thorn's Blog

Oil. Practically every facet of our modern civilization depends on it. So what would happen if it ran out?

That's exactly what happened in 2024. well it didn't happen all at once. Like someone turning off a faucet. No , it happened slowly. It started in the summer of 2008. that's when the international demand for oil surpassed the ability of oil producers to pump more to keep supply ahead of demand. "Peak Oil". They called it.

In hindsight, it should have been hard to miss what happened next. The price of oil jumped from $70 , to over $100 per barrel. Aside from paying more fro gas and heating your home. No one seemed to notice at first. It was conventional wisdom that the price would go down again. But instead , oil prices begin an irrevocable rise that slowly began to weigh on global economics and advanced energy to the forefront of national polices.

At first it was just a recession; prices went up. Earnings went down, people tightened their belts and waited for it to pass. But it didn't. Recession slowly gave way to depression. Unemployment soared, bankruptcy increased, businesses failed. Global trade started to slow. By 2012, the economies of the developed nations were sagging under unemployment lines and failing finances. Automobiles became a luxury, as did long distance travel, or even just the sight of  planes in the sky. People got by with less. Microecononmics, weather it was wind or solar power, back yard farming, or "garage" manufacturing with recycled materials, kept people alive.

In the third world depression and global climate change resulted in darker, more cataclysmic events. Huge populations of refugees, fleeing starvation, disease or environmental disaster, went on the move causing disruption, chaos and conflict. Entire nations crumbled and bodies started to pile up. The world watched as the large kill-offs began, the lucky ones sighing"Thank you God it's not me"

As the second decade of the century advanced, the oil depression lead to political turmoil around the world, but the Middle East, the global oil reservoir, was the worst affected. Religious, cultural and political divisions led to cataclysmic violence and arbitrary destruction on a massive scale. the horrible climax came in 2014 when western forces used tactical nuclear weapons to defend oil fields from a revolutionary army, leading to catastrophic casualties, and transforming several important oil fields into radioactive dead zones. Subsequently, governments fell and anarchy arose. Mobs, death squads and religious purges reduced much of the region and the world to a pre-technological, tribal wasteland.

In the developed world, things worsened. the people could live with blackouts and electricity rationing, but they weren't ready for food riots, outbreaks of virulent disease, or the collapse of the environment. The hospitals filled up. Once unthinkable, people got used to seeing starvation and death on their own streets and just tried to survive. As it stretched on, the depression came to be known as the "new dirty 30's" and it made the old one seem easy.

Desperate for energy, the superpowers, the United states, Europe, russia and China, found themselves a stand -off over some of the world's last reserves of oil; one in particular being the Caspian Basin in Central Asia.  There wasn't enough for everyone and none could get it by themselves. So they hastily allied into two superpower blocks: The Western  Coalition, Comprising  the US and EU and the Red Star Alliance; evolved from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization by Russia and China. East side deployed sophisticated satellite missile defence systems that rendered long distance nuclear combat obsolete. Therefore, they had to fight with conventional armies. Both sides undertook a massive build-up. soldiers were conscripted and shipped out, vehicles based off synthetic fuel blend technology rolled off the assembly lines. the region is a tinderbox, with each side fortifying their oil fields and eyeing each others. Everyone knows it's just a matter of time until someone fires the first shot.

The answer we've found to the question, "what would happen if it ran out", seems to be that men fight over the last few drops..