<p>Here is an interesting question to ponder with increasing oil prices and a shrinking dollar. Which top 20 universities would best survive the situation described in James Howard Kunstlers book "The Long Emergency". If in the near future oil was to become very scarce, the dollar collapsed, wall street crashed to nothing and imports of all kinds ceased due to lack of international purchasing power, which of the top 20 universities would best survive. Assume their endowments were wiped out and food and energy had to come from near by.</p>
<p>I don't think people would care much about college if that happened. which it might.</p>
<p>I just finished reading this book. It's very provocative, and while I don't necessarily agree with where he ends up, I believe Kunstler gets a lot of things correct in his analysis.</p>
<p>Cornell is the obvious answer to this question. We grow our own food, milk our own cows, and make our own wine. There is a hyrdoelectic plant on campus, and a lot of campus heating and cooling is already done using water pumped in from Cayuga Lake. The soil in the Finger Lakes region is rich and pure. We have engineers, managers, and biologists, with artists and poets to entertain. Best of all, it's far away from the urban masses, meaning there won't be too much disease and squalor to deal with.</p>
<p>If such an emergency happened, Cornell (as well as some other land grants) would be best poised to lead us out of trouble.</p>
<p>"Best of all, it's far away from the urban masses,"</p>
<p>Haven't you seen Red Dawn? Nowhere is safe from those Commie bastards.</p>
<p>Publics would shoot down.</p>
<p>Private Top Tier Tech schools (Stanford/MIT/Caltech/Carnegie Mellon/Cornell) would probably jump as they are the cutting edge in innovation as well as designing/solving problems.</p>
<p>I left out the top publics because with the government collapsing, the publics would probably ceaes to exist. </p>
<p>I think this topic makes no sense though...oil can be wiped out altogether by tomorrow and I guarantee you the ones suffering the least will be America (and Japan/Germany/few others). The big losers would be China/India/MiddleEast/Africa.</p>
<p>""Best of all, it's far away from the urban masses,"</p>
<p>Haven't you seen Red Dawn? Nowhere is safe from those Commie bastards."</p>
<p>I thought the situation was more of an economic attack than a physical attack. So whether or not Communist troops could reach Cornell is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Economic attack? Well, I'd say the top publics and public affiliated privates would do well. Namely: Cornell, MIT, CalBerk</p>
<p>But we'd also see lots of innovation coming from lesser known places. Cooper Union, perhaps, or other places that are very good/awesome, but lesser known.</p>
<p>For a physical attack, I would NOT want to be near a major city, nor in a major school.</p>
<p>Deep Springs for me.</p>
<p>Apparently most major universities were selected as early strike targets by Soviet Russia in the Cold War. Schools with nuclear engineering programs (often responsible for manufacturing plutonium) like MIT and Cornell were very high on the list.</p>
<p>Not that the communists didn't have enough ICBMs to hit every major population area in the country ten times over.</p>
<p>The problem with Deep Springs is that you wouldn't have anybody to mate with. You would want to carry on the human species...</p>
<p>Makes sense, though, no?</p>
<p>Not to mention, lots of the major defense-related schools are in big cities that would be targeted anyway (for physical attack)
MIT – Boston
Harvard – Boston
Yale –*New Haven (sorta near groton, which is a major sub base)
Etc.</p>
<p>yeah i would agree cornell would win it.</p>
<p>While I am certainly not minimizing the seriousness of "peak oil," I don't believe the doomsday scenario that so many seem to envision. The technology to largely replace imported oil, whether it is nuclear, food to fuel, fuel cell, wind, solar, geothermal, or a combination of these, is available. The problem is that up until this point, the potential of these energy sources has never been fully exploited because oil was cheap and available. Many seem to forget, for example, that the U.S. has some of the largest reserves of coal in the world. The challenge is how to burn it cleanly. When pressed, the American science establishment and industry is very good at solving these sorts of problems. As for what other countries have done, Brazil is a great example. It doesn't need to import foreign oil. Why? Because following the last major oil shock in the 1970s, Brazil forged ahead with developing ethanol production from suger cane, which it now grows in abundance. Most vehicles in Brazil are now of a "flex fuel" type that can utilize this fuel and Brazil can make as much as it wants from a renewable source. This technology is available in the U.S. too. We just haven't developed it. So the way I see it, "peak oil" is as much an opportunity as it is a challenge.</p>
<p>"I thought the situation was more of an economic attack than a physical attack."</p>
<p>You don't think the Russkies would sucker-punch us when we're down?</p>
<p>[Aside comment: According to my tour of the Pentagon, during the Cold War the Russians always kept two missiles pointed at the small building located at the center of the Pentagon. They thought it housed all of the nation's secret plans and important documents. It was actually a hot dog stand in a casual "no salute" zone.]</p>
<p>
[quote]
When pressed, the American science establishment and industry is very good at solving these sorts of problems.
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</p>
<p>'Tis a shame we didn't elect a President who would have pressed these sorts of issues eight years ago.</p>
<p>Oh wait. We did. The Supreme Court just co-opted the rule of the people.</p>
<p>^I couldn't have said it any better.</p>
<p>I'm gonna go with Michigan, largest alumni base.</p>
<p>All of them. Oil is not really as important as it is made out to be all the time . We have technology which can replace oil if it is required-did anyone even watch Who Killed the Electric Car? Ethanol , solar panels, coal, wind power, nuclear power, and a host of other things will all come into their own. If oil was to be cut off quickly then oil companies would have no reason to continue their suppression of such technologies. Some nations in the process industrializing (China) would be hit very hard, but the USA would be fine in 5 years. I can not imagine that with the wealth the top 20 have they will be greatly effected.</p>
<p>I don't know. Kunstler makes a pretty good case arguing for uniqueness of oil -- it's cheap and transportable.</p>
<p>Things like fuel cells and batteries require a lot of expensive commodities to make. There's something like an additional 150 pounds of copper inside your average Prius, and that needs to be mined out of the ground somehow... using, you guessed it, oil.</p>
<p>Even if we can solve the electricity problem relatively easily using nuclear and coal, the transportation problem is a tough puzzle to crack. As Kunstler argues, expect a resurgence of dense cities and water/land based transport. </p>
<p>Most of the cities in the Southwest and Southeast are absolutely ****ed under Kunstler's scenario. Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix, Las Vegas will all rot. The Rust Belt -- Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Buffalo -- will rise again.</p>
<p>I don't think a majority of posters who posted so far has kept up in foreign diplomacy nor international relations in the past decade. Knowledge in logistics of the economies/technologies of our nation vs. others is even more nebulous. Some people seem to actually think that depleting oil supplies would hurt the U.S. more than it would the Russians (haha, their entire economy "boom" is focused on it!) and somehow the Russians will "kick us when we are down."</p>
<p>The news is, if oil was gone tomorrow, the U.S. couldn't be happier. Its problems with Russia/China/Middle East would be basically solved and it would only consolidate American power in the world. I would even surmise that the resulting depression would oust the current controlling party of both Russia (that means Putin and his crew) as well as China. The U.S. will finally be able to employ the available technologies the replace oil that has so far been deemed financially expensive with respect to cheap and subsidized oil. </p>
<p>If anything, Russia will be the one "down" as it would kneel over and suffer perhaps the worst depression/collapse of its economy since Black Tuesday. Oil is the only thing keeping Russia afloat right now as a major power. It fuels its military funding as well as keeps the current party in firm control.</p>
<p>So my serious answer to the question at hand is... ALL THE TOP 20 universities will flourish and survive the "long emergency" as the United States is catapulted to a newfound dominance and control of worldly affairs and global power.</p>
<p>Then the United States will establish the United Earth Directorate and send hundreds of thousands of criminals and misfits on 3 different interplanetary cruisers to worlds in the far reaches of the galaxies. These 3 ships will crash on different worlds and eventually a "Confederate" power will control these scattered worlds. However, a rebellion by the "Sons of Korhal" will overthrow the Confederate forces. This is spearheaded by 2 newly discovered alien species, the Zerg and the Protoss. The "Terrans" as we will call them, is unfortunately in the middle of a terrible war between the two species. After the discovery of such species, the United Earth Directorate sends a fleet to maintain dominance over the Terran colonies as well as capture the Zerg's central control point, the "Overmind." However, the UED was tricked as well as outmaneuvered by a rogue Zerg mastermind named "Sarah Kerrigan" who reunited the broods upon the death of the Overmind and then sent them against her Terran/UED/Protoss enemies. Not one UED ship made it back to Earth to report the failure. Now, both Terran and Earth forces seem to be at the mercy of the brooding Zerg forces, known as the "Swarm." </p>
<p>Now, the real question is, which of the top 20 universities will survive the Zerg onslaught?</p>
<p>PS: Yeah I'm bored.</p>
<p>From a geopolitical standpoint, yes, America couldn't be happier if oil disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow. Save for perhaps Canada. Fortunately our rail and water infrastructure hasn't been completely abandoned. (And I have actually seen some recent reports that Europe is actually a lot more dependent on trucking than America is.)</p>
<p>But from a quality of life standpoint, 95 percent of Americans would be hurting for the next ten to fifteen years. Most Americans have no idea where their food comes from, let alone have grasped the concept that bicycles can be a viable mode of transportation.</p>
<p>Food for thought: During the Great Depression, 50 percent of Americans were still living on farms and had the ability to subsist on their own labor.</p>