, I was having a go at the notion of total and utter mad max within one week (as per the authors website)

I don't believe in symmetry on this matter either - however I think there is enough precedent in history and in data to put "total collapse within 1 week" into the very unlikely catagory!!

Totally_Baffled wrote:I don't believe in symmetry on this matter either - however I think there is enough precedent in history and in data to put "total collapse within 1 week" into the very unlikely catagory!!

Yeah - peak oil won't cause a "business as usual" collapse in a week. But we certainly can't assume a "rational" business as usual environment post peak. It is possible that a relatively modest physical event can have disproportionate effects. See previous oil shocks, previous economy collapses, Argentina, USSR etc...

There is no precedent for the affect continued reduction in global net energy will have on a globalised industrialised society. We have no idea things will react but I?d guess dramatic non-linear responses are more likely than calm proportional responses.

As far as you can tell from the youtube promo video, this book looks like its about global oil supply being cut off completely by a series of coordinated terrorist attacks around the world. In opther words it doesn't look like its particularly about the effect on society of PO, i.e. how decline rates are likely to slowly (or quickly) play havoc with the economy etc..

If all of the world's major fields and refineries were taken out overnight then I'm sure the UK would be a very different place within the space of a week (with or without strategic reserves)! I'm also sure that the UK would take longer to collapse than many other countries who are much more dependent on oil but have no reserves and less military options available to be able to "escort" some of the remaining sea-bound oil tankers their way.

But hey, its fiction, the likelihood of such a series of events is about the same as, say, a nuclear war. No point in planning for it, and no point in reading about it unless you take it for what it is: an entertaining story (or it might even turn out to be well marketed drivel!).

Good post Sally!

TB, yes I take your point re the analogy of the recent fuel blockades in GB mainland and the coming Oil depletion which we will have to cope with. They are not correctly analogous at all, you are completely right.

I think what I was trying to say is what others have maybe said better, in that the down side of the depletion curve in my opinion will be nothing like going back to where we were as Chris said 30 years before Peak. But, in addition to that, it is my strong opinion that the downside is going to be worse than many sensible thinking PO aware people imagine. Sally has spelt out clearly some of the reasons for that being the case. I work with "computer systems" and used to work for Northern Ireland Electricity, before moving into the commercial business sector. I know how dependent on many aspects of infrastructure computer systems are and I also know how many business' are completely dependent on their computer systems. One example is that we didn't have JIT supply chains until 20 odd years ago - they depends on everything going right and when one link breaks down that it is quickly fixed. I am sure you can see the vunerabilities that exist - I see them during the course of my work regularly. It is a bit like seeing into the future.

I also fundamentally believe we are completely different society now than what we were in the 1940s - almost 70 years ago and whatsmore a few billion people ago too!! It is amazing how much has changed since that time (a couple of decades before I was born), but we do just about everything differently now and I have deep reservations about how quickly we could return to that kind of spirit, attitude, neighbourlyness, ability to cope, etc. etc.

I know I have become rather "mad-max" like in my outlook and a real "doomer" it seems, but it is not through choice, but because I only seem to be able to see that type of scenario when the SHTF. But then again, having dependants one tends to think of the worst case scenario first and then hope that it won't be that bad. Maybe I need to "hope" harder......

But hey, maybe this discussion is taking place in the wrong thread.

Hi there,

thought I'd dive in and add my tuppence. LAST LIGHT isn't specifically about Peak Oil, but, more the increasing fragility of our situation, relying on a resource that more often than not, now comes from or through very unstable countries. And that unhappy situation I would argue, is a result of Peak Oil.

It did start out as a thriller, but evolved into a 'message book'.

Originally I started out with the intention that the hero averts the tragedy in a timely way and saves the day...but then I thought, sod it...why? Why the hell am I following the standard thriller template whilst dealing with this particular subject? It's too bloody important.

So instead, I ended up writing a book designed to scare people witless...and have them examining how vulnerable we are. To imagine how frightening it would be to see their local Tesco's stripped bare overnight, and gangs of people fighting each other for the last tins of beans....if, there was some kind of sudden oil strangulation scenario.

So whilst it starts out like a British Patterson/Harlan Coben thriller, it ends up as something altogether....not.

I'm really hoping it catches a Richard&Judy book club slot...obviously because it boosts sales for me, but mainly because I want them to be frightened into talking about Peak Oil on a prime time slot.

Hello to the author! and Welcome.

I know I said I wouldn't read the book.... ( ) perhaps I should clarify that - I wouldn't go and see Titanic either because I don't handle tragedy...

I hope your book does get folk talking... it did all of us here anyway (and that was without reading it!)

I agree we are in a fragile situation. Have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse"? I have a doomer streak - I'm trying not to listen to it!

Thanks for posting on here. Maybe I'll take another look.....