There is an vaguely interesting news story about a car in Oklahoma that was buried as a ‘time capsule’. A contest was held for the residents of Tusla to guess the population of the city in 2007. Except that they had to guess 50 years into the future, the year was 1957. The car was then buried, to be exhumed in 2007 and given to the person or their inheritors who guessed closest to the cities population in that year.

Nice publicity stunt. Except that when they exhumed the car from it’s secure, concrete vault “strong enough to survive a nuclear attack” it was a bucket of rust. Same goes for the odds and ends they included, such as a woman’s leather handbag, now rotten. Video link here of the unveiling of the rust bucket.

We often think our civilization will last forever, especially those things that are well-covered and protected from the weather. Not so. A great deal of our civilization will disappear relatively quickly. Cities would last less then 200 years. Concrete dams not really that much longer.

We’re quite guilty of believing that our civilization will be different then those gone by. But there is no evidence at all that we will last longer or even be remembered “more” then they were. The trend to build huge mega-cities is actually very dangerous. Cities are not self-sustaining by their very nature and will collapse from their sheer size as resources are continually stripped from the earth for their sustenance.

There is another human side-effect of cities - we’ve lost our rights to “roam”.

When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.

It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.

Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas’s eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.

He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home. How Children Lost the Right To Roam

Our disconnect from the natural world and what it contains, and the experience of it, creates false illusions that our world is the “real” world. Of course this isn’t true. Our world today would be very alien to our ancestors of even a hundred years ago. And even their world wasn’t the real world. Their world was a world of growth, development and expansion, the results which we see and experience today.

But for how long can this continue? How much growth is enough? Many would say we’ve already long passed those reasonable points. But little is being done about it as mega-city after mega-city continues to expand and grow even in the face of their own collapse. Even old neighborhoods in small towns are long since gone, paved over and covered with strip malls and 7/11 stores. Unending growth and expansion has destroyed our own past (slide show here). It’s not wonder we don’t feel connected to anything, it’s simply no longer there.

In times, these cities will collapse, imploding on themselves as the raw resources to sustain them disappear. They will be the ghost cities of the future as they crumble back into the environment from which they came. And then we will learn again what it is like to roam in the forests and countrysides. That real world is still out there, outside of our doors and cubicles. It still exists, but not quite like it always did.

It’s now a blasted and devestated “real” world of strip mines, logged forests, pavement and garbage dumps, sliced, diced, plowed and covered. In many parts of the world, its simply not safe to wander around because of the environmental hazards we’ve created. Then there is the human hazards of creeps, pedophiles, rapists, muggers and gangs that make such wanderlusts more then a bit dangerous in some areas.

There is an unbelievably high cost to civilization that is often not taken into account. Combined, the environmental effects, social effects and population, resource and economic effects are all negative deficit entries against the ledger of life. This is the underlying reason why civilization will collapse. Life is sustained by the real world, the natural environment which humans have wrestled with for so long. But the struggle to overcome this environment has been long since won, except that we didn’t realize it. We decided we had to go much, much further and pave it, plow it and build on it until we have mastered it all.

But this is sheer folly. Civilizations that destroy their resource bases never last. Watch the slide show above to see how this happens. Ours won’t last either. In a few hundred years, all that will be left is piles of rubble and rust.

Why? Because the energy required to maintain the buildings and their heating and cooling systems, to keep them weatherproofed with roofs, windows, paint, plastic and rubber will be gone. Peak oil is peak energy, the energy required that enables this present world to be ‘civilized’. Civilization is already threatened by the destructive use of its resource base all over the world, but this process of decay will accelerate rather dramatically when the energy dries up. The simple ability to maintain, let alone keep building more structures, more roads, more everything will be gone.

The car in Oklahoma disintegrated because we could not maintain it. By choice of course, but it’s an analogy of our civilization. Without the energy to maintain our world and keep it repaired, it cannot last.

Also gone will be the raw resources needed. Oil for transportation, fertilizers, food production, plastics, energy generation and manufacturing, forests for lumber, paper, cardboard and every other cellulose based product including insulation, chemicals and cleaners. Simple clean water will be scarce and hard to find as aquifers, rivers, lakes and streams have been polluted, rediverted and dried up.

The easily found and readily available minerals for all types of metal from iron, steel, copper, zinc, gold, silver, manganese and nickel will be consumed. Deep in the earth will lie raw materials which will probably remain forever unaccessible to humans.

Civilization as we know it will be gone, a heap of rust and rubble. Humans may be largely gone too, depending on how severe die-off is and how much climate change destroys our agriculture. Future humans, if any will wonder about our folly - how could they have consumed everything?

The Island

Imagine an island where on one part of the island, the “royalty” live. They have everything that they need, there is an overabundance of food, water, clothing, housing, electricity, transportation, entertainment, education, medical services and economic activity. Their population expands dramatically due to this prosperity, swelling their side of the island in short order.

Generous at first, they help the other island dwellers not so fortunate, with food, clothing, technology. This continues intermittently for a while and the other island dweller numbers also swell rather dramatically.

The raw materials used to create the prosperity for the royalty comes from their surrounding environment. But eventually, these resources are depleted and harder to find. So the royalty start taking by force or by coercion into agreements from the rest of the islanders. They even do this among themselves on their side of the island.

Even more resources are consumed because of this, but they’re no longer distributed like they once were. The royalty start hoarding for themselves, becoming even more prosperous and rich.

On the other side of the island live the “sand-dwellers”. They don’t have the prosperity of the royalty. They live in simple huts, some even live in the forests or in the desert, herding goats. Their requirements are few, but underneath their feet and in their forests they have valuable resources to the royals. The royalty take these resources for their own use, by hook or by crook, and sometimes wars are fought over them, but the sand-dwellers always manage to lose, they don’t have the technology or the numbers to defend themselves.

Eventually, the royalty starts running out of easily found resources. In fact, the entire island does. The royalty get desperate and start forcing the sand-dwellers to give up even more resources. More wars erupt, but this only consumes more resources even faster. The spiral of descent continues and entire peoples on the island are quickly depleted of the sustenance to live. By now, there are far too many people on the island, the once former prosperity made sure of that. But now they cannot even all be fed and many starve.

Disaster strikes. A hurricane hits the island and affects everyone. The sand dwellers rebuild their tents and go back to herding their goats, but the royalty have much more trouble. Their infrastructure is damage severely and billions are spent trying to make repairs. They now need even more resources. They go again to the sand dwellers in the deserts and forests and once again, take what they need. More wars are fought, more resources are consumed.

The sand dwellers are angry. Some want the prosperity of the royalty, others would rather live as they always have. They divide among themselves. The crafty among them become rich selling to the royalty the resources on their side of the island. Resentment grows among themselves and they fight and more war breaks out. The royalty finds ways to exploit this situation so that they can benefit with even more resources for their themselves and their royalty brethren.

By now, most of the resources are consumed and there are far, far too many people to feed. Almost all the ocean fish surrounding the island are now gone. The forests are cut down, the minerals are stripped from the island and all the wealth is now found among the royalty. Some of the “new royals” on the sand dwellers side of the island have become like the old royals, and have built huge houses, even castles. They too have heaped many treasures to themselves in an attempt to maintain their lifestyles of abundance and influence.

But more disasters hit. Suddenly, the island climate changes. Drought strikes and the entire islands food production falls. Decades of severe pollution takes its toll on crops, soil and fisheries and air. Overproduction has caused desertification where nothing grows, acid rains damage the remaining forests, lakes and streams. And the resources for the royalty start running out even faster. Soon, they won’t even have fuel for their cars, so they start taking food and making it into fuel. Even more people starve, but the royalty don’t seem to mind.

Competition for resources becomes quite acute. Threats are hurled back and forth all over the island. Terrorists pop up and demand fair treatment for their lives, religion and lifestyles. A huge island infrastructure has developed to “combat” this problem, but does nothing to address its cause. Nothing works right anymore, even among the royals they fight and bicker. Disillusionment sets in, deeply across the entire island. Many die in the resource wars that now plague the island like a rampaging virus.

The situation desperately worsens as the royals are now threatened with their very way of life. Island leaders convene and endlessly discuss ways to somehow preserve there way of life. Nothing is agreed upon and nothing is accomplished and in short order, chaos ensues as the island dwellers are all now fighting for what’s left. Anarchy and collapse affect everyone, while the separate island governments crack down. Many desperate measures are proposed and tried, including using torture against the troublemakers, building many prisons, and even implanting microchips into the island inhabitants to track their movements and activities. Many new laws are enacted, some without even following established procedures as the royalty desperately try to retain their power and control.

Nothing works. As bad as it is, the situation just keeps getting worse. The entire island is now in peril. Huge island wars are fought, killing millions and millions. Even more scarce resources are destroyed, consumed and simply lost to this folly. In desperation, the rich among the royals attempt to build lifeboats for themselves, even abandoning their own, but its only an island and there really isn’t anyplace to go.

By now, hundreds of millions are dead. Billions find themselves facing starvation. The island was never big enough anyway for so many and some find a morbid sense of comfort in that fact. The royalty are destroyed, their cities are abandoned without the constant flow of resources required to keep them alive. The goat herders are still herding goats. Those that survived the conflicts had to move far from the wars and the effects of the climate change. Those that didn’t, didn’t survive.

A few royalty exist. They live among the ruins and devastation. They had to fight very hard to stay alive, even killing each other. They scratch out a living mostly by scavenging. A tiny few grow things. Hardly anybody actually hunts because there’s nothing left to hunt. It was all eaten in the destruction.

The adjustment to the survivors was exceedingly hard. Because of starvation, death and war, plague killed many. Simple infections were now life threatening because there were no medical services. Ancient wisdom for self-treatment had long ago been lost and even rejected among the royals. Their lifestyles of exploiting everything for profit, power, control and ownership left them bereft of the basic skills for survival. Some say that they forgot how to live. Other say that they never knew how. Their practice of killing everything that got in their way, especially other humans who chose to live simpler was appalling. But they did it anyway, firmly believing that their way was the one, true correct way.

But now they find themselves abandoned, alone and starving. The sheer folly and utter stupidity of their former lives and lifestyles is not lost on the survivors. Those that survived and complained were quickly destroyed by their own ineptness and lack of skills. Some were even killed because they were the new troublemakers, the terrorist that had enabled and caused all the problems in the first place.

A new way of life was embraced for the surviving island inhabitants. A respect for all things living and the life source for their lives was renewed generation by generation. This took a long time though, but eventually it was either taught, remembered or learned from trial and error. Island enemies no longer existed. It was after all, only one island. They eventually learned again how to get along with one another and the huge wars of the past were forgotten.

Very slowly, the island and the surrounding ocean recovered from the damage that was done. Millennium passed and some of the islanders started gathering resources to themselves and ordering everyone else around. The lessons of the past had long since been forgotten.