New Setting Idea from CNN... a modern earth out of oil.

[Kalendraf]

then you have an asteroid hit Minnesota (damned Timberwolves).

Hey...watch where you're aiming that thing!

I'm a T-wolves fan from Minnesota. After years of waiting, we're finally advancing on in the playoffs. After all those years of cursed lottery balls at the draft and then the whole Joe Smith deal, we're way overdue for a run of our own. Have some patience, and your team will get there someday.

Now if we can just beat them Lakers.

 

[Virate]

If we did run out of oil...it would be a world that has NOTHING on the World of Darkness.

If you were wondering what would happen if the oil supply suddenly ran out...

First the electrical power would start to falter, power grids would get overloaded when generators went offline leading to huge blackouts.

The food stored in refrigerators would quickly spoil, leading to a rush on canned and dry foods at the store. There would be mass chaos as there isn't enough to go around.

Major cities would run out of a food in just a few days, leading to total anarchy as people desperately started searching for food. Speaking of cities, most buildings would become nearly uninhabitable, being dark and too tall for their own good.

In a few months civilization would experience a MAJOR die-off as millions would begin the slow process of starving to death. Armed gangs would only be kept in check by the military, and even then that wouldn't last forever.

Solar/Wind power simply doesn't generate enough energy to keep up with demand.

Hydrogen power is great, if we had a source of hydrogen that would last any length of time...we don't.

Nuclear Fission isn't the answer either, there aren't enough fissionable materials to keep the reactors powering the world.

In the end we will be left with small communities that have access to a power source, and rural farms that supply food in the old fashion way.

The problem is this, we have a society that is expending more energy than we have coming in. Fossil Fuels allow this by giving us a source of energy that has been building and storing itself for millions of years, when that is gone, everything will fall apart.

All indications are that this will happen in our lifetime, everything that you see around you...the computer, the internet, and the car in your driveway...it will be gone one day. Nobody realizes it yet, but we are living in the golden age of mankind, and once it's gone it won't be back for a very long time.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

If we did run out of oil...it would be a world that has NOTHING on the World of Darkness.

If you were wondering what would happen if the oil supply suddenly ran out...

First the electrical power would start to falter, power grids would get overloaded when generators went offline leading to huge blackouts.

Actually, very little power is generated from oil in the US or EU. It is used for lubrication on generators, but you can use bio-based lubricants for that. There is plenty of coal, and since the postulated scenario doesn't have coal vanishing, we'll keep using that (belching out mercury, natural radioactive compounds, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide). That should last several centuries.
Oil *is* the dominant transportation fuel, but you can also use the coal to produce synthetic fuels such as Fischer-Tropsch diesel. That is costly, but at a high enough price for oil it's worth doing. Renewable fuels also work: biodiesel costs around $2.50/gallon in the US, and cellulose-based ethanol is close to that. High, but not civilization-destroying.

Solar/Wind power simply doesn't generate enough energy to keep up with demand.

Hydrogen power is great, if we had a source of hydrogen that would last any length of time...we don't.

Solar and wind could *certainly* generate enough power for the entire world if we had the impetus to develop it. Cost is the only major obstacle - the resource is big enough. If coal becomes scarce (not in this century) or if global climate change becomes a real concern (more likely), it's worth the cost. You might use pumped hydropower more for storage to level out the intermittency of the renewables - when there is more wind power than needed, pump the water up into the reservoir. When there isn't, let the water flow. (You could also use batteries on a large scale - if they're stationary, it doesn't matter how heavy they are.)
Hydrogen is an energy carrier just like electricity is. It's not an energy source. You could use electricity (from coal, solar, wind, nuke, hydro) either to split water into H2 and O2 or you could store it directly in batteries. Which one we use in vehicles depends in large part on which storage technology is better-developed.

The point is, we have a lot of great options in renewable fuels and electricity that we just aren't using now because fossil fuels are cheaper. So if we ran out of both coal and oil then energy (electricity and vehicle fuels) would cost a bit more - perhaps twice what we pay now, given the learning curves you would see. That's something we can adapt to. Once demand exceeds supply and supply cannot be increased fast enough (not the same as running out) there will be a shock for a few years as the price of oil skyrockets. But, assuming that we are smart enough to realize our options and avoid an apocalyptic war for oil (a la Mad Max), then we'll bring alternatives online and adjust. Life will go on much as we know it, except for some geopolitical changes (probably the fall of the House of Saud).

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Nuclear power is not as economical as most people think. When you add in all of the costs associated with contamination clean-up it becomes very expensive. Also, you have the perpetual problem of what to do with the waste. No one wants it.

Pfft. Put me in charge, I'd just drop it down those deep, dark, empty oil wells in the Saudi desert.

What, they got something better to do with all that desert?


Wulf

 

[WayneLigon]

*nods all around*

I think if such a thing happens, it won't happen fast enough to cause major disruption of everyday life. Certainly some sections of the economy will fail but other means will emerge from it, so such failure will probably be a good thing in the long run: it might show the foolishness of putting all your eggs in one basket.

It would be a good start to a darker d20 Modern game, as oil companies feel the squeeze and so try to expand and take over burgeoning new technologies. All sorts of opportunities for espionage and mercenary-esque adventures.

A good monkeywrench to throw into the pot would be the discovery of easy-to-get, and thus cheap, oil in some previously under-developed country. Perhaps an earthquake opens up a route to a vast oil reserve under Mexico. Suddenly, Mexico becomes a rich and devestatingly powerful nation in a very short period of time. Tom Deitz had a couple of novels (Above the Lower Sky and Demons in the Green) where such a thing, or a similar thing, had happened to make Central America a global powerhouse.

 

[Krieg]

No, no, no. If you want a good setting, first you hit the planet with the oil-eating bacteria, ...snip...

Ill Wind

 

[Virate]

Solar and wind could *certainly* generate enough power for the entire world if we had the impetus to develop it.

Each year we race little solar powered cars across the nation. Each year it is a joke compared to the gasoline cars that pass them like they are standing still.

Please excuse my skepticism, but if solar powered cars are any indication of the potential of solar power, then that industry is in real trouble.

I don't buy into the bit where Solar will power the world, we would have to convert a significant potion of the earth's surface to this task. Destroying natural environments and reducing agricultural land. To make the US completely sustainable by solar power would require us to convert 40% of our land mass into solar collectors. This is a terrible prospect, and ultimately too expensive to build or maintain.

As for coal, it only supplies 25% of our energy in the US.
It isn't nearly as easy to transport, nor is it as dense.
Coalmining operations actually run on oil, not coal.
Coal used to have an EPR of 100 to 1, meaning 100 units of coal extracted for the expenditure of 1 unit of coal. It is now at 8 to 1 and by 2020 it will be only at 2 per 1, making it a very inefficient source of power.

As far as Ethanol, there are some estimates that actually conclude that it actually takes MORE energy to make ethanal than it produces, even the best estimates put Ethanal at an EPR of 1.7, making it extraordinarly inefficient.

Sorry to be a killjoy.

 

[Creamsteak]

A lot of those solar cars come from Universities, and I know for one that a lot of the problems are related to mishaps. Last year, my school's car used two year old cells for energy, and that caused the car to do incredibly bad. I think my school's vehicle can only get up to 55 mph, which is pretty slow by modern motor vehicle standards... but it'd be fast enough to maintain some degree of transportation.

 

[Pbartender]

Anyway, that got me thinking about the effects of running out of oil. America would be totally isolated... no oil, no airplane flight. Power would only be available from steam... we'd go back to using firewood as our primary means of heating our homes. Large steam engines wouldn't really work without the oil necessary to lubricate moving parts. All other power requires oil for lubrication so oil would still needed for those power sources.

Scary stuff... but it could make a hell of a campaign setting.

"My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember, a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called Max.

"To understand who he was you have to go back to another time, when the world was powered by the black fuel, and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.

"Gone now. Swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They had built a house of straw. The thunder of machines sputtered and stopped.

"Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the everlarge. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting. A firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men.

"On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay ordinary men were battered and smashed, men like Max, the warrior Max.

"In the roar of an engine he lost everything and became as shell of a man, a burned-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again..."

 

[LazerPointer]

Interesting thing to think about, but I wouldn't want to roleplay in a world I'll see when I'm 50 anyway.