
Life inside a nuclear missile silo - ClifReeder
http://www.theverge.com/culture/2011/11/1/2525857/2012-survival-condo-at-the-end-of-the-world
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dmm
> the idea that soon oil will run out, bringing about the end of society as we
> know it

That's not what peak oil means. The oil will never "run out". In a hundred
years we will still be pumping oil out of Saudi Arabia.

A person can be surrounded by a whole world of air and still suffocate if
their lungs are inflamed and full of fluid. A person is doomed if the effort
of drawing a breath consumes more oxygen than derived from that breath.

Likewise it doesn't matter how many barrels of oil are in the ground or under
the sea if producing a barrel of oil takes more energy than can be derived
from that oil. It doesn't matter how many acres are covered in tar sands if
the facilities to convert those sands to oil aren't built.

That said, the people in this article are crazy.

~~~
blake8086
I wouldn't be so sure.

I think one day we'll see oil wells with vast temporary solar arrays deployed
next to them pumping oil for the millions of gas and diesel-burning engines
that are still in the wild.

We'll be spending 10 barrels worth of energy to get a barrel of oil because
there's so much infrastructure investment in oil.

~~~
dmm
There is a lot of interesting analysis regarding possible responses to
declining oil production. If you respond to a 3% decline in production by
building infrastructure to produce energy by other means, you only deepen the
energy deficit because that infrastructure takes energy to build.

Check out this article: <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526>

You might right though. Sperm whale oil is still used to lubricate satellites.

~~~
Retric
If you look at how much energy has been harnessed by farms over time you will
see a far more gradual increase. _In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption
was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). Oil remained the largest energy
source (33%) despite the fact that its share has been decreasing over time.
Coal posted a growing role in the world's energy consumption: in 2009, it
accounted for 27% of the total._
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency> Typical crop plants:
1–2% <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth> Permanent pastures: 26% Permanent
crops 4.71% The estimated amount of irrigated land in 1993 was 2,481,250 km2

So something like 1% efficiency * 2,481,250 km2 * 1,000,000 m^2/km * 1kwh /
m^2 * 1000w / kw * 8 hours a day * 365 days a year * 3600j = 2.60829 × 10 ^
21J or 724,525TWH granted plants use much of that but farms are still
producing something like 70% of the worlds energy and then spending a large
fraction of that on farm animals.

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fleitz
Looks cool, but not buying into the whole every family needs a "compound"
theory.

The part in the video about the idea of the earth getting closer to the
galactic centre is hilarious. I don't think the speaker has any concept of the
relative speed at which we're heading to the galactic centre, collision with
Andromeda will happen first, and even that should likely be a non-event. By
the time the Sun reaches the galatic core it will have long since burned out.

~~~
alexqgb
Indeed. It's funny hearing definitive statements about global warming ("I
don't think carbon has anything to do with it") followed by an inadvertent but
total admission of scientific illiteracy.

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Ahmes
There is a fascinating documentary/long-form article in VICE about another
Nike missile silo in Kansas that was backed by a VC and fronted as Y2K fallout
shelter/precision spring manufacturing facility for NASA but was in fact
producing kilos of MDMA and analogue chemicals.[1]

One of the guys behind the operation, Leonard Pickard, was formally convicted
of producing 200,000 doses of LSD in an industrial facility in Mountain
View.[2]

Interestingly, the facility in Kansas was turned into an even more luxurious
living abode than the hypothetical ones presented here. Think Scarface.

[1] [http://www.vice.com/hamiltons-pharmacopeia/getting-high-
on-k...](http://www.vice.com/hamiltons-pharmacopeia/getting-high-on-krystle)
(Scroll down)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard>

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xradionut
There's a fortress mentality amoung many of the wealthy I know. Beyond gated
communities and personal self defense it has extending to overly secure homes
outside of major cities or secondary homes in other countries. Many of them
think of it as "insurance" just in case the economic poop hits the fan and
there's a more agressive backlash than OWS.

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jessriedel
Economist Robin Hanson has a lot of interesting stuff to say about the
economics of existential risk, and how we might use refuges as payouts in
prediction markets which forecast the end of the world.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/refuge-markets.html>

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jplewicke
My major concern with using a former nuclear missile silo would be that it's
hard to know whether Russia's intelligence service knows that it's been
deactivated. The odds of of a nuclear exchange with Russia are low, but I'd
prefer to know that my fallout shelter might not be targeted for a direct hit
with an ICBM.

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socillion
An interesting and vaguely related article on the psychology of what happens
to believers when nothing happens:

[http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/17/apocalypse-now-why-
bel...](http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/17/apocalypse-now-why-believers-
will-grow-stronger-when-the-world-doesnt-end/)

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Andi
I cannot imagine to live in a house without (direct) sunlight.

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mrbgty
The bunkers are cool structures.

The people in the video are crazy.

