interesting story - "Global Peak"

[Strategos' Risk]

A view of the dystopian future when the oil runs low.

Looks kind of cool in a morbid way.

 

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Yes; those have become rather popular for some strange reason.

I imagine that it's rather like the overpopulation fears of the 1960s and 1970s; popular enough to incite plenty of copycats and fellow travelers, but also popular enough to inspire people to take steps and invent things to ensure it never does happen. A self-defeating prophecy, if you will.

 

[Nikephoros]

This story would be easier to read if there was not as many posts in between, but alas, thats what we deal with in a message board

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Does anyone think that it will be that bad once the fuel is gone?

 

[Uber_Amoeba]

Does anyone think that it will be that bad once the fuel is gone?

I dunno. The one resource that almost everything we have, all transportation (and therefore, food, supplies, etc), depends on, about which's demise most governments are still digging in their heels at adequately and realistically preparing for? This may not be the Optimistic Story Of Plucky Humanity Finding The Solution Once The Problem Is Apparent (Tm), but it isn't exactly Worst-Case Scenario either (that one involves nuclear war and Global Warming holding Man down while Peak Oil kicks him in the nuts).

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I think they're overestimating how much the South/Red States will regress due to the economic meltdown.

With the considerable latitude given to state governments, when Indiana and Kentucky had managed to suppress the pro-government counter-secession in Louisville they had taken fifty thousand African-Americans, ten thousand suspected homosexuals, and twenty-five thousand general 'communists and environmentalists', loaded them all onto barges in the Ohio river while chained together, and then sunk the barges.

Massacring gays and liberals I can see, but black people as well?

Also, here's the definitive story on global warming from those forums.

 

[Faeelin]

Absurdly silly, and too extreme.

 

[Nikephoros]

Good story. However, that board does not really have true debating and different views.

That board has strong bias against the South.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Absurdly silly, and too extreme.

Any particular criticisms?

 

[Faeelin]

Any particular criticisms?

The rise of a Marxist northern America, fascist France, etc. It's just using the failed idelogies of the 20hth century again; I think tey'd actually find new ones, rather than rehash ours.

The use of inner city blacks as corrupt police. Umm, why?

The first reference to fuel cells comes from Israeli jets. Wha?

The world seems to have been caught off guard, as if everything was going fine until one day oil ran out.

Also, the formation of the New Confederacy. I'm no fan of conservative Christians, but I'd be very surprised if they went along with genocide and ethnic cleansing, especially places like Virginia et al.

Also, the author seems to think people are more loyal to their states than the USA.

 

[Raymann]

Doesn't make sense.

If the US was that bad off wouldn't they just build 200 new nuke plants and go electric?

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Looks like someone else wrote another one.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Even though this story was last updated thirteen years ago, I still think about it from time to time. If nothing else, it's a pretty evocative piece of mid- to late-2000s dystopian anxieties, at the tail end of the Bush administration, right before the Great Recession, back when we worried about energy shortages. Some things never change, eh?

Back then, the idea of the National Front taking over France or civil war breaking out in the U.S. were far more quaint than they are now. The world-building of it is grimdark, misanthropic, but oddly memorable. It has the distant tenor of War on Terror era military sci-fi. Interestingly, the conflicts of that future world are not focused around the West vs. Islam, what with all of the oil running out, but also because they just have Israel nuke everything.

Which brings me to a choice chapter: presenting, the crusader state of Cyprus, Malta, and the Peloponnesus:

And Air Marshal Johnathan Falkirk was their ally. As Generalissimo of Cyprus, Malta, and the Peloponnesus, he thought mildly, amused at his fate as a crusader despite not being very religious. The RAF had still had its sovereign base areas on Cyprus, and it was toward Cyprus that the surviving elements of the Royal Navy had finally come, a taskgroup, one of the SSBNs proved useless in the face of the French ABM lasers, a few SSNs, some frigates and patrol boats showing the flag in distant reaches. The remnants of the Royal Navy operated out of Famagusta at first, and then returned daringly to Malta to threaten the French. But not to fight; they were outnumbered, and the position was hopeless.

Just to preserve what they had. And it had only grown; southern Greece, when the northern part was overrun by the Balkan peoples in internicine war triggered by starvation. The Greek islands, Ionian and Aegean. And finally, of course, what was necessary to give them an industrial economy, to give the Israelis food supplies too in turn. It was a devil's bargain, to work with those bastards, but the Royal Air Force was the only thing keeping the Turks and Greeks of Cyprus from killing each other, and the French from snatching up the remains.

"Air Marshal, Sir?" General Bagenev glanced over to his guest. Sometimes he though the old man was going senile.... But he was still the only ally that Israel had left in the world. The Russian Jew who commanded the northern sector of the IADF--responsible for the north of Israel and Lebanon, where their client state (as opposed to full ally) of the Falange kept things tightly locked down and defended the immense fortifications in the Bekaa Valley. "You see the effects of our last strikes?" He pointed out the still-burning smudges, the columns of smoke from two weeks ago where what were likely the last oil wells in the mid-east, a very tiny find by the Arabs in the southeast of Syria, had been destroyed. They had tried to establish them secretly, but little escaped the notice of Israel, nor the reach of her hydrogen-fueled jets.

But he knew in his heart that this alliance would be the only thing keeping the people he had taken up the defence of, for a long, long time. From chaos, pirate raids, fascist French domination, and countless other things. The Republic of the Islands, a true Mediterranean state, would be born out of the remnants of the British armed forces. And to support it, they needed Israel. It did not let him rest easy, and never would, but that was the job of those last remnants of Britain now. By ruling justly but sternly over the Cypriots and Maltese and Greek islanders, they would protect them from moral opprobrium.. And take it upon themselves.

Wonder if @Pelranius still remembers this story. It was a pretty memorable world-building project, for a spell. I think it's still reading, or at least skimming through, today. Both as a grimdark near-future dystopian story, and as a time capsule for attitudes a decade and a half ago.

 

[Twiggierjet]

Ah, I love me some aged sci-fi. You ever read Shooting War? It's got the same vibes.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Ah, I love me some aged sci-fi. You ever read Shooting War? It's got the same vibes.

Way ahead of ya

FH: Shooting War

Nominated for 2007's Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic. Takes place in 2011. President McCain is pretty much under siege. The War on Terror looks a lot like the present, except more so. A (failed) Arab peacekeeping mission is getting slaughtered there. A more invigorated version of...

www.alternatehistory.com

 

[Twiggierjet]

Way ahead of ya

FH: Shooting War

Nominated for 2007's Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic. Takes place in 2011. President McCain is pretty much under siege. The War on Terror looks a lot like the present, except more so. A (failed) Arab peacekeeping mission is getting slaughtered there. A more invigorated version of...

www.alternatehistory.com

Well damn now I feel old.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Now that I think about it, Global Peak is a lot like other War in Iraq-era military sci-fi/AH from that time: very blithe about death and destruction, because it was a hair-trigger era when people worried about random bombings and expected to be going to war against Iran soon... as opposed to now when we're worried about random shootings and expecting to go to war against China soon. Oy. But in that same vein, another piece from that era that sticks out is the late Scott Palter's two-part cliffhanger A Dystopia to fold Laundry by, in which he just takes random news from 2004 and turns it up into a global catastrophe caused by too much news happening all at once. My previous thread for that:

The World as We Know it Breaks in 2004

I've been thinking about suggesting a "make your own doomsday with the news" game, but I decided to make this thread first because people wouldn't understand what I mean. Scott Palter of ChangingtheTimes wrote "A Dystopia to Fold Laundry By" in March of 2004. As he states, he basically took...

www.alternatehistory.com

Anyway, interesting historical artifacts.

 

[Bassoe]

Also, the formation of the New Confederacy.

It's a classic cliché source of post-apocalyptic baddies. If the author is left-wing, they'll have a new Confederacy, if right-wing, Aztlan. I have no knowledge of actual support for founding either of these, but imagine can timelines where their supporters fight each other over the same territory or team up to found some kind of apartheid hacienda system knockoff.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I don't think the author was actually leftist, I think she was just part of the war nerd milieu of that War on Terror era where people were very blithe about megadeaths. Having re-read that thread, I noticed some grimdark- and seemingly implausible- bits like this:

Well, they used up a lot of their nuclear arsenal turning southern Mexico into a radioactive stain on the map when the Mexicans made a grab for the southwest just as the war started. More about that is coming later, but suffice to say the population of Mexico City was subjected to the Claw of Death, which scratched 10 million urban dwellers right off the map.

The Mexicans couldn't return nuclear fire. It was perfect. They didn't have to lose the services of more than a single division to keep the Mexican forces in check. They just put an eight-pointed star (actually, Adrian) in Mexico city, and hit a couple of other targets--oh, I think the total for final fatalities was 30 million, fifty million dead. There's also plenty of Mexicans still alive. It has been "so bad" continuously for eight years.

So basically you've got the New Confederacy genociding minorities and nonbelievers, a nuked attempt at Aztlan, a Soviet-style FedGov that executes scavengers for "wrecking" and uses gang-bangers as law enforcement, and that's North America alone. I think it's just a bit of edgelordism as world-building.

And yet, some parts are pretty thought through. It's not just a lazy parody or caricature, because that's just how military sci-fi could be back then.

 

[Alias_The_J]

If nothing else, it's a pretty evocative piece of mid- to late-2000s dystopian anxieties, at the tail end of the Bush administration, right before the Great Recession, back when we worried about energy shortages. Some things never change, eh?

Dystopia is always one election cycle away, collapse a decade, and depletion never sleeps.