If we ran out of fuel, what sequence of events happens?

Transport and supply chains collapse first, then food and energy shortages spread, economies destabilize, and daily life grinds to a halt.

Supply chains die in days, not weeks. Grocery stores empty, hospitals lose power, and modern civilization basically reverts to pre-industrial within a month.

1. The Government will tell you that there is not a problem. 2. Then that there is a problem but it's the fault of the previous party. 3. Then they will tell you that it is an opportunity for renewable energy. 4 Then everything stops.

Step 1 eat your neighbors step 2 now your are stronger than the starving people you will win

We will not run out of oil, but oil is priced on a worldwide market. It may cost $15 per gallon for gas, but we won’t run out of gas.

If we are talking about running out based on current global dynamics, the US wouldn't run out. Realistically, if there is that serious of a supply issue, the fuel supply in the US gets nationalized and is still able to provide plenty for us to keep things going.

There is a three part documentary series on this, Australian, Mad Max, Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.

Work From Home would finally be the standard again instead of managers forcing people to come into the office for no actual reason other than to micromanage and control them.

Have any no watched Mad Maxx yet?

It's not quite straightforward considering there would be all kinds of restrictions imposed on fuel consumption in the lead up to day zero. You'd probably see incremental rationing of fuel, with the population getting cut off first and then industries getting cut off in order of necessity. You'd already have been living without electricity or any kind of retail necessities for weeks before day zero hits. You'll probably be so miserable that you won't even notice when the day finally comes. This is based on my experience living in a city that once ran out of water due to drought. The water restrictions began broad - no watering of gardens before sunset, no washing of cars - and gradually escalated to restrictions on water usage across the board - only 25 kilolitres per month. From there, it got stricter - weekly restrictions instead of monthly. And then it got to daily restrictions for a while until the pipes actually ran dry and people got a *daily* ration from tankers. I'd argue that day zero had already come to pass at that point, but the "day" kept getting postponed because the "savings" were helping so much. The same would probably happen to fuel.

In the distance, you will see four horsemen approaching. One on a white horse, one on a black horse, one on a red horse and one on a pale horse. Then a cybertruck driver on his phone crashes in to them. The cybertruck disintegrates and bursts into a nuclear explosion. As cybertruks are secretly linked, the nuclear self destruct in all of them triggers. Thus endeth the world.

First comes the panic… then the silence when everything just slows down. Kinda scary how fast the world would change without it.

You think the panic-buying was bad in the pandemic? This will be food riots and mass hysteria. (ironically using up more fuel) But the power going out will be the leg-sweep as people at home are now no longer connected to the news or each other and don't know if help is coming or if they're going to be forced to fend for themselves. That'll be the point where society collapses.

Call AAA. They'll bring a can of fuel.

Short term chaos, long term we would eventually recover (assuming they still have oil and gas for their non transportation related uses). If oil and gas ran out, modern life would grind to a halt (a suprisingly large amount of our daily life is tied to both products). We can convert coal to fuel and the US supply alone would last decades. The switch to electric vehicles would come faster.

Stay home? Eat grass.

You walk to the gas station to buy a jerry can of gas.

Step 1. My wife yells at me. Step 2. See Step 1 Step 3. Call for help while wife is yelling at me Step 4. See Step 1

Everyone gonna invest sustainable energys

Day 1: panic buying. Day 3: empty shelves. Week 2: power cuts. Month 1: you find out real fast which neighbors you actually trust.

everything gets hella expensive, literally, EVERYTHING

We all become homesteaders as supply chains collapse.

You seen a movie called mad max ? well that’s kinda like what’s gonna happen here in Australia when shit hits the fan

It depends on how your local supply chains are setup. Most goods are still transported around by fossil fuel trucks, and these logistic chains will collapse. Nations which have made heavy investments into railways and railway electrification will be insulated, and electric vans and such will be in very high demand. More electrification and less fossil fuel power generation is how we mitigate/eliminate the effects of fuel shortages

War

for me its time to make a steam powered go cart and a charcoal farm. I'll be the richest man in the apocolypse!

Back to horses for transport!! 🐴

We will all need to grow our own food

blue collar out of work and wont be able to feed the country

Sit down Put you head in between your legs as far as it will go Kiss your sweet ass goodbye.

It is not a single event. Demand decreases (if only a bit) as price increases. Price increases when supply dwindles. At some point, some gas stations will run out of fuel, and people will drive to the ones that still have fuel / stop travelling. We saw in COVID times that a lot of people were able to work from home. Fuel for power plants is a different thing than fuel for cars, although power plants have a much larger capacity and can run on different kinds of fuel. Those will also simply shut down if they run out. While the current situation is certainly serious, there are large stockpiles of oil in the world, to the tune of 18 months worth of production. And 'only' 20 % of the oil travels through the Straight of Hormuz. So we will not run out in the first 5 years or so. These higher oil prices once again make investments in renewable sources more cost-effective (as well as attractive from an 'I want to be independent' point of view.) Long term the world will move to more renewable energy.

I suppose it’s not “if” but “when” we run out. Earth’s resources are finite, not infinite.

Chaos

We wouldn't run out, but it might become prohibitively expensive

Us running out is a misnomer. It's possible that there won't be as much fuel as people want to use, but Australia's fuel supply will never hit 0. We make some of our own fuel for Gods sake

Skip the Dishes goes bankrupt. Millions of south Asians return home (in sailboats I should assume)

Re the Road Warrior movie~ It's mohawks & assless chaps from here to the horizon.

Guess I’ll check the air pressure in my bike tyres.

Look at the 70s for what happened the last time we had a shortage. [https://www.history.com/articles/1970s-energy-crisis-effects](https://www.history.com/articles/1970s-energy-crisis-effects) But we wont, OPEC already said they will release more oil when the conflict started. There is no embargo, just high demand and low supply at the moment. But think of it like a spigot, we can pump out more barrels for a time elsewhere but its going to cost more.

We'll collapse and burst into a supernova and then forming a black hole

We will use renewable energy instead.

It is possible to be free of oil and gas. It just takes time to implement and good luck considering all of our politicians across the world are bought and paid for by oil and gas.

All my firewood comes in and the water is all saved as much as possible

imagine we would have known 40 years ago „fuel“ can run out then we would had focused on renewable energy and not be dependent on oil and gas gatekeepers.

No idea what would happen world wide, but I would start gathering a bunch of plastic and attempt to make fuel out of that in my car

People on life support would die first, this happened already in Cuba

Bike prices go up

Have you seen Mad Max?

Darkness, rage, more war, death of the poor and weak, death of the middle class, death for all. Now, if you mean fossil fuel, most of the above, but the wealthy would shelter, build nuke plants and maybe squeeze by assuming they agreed that solar, batteries and wind were real options until then. My .02

I rebuild diesel engine fuel injectors for a living, so I would immediately be out of a job. Not that this would matter considering that with the almost immediate collapse of all supply chains I likely wouldn't survive anyways. Even if I figured out how to feed myself, I have chronic health problems that would drastically shorten my life without modern medicine.

Lots of doom and gloom posts here. It should be obvious why the US takes oil security so seriously.

Whatever you read in this thread, keep in mind doing this to Cuba is explicit US policy right now. They are in the midst of an absolutely catastrophic fuel crisis due to an economic blockade by the US which threatens sanctions or tariffs on any country that sells fuel to Cuba. A move like this is downright barbaric... especially because the US allows some fuel imports into Cuba that will be used for specific private corporations while prohibiting anything that will be used for the public sector, meaning you have 5-star hotels with full power so wealthy foreigners can enjoy all their expected comforts while hospitals right next door are struggling to keep newborn babies alive because the power keeps shutting off throughout the day, sometimes for hours at a time. You couldn't put this sort of thing in the plot of a movie because it would be too cartoonishly evil to be believable. I wish more people knew about this.

We would all put on our best bondage gear and tear up the desert in search fuel and food

Depends on how you define fuel. Are we talking oil/gas? Or are we including call, nuclear power. I don't think we should stretch it to include hydro, wind, and solar because that strains credibility of any sort of civilization persisting. A complete loss of oil would be tremendously destabilizing. Supply chain collapse, large social upheaval, but there are still systems that allow for some form or power. Trains become massively important, as many use other power sources, assuming they aren't overwhelmed. Severe restrictions and power rationing. Include coal and nuclear? Societal collapse. Straight out.

Where I live we run 95% on hydro electricity so I don’t think we will have an issue with that. The main issue will be the grocery shortage and sudden demand for electric cars. Hydro prices will probably spike, I’ll be out of a job because my industry is highly reliant on fuel

There’s a [pretty interesting paper from 2011](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3154234/) about the ways that running out of oil (in this papers case, running out in the sense that the *earth* is running out) will impact life. Its focus is the impact on low and middle income countries but a lot of the information is broadly applicable. Edit: also [this](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2602925/) one which is more how it impacts everyone. I read both for a course in college.

It’s pretty apocalyptic if the sun can’t charge up our solar farms.

People with guns steal from those who don't , beyond general chaos, we permanently devolve into anarchy.

Lockdown.

I'm gonna start by saying I am the furthest thing from an expert so everything I say is based on what little I know. I don't think it's like one day we are just going to wake up and be caught off guard with, "there's no more fuel". People within the fuel industry would raise alarms at least a few months in advance, but probably a few years ahead of time as they see reserves and such running low/lower than can be replaced. I imagine there would be a period of sanctioning/rationing what fuel there is. At the same time scientists across the globe would work feverishly to come up with a proper, renewable fuel replacement/replacements. This could be anything from going to solar/electric, maybe water powered, maybe wind, I have no real idea. It would be a major, global focus though. Assuming a suitable alternative can't be found in time, it would be detrimental. Costs of everything would sky rocket, there'd be anarchy...it would get ugly quick

We pull over and make out

The next situation to happen would be collapse of private and public transportation

Don't forget the petro chem industry supplies starting materials for nearly all modern pharmaceuticals and the plastic used by everything.  In short would eventually fall back to 1800s level things. 

bro we couldn't figure out how to domestically produce paper masks *years* into a pandemic what happens is many many millions of people die within a shockingly short timespan figuring out exactly how those deaths will occur is like tossing 500 legos up in the air and wondering beforehand exactly where a certain piece is going to land

Well, countries running their power grid on nuclear plants would look pretty smug for starters.

This is where that wind and solar power comes in handy.

By fuel do you mean only fuel, or oil used to make fuel? If fuel only- the first two things. If oil, much much more. Its surprisingly easier and more affordable to convert your current car to an ev than one may think. Emissions would suddenly dissapear allowing a sudden positive environmental global effect, Wind Turbines use a similar item to produce energy while working at lower speeds. Plastic products would FINNALY halt in production. Glues, some medical products, asphalt, batterys and significant othe products would need to find a different compound to make very very quickly. It better to slowly move away from oil based products in general because prices for them would become unatainable in order for the people invested in them to be richer

Aha/Elation approved answer: We will need to go to Amphoreus for fuel and errr see you tomorrow Real answer: Welcome to Resource Wars, wake up to the smell of nuclear fuel in the morning!

See Mad Max 😀

We will stop single use plastic thats for sure !