315. MY GRUESOME STARVATION DIARY

We know from Peak Oil 101 that our agricultural systems are utterly dependent on crude oil. Food growth, harvesting, transport, retail, the plastic bag you take it all home in... It all runs on oil. In fact, it takes 35 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of beef. And that doesn't even include the half gallon of gasoline you need to get to the drive-thru and back. So everytime you eat a hamburger, you're basically guzzling down half a barrel of crude oil.

Clearly peak oil is going to have gruesome knock-on effects on the food supply. As oil prices soar, the price of food will spiral out of control and our food systems will collapse. Mass starvation is a certainty.

This isn't some hypothetical future event we're talking about here. The latest stats from the EIA show that crude oil peaked in May 2005 at 74.4mbd, and is now down by almost 2.5% from that peak. Peak oil already happened, and we're more than 2.5 years into the decline of the post-peak period.



Only the prepared will survive the looming food crisis. People like Matt Savinar, who have wisely stocked up large quantities of nitro-packed food:

Now, as you may know, I am JD -- one of the Internet's premier peak oil denialists, and proprieter of the website Peak Oil Debunked. I have taken no steps whatsoever to prepare myself for peak oil. In fact, I have consistently maintained that peak oil is no big deal, and gone far out of my way to mock and ridicule peak oilers. Here's my food supply:


Don't have much gardening space either. Just a few old pots I found in the trash, and a ratty tuft of untended green onion:


It doesn't take a genius to see that I am going to be starving to death in the near future.

Now I know I've enjoyed laughing at you peak oilers over the years, so I figured you all would enjoy watching me eat my words. You know... Rue the day I ever mocked peak oil.

To that end, I have started this thread to document my descent into starvation due to peak oil. I will be posting to this thread every 3 months or so with an update on the soaring food prices, and my ongoing starvation status.

To establish a base line, I got some prices from the supermarket this morning:

Nov. 24, Sakae Supermarket, Osaka, Japan, 2.5 years post-peak (prices in yen)
One apple: 100
One tomato: 158
One head, Iceberg lettuce: 198
One stalk of broccoli: 198
One medium onion: 33
One medium potato: 66
5 kg, White rice: 2480
1 liter, Milk: 188
Chicken breast (100 grams): 50
Beef stew meat (100 grams): 114
I loaf of French bread: 165
One egg: 53

Current weight: 86.5 kg

Mood at onset of starvation: Upbeat