As a minor note, what I predit would really happen if international trade was outlawed would be for the U.S. and Canada to near-instantly merge into The United Territories of North America, or something, rending the international aspect moot, and life would go on.
My points about the US were in response to the suggestion that the US would be fine. I fully concur that there would be utter chaos in many other countries, especially Japan et. al. (Britain would have a rough go of it, but could still go back to coal, I suspect.)
Addressing those who took exception to my suggestion that Canada would probably fair better, it has a lot to do with the mix of economic activity that goes on in both countries, and how that would transform in the face of lost foreign markets.
Canada would suffer gravely, no doubt about it. However, there are two factors in it’s favour: 1) the scale of its economy, and therefore its losses, is far smaller (less than 1/10th of the U.S.'s), 2) it has adequate domestic resources, energy and manufacturing capacity to maintain its current standard of living. The U.S., on the other hand, would have to develop new energy sources (shale oil, perhaps?), adjust its resource needs to reflect what’s available and build a huge amount of manufacturing capacity to make up what’s been lost.
I’m thinking just the opposite to everyone else. It will largely be the poor, peaceful, 3rd world countries with minimal trade with anyone else that will get through this fine. Sure, the big countries are richer but they’re going to fall harder and it’s going to take them longer to get back up. The massive turmoil that would arise would cripple any advanced society and cause anarchy and millions of deaths. Wheras with a poor country, most people are, to some extent prepared to deal with such an extreme contingency and can just go on with their lives.
How many americans do you know with portable electricity generators in their homes? How many people have several months supply of bottled water? Maybe if there was a 6 month warning that this would happen, the US could cope, but if it came overnight, I would rather be in the phillipines.
They might even do a bit better, actually, if imports of rifles and bullets were stopped.
Why would you need such a thing? The uSA doesn’t import any significant amount of electricity. Nor water. Did you read the OP? he’s nto asking what woudl happen if technology ended or something, he’s asking which nations could be self-sufficient. And other than oil (and a few rare metals) the USA is not bad off. We are a net exporter of food, and what we do import (cheap toys, gifts & clothes, and electronics) we can get along without until we re-ramp up those industries- assuming we really "need’ that much in the way of cheap clothing, toys & such.
Oil would be the only problem, and we’d have to ration gas and ramp up domestic production (oil shale and oil sand have nigh unlimited oil if we want to pay the price)- while making cars that get 50+mpg. Overall, that might even be a GOOD thing. Ok, and we’d have to have a “sell your platinium jewelry for Uncle Sam” drive. Big deal.
Many of the 3rd world nations depend heavily on other nations even for their infrastructure. Some nations even heavily depend on loans and aid to run their governments. Few have any oil, and those that do have no food or water. Now sure, in some of those nations there are dudes who live in what amounts to a medieval existance anyway and they might not be too badly affected- but after all, they don’t have too far to fall. However, many of those nations have unstable governments and even in the poorest nations of Africa we have seen what horrors civil war and “ethnic cleansing” will bring. In fact, in too many areas, without “Big Daddy” UN or USA around, and they’ll lapse into savagery beyond what they get away with today- which is pretty fucking bad.
OK, some of the small island nations out in the Pacific might be almost untouched. But I wouldn’t want to be in Asia, Africa, the Balkans or even South America. That doesn’t leave much.
Yes, but modern society, for all it’s superiority, is far more fragile. Ignore oil and coal, where is the US going to get it’s Vandium from? Manganese? Type D Wingnuts, Reticulated flanges? What happens if a power plant needs a replacement valve and the only company that makes them is in Mexico or China. What if that valve was essential to the running of the system.
Western people don’t have the education or preparation to deal with primitive situations, it’s an all-or-nothing type proposition. If the technological society breaks down, then it falls hard.
It is thoughtless at best to assume that oil is replaceable by domestic sources. Everything would change, ESPECIALLY food production. Do you have any idea how much energy in the form of petroleum goes into the food you put on your table? Personal transportation would be the least of our worries.
Petroleum fuels the fertilizer, the pesticides, the trucks, the planting equipment, the harvesting equipment - then add to that the transportation to get the crops to the different production facilities and then to your table.
Most of our crops do not directly feed individuals, but are commodities feeding a vast interconnected infrastructure. That would all have to change drastically. Our whole economy is a house of cards built on oil.
I agree with the person who said that the least affected country would be a third world nation - one where they don’t use a lot of energy and have a subsistence economy. I don’t know where that would be.
You assume, without any evidence, that there will be a break-down. I doubt this. As fro wingnuts- there is a supply of them now, and by the time they run out, we can have factories up and running that can make mountains of them. Watch “America, the Arsenal of Democracy” sometimes and you’ll see how Amrica geared up in only a year or so- and that was with 60 yo technolgy. We did it then, we can do it now.
Yeah sure, we’ll have some problems with some rare metals- I mentioned this, if you would read “Ok, and we’d have to have a “sell your platinium jewelry for Uncle Sam” drive. Big deal.” There’s so much Manganese off the coast of the USA that we could make walls of it. Sure, it’s be more expensive, but so? Sicne the uSA wouldn’t have that huge trade deficit, and a vast % of the national debt wouldn’t be owed to anyone anymore, the cost would be neglible.
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Rusalka** Yes, the USA needs Oil. But you forget that the USA has lots of oil. We buy it elsewhere as it’s cheaper, both in $$ and in damage to the environment. Oil shale, oil sands, and coal- the USA has enough of those to run everything for centuries to come. Sure, gas made form those will cost more, and thus no one will be driving a 8MPG SUV. But dudes now drive those, and they can drive a 50MPG car. Are you trying to tell me that gasoline or diesel made from those sources will cost more than 5x than what it costs now? :dubious: Growing crops wouldn’t be a problem, in fact, as we wouldn’t have to grow anywhere near as much, there wouldn’t be a problem at all. Food wouldn’t be a problem.
I dare say a lot of us in the northern half of the USA would be plenty happy if Canada stopped exporting its cold winds and snow to us.
If Norway, Denmark and Sweden joined forces, the resulting union wouldn’t be too bad off. Norway is ankle-deep in oil (with Denmark producing just enough to be self-sufficient), Sweden has iron ore and probably the most advanced industry of the three - they can build nuclear reactors and fighterplanes, so they should be able to make most of what’s needed. (And I’m certain Sweden could lash up a nuke or two as deterrent…) Denmark is a net exporter of food and could crank up the output if needed. Can we keep Greenland? Interesting minerals there (bauxite), not worth mining now but under the OP’s setup…
Hydroelectric power, wind turbines, advanced pharmaceuticals etc. etc. Not too shabby. I guess we’d have to get used to driving Volvos, though.
According to this site: http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/08/02/build/state/25-coal-fuel.inc
"For F-T, the break even point comes when crude oil is more than $35 a barrel. Friday crude oil futures settled at $60.57 a barrel. "
F-T = Fischer-Tropsch, named for the German scientists who developed the process in the 1920s for converting coal to diesel fuel
If in fact that the break even for FT is under $60 barrel then the price of gas could be roughly the same as today. There is also the other fuels from coal see:
http://www.taemag.org/issues/articleid.18976/article_detail.asp
The 6.15 per cent of arable land holds up pretty well against the United States’ 18.01 per cent because we have only 20 million people. In very simple terms, there is a very thin north-south area on the east coast, that we call the “Coastal Strip”. This is only about fifty miles wide, but it contains a major part of our population (including Sydney). This area is very arable, but it’s small, and it’s got a nasty habit of being built on. It’s a little-known fact that some of the best farmland in the entire country is a rich and fertile alluvial basin on the east coast. There is a minor drawback though - they dropped Sydney on it, so it’s entirely under concrete. This “Coastal Strip” area stops abruptly to the west, where the Great Dividing Range pops up with its sandstone eastern escarpment, also running for thousands of miles north-south. You’ve then got a hundred miles or so, as you head west, of rugged, wild, rocky, mountainous country which is next to useless for any sort of agriculture. Finally you get to the other side of the mountains, and they don’t drop away sharply like their eastern face. They mellow out into undulating country, and we have another north-south strip of this, about two or three hundred miles wide, which would likely be Australia’s main farming area. Sheep can be found anywhere, and dairy cattle tend to be in the southern regions, Hereford and other breeds make up the beef cattle through New South Wales and into Queensland, and there is also a wide variety of crops which change as you head north into the tropics and sub-tropical areas. Northern NSW has a decent-sized cotton industry. Heading further west, and the country flattens out. This is wheat country, generally. Beyond that, and we’re now about five or six hundred miles west of where we started in Sydney, and things start to get flat, sparse, and with a hint of semi-aridity. This is cattle country. The feed is sparse, but the stations (ranches) are enormous, and the cattle are still of good quality. Beyond that commences your several thousand miles of COMPLETE FUCK-ALL until you get to the southern areas of Western Australia, where the farming starts up again. This is a simplification, and there is farming in other areas, but generally think of Australia as the left two thirds being desert, and the right third divided into vertical bands, most of which are just fine for growing stuff.
Seafood should be little problem.
As has been mentioned, we do import some oil, but we’d probably have enough of our own to splutter along, maybe. We have huge coal reserves, and if it wasn’t for our water shortages, I could see them building modern steam locomotives (I have heard rumours of South Africa looking into doing this). Our electricity grid is coal-based, and that should be fine. Our manufacturing sector isn’t what it used to be in this day and age of cheap and quality Chinese widgets, so that could be a major stumbling block for us until we get going properly.
Australia would survive, but it wouldbe decidedly ugly for quite a long initial peroid. We are among the world’s most urbanised people (despite all the space), and if the average Australian had even a short disruption to their supply of microwaveable popcorn, I suspect they’d lose the plot. I too tend to think that the poorer countries might handle this better. We in the west are just too soft.
I assume when the walls go up we can stop budgeting for foreign aid? The US currently spends about $15 billion. While it’s only a small part of the US budget (we’re near the bottom of industrial nations, percentage-wise), all of that could go to developing the US’s oil reserves, developing more efficent cars/farming equipment, ect.
The same with defense spending, or do we still need the military?
Some one get Una in here, hmm? She’ll be able to tell us some very solid figures.
I can think of quite a few African countries that wouldn’t do badly at all. Places like Congo Kinshasa and the CAR have a few elites and a miniscule middle class who would suffer but the only thing 90% of the population gets from foreign trade is maybe a plastic bucket and fripperie. As for foreigners preventing them from “lapsing into savagery,” who is it exactly who buys the “blood diamonds” for export and imports the automatic weapons for sale?