Exit Mundi - A collection of end-of-the-world scenarios

[acri1]

I think I might have posted this a LONG time ago in the days, but this is one of my favorite sites ever.

WELCOME TO EXIT MUNDI: A COLLECTION OF END-OF-WORLD SCENARIOS


Basically just a huge collection of scenarios about how the world might end, detailing the science/history behind them and why they may or may not happen. Has everything from the earth getting hit by an asteroid, to the sun burning out, to demographic doom, to the Christian account of apocalypze. They make for some pretty interesting reads breh.

Gonna just post a couple of my favorites.

Gamma Ray Bursts

FLASH! - Nature's Dirtiest Trick

Some call it the main cause of death for life in the Universe. Right or wrong, we should consider ourselves lucky that so far, the most violent natural phenomenon of all has left our planet alone. If it one day does strike, better say goodbye. We don't stand a chance against the infamous `gamma ray bursts' (GRBs).

It's like a lottery, really. Every day, somewhere in the Universe, there's a HUGE explosion. Within seconds, an amount of energy sets free that equals the amount of energy the Sun would emit in its entire lifetime. In fact, some of the blasts are bigger than the energy of all stars combined. No, you just DON'T want to be around when such an explosion occurs.

Strangely, the explosions are usually invisible to the human eye. You would need gamma ray vision to see them. We're talking gamma ray bursts here: cosmic super explosions that throw an awful amount of gamma- and X-radiation into the Galaxy.

It was only recently scientists found out what gamma ray bursts really are. A GRB is what happens when a huge, dying star is eaten up from within by a black hole. One moment, you'll see a gigantic star, and the next moment, shhhhlllp!, it is gone, sucked up by a black hole. In those final moments, the black hole spews out a column of energy -- almost at light speed! That's why gamma ray bursts are often called 'the birth cries of black holes'. A less friendly, but more accurate, term would be that GRBs are belching black holes after they've eaten a star.

Gladly, until now these super-spectacular things only happened in distant galaxies, billions of light years away.

But then again, that could change. Heavy, rotating stars like the ones that cause gamma ray bursts exist in our part of the Galaxy, too. At least one is about to go pop: Eta Carinae, a beautiful, but dying star system in the southern constellation known as the Keyhole. Gladly, the burst won't hit us directly, since the axis of Eta Carinae is pointed away from us. But any day, we could stumble upon a dying star that IS aimed at us.

On a list of twenty phenomena that threaten life on Earth published by the popular science magazine Discover, gamma bursters come second, right after asteroid impacts. As Arthur C. Clarke once pointed out, gamma explosions may be the reason why we don't notice much of extraterrestrial life forms: long before an alien civilization would have come to the point of going out in a UFO to explore the galaxy, a gamma ray burst would have wiped it away.

If a gamma ray burst really does go flash somewhere in our cosmic neighborhood, the end of times would be really nasty. It will be like a Hiroshima bomb going off -- on every place on Earth at the same time!

At a distance of something like one thousand light years, the afterglow of the burst would light up as bright as the Sun. Moments later, our planet will be bathed in a HUGE load of super energetic gamma and X-rays. A fiery blast will set the atmosphere ablaze. Forests will burn, rivers and lakes will boil away and the side of the Earth facing the blast will be sterilized immediately.

And you won't be safe on the other side of the planet. A massive shockwave, much like the aftershock of a nuclear explosion, will sweep across the globe. A wall of fire will roast every living thing on Earth -- well, except a few fish, that is. The Gamma Ray Burst will reset evolution.

Even a blast occurring farther out in the Milky Way won't be good for our health. OK, so the burst is too far away to fry us. But still, it will mess up our atmosphere. The energetic gamma rays will grind up the molecules our atmosphere is made of into separate molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. These atoms in turn will mop up the ozone layer, leaving us exposed to the deadly UV radiation from the Sun.

And if that isn't enough to kill you, there will be the soot. High up in the atmosphere, the loose atoms will bind up into nitrogen dioxide, a brown, filthy gas that will blanket the Sun. We'll have a massive nuclear winter and die a horrible climate disaster death.

To make things worse, no one really knows how big the risks are. On the one hand, gamma ray bursts that damage our world are likely to happen once every 10 million years on average. That would mean our planet has survived many, many bursts in the prehistoric past.

On the other hand, it's hard to predict when the next GRB will hit us. Could be in million years time. Could be tomorrow.

 

[acri1]

GLIESE 710

If you like to watch the stars, watch this: that faint, little white spot in the constellation of Ophiuchus. You don’t see it? Don’t worry: it will get bigger over time. For actually, it’s a star that’s coming straight at us.

For an object that could one day smash our world to bits, the star has a pretty dull name: ‘Gliese 710’. Most people probably have never heard of the thing. But that will change over time, as Gl-710 gets nearer. And nearer, and nearer. You see, Gliese 710 is rushing straight towards us, at the breathtaking speed of 50,400 kilometers per hour – almost fifty times the speed of sound.

Gliese 710 is a dull, red dwarf: a small, dim star. It only shines with four to five percent of the Sun’s luminosity, while it’s mass is only half that of the Sun. So why worry, you ask? Hold on: it’s still a STAR we’re talking about here! And that's not the kind of object you want to find in your backyard in the morning: Gliese 710 is more than fifty times as big as the Earth, and more than 100,000 times as massive. Oh, and it BURNS!

Gladly, we’ll have 1.4 million years before catastrophe strikes. What's more, Gl-710 is destined to pass us at 40,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, in what you could call a complete miss. But wait - there's something else.

Most likely the Death Star will mess up the pile of cosmic debris called the Oort Cloud a bit, and start throwing planet-sized chunks of rock at us. For tens of thousands of years in a row, we’d have to shelter for incoming comets. Our planet could get hit, or an exploding comet could block the Sun and trigger a devastating Ice Age – much like the ominous, hypothetical space body called Nemesis is held responsible for at least ten extinctions on our world.

Gladly, there’s also a possibility Gl-710 will do nothing nasty in particular. You see: incoming stars from many light years away are always a bit hard to predict. So in the end, Death Star may simply miss our Solar System completely.

Then again, of course it could also be the other way around. Perhaps the calculations are wrong for the worse – and Gl-710 smashes into our Solar System directly. The dreaded thing would start gobbling up planets, or kick our poor Earth away into deep space. We would be incinerated, or deep frozen, or if we’re really having a bad day, both.

And that's not everything. Gliese 710 is not the only star that’s coming our way. During the next million years, at least eight stars will come closer to us than our current closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri at 4,3 light years. One of them, a red dwarf called Barnard’s Star, will arrive in only 10,000 years time. After that, a massive twin star system called Alpha Cen A/B will come knocking at our door. Calculations show the system is massive enough to give the Oort Cloud a good stir. Better keep those hard hats within reach, folks!

And how about this? There’s always the remote possibility Gl-710 or one of the other incoming stars is surrounded by planets. And that some of these planets are inhabited worlds. As you can read elsewhere on this site, the chances that this life is intelligent are vanishingly small. But for arguments sake: suppose it is. What would it do if it found us on their way? What would you do?

As every science fiction freak can tell you: it’s probably not a good idea to be a stand in the way for some kind of Klingon civilization.

 

[acri1]

Climate Shift

We’re in for a surprise. A few tens of years more, and our climate might suddenly go totally berserk. For starters, it would turn our planet into a lifeless, super hot oven, much like the planet Venus. Welcome to the ghastly phenomenon dubbed ‘the runaway greenhouse effect’. And the really scary part is: we might be heading straight towards it.

Phew! Aren’t we lucky? In the 1990s, they predicted we would get climate warming. The poles were about to melt, they said. Entire countries would get flooded. Huge hurricanes would sweep across the globe. Millions would die. Well: they had it all wrong. It’s the 21st century now -- and little has happened so far.

But then, suddenly, it all changes. From one month to the next, the climate of the world goes wild. Temperatures jump. The ice caps of the poles crumble, pushing the sea levels up. The snow caps on the mountain tops melt, turning even the tiniest rivulet into a roaring body of water. Cities are flooded, countries washed away. Tornadoes and hurricanes push across the globe. Harvests fail. Economies crumble. Tropical diseases like malaria and dengue push northwards. Forests turn into deserts. And of course, millions of people perish during all the mayhem.

And if you thought that was bad: you haven’t seen nothing yet. Within a few decades, the situation goes totally out of hand. Temperatures just keep on rising, faster and faster. And as they do, more and more water on Earth begins to evaporate. The sea level begins to drop again. If you’re one of those poor souls who had his country or city flooded when the ice caps melted, you might be glad to find the sea retreating. But don’t put that flag out yet. What you’re witnessing, is the end of the world. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here’s how it goes. As the temperatures rise, more water evaporates. But as more water evaporates, our atmosphere gets thicker -- causing the temperatures to rise even more. And as the temperatures rise even more, even more water evaporates. And as even more water evaporates... You've got it: there’s a chain reaction going on. The dreaded ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ has just kicked in.

Governments and scientists will desperately look for a way to turn the tide. But they won’t find one. There’s just no way you can stop something as mighty as the Earth’s climate. Although our politicians might still mumble some reassuring words to prevent a general panic, deep within they will realize how bad the situation really is. A few years more, and our planet will no longer be habitable. All life is about to vanish from the planet formerly known as Earth. There is no escape, not even a remote possibility things will improve.

The best evidence for that is hovering in the night sky: the planet Venus. For many years, scientists wondered why Venus has an atmosphere so hot that lead and tin actually melt in it. Only in the late 1990s they realized that Venus too has undergone the runaway greenhouse effect. Its atmosphere is so dense, incoming solar heat cannot escape from it.

Exactly that, my friends, is what is happening on our planet. Earth is about to join Venus. We’re about to literally fry to death.

By now, temperatures on Earth start getting really uncomfortable. Everywhere you look, there’s this dense, watery fog -- it’s water vapor, as you might have guessed. Where there used to be rivers, only dry gullies are left, carving through the barren landscape. And where the oceans used to be, only some lakes remain -- and they get smaller each day.

It’s hard to tell how exactly humanity will die in the end. Perhaps we won’t be able to stand the heat anymore, and literally find ourselves cooked to death by the ever increasing temperatures. Perhaps we’ll suffocate, as our once fresh atmosphere turns into a dense brew of carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane. Perhaps we’ll survive all that, clinging to our gas masks and our airconditioning -- and in the end starve to death because all plants and animals are gone.

One thing is absolutely certain, though: it will be some gruesome, hellish end. After a few years or decades, our planet has become a deserted fog planet, with an atmosphere so hot that lead and tin actually melt in it. Life will be no longer possible -- except perhaps for a handful of soil bacteria that are able to withstand all the nastiness.


The Runaway Greenhouse: The facts

Of course, we could have known what was coming. Ever since the 1990s, there were some climatologists warning for it. But their calculations were laughed away, ill understood by the general public or ignored by the politicians in charge of things. The climatologists were dubbed pessimists. Even though their computer models told otherwise.

As late as 2001, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formally warned that the greenhouse effect could ‘unleash catastrophic and irreversible changes to key planetary processes that make the world habitable.’ In 2005, a British government research council repeated the warning. And added the effect could kick in as soon as 2015.

The runaway greenhouse effect works quite simple, really. First, you should realize why we have an atmosphere in the first place. That’s because there’s a lot of water vapor and carbon dioxide in the air. There’s nothing wrong with that. The carbon dioxide and the water vapor serve as a ‘blanket’: they prevent some of the incoming heat from the sun from flying off again into space.

At least, that’s how things went until one day, six billion humans came around. Mankind literally pumps trillions of tons of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

No big deal, so far. Calculations show that this massive amount of extra greenhouse gas will only push up the Earth’s temperatures a few degrees. Besides, about one quarter of all the methane and the carbon dioxide is cleaned up by nature each year.

But around 2015, that could suddenly change. The climate warming could pass a critical threshold. The ice caps of the poles could melt. This would set free billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide: the ice caps are full of tiny bubbles of trapped ancient air with a lot of carbon dioxide in them. This suddenly gives an extra push to the greenhouse effect.

Also, the warming could unleash carbon dioxide that is trapped in sea sediments, in the permafrost of Greenland and in the soil. And worse: the warming could set free the trillions of tons of methane that are stashed away below the ocean's floor and in the permafrost. At the same time, nature could get ‘saturated’ with carbon. Of course, plants and soil organisms will still breathe carbon dioxide. But there will be too much of it.

And in the end, the water vapor kicks in. While it gets hotter, oceans and rivers start to evaporate. This would make the atmosphere denser and hotter, pushing up the evaporation, making it hotter... And so on.

Then you would have it: an environmentalists nightmare. The greenhouse effect will go wild. And wilder still -- until we live on a planet with an atmosphere so hot that lead and tin actually... You can fill in those words yourself by now, right?

So: abandon all hope?

To be honest, of all end of world scenarios outlined on this site, we at Exit Mundi find the one with the runaway greenhouse effect particularly scary. Of course, there’s the problem with meteors, and the risk of robots taking over. But the greenhouse effect is happening today, as we speak. It seems to be only a matter of time before we can begin to melt that lead and tin.

On the other hand: climate is a difficult beast. If we’ve learned one thing over the past few decades, it is that no one can really predict how the climate will change on us. For example: there’s a good chance the greenhouse effect unleashes not a runaway chain reaction -- but an ice age, as reported elsewhere on this site.

Also, Earth survived intense heat before. 50 Million years ago, the North Pole had no ice, but a subtropical climate. And before that, in the era of the dinosaurs, CO2-levels were about four to six times higher than today. Back then, sea temperature was up to 40 degrees Celsius, and many continents were flooded. It was really a greenhouse world - and it didn't went out of hand.

On the other hand, even if there's a remote possibility it DOES go out of hand, there’s plenty of need to worry. We don’t know about you, but we at Exit Mundi prefer neither the ice age, nor the super hot Venus-like atmosphere. We like things the way they are.

So if you read this and you happen to be one of those top dogs in charge of things: hey, it’s only one atmosphere we have here, PLEASE be a little careful with it!

 

[acri1]

Apocalypse

BEHOLD - The Day The Lord Made Peace On Earth

Millions have prayed, sacrificed, repented, flogged their backs, pilgrimaged, even killed themselves -- all because of the particularly nasty scenario of doom and destruction laid down in the Bible book `The Apocalypse'. However, most modern Bible experts agree that St. John never meant the end of the world to be taken too literally.

Okay, so here's what's gonna happen. According to John's visions, it all starts to go wrong when the `lamb of God' one day decides to open up the huge, sealed book of life. The looks of the lamb betray little good. As John writes, it looks `as it it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes.'

Don't worry, we mortals probably won't have to face this heavenly lamb -- yet. The first thing we do notice, is four horsemen: one on a white horse, one red, one black and one pale. The band of horsemen is here to bring about a lot of misery. The swordsman on the red horse spreads war, the man on the black horse leaves a trail of famine, and that skinny guy sitting on the pale horse, that's Death himself, bringing `plagues or pestilence' -- John leaves it up to Mr. Death to decide. By the way, the guy with the crown and the bow on horse #4 causes no problems in particular.

The horsemen are barely there, and here comes more trouble. Suddenly, the Sun goes black. The Moon becomes red as blood. There's a massive earthquake. Amazingly, the stars drop from the sky like figs from a tree, and the heaven slams shut `as a book folded up'. All mountains are dislocated, and every island begins to drift.

Still surviving, right? Wait, the worst is yet to come. Suddenly, everything becomes quiet, and in the `four corners of the world' (sic), four angels appear. It's the angels that cause the silence: they hold back all wind. Then, from the direction of the Sun, a fifth angel descends, carrying a special item John calls `the seal of God'. The angel marks the slim total of 140.000 Jewish people with the seal, and rushes home. By now, you're probably beginning to feel somewhat nervous. John anyway foresaw that a huge crowd would dress in white robes and pray for salvation.

And to be honest, nothing has really happened yet. After half an hour of complete silence, all hell breaks loose. There's a huge thunderstorm, there's the sound of voices coming out of nowhere, and there's another massive earthquake. Next, there's hail. And fire, burning up all grass and pulverizing one third of all trees. A mountain-sized comet plunges into the sea, turning one third of all water into blood while killing a third of all organisms living in the sea, and sinking one third of all ships.

It becomes darker still. A talking eagle is spotted. It screeches there's more to come. And that's no understatement. For the next moment, another meteor plummets into the Earth. An angel brings out a key and uses it to open the lid of a bottomless pit humanity somehow overlooked. Now, you're in for some REAL trouble.

There's smoke coming from the pit, and then, suddenly, huge amounts of killer locusts, each as lethal as a scorpion, flock out of the smoke. The scorpion locusts leave the 140.000 who carry the divine sign unscathed, but sting everyone else, for five long months in a row. By now, people `shall desire to die,' John estimates. But isn't that a pity: to their astonishment, they discover it is no longer possible to die.

Then, after those five painful months, the locusts take the shape of horses, albeit with manlike faces, long hair and lion's fangs. They total the number of two hundred million. The king of the monsters, a guy appropriately named `Exterminans', arrives at the scene.

Still holding out? Prepare yourself, actually they've been treating you mildly so far. Suddenly, the locust army out of hell sets out for a huge massacre, butchering one third of all people. People are burnt, suffocated in smoke, or squashed by huge lumps of brimstone, all of which sling out of the locust's mouths. Cities crumble, Jerusalem is destroyed and there's another earthquake, a devastating thunderstorm, and yet another earthquake.

Then, a sign is spotted in the sky. It's the Virgin Mary, `clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and on her head the crown of twelve stars', as John puts it. Another sign is seen: a huge, red dragon that uses its tail to throw one third of all stars (weren't they already gone?) to the surface of our pitiful planet. In a brief but fierce fight, the dragon along with several other demons is booted out of the sky. Unfortunately, they all fall down to earth. The dragon is in a bad mood. It declares war on the Virgin Mary and her likes.

And when that happens, you'd better hide. Out of the sea rises a huge beast, with seven heads and ten horns. (In a later chapter, John will explain that the ten horns are actually ten power-hungry kings without a kingdom.) The beast has `words of blasphemy' written on its seven foreheads, has the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. Don't try to kill it, you'll find that the head you're hacking off grows back on within moments.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, most people decide. They kneel in front of the beast, and decide to `adore' the dragon. The sea monster reigns for 42 months, speaking the curious combination of `great things and blasphemies'.

Then a second beast hits the scene, this time coming out of the earth and wearing two horns. The new beast takes over power from the sea monster, and demonstrates his supernatural talents, for one thing by letting it rain fire on earth. Understandably, the remnant of the earth's inhabitants accept the beast willingly as their new leader. They should have known better, though: the number of this beast happens to be 666. Although John never actually calls it that way, the beast is in our time often referred to as the antichrist.

Meanwhile, the 144.000 who still carry the mark of God on their foreheads decide they don't want to have anything to do with the beasts. On mount Sion, they team up with the divine lamb. Also joining are three angels, one of which sets out to warn the masses not to hang around with beast nr. 666 anymore. Meanwhile, another angel reassures the 144.000 that the sinful city of Babylon will soon be destroyed. In yet another supernatural appearing, someone looking much like Christ descends on a cloud. Next, seven more angels appear, carrying seven divine plagues. Still following?

Now, if you're one of those who take the antichrist beast for leader, you're definitely in for trouble. The first angel strikes and wounds everyone. The second one turns the sea into blood, whereupon `every living soul' that happens to be in the sea drowns. The third angel turns all rivers and fountains on Earth into blood. The fourth angel harasses the population with heat and fire. The fifth angel brings darkness to the beast's kingdom. The sixth angel heads for the Middle East and dries up the river of Euphrates.

The unholy threesome -- the devil dragon, the antichrist and his false prophet, who is also there -- take up the glove, and declare an all-out war on God. They send out three ghostly frogs to convince all world's leaders to engage in the final battle. God in the meantime gathers his troops at a place which in Hebrew is called Armageddon (literally: the hill of robbers). And there's more voices and thunderstorms. Not to mention the biggest earthquake that ever shook the Earth, all previous apocalyptic earthquakes included. More cities crumble. Mountains collapse. Every island is swept from the face of the earth. And there's more hail, with hail stones as big as tennis balls.

Another angel descends, declaring the evil city of Babylon has just been destroyed, it only took one hour. Kings and merchants lament over the devastated city. A bright, avenging angel descends to lead the troops of God: it sits on a white horse, wears a blood sprinkled garment and has the dubious pleasure of carrying a two-edged sword in its mouth. Together with the others, the angel beats the antichrist and his false prophet and throws them into a pool of lava. If you were dumb enough to have joined the antichrist, you're dead: the angel with the sword slashes everyone and uses the corpses to feed the birds.

Now that the big part of the job is done, it's time to clean up the mess. Another angel comes down, ties the defeated devil dragon, tosses it back into the pit and shuts the lid. Not to be opened for another thousand years. Every martyr Christian that was ever beheaded comes back to life. Reunited, they live and reign for a thousand years.

But time flies when you're having fun. Suddenly, it's a thousand years later, and oh boy, the devil is at it again. He comes out of his pit and seduces all nations to join him in yet another war against the city of martyrs. But God himself puts the uprising swiftly to an end, by letting out a huge heavenly fire, which burns all the bad guys. This time, the devil himself is tossed into the pool of lava. The false prophet -- obviously, he survived the lava the first time -- is taken captive. He will be tortured forever, John is told.

Now, it's time for the final judgment. All the dead rise, and are judged `according to their works'. Many are cast into the pool of lava, those who have an entry in the book of life -- the chosen ones -- live forever.

By now, our planet has underwent some radical changes. There are no more seas, for instance. The skies open up, and an entire city -- the new Jerusalem -- gently lands on earth. It is made of gold, has twelve foundations, twelve gates and twelve angels guarding the gates. People don't die anymore. And what's more, they don't suffer, cry or worry about anything anymore. There are no more murderers, sorcerers, liars and, notably, no more dogs. Also, there's no more day and night. The world bathes in the gloom of the glory of the Lord. `Behold, I make all things new,' God declares.

No, seriously: should we worry?

All in all, the end of the world John foresaw is quite a ride. Interestingly, it lacks a well-defined chronology: the stars are swept from the sky again and again, the antichrist and his prophet die and come to life, people are killed in vast numbers, but in a next chapter, they seem to be doing just fine. According to theologists, this timelessness depicts the heavenly point of view of eternity.

But the lack of a clear chronology also makes the book prone to speculation: what apocalyptic state are we in today? Didn't we already have the diseases, hunger and war? And hold it, that Saddam Hussein guy, isn't he the antichrist?

Arguing like this, people have seen the antichrist in Napoleon, Stalin or Hitler, while others have connected the emerging beasts with the US and the USSR, the German empire vs. the Allies, Saddam Hussein's Iraq vs. the UN, or Milosevich's Serbia vs. NATO. But let's assume John's vision is to be taken literally. Clearly, we would have noticed an earthquake that dislocates all mountains and islands on earth, an army of demon-like locusts attacking us and two comets that slam into our inhabited world -- to mention only a few.

Still, even today many Christians believe the world will end sooner or later, with or without all the monsters, earthquakes and supernatural battles involved. Mainly, this is because the the book is very abstract and obscure to an untrained reader. The Apocalypse is by far the most difficult, hard to understand Bible book of them all.

Bible scholars have pointed out that John wrote about the vision around 70 A.D., a time when Christianity was brutally being persecuted and actually in danger of becoming extinct for the first time. John, himself being captured and thrown into a pot of boiling water once, wanted to support his fellow believers. The Apocalypse was his way of saying: don't despair, we will win in the end.

Interestingly, the imagery from The Apocalypse is deeply imbedded in the religious traditions of John's time. As many scholars have argued, almost all beasts, eagles, locusts, dragons and acts of nature John describes stem from the long standing tradition of Jewish religious culture -- and even date back to the Zoroastrianist apocalyptic of the ancient Iranians. The symbol language John uses would clearly have been understood by the faithful from John's days.

So, should we really worry about antichrists and demons waging war on God? You guessed it: probably not. Well, don't be disappointed, there's plenty of other, more realistic apocalyptic scenario's left!

Once, I visited a personal homepage where a movie fan brilliantly parodied all apocalyptic soothsaying. The guy that ran the page argued that television actor David Hasselhoff is in fact the devil. Among many other things, Hasselhoff definitely is the monster that comes out of the sea: he does it all the time in the Baywatch series. You may take the seven heads that keep growing back on for the seven TV-series he's in and that are constantly rerunning on television. And so on, and so on.

Clearly, the guy has a point. Translating abstract biblical vision into secular fact is a risky, haphazardous business. It can only lead to disconcern and more, hilarious speculations.

 

[acri1]

Oil Peak

Look around. See that world out there? Well, it is about to change - forever. Think of wars, famine, diseases and worldwide turmoil. That’s what’s coming down, as we pass a nasty spike in the statistics called the ‘Oil Peak’. In fact, we may just have passed it already.

They call it ‘Economic Hiroshima’. And frankly, that’s an understatement, suggesting just a local catastrophe that will be gone soon. Well: not this Hiroshima. It will last many decades and change our world forever. An it will not only affect the city of Hiroshima. The impending crisis could throw the entire globe back into the Middle Ages.

And in fact, that’s not even the main reason why the Oil Crash is one of the ugliest scenarios you’ll find on this site.

The real bad thing is that the Oil Crash is going to happen. Period. Left-wing and right-wing; conservative and progressive; scientists and politicians: ALL agree that the crisis is inevitable. In fact, the Oil Crash may have begun already. As we write this, the US has conquered the oil well called Iraq and the oil price is at an all time high of over 40 dollars per barrel. This looks bad, folks...

It isn’t hard to explain what the trouble is all about. The 'Oil Peak' is the point where the world’s oil supplies are exactly half used up. Yes, I felt some relief when I heard that for the first time, too. Apparently, after all these decades of industries and cars, we’ve still got half of all our oil supplies left! Put precisely: we started out with an estimated total of about 2 trillion barrels. And in 2003, some 900 billion of it had been used.

But there's a downside. When an oil well is half empty, you’ll have to go through an increasing amount of trouble to pump the last bit up. Think of it like eating yogurt out of a carton. At first, you’ll have no trouble to bring out spoonfuls of yogurt at all. But after a while, you’ll carefully have to maneuver your spoon around along the sides and corners of the carton to bring the last bit out. In oil wells, it goes the same way.

So when half of all oil in the world is up, the price per barrel will begin to rise. The prices will steadily go up, with about 1,5 to 3 percent a year. But meanwhile, world demand for oil is on the rise, too. Currently, the entire world consumes about 75 million barrels a day -- or 25 billion barrels per year. But in ten years time, demand is expected to rise by more than two thirds, to 135 million barrels a day.

Obviously, there's a gap here. We’ll have an oil crisis. According to some estimates, the price of a barrel of oil will increase, don’t look now, five- to six-fold in only a few years time, to prices up to 200 dollars per barrel! This will unleash a worldwide economic crisis beyond imagination, making the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a fun time.

The real problem, of course, is that our society is addicted to cheap, abundant oil. Our cars, airplanes and ships run on oil. Our electricity is generated in oil-fueled power plants. The stuff you buy in the stores is brought there by trucks that run on oil. In the end, literally everything is to some degree ‘made’ of oil!

So when oil gets expensive, so does our world. Even seemingly innocent things like socks, drinking water and bread will become very expensive. Factories and businesses will go bankrupt. Unemployment will explode, pushing up the state deficit and deepening the crisis even more. Banks will shut down, thereby killing the savings of their clients. In the end, the Oil Peak will send massive shockwaves through the world’s economies.

If you’re an American, your problems are even worse. The US economy is particularly vulnerable to oil problems, not just because the US consumes so much oil, but also because the oil trade worldwide goes in dollars. Consequently, when the oil trade hampers, the US economy takes the punches.

But you don’t want to live in one of the developing countries, either. South-America and Africa are very vulnerable to an oil crisis too, because their economies are weak as they are already. The Peak Oil will trigger an instant and sharp crisis in the Third World, causing even more wars, famines and deaths.

Wind Stuff

So if it’s all that bad, we’d just turn to some other kind of energy, right? We’ll have wind mills, and solar cells, and everything will be cool again, you say. Well -- actually, that won’t work. The problem is that at the moment, there just are no real alternatives!

Take wind energy. Wind is obviously stuff that doesn’t contain a lot of energy -- just compare slamming your head into a bit of wind with slamming it into a concrete wall. And what’s more: to build wind mills, you’ll have to weld steel, drive all kinds of stuff and engineers around in trucks and cars, build factories and make thousands of components. In the end, it costs more energy (oil) to actually build a windmill, than a windmill will ever generate during its entire lifetime!

Roughly the same goes for other so-called ‘alternatives’, like solar cells, hydrogen energy, biomass energy and what-have-you (for the details, check the Q&A below). They all cost more energy (oil) than they produce! The only realistic alternatives are gas and nuclear power. But gas runs out too, and it doesn’t help that we are closing down many of our nuclear power plants.

Nuclear fusion, perhaps? Indeed, that would be a clean, good alternative to oil. But the problem here is, the technology just isn’t ready yet. We need to do more research. After all, you don’t want to risk blowing up part of the planet in an all-too-hastily done fusion experiment. "You wanted energy? Here, have some!"

And of course, even when it comes to alternatives, we’ve still got this world here that is hooked on oil. Our cars run on gasoline, not on electricity. So we need to replace all of our cars and rebuild and rewire most of our society first, before we can use nuclear fusion or nuclear power. And that takes a lot of, uhm... the black stuff.

The cavalry and we

But hold it now, you say: we’ve faced oil crises before, haven’t we? Indeed, in 1973 and 1979, the flow of oil hampered too, plunging the world economy into crisis instantaneously. But back then, it was all easy. Venezuela just pushed up their oil production a bit -- and presto, cheap oil was back again. This time, it is all different. Once we’ve passed the Oil Peak, there will be no cavalry to help us out. Every oil producing country faces the same problem. We’ll have to go cold turkey on our oil addiction. That's just the way it is.

By now, you probably see how immensely complicated and big the problem really is. And we have only given you the broader picture. We haven’t detailed the wars and turmoil the Oil Peak will inevitably unleash. We haven’t elaborated on the fact that all the experts agree we won’t find any new oil fields.

The question is not if, but rather WHEN the crisis will strike. The ever-optimistic oil industry says it will last until approximately 2020 -- giving us some head start, to test those nuclear fusion stations and replace our cars. But most economists think we will reach the Oil Peak sometime over the next few years -- before 2010. The leading Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) calculates 2008 will be the year.

But in fact, there are some disturbing signs the crisis has begun already. Obviously, the oil price is in trouble -- just read the newspapers. It goes up and down, and up and down, like a rollercoaster. This is exactly what the experts predict would happen right before Peak Oil.

Oh, but surely, there has to be SOME way out? A comforting punch-line, or a soothing, concluding remark? Actually, even we at Exit Mundi are at a loss. Looks like we have to brace ourselves and face the Big One this time. We’ll see death and destruction, and see our world change forever. Can’t say we’re looking forward to it, either.

And even then, we’d have to have some luck. There’s a particularly nasty glitch in the theories even the economists don’t know about. For in fact, the biggest risk we’re facing is not even the Oil Crisis itself -- but rather, the invention of some kind of new energy source!

Say we all stop using oil tomorrow. That would mean that suddenly, we will stop putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Now, this is probably not a good idea. Over the years, we’ve got huge amounts of green plants, plankton and algae on our planet, courtesy to the greenhouse effect. If we suddenly stop producing greenhouse gases, these plants and algae will suck all of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

This will kickstart an instant, all-out Ice Age, as our planet is robbed from its protective carbon dioxide ‘coat’. The Earth would freeze over. It would turn into a huge snowball.

Now, who wants to have an Ice Age without any heating to keep us warm?

 

[Hawaiian Punch]

 

[sm0ke]

Holy shyt. I can't believe this site is still around.

I read every thing on that site like 10 years ago. Layout is a little different, it almost seems more outdated now .

 

[acri1]

Holy shyt. I can't believe this site is still around.

I read every thing on that site like 10 years ago. Layout is a little different, it almost seems more outdated now .

Yeah, I think the last updates to the site were like 2008-2009, and even then the layout was old school (Frames ).

The content is mad interesting though.