Doom meaning what? Zombie hordes? Does it have to get to that point to consitute "doom"?

It is of course theoretically possible to cope with $8 dollar gas but that is how people are wired especially in the US. You may be underestimating how much different their situation is from ours. There is no “real” culture here in the US; Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly on the great democratic Leviathan. This little experiment in Enlightenment polity is one SMALL step away from the “bellum omnium contra omnes”. As we speak all the social safety nets, to capture those who can no longer act “economically”, that were [reluctantly] put into place are “financially” failing or have failed. It won’t take long for the mounting gasoline, energy, and food cost to reach a trigger point where those that can no longer keep running on the treadmill begin to fall off in quickly increasing quantities. As those number build, as they are every day, those forced to the bottom will find away to turn their existential anxiety into creative anxiety and release upon the “system” that has thrown them to the wolves. The very technocratic aristocracy that they have been suckling upon their entire lives will become their enemy, and they will find creative ways to strike back at it. As institutions and supply lines begin to break down from mob violence the situation will keep accelerating until the war against all arrives right at your front door. Where things go from there is the biggest question…
Ordo Ab Chao
==AC

Ya should have posted this in the Doomers forum.
But as the thread about what old posters think about $107/bbl points out, there are many factors at work and their effects are not easy to forecast.
All one can do is use their Meter to gauge progress at achieving compliance with their personal 5 Rules.
When you have made some little progress to those goals, go out and enjoy the sunshine.

Yes safety nets are falling right and left. Europe has not been bestruck by doom by high gas prices because Europe had lots of time to adapt to high gas prices. Those gas taxes allowed gradual addition of mass transit and other systemic adaptations. Doubling the price of gas in a system that is completely adapted to long commutes from huge, wasteful mcmansions in the exurbs in low-efficiency cars to get to jobs that are based on financial alchemy will be catastrophic. Yeah, my doom-meter bumped today bigtime.

Congrats on taking up the pipe, vision-master. Does wonders for the nerves. Cheapest way to imbibe, too. Have a few tobacco seeds as well - plan to corner the market on Localized Vice!

I hope for things to get bad but not out of hand. Enough of a sting to make people sit up and ask some real questions. Seems like there are enough constraints on the system to keep the wheels from falling off for a few years - barring total loss of bees, that will truly and utterly fuck us up pronto.

That's an interesting post, Kill. It mirrors my own psychic sensations.
The sad truth is that probably no preparations will be sufficient, esp. when you get into my age group (50-plus) and realize that though the spirit is willing, the flesh won't always be.
But the thing that most frightens me is that soon most people will be frightened, not just us futurist types. Then the stampede begins.
How do you prepare for a locomotive bearing down on you in your nice little sanctuary, and you're tied to the tracks?

I lived in Europe for five years, SPG (admittedly, a long time ago), and visited it several times since. Its infrastructure is organized completely differently from the US one. I'm not at all surprised that they're living fairly easily with $8 gasoline.
But, as that mean sonofabitch Kunstler correctly notes, we've committed everything to the current crazy arrangement. Most suburban streets don't even have sidewalks, and here in backwoods Virginny, the roads don't even have shoulders. We can't "go European" without paying an enormous price that will cause a lot more than 15% of people to have to start skipping meals etc.
I'm talking Greater Depression. You can just see it shaping up, with the latest Fed bailout of the plastic-housing industry, which will be paid for with invented money.

You'll get used to it, as you have up till now. Take a slow scroll down this page: Link
$5 gas? I should be so lucky

Now that I've started a bunch of seedlings today, I feel much better.

Didn't have to spend a dime today, either, so being broke is no setback.

I figure, like nausea, the shit will come in waves.

There is an air of nervious anticipation with some posters on this thread.
Perhaps you could think of how an astute reader of European politics would have felt through the 1920's and 1930's. That sense that from an accademic threat of street thugs and bully boys the slow growth and spread of facism, predicting it would all end in tears... and year by year crisis by crisis slowly realising how many, just how god forsaken many tears it would end in and feeling a world desperate not too see. Retaking the Saar, German rearmarment, Italian advernturism in Africa, Japan and China, Anschluss, the Sudatenland and piece in our time...... every ratcheting of the tension fearing and hoping it would burst.
So we watch finacial markets, oil production reports, food prices, weather, each with our own theories how things will turn out and slow but surely feeling the ratcheting tension and realisation of how it will turn out in the end..... bit by bit and ignored by the general population.
If its any solice perhaps you can think of yourself a little like WSC, in the wilderness years watching and warning about the gathering storm.
Still that story ultimately had a happy ending....... after all the tears.

The time for us to be tested is rushing toward us. I now believe we will have severe shocks this year. Mental preparation is vital. You may find out your preparedness will give you the ability to keep your head while everyone else is losing theirs. Get your worrying over with now.
Read this book: Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. (Available for as little as $3 on amazon)
Remember, you have the TREMENDOUS ADVANTAGE of foreknowledge. When the time comes, all the scenarios we've hashed-out over the past years will show their true worth.

I had my doom-o-meter go off this afternoon when I tried to purchase a few #10 cans of freeze dried meats. Most of the websites stated they were back ordered. Yikes!
Not to favor one vendor over another, I will state Nitro-Pak had what I wanted in stock.
I am definitely more sensitive to things like that than I was two years ago.

I for one know about "mental darkness" and have been busy downsizing my physic life about 10 years now. Happiness is walking in the woods with my dog. Happiness is going for a nice bike ride, happiness is staying home and getting a nice buzz.

As pointed out, the Europeans do pay more for gas, but that's not a fair comparison (I was stationed in Italy for a year). They have much better public transport (I have none where I live). Second, they may pay more for gas, but they don't pay anything for healthcare. Health insurance and bills are rising fast and killing Americans. I would gladly pay more for gas if I had free health care, even as "bad" as the European health care is