I voted 3, but probably between 2 and 3.

An easy 5 for me. Agriculture without fuel will not support the present population. Ergo, dieoff will occur, with all which that implies.

2 in Canada. 3 in the States. I wonder if another category could be created that includes elements of myth AND geological reality.

Regardless of peak oil, there's going to be an economic collapse that may actually proceed peak oil, and modify the sky high prices through demand destruction.

If the economy keeps chugging along, pulling more and more into the ponzi, then peak oil and higher prices will come first and will be the straw in the camel's back that precipitates an economic crisis.

Either way it isn't going to be pretty. The first is a more deflationary scenario. The second more inflationary. Ultimately living standards will plummet from sky high unemployment combined with lower prices, or through hyper inflation. Pick your poison.

Is any country, continent, immune from the worst of these effects?

I'm between a 4 and a 5...usually leaning closer to 5.

It's not PO that will cause this but people reaction to it...If everybody joins together & shares their resources with everybody freely to bring the level to a 3...then i will happily say i was wrong!

Compare PO with the great depression...then look at demographics:
- more than double the world population since TGD.
- many more family farms back then (which gave people a place to go).
- i don't believe there was any gov't debt at that time.
- people abhorred personal debt at that time.

A great depression NOW, should be quite different than the great depression back then...It almost certainly will involve a die-off (i just don't see any way around that before the rebuilding process begins).

I wander between a 4 and 5. With my recent campaign of filling up dollar bill borders with sites containing PO information, (written in the white borders on front and back), the more hope I think there is for it to be a 4. Since the information is provided for them, (with specific sites), I think many people will make the effort to find out what all that writing on the dollar bill was about, and a few of those people will take the issue seriously, (once they find out what it is.)

I voted 4 because I slide between 3.5 and 4.5 depending on my mood. Sometimes I think we'll make it through no problem, other times I think a bit of dying off will occur... I don't think the die-off will necessarily suck as terribly as many on this site imagine it will. Some european nations and Russia have been going through a "die-off" for a number of years now and they seem alright to me. If it's slow it won't be all that bad.

I'd like to know who voted for number 6!! The doomiest of the doomers!!

Have no fear! There will always be Beer!

Easy 4. It's going to be a tremendous change but there isn't going to be a huge die off. The key word here is we will "adjust".

Certainly, I could see the population growth reversing slowly, which in itself would be a big change. Keep in mind, the birth rates are already very low in many developed countries and the bulk of our population is already starting to retire.

World population has doubled since only 1960. It has more than TRIPLED since TGD. And it has increased fivefold since oil was first discovered. But your point is well taken, Ron.

I vote 5 because I think PO is just one of many paradigm shocks facing the culture of death that has held sway as the dominant culture for the past 10 millennia.

Overpopulation, environmental degradation, climate change, pandemic disease and economic collapse are all vying with PO to bring us crashing back from overshoot to balance.

PO might be the trigger or it might just be one more symptom among many. But IMO within the next decade, die-off will happen.

I voted 3 with the understanding that the problems will develop a few years after "peak". We could easily hit 4 by simply not changing.

Definitely a 5. I think we can learn to live sustainably, but not until we've addressed the overshoot problem - and to that there's only one solution. Die-off. As a species we must learn how to work with nature, as part of nature. Once we've done this we'll be able to make real achievements. One day perhaps even solar colonisation. Until then we have many lessons to learn.

Wouldn't that be awfully hot?

Could you add an 'other' category/choice? I am in the 4-5 camp, but I have reason to believe that long term, we (meaning people - not nations) will be ok...

GET THE WORD OUT. WRITE IT ON EVERY BILL YOU HAVE! Thats the funniest thing I've seen since BiGG posted the MOON DOOMED! link. I just cast the other 6. If you're gonna go Doomer, you may as well do it right! Why? If we're headed for 5, then there's no way to stop there. Energy's gone, metals are gone. Farmlands are sterile. Climate's screwed up. Nope, no way we stop at 5, were goin' all the way to 6.