The grab-your-gun-and-head-for-the-hills scenario goes something like this: In the next year or so, world oil production will peak and then promptly plummet, forced down by sinking reserves. While supply crashes, demand will grow. Virtually overnight, fuel will become so dear that farm tractors will go idle, people will go hungry and homes will go cold. Financial markets will collapse and social chaos will follow.
Are you ready?
The doomsday image may sound like the half-baked plot of a Schwarzenegger flick, but thousands of North Americans are taking it seriously enough to stock up on non-perishable food, recycle their own manure, build home gardens, bone up on canning techniques, even undergo "socially responsible vasectomies" to limit their energy reliance.
With the price of a barrel of oil spiking upwards of $100, the more alarmist of peak-oil buffs are buzzing that the world's oil-dependent economy could tank in the very near future.
These "doomers," as they're called among the peaknik community, congregate online at DieOff.org, AnthroPik.com and dozens of other apocalyptic sites dedicated to discussing when the sky will fall and what to do afterward.
One of the most popular sites, LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net, casts the looming crisis in dreary terms. "Dear Reader," it reads. "Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists, bankers and investors in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global 'Peak Oil.' "
The site owner, a California lawyer, advocates getting in shape to prepare for a new era of manual labour, and provides links to companies that hawk dehydrated food and emergency survival kits.
Some environmentalists bristle at such grim proclamations. "It's simply fear-mongering," says Guy Dauncey, author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. "When you mention collapse and heading for the hills, that saps the creativity we need to get out of this problem."
Doomers come in many shades of gloom. Paul Chefurka, an Ottawa-based civil servant, identifies as a doomer but distances himself from the "buy-canned-food-and-bullets crowd."
"You can't prepare for everything," he says. "At this point any vision of the future is just as likely to be wrong as right."
The concept of peak oil attracted Mr. Chefurka's attention four years ago just as interest in the theory was flourishing online. The theory, which posits that oil production will inevitably hit a zenith and subsequently spiral into terminal decline, had been around for 50 years, but numerous endorsements from geologists and oil experts swelled its profile around 2002.
Mr. Chefurka had spent much of his life denying the existence of global warming and the ills of greenhouse gases. One day, while researching greenhouse gases online, he came across several sites dedicated to peak oil. "About 30 seconds later I was a changed man," he says. "I could see right away that they made an awfully good case."
He immediately fell into the extreme doomer camp, adopting an "apocalyptic sense of imminent catastrophe." He has since softened the fatalist stance and is predicting more of a protracted economic downturn. But that hasn't stopped him from making some drastic changes to cut his oil dependency.
In recent years, he has moved from a suburban McMansion to an urban bungalow, downsized his car and curbed his air travel. He started a food garden on his small urban lot that supplies 20 per cent of his and his wife's fare during the warmer months. What they can't eat, they've started canning for the leaner winter months.
On his website, PaulChefurka.ca, he encourages readers to eat lower on the food chain, retrofit their homes and "consider not having children." Mr. Chefurka himself has had a "socially responsible vasectomy."
"We've got too many people on Earth doing too much," he says. "Unless family is more important than anything else, you might want to consider not having one."
