Hre is some and my best attempt at the order of appreance
1. Panic
2. Total Global Economic Collapse.
3. Complete breakdown of global logistics. Cities would get no more deliveries of food or other products needed to keep them going
4. Collpase of power grids.
5. Crops go untended or inadequately tended.
6. Vast majority of global crops go unharvested.
7. Global starvation on a scale never evne imaginved before.
8. War, Canibalism, chaos
9. Total collapse of civilizaiton as we know it.
If it happened more gradually and we had time to prepare then all of the above would be mitigated and some could even be avoided.
Short term, chaos and panic. Air travel would pretty much stop dead, and car-based transit would be seriously impaired. Any cities without a good electricity-based transportation system would be pretty thoroughly screwed. Sales of electric cars would shoot way up. Many diesel engines would still be able to operate, but prices of used vegetable oil would go *way* up.
Medium term, we'd develop bio-based replacements. They would, at least at first, be far more expensive than traditional gasoline used to be, so SUVs and the like would be a thing of the past. Airline travel would be a luxury for the ultra-rich. Trains might go back to burning coal or wood. More electric cars would go on the market. Slow bulk transportation by sailing ships and the like would become economically viable, and ships would also develop solar-powered engines and the like.
Long-term, more of the same, but we'd get to a point of equilibrium. Probably still less long-distance transportation of goods and people than in the petroleum economy, but food shortages and the like would stabilize, and things would get pretty functional again.
We would be so screwed. The population of the world would decrease dramatically. If you look at a graph of the population of the world once we get oil then the graph goes nearly vertical. So we have billions of people that only exist because of oil, and once we run out then billions will die. It would be a complete collapse of infrastructure, everything in our society is reliant on transportation powered by oil. Even if we invested in nuclear power plants they would essentially have to shut down due to the fact people couldn't transport themselves to it. If you lived in a city then you would stave to death due to the fact you couldn't ship food to feed people. Our world would go from 7 billion to less than a billion if we ran out of oil tomorrow.
Peak Oil seems to have peaked. Shale gas and shale oil have been discovered almost everywhere, it seems. Gas prices in the US have fallen dramatically.
However, if we did run out next week then suicide definately would be an option. The western world would be in a state of anarchy within a week. As soon as the supermarket shelves were cleared it would be complete chaos.
You can make oil from coal. You can use gas in petrol vehicles after a conversion process. I believe it can be done with Diesel vehicles now.
Apart from fuel we would be a bit short of other things as well. Take a look at this partial list: http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20...
Carbon-based energy will always be here. That's where bio-fuels come from. The very idea of ever running out of energy would totally depend on if "the carbon cycle" would cease to exist. Fossil fuels are the result of our carbon cycle and nothing else. Every person is made up of carbon. Carbon is the basis of all of life. Throw in other essential (and continuously cycling) minerals along with water and you get an endless supply of energy as long as the sun shines.
Some people will say, "Use solar power," but for solar power to immediately replace oil, enough solar panels would have to be already in place to do so.
Making solar panels requires energy. A world with very little energy would only expand its solar power capacity very slowly. In addition, some means of storing the energy, such as using batteries or making hydrogen would be necessary to replace oil. Making batteries or fuel cells to use the hydrogen requires energy.
As dangerous as global warming COULD be, hydrocarbon fuels are a necessary step between the pre-industrial and post-hydrocarbon economies. In fact, the real question about global warming is what will happen first if we do nothing; will it be millions of square miles of land under water or will we run out of oil. Either way, if we don't develop new energy sources, we lose.
As a geologist, this question is somewhat like "what would happen if we ran out of dirt"
It isn't really possible. It is hard to answer what would happen if something impossible occurred. I don't know maybe unicorns would drop from the sky to replace our cars and Leprechauns would tend to them.
Ethanol and Methane Hydrate would be used instead, and everyone would be driving Mopeds.
We would all die, so stop being silly.
There's more oil in the world than we can possibly use, more being found every day.
Imagine waking up one day and finding out that all the oil in the world has been completely drained out.. all the nations are running on reserve and what next? what would u do, what would the U.S do, What would happen next? and No suicide is not an option.
We'd have to go back to killing whales for our lubricants.
The US Presidents will have to take less vacations.
We would still have electricity from hydroelectric dams, if the greenies would let us.
Not to worry. It will not happen in your great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren's lifetime.
Oil is made naturally (slowly however) so it would be hard to "Run-Out". We would go ahead and use Solar Energy, Wind Energy, and any other types of power we could utilize. We would "Go Green" because we would need to.
The elliens would come and eat our kidneys because they wouldn't have any use for earth because they wouldn't be able to steal oil from Antarctica! Then humans would go extinct!
The only choice would be to drain out fat people
Nothing realy. We can change our life style very soon!
WW3 for whatever is left
change our lifestyle
