Well, the official story of WWO is over for now. Time to peel back the curtain a little bit. If you don't like out-of-character stuff, go ahead and ignore this post. Otherwise, stick around for some behind the scenes extras.

This has been an eye opening experience for me. I like to write speculative fiction, and I do actually work for an oil company (name withheld for obvious reasons). I've also had some experience in writing collective fiction, so the chance to participate in something like WWO was something I couldn't pass up. The intensity of this, however, got to me. As gas prices rose in the real world, it became harder and harder to write in WWO. It was quite depressing, and it was almost impossible to come up with something that wasn't a major downer. That's why my posts became less frequent. I apologize for that and hope that what I did write was good for everyone.

Seeing everyone's different views was awesome. Some were more apocalyptic than others, but it all managed to work well together. I think we all captured the panic, the perseverance, and the general unbalance a sudden disruption of oil would cause. Do I think it will happen like we said it would? God I hope not. Hopefully, we'll wake up and realize that we can't afford to keep spending $4 a gallon on gas just to waste it. I believe we'll reach that point slowly, before a WWO occurs. Then again, who knows? That's the point of speculative fiction, really. To make us think about what could be, what might be, and what we would do about it.

So, what became of my WWO counterpart? Well, he and his family moved into a house near the office. They're doing fine, and he's even got into gardening and helping out at the market on weekends. His company spent a fair amount of money acquiring small alternative fuels firms and making collaborative deals with the rest of Big Oil to research a way to minimize the use of crude for transportation fuel. Some years down the road, a breakthrough happened and gasoline consumption was cut by 60% thanks to better engines and a new fuel source.

However, the Suburban Revolution was over. After 2007-2008, people weren't interested in living far away from where they work anymore. Cities that were once decaying were now revitalized thanks to renewed interest in tighter communities. Once an urban problem, crime moved out to the suburbs as the new city communities cracked down and drove out the bad elements. Safety and security was best found not behind the gates of some housing development 15 miles away, but in the closeness of neighbors and the ability to walk to the store and to work.

As for me, in this here and now, I'm a different person thanks to WWO. I'm much more aware of the fragile thread that supports the lifestyle I and others keep. I'm making changes, but there's a long way to go. But I AM changing, and that means that for me, WWO was a success.

Thank you to everyone who sent me words of encouragement. Thank you to the masters of WWO, for giving me the chance to participate and think. And thank you to the other Heroes, for without you this wouldn't have been as amazing a journey as it was.

Looks like it's the final days of WWO as a community site. I've been in some deep thought about all of this, and I've come to several conclusions:

1) We take ease of consuming for granted. We take and take, without thinking about where it comes from or what would happen if it was gone.

2) On that note, there's no appreciation for what we have. In the days before easy transportation, everything you got you earned through productive work of some form or fashion. Also, everything served a purpose. Nowadays, our lives have been filled with clutter. The shock helped reduce that, but there's a long way to go.

3) We need to rebuild communities. Don't just lock yourself up again. Get to know your neighbors. You might need them someday.

4) Learn how to take care of yourself. Basic disaster survival is a must. Once again, we got lazy and careless. It cost us a lot.

5) Understand the world as best you can. The oil shock shows us how interconnected money and politics and even religion really are. Make sure you elect leaders who understand that balance.

As I sit here at the end, I wonder how different things might have been had we planned ahead of time. Before the shock, I told some friends about the rumors. They brushed them off, said they could weather the prices. These same friends are now getting comfortable again.

The question to take out of this is: can we really change?

Good night and good luck everyone.

Current Mood: tired

It's ironic we'd be talking about world power this week. I've been meaning to post this up, but hadn't had the chance.

A premonition from the past

It's kind of funny, really. All this time we'd convinced ourselves we were #1 in the world. Problem is that in order to be #1, you need to not rely on anyone else. We've been reliant and are still reliant on other countries to keep ourselves afloat. We owe them, they know it. Yet we just kept acting like it was us doing them the favor. All the while they tightened their grip on us like a boa constrictor.

If you didn't already know, the US is the only country that has private oil companies. All the rest are state run in some capacity or another. Oil was always political, always at the center of world relations. Iraq was about oil, but not in the way most people think. We didn't want the oil in the ground. We wanted another friend in the Middle East, one we had influence over. Well, that didn't turn out so well.

There's a huge slice of humble pie that America is going to have to choke down. Our days of acting like the big dog in the yard are done. How can we be a superpower if we can't even get our boats out of dock? We have to accept the fact that until we can get the alternative fuels going, we are merely a customer to the real Big Oil...the ones who have it. That ain't us, guys. It's Russia and the Middle East, our two biggest "enemies" as far as the history of the last 50 years.

We Are So Hosed.

Now can you see why my company wants to get out of oil and into other forms of energy?

Current Mood: intimidated

This is a direct response to chuckles' mission. Yeah, it took a couple weeks to respond but work has kept me really busy. I'm not entirely sure if this should count this as a success, since I missed on a couple of details. However, I'd like to submit my progress anyway.



Hello farmer's market. Here's hoping we can find some tasty vittles today!




Ooh..a bread stall. I got an idea. How about pizza? Yes, that's me with the grey shirt and bald head. Here's the first part of my questionable status on this mission. I couldn't take a picture with my sign. Advertising you're a part of WWO in this town (especially a high profile member like me) is not a good thing, so I had to lay low.




Wool? Not too tasty, but might come in useful down the road. Nifty that I could find that here.




Cheese...but it's yogurt cheese. That gets a veto from the missus as far as pizza goes. This could be more difficult than previously thought.




Ahh...veggies. Lots of greens, but again a failure in no tomatoes. Oh well, I'll get some salad greens anyway.




Some entertainment, which was nice. Yes those are cars. We still have fuel here, so some people drove. It's definitely a luxury, though. Most of us biked or walked.

By this point, I realized I couldn't find two very important ingredients. Cheese and tomatoes were nowhere to be found in this particular market. I would have to try somewhere else.

Here's questionable status time #2. I went to a local farm market (nice store, but all local stuff). While I was there I picked up some locally made sausage, cheese, and they even had tomatoes! However, they were VERY unhappy with me taking pictures in the store. These times have made people exceptionally paranoid, and they were afraid I was working for a competitor. Even after I explained what I was doing (leaving out the WWO part, simply saying it was a school project for my kid), they would not let me publish any pictures of the inside or outside of the store.

You can fail me now if you want, but here's the rest of the story. The family and I headed over to a friend's house, since our hotel doesn't have a stove. After I got there, it was time for inventory.




A little over a pound of cheese, tomatoes, crusts, salad greens, and Italian sausage. Add some olive oil for treating the crusts and dabbing on the greens and you've got a pretty good meal going.

(yes, I know it's a gas stove. Another green zone perk.)

I could post a recipe, but really it's simple. Grate cheese, brown sausage, cut tomatoes. Put together and bake. Put more tomatoes and cheese with greens for salad. Through the magic of TV, we get...




Pizza and salad. Yummy yummy. Hope that helps brighten your day, chuckles!

[OOG: Just want to add a few links here for those folks who helped me out on this adventure.

Cherry Street Farmers' Market in Tulsa

Lovera's Grocery in Krebs (sausage and cheese, exported to store).

Would've given props to that local farm store too, but the lack of pictures = lack of props. Next time, don't be so mean :P

Just two more links...
This one 'cause these guys were so cool to me out on Cherry Street: Sustainable Tulsa

And here's one for anyone else feeling brave enough to try this out: Local Harvest for finding markets, co-ops, etc. in your area]

Current Mood: full

They say we should be documenting this crisis, and that we're short of photographs. I did a little driving around on the way back from work and snapped a few phone shots. It's not a lot, but it gives you an idea of the impact.



First off, I wanted to show you I got my banner in my car. Figured if I'm going to be driving, I should at least advertise.




Four months ago, these storefronts were home to local businesses. Once the crisis hit, prices went up and people quit shopping. Now they stand an empty testament to what once was.




Even local grocery stores haven't been immune. The big box chains have their shipping deals in place, but the local stores can't promise the volume of sales. They got left behind to die off.




These trucks have been here for a while. You'd think a large shipper wouldn't abandon his load, but when you're out of gas you're not going anywhere. I'm assuming they'll get out here eventually.




This house has been for sale for 3 months. Even a buyer's bonus can't get people to make that kind of investment. However, there is some brightness amongst all this.




Sorry for the poor quality. This household converted their entire yard (at least a couple thousand sqaure feet) into a garden growing food and spices. It's good to see some folks are trying to help ease the transition pain.

So, there's an update from a Green Zoner. It's not violent up here, but it's not all roses either. Instead of a supernova, it's more of a slow chilling. I know we're moving towards tomorrow, but seeing the old world fading is still a bit disturbing.

Current Mood: contemplative

Friend of mine sent these to me at work. It's so fitting. You just gotta laugh during times like these, you know?

Current Mood: silly

It's been a month since I've posted...feels like forever. I haven't been able to spend any significant amount of time online, much less be able to get my thoughts together. Everything is a little tense here. Heck, it's tense everywhere. I know I promised better news, so here goes.

First off, know that I can't go into a ton of details. I still work for a corporation, so there's NDAs and all that jazz keeping me from really spilling the beans. What I can tell you is the same things that the media would be telling you if they weren't so focused on all the violence.

We're working on a solution.

Actually, it's not so much a solution as it is a path forward. By now it's apparent that oil is never again going to be produced in a quantity that meets the demand we currently have. A lot is going to have to change, and all the unrest proves that as a whole society isn't ready to make the same sacrifices many on the WWO boards have. So, as any good capitalist entity would, the company has seen a need that should be filled.

You should never fool yourselves into thinking the oil companies didn't foresee this day. They knew it would happen. They just weren't quite ready for it to happen so suddenly. The unpredictability of the human beast actually caught big oil off guard. Contingencies planned for 10 to 25 years from now are being accelerated.

We want to keep the world moving. We want the trucks on the road and the planes in the air. The oil companies gain NOTHING from transportation failure. Sure, there were record profits in a couple of the companies (not mine, but that's another story I can't tell). Those profits come from inflated sales of crude from their upstream portions, sales that are quickly declining due to lack of supply. The days of pulling money out of the ground are fast coming to an end. The oil might be there, but it's too expensive or dangerous to get.

So, what do companies that have spent over a century fueling the world do when the source starts to dry up?

What do you think? -play game show thinking music-

If you answered "find another source" you win the black gold star. That's what the companies have been doing for years. There's not a lot of the world left to explore, so most of the oil production increases have been from improved taps of existing sources. Otherwise, oil companies have just been trading wells and crude around.

We knew that couldn't last. We've been working on alternatives. That's right, the oil companies who are responsible for killing fuel cells and slamming ethanol have been working on alternative fuel sources for years. Any time one alternative or another has been "killed" it's because it was too expensive for us or the transportation industry to implement compared to oil. The politicians love to say they support them, but the hard economics show that the ideas are still dreams. However, those "dead" ideas have been pushed into R&D to find ways to make them cheaper and get them out on the highway. The first company to break the oil barrier would become the richest company in the world.

Do we have the cure yet? Nope. There are many things in the works. Some are ideas you're familiar with like bio-diesel, ethanol, and hydrogen. Some are more eccentric (and seriously off limits for me to talk about). The point is that the very entities people see fit to label as the bad guys are likely to be the ones who save the collective bacon of the world. It's a storm they've been waiting for, and I can almost promise you that when we come out the other side you'll realize the fuel companies (formerly oil companies) aren't the all powerful enemies the media wants you to think we are. We want this crisis over as much as you do, and we're busting our ----- to get there.

Oh, and the mass transit bill? Yeah, we had a lobbyist there. I can tell you why, too. It was another pipe dream. The amount of fuel and energy it would take to implement and maintain the infrastructure would have pushed our supplies even further into the red. More gas to the government = less gas to the people, and that's before the trains and buses would even be running. By the time it would have become solvent, the energy crisis will be over.

The light at the end of the tunnel, folks...this crisis will pass. There's a timeline to get it fixed. It's not tomorrow, but it's out there. We're not going to go extinct as long as we resist the urge to panic. Those who can are doing what they can to push us past this. We need to work together, not against each other.

Current Mood: and focused

Couldn't think of a happy title, given the circumstances.

First off, sorry for the long silence. A lot has happened in the last two weeks The first and most important thing is that I had to relocate. The company decided that all employees who commute more than 10 miles a day need to maintain a "temporary residence" near the offices. Right now, they're footing the bill to keep me and my family in a hotel a couple blocks away from the complex. Most of the hotels in town have been converted into dormitories. The desk staff was reassigned to facility work (read laundry and maintenance), since they weren't needed for reservations anymore. The owners of the properties agreed to this, since otherwise they would have had to shut down completely.

Guess the good news is that I'm in a more rural area than I was before. There's lots of open land around this town that can be farmed. Since the company basically built this town a century ago, they have ties to the landowners around here. Slowly but surely, they're making contracts to keep the farms working and keep the workers fed. It's feudalism v2.0, and the company is king. Everyone here would be in deep trouble if the "secured" flow of fuel stopped.

Yes, you heard me right. The company, acting in its own interests, is renegotiating almost all of their downstream contracts. Using some fine print most people never read (I mean, who actually thought a "catastrophic long term oil shortage" would happen), they managed to reshape the flow of gasoline and diesel in such a way that it ends up helping them out. After the military gets their share, the next priority of fuel goes to the infrastructure to keep the company going. If you live in a town with a refinery, terminal, or port, there will be gas there for the people who work for the company and the folks who feed and supply them. What's left after that is what the rest of the world gets.

So now you know where part of the refined fuel has gone. The autocracy we all feared is real now. My company isn't the only ones. Every oil company, especially the foreign state run ones, have begun to enact their plans to keep operating. State first, company next, then sell the remainder for the highest prices. It is the law of business on a grand scale involving the lifeblood of our culture. As fuel becomes more scarce, those controlling it will grasp it tighter and tighter. Our government will try to balance things out, but they're just as enslaved to the supply as we are. Even if they took it over, it wouldn't change things. Keeping the remaining fuel flowing to the "right places" is the first rule of the New Order.

It was unpopular to work for big oil before, but now I know it will be dangerous. The media's done a great job blaming the companies for the failure of society as a whole to prepare. Now that society is getting more irate, and they're after the easiest scapegoats. That means I can't tell you exactly where I am now. Even if some of you enterprising folks do figure it out, remember two things. One, security around here is pretty tight. They know there are nuts out there, and the security detail is likely to taser or shoot and then ask who you are. Two, I'm your lifeline inside. Taking your frustration out on me or my coworkers will only cut away the information I can give you.

That disclaimer said, I wanted to let you guys know what was coming up. I wish I could do more to help, but I'm forced into the situation of watching out for me and my own. This is our best hope for the middle future, and I'm working on a plan for the longest term. The best advice I have is if you don't currently work for a "vital" industry or service located near some part of the oil infrastructure, the outages are going to keep getting worse until the fuel situation stabilizes.

Hopefully next week I can provide you some happier news. Let's just say that part of the company's contingency plan is being ramped up. I can't go into too much detail yet (NDAs and such) but I'll check in and see what I can and can't say.

Current Mood: guilty

One of the benefits of being an IT salaryman is that they like to make sure you can work 24/7. That means company provided Blackberrys and laptops. In case of emergency, you can work from your house.

I'd call the events of the last 3 months a big emergency.

I was putting in long days/evenings until they decided they wanted us in the office more than we were out of it. So, I went back to having a more reasonable schedule on the days I had to go into work. It was fine, if a bit expensive, but then the gasoline started drying up and it got real difficult to get in.

Since my employer is an oil company, they're in full out crisis mode right now. They can't afford to lose anyone, because it would be near impossible to fill the positions with anyone who do the job with the efficiency required. That gave me and my coworkers some leverage to pull of a minor coup.

They want us to come in 3 days a week? Fine. Let us set up a corporate van route that traverses the 50 miles back and forth between Tulsa and our site. The vans run diesel (relatively cheap and in full supply), and we can rotate drivers. Amazingly, they agreed pretty quickly. We found a couple of people that had the right commercial licenses, and voila instant shuttle. Too bad they couldn't have done this a few years ago, but a few years ago we couldn't convincingly say do this or we quit.

So, it's a good thing I've still got a job, right? Well, except for the fact that who I work for makes me public enemy #1 right now. Some of my coworkers have found out the hard way it doesn't pay to advertise anymore. At best, you get a lot of angry questions about why weren't people warned and such. At worst, well let's just case they're still looking for the culprits, but my teammate should be able to go home from the hospital soon.

I don't know if I'll still have a job six months from now. I guess it all depends on how the world adjusts to things. My job, like my life, revolved around gasoline in ready abundance. Now that it's going away, my job like my life is in a flurry of confusion and adjustment. It's times like this that belief in a higher power comes in handy. I'd be one depressed lad if I couldn't hope it would all turn out for the best.

Current Mood: okay

A lot has been said about rationing and when the government is going to step in and make sure that everyone gets the fuel they need. I have the feeling that you're not going to see that happen, at least at a consumer level. From the talk I've been hearing at work, the primary concern is making sure the trucking industry keeps going as long as possible. All other fuel usage is secondary at this point. Cars, vans, SUVs can rust as long as the people who transport supplies keep moving.

What's that mean for you and me? Well, as the supply of oil continues to drop, less gasoline is available. Many of you are already seeing that. However, the gas that is available is going to be found in one of two places. The stores that are directly owned by the oil companies are going to get first share. There's not a lot of those out there, though. The rest of the available auto fuel goes to the large chains. They pay the best, so they get the product. That doesn't mean every Circle K and 7-11 is going to have gas, however. Distance from a terminal tank farm is key. The further away from the terminals you get, the less likely you're going to have gas and the more expensive it will get. I'm lucky to live within 30 miles of four major terminal facilities, so I haven't been out of gas yet.

With all the gas going to the chains, the small mom and pop gas stations are basically hosed. There's a couple around my community that have already closed down, and more are sure to follow. It's the Wal-Mart effect. If you don't have the buying power, you can't afford to compete. In this case, if you don't have multiple stations, you don't even get to buy product. It's causing a lot of uproar, but the eagles in Contracts and Legal have already made sure the little guys can't fight us. It's amazing what you can squeeze into the fine print these days. If you thought the oil companies were screwing the consumers over, wait until the big store chains get a stranglehold on the market.

On the diesel front, it's a bit better. The fuel is still there, thanks to a smart move by the EPA to allow the refineries to make high-sulfur diesel again. That means the refineries can turn out diesel as fast as they can, and most are ramping up to full capacity. Where it used to be gasoline first, then diesel, it's reversed now. Most of the work will be getting as much diesel out of each barrel that they can without blowing past the old high sulfur limit. The older (pre-2007) trucks and equipment will be fine on that. The newer vehicles that were designed for low sulfur might see some supply shortages or be forced to run the high sulfur fuel and risk the damage. The higher sulfur means more environmental impact, but it's obvious we've got more pressing concerns than pollution at this point.

In short, as long as the diesel flows the government will probably not step in. Forcing any sort of gasoline rationing on the consumers is only going to make the unrest worsen. However, as soon as diesel starts drying up, you can bet they'll be there to make sure as much of the trucking infrastructure stays intact as they can. Just like with the gas, the big companies with buying power will get the fuel, and the little guys get the scraps. That means more small companies will go under, more unemployment, and more depression in the economy.

I don't know about you, but I feel like a little minnow in a pond full of bass. Getting the information I get just makes me a minnow that knows too much for his own good. I can't do anything to change it. All I can do is keep reporting and hope that the information helps you all plan and prepare. Of course, if you haven't starting changing your life by this point, you're coming up to the starting line after the race has already started.