<p>I would argue, in the greater context of things, any "hurt" that Americans would suffer in the immediate short-term would pale to the utter devastation the rest of the world's countries would suffer in both short-term and long-term, particularly the U.S.'s major threats such as Russia/China/Middle Eastern powers.</p>
<p>Right. </p>
<p>But the confounding issue is that these types of cataclysmic events don't happen overnight, and that in the waning years of the oil economy the threats you cite might just have the gumption to try to attack North America.</p>
<p>America's greatest mistake was not doing to the Middle East and Russia what we did to Japan and Germany after World War II. Truman was a genius, and we will pay for not learning from history.</p>
<p>China is its own can of worms. Needless to say, the sex ratios alone in China are enough to put one on edge, to say nothing of the atrocious environmental and labor standards in the country that are just stewing future civil discontent that the Party may be unable to control. I am worried about Beijing this summer.</p>
<p>Rice baby. In the middle of Houston, energy capital of the world. refineries are an hour away, and Rice could "partner" with oil companies located in Houston to sell us natural gas and oil on the cheap, which we could sell to the rest of the country for..."1 MILLION DOLLARS"! (Austin Powers reference)</p>
<p>I'd say Yale. If the apocalypse hit New Haven, you wouldn't even notice.</p>
<p>(not that killadelphia is much better, but still)</p>
<p>Berkeley and UIUC: They were awarded $500 million for a biosciences energy research institute and is actively looking for viable alternatives. </p>
<p>Just imagine the royalties garnered off this groundbreaking research.</p>
<p>Berkeley chancellor claimed, "This is our generation's moonshot."</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'd say Yale. If the apocalypse hit New Haven, you wouldn't even notice.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>LOL at this endorsement of Yale's fair city.</p>
<p>one power that's never lacking is manpower. a new decree of running on a hamster wheel for 2 hours a day. solves the obesity problem too.</p>
<p>i read somewhere that it's possible to convert each step we take into energy through the installation of shock absorbers on the sidewalks? Is that possible? I read that article somewhere and I can't seem to find it.</p>
<p>"America's greatest mistake was not doing to the Middle East and Russia what we did to Japan and Germany after World War II. Truman was a genius, and we will pay for not learning from history"</p>
<p>First of all, why would we have done a thing to Russia? They were still our ally at that point. Not for long though thanks to Truman.</p>
<p>Second, Truman was a douchebag. He is the reason we had the Cold War with Russia. When FDR was president, the USSR was actually <em>gasp</em> our ally! We included them in our war plans, asked for Stalin's counsel and advice, and just acted friendly in general. When the illiterate hillbilly Truman took over though, he completely cut off Russia because he simply didn't like Stalin. When we bombed Japan, Russia had absolutely no idea what we were doing, and had spent millions drawing up plans to invade Japan with our help. After that our relationship with the USSR obviously chilled. Hence the Cold War... thank you Truman...</p>
<p>Now back on topic. I would say Deep Springs is clearly the most disaster-proof. :)</p>
<p>^I don't think it was Truman's fault persay (as every nation's leader could have "prevented" some of the mistrust in some way and there are arguments on who is "right" or "wrong"). There was a very strong deep-seated feeling of mistrust between the Allies and Russia before and during the war. Stalin felt that the Allies (U.S. and Britain) were delaying D-Day on purpose in order to weaken Russia. He pressed very early on to open a second front, but instead the plan was changed and Africa rather than France became the first point of the invasion. It would be a long time until the official D-Day. The Russians spied on the U.S. during and after the war.</p>
<p>The alliance between the Soviets and the West was not an alliance based on mutual trust. Indeed, the roots of the mistrust predated the Second World War. </p>
<p>-During the Russian Civil War, western nations had actively intervened in an attempt to destroy the Bolsheviks.
-The Soviets and their interests had been excluded from the Munich Conference.
-Conversely, Stalin's pact with Hitler on the eve of World War II did little to endear him in the West.
-Stalin had felt that the western powers had been reluctant to open a second front preferring to see Germany and the Soviet Union inflict enormous damage on each other.
-A good reason for using the bomb on Japan even when the war was seen as already over was to impress/intimidate the Soviets as well as hasten the war's defeat so that the Soviets could not lay claim to Japan's future as it did with Germany's.</p>
<p>The postwar future of Europe became a subject of disagreement.
The Atlantic Charter, signed by Britain and the U.S., called for peace without territorial gains, national self- determination and free elections. </p>
<p>The Charter's terms conflicted with Stalin's demand that the Soviet Union's western borders be moved further west, thus annexing non-Soviet lands.
In the interest of Allied unity and the successful prosecution of the war effort, agreement on contentious political issues was postponed until the end of the war. </p>
<p>Yalta Conference </p>
<p>At the February l945 Yalta Conference, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States reached some agreement on the shape of postwar Europe. </p>
<p>-Germany would be divided into zones of occupation, and would pay an -indemnity.
-The nations of Eastern Europe had the right to hold free elections, but the governments must be pro-Soviet.
-Throughout the region, communist-controlled coalition governments became the rule.</p>
<p>Having just fought the deadliest war in history because of appeasement and the fact that people could not stand up to aggressive leaders (Hitler), one could not expect the Allies to appease Stalin's demands of greater Soviet influence/power/territory and his other aggressive claims. Thus, because of Stalin's ideology, attitude and demands (with the addition of the mistrust aforementioned), the Cold War was all but inevitable.</p>
<p>Directly after WWII the USSR was a military and political superpower. They were going to get what they wanted regardless of how "friendly" Truman was with them. Truman's complete disregard of the USSR when he took office only served to increase the tension between Russia and the rest of the West. Russia deservedly felt it should be included in the plans for post-war Japan after it put such a huge stake in keeping Hitler occupied at the cost of millions of military and civilian lives. </p>
<p>Obviously we shouldn't have just gushed over them and given them everything they wanted, but Truman made a terrible error in judgment by distancing himself from Stalin and making his dislike for Stalin so apparent. </p>
<p>That's my opinion, obviously, and I'm sorta hijacking this thread so I won't say anymore on the subject. That's just how I feel about Truman :p.</p>
<p>This is a totally fantastical subject of course, No such apocalyptic even will take place in the foreseeable future. However, if I were to play along, I think any university which impacts humanity the most will probably last the longest. That pretty much means all the major research universities, particularly those that are very strong in the Life Sciences, Medicine and Engineering. </p>
<p>At the same time, you can expect those universities that have the largest endowments to make it through. </p>
<p>Regardless, all institutions will probably have to function on minimal power in order to go on as long as possible. Schools will probably enroll 50%-75% fewer students than they would ordinarily, many departments will cease to exist, a lot of faculty will be laid off etc...</p>
<p>So, bottom line:</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California (those will probably be collapsed into one major university)
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann arbor
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas (like the UCs, the Texas system will be collapsed into one major university)
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Washington University-St Louis
Yale University</p>
<p>Some of the very wealthy LACs (with $1billion+ endowments) will also be able to weather the storm.</p>
<p>Some are not understanding the scenario imagined here. Forget about wars, nukes or natural disasters. Just imagine it as a possible outcome of todays finance and resource problems. Because of bad loans, insolvent banks, trillions in derivatives, trade deficit, negative savings and lost manufacturing base the U.S. dollar is dumped by every country and financial operation in the World, after they have used as much of thier foreign exchange as possible buying dollar denominated commodities as possible such as oil, steel, iron ore, scrap metal, wheat etc. ( no virginia that could never happen). This crashes the Dow to 10% of its current value, and the government becomes insolvent. We can no longer buy foreign oil, or anything else because our currency is worthless (like zimbabwe). So now we have to live with just domestic oil (30% of normal) and we have only 2 years to adapt. Not enough time for cold fusion, or any other technologies to save things. We are also assuming that all the college endowments are wiped out .</p>
<p>In that case:</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California (those will probably be collapsed into one major university)
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann arbor
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas (like the UCs, the Texas system will be collapsed into one major university)
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Washington University-St Louis
Yale University</p>
<p>The student bodies and faculties at those universities would shrink manyfold and many departments would just cease to exist. </p>
<p>I guess that would be the CC version of Apocalypse Now! LOL!</p>
<p>
[quote]
The student bodies and faculties at those universities would shrink manyfold and many departments would just cease to exist.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You know, if this economic apocalypse means the end of worthless-ology fields like gender studies, asian-american studies, etc., I'd be all for it!</p>
<p>Another angle I'd like to add is that I think urban and rural schools will be best off, while suburban schools would find themselves in deep trouble.</p>
<p>Cities are dense and can have mass-transit infrastructure that can be scaled up. Additionally, walking from place to place is a reasonable possibility. So long as there were enough energy to ensure a supply of food and necessary commodities and avoid mass social disorder, the urban schools would survive.</p>
<p>Rural schools like Cornell that can become essentially self-sufficient from their own agriculture, solar/hydro power, etc would also survive.</p>
<p>Suburban schools, however, have neither the advantage of urban energy-efficiency nor agricultural self-sufficiency. They were designed around the personal automobile. So suburban schools get the axe.</p>
<p>West Point</p>
<p>Annapolis</p>
<p>Actually, now that I think about it, the universities most likely to survive the "long emergency" aren't generally the elites, but the land grant universities. These schools can grow their own food and many of them are at the forefront of alternative fuel (e.g., biofuels) research. So along with Cornell (which is a land grant university), look for the rise of --------- State University(ies). Bye bye HYPS.</p>
<p>Not only does Cornell grow its own food and produce its own dairy, it also has an on campus winery. So we'll be able to drown the rest of the world's sorrows when the Southeast and Southwest wake up and realize cities never should have been built in those areas.</p>
<p>Sadly, our nuclear reactor, which was responsible for producing a lot of this country's weapons-grade plutonium during the Cold War, was taken out of service a couple years ago. But I think we could get it back up and running in no time.</p>
<p>US Air Force Academy.</p>
<p>Places where most of the power comes from coal would survive: Colorado, Wyoming, perhaps Montana, Utah, West Virginia.</p>
<p>Oregon Tech is heated geothermally. And so is a college in Idaho I think.
Cities like Reno that have geothermal plants may be able to keep their local university going. What colleges are in/near cities fueled by windfarms or solar arrays?</p>
<p>Tulane probably has a great deal of experience surviving the worst.</p>
<p>Note, the warmer/milder the location, the less power required.</p>
<p>'Tis a shame we didn't elect a Congress that would have provided more incentives to companies to explore for more energy sources, to encourage construction of more nuclear power plants, and to tap the oil we already have offshore, in ANWR, and in the Gulf of Mexico years ago.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Note, the warmer/milder the location, the less power required.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Right. There was a reason why nobody lived in the South until a Cornellian invented air conditioning.</p>