Is a return to the "dark ages" possible?

Warbie said:
I went off on one then, and I agree :)

There'd be some painful restructuring and maybe some back to basics living for a while - unless it kicks off a nuclear war. In that case i'll stick with my previous stance.
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Indeed, it won't be pretty, but I doubt it would be the end of the world either.

Far more realistic that we would simply enter a period of unrest and uncertainty before finally readjusting, especially Economically and Politically.

Half the world already live with Oil playing a relatively minor role in their everyday lives.
 
You have to remember oil isn't just a fuel. It's important for any machinery (lubricant), fertilizers, plastics and most importantly, global economy.

Peak Oil gets bandied about a bit by people who have no more knowledge on it than some sensationalist journalism, and form a stead-fast opinion from that. It is however, an interesting subject, and will depend on far more factors than just how much oil is in the ground (for example, as someone said earlier, there is indeed lots of oil remaining. But the very workings of an oil field means that the final 1/2 is substantially harder to extract than the first half. Couple that with the fact that it isn't possible to extract all of the oil from any field, and that oil estimates from OPEC are almost certainly fiddled, makes it harder to predict total available oil).
 
I'd be more interested in seeing who would be ruling the new society that would be created after the destruction of present day society. Yes, we'd probably have aspects of a Hobbsian way of life (solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short) but we'd soon group together to form another society. This would be based on factions, and be akin to a tribal sort of thing I believe. However we'd soon (I'm speaking a few years, as oppose to decades/generations) band together for 'the greater good' and it is the rising of a new government/supreme power that interests me. And then the lawyers of the World will step forward and take control again. :)
 
This would never happen though. Every empire in the past has fallen because it cannot rule over so many people from a central location. Its not because they ran out of something.

We won't suddenly wake up one morning and find the oil gone. Humans adapt and survive, thats why we are top of the food chain. If oil runs dry then we will have adapted to use other sources.

We have progressed to the stage where it would take an absolutely catastrophic nuclear war or environmental disaster to knock us back significantly. We can produce nearly everything that we use oil for without the need for crude oil, we just couldnt remove it from the equation tomorrow.
 
Yeah, oil wouldn't suddenly run out. It'd be a gradual process. Currently there are loads of sources we aren't using because the value of oil isn't high enough for it to be worth drilling. Once the price of oil goes up the harder-to-drill deposits will become worth drilling for.

At some point, the price will go up so much that it will become too expensive to burn as fuel and make plastic bags from. It'll just be used for high-grade lubricants and high-grade plastic products and alternative products will replace it's use a a fuel.
 
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