The force with the best machines has a strong tactical advantage. Robots have a much lower cost of operation than their human counterparts and require no sleep, food, or safety equipment. If a machine is destroyed, another can be instantly deployed to take its place. Humans simply cannot compete against those types of abilities. Any combat engagement between the cold steel of machines and the flesh and blood of humans would result in the slaughter of all the organic combatants involved.

Machines have no conscience to evaluate their actions; A gun does not know the difference between a 5 year old child and a hardened soldier, only a human operator does. The only way for those on the receiving end of robotic warfare to retaliate is to turn to terrorism. If one has no chance of defeating the opponent on the battlefield then one is forced to strike at the civilian population instead. If, however, both forces have access to robotic technologies, war on a traditional battlefield will become pointless, as neither side will suffer human losses, defeating whatever meaning that could be found in war.

Much like humanity as a whole, the man in the story ignored countless warning signs. “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.” The man was completely aware that he should not have continued into the extreme cold of the Yukon, and yet he was so secure in his abilities that he pressed forward. Similarly, humans release enormous amounts of toxic gases into the atmosphere, even though we are fully aware of how damaging they are to life. We know better than to breathe in the gases our chemical plants release, and yet we don’t seem to grasp the fact that those gases have no way to leave the planet. Eventually, perhaps sooner rather than latter, they will come right back to harm us.

“It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death…Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.”(London) Even though he continued to struggle for the chance of surviving the ordeal, from that point on he knew that he was as good as dead. He had enough intelligence to realize how hopeless his situation was. Shortly after this he accepts the cold reality of the situation and determines that “he might as well take it decently.” While humanity may not have reached such a tipping point yet, many do not realize how close we are to an irreversible decline, like the man’s death, we may actually be. If enough of the polar ice caps melt, the amount of sunlight (and heat) reflected back into space will diminish to the point where the poles will no longer be able to refreeze, and the world climate will change even more drastically (Revkin). This is in addition to the more well known concept of rising sea levels causing entire cities to be flooded, including New York and London (Revkin). From that point on there would be nothing we could do to repair the damage in any measurable amount of time

Mankind continuously “tests the ice” of the world by adding more destructive abilities to what we already do. Man builds a single coal power plant, testing an area of ice. Because there was no immediate change in the area as an effect of the new power plant, humans build hundreds more. Mankind might hear a metaphoric crackle in the ice, but continues building yet more toxic machines, such as automobiles. It might not be until our entire civilization has fallen through the thin layer of ice that we realize that we probably shouldn’t have been so reckless, and that all of those pesky environmentalists were actually right all along. “You were right, old hoss; you were right”(London). Even with all of the abuse the Earth has taken because of us, it will take no notice of our departure.

Jack London’s century old story warned the world about the dangers of trusting knowledge over wisdom Since then, few improvements have been made in how humanity treats the planet, in fact, the situation as become even more dire. Nature has warned us countless times to discontinue our destructive ways, all to no avail. The global community attempted to set the gears in motion to attempt to alter our amount of destruction with the Kyoto Protocol, but it has the same effect as the man building his fire under the snow covered tree. An attempt at survival was made, but it was not sufficient. Humanity now has far more wisdom than the lone man in the Yukon, but only time will tell if we posses more wisdom than he had.

Works Cited
London, Jack. To Build a Fire. 1908. Wikisource. 6 Sept. 2006. 2 Feb. 2009 .
Revkin, Andrew. “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts.” New York Times 2 Oct. 2009. Feb 2009
Merriman, C. D. “Jack London – Biography and Works.” The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. Jalic Inc. 10 Feb. 2009 .

In the not-so-distant future dwindling crude oil production capability will cause economic devastation on a large scale. This is not what I personally believe will happen, but what could be considered a worse case scenario. Peak Oil is a theory that was introduced in 1956 by Marion King Hubbert that is used to accurately predict the rate of oil extraction of a single oil well, oil field, region, country, and most recently applied to the entire world. Peak Oil is defined as the idea that the rate of oil extraction from a well follows a bell curve, starting off slow when the well is first discovered, rising exponentially as more equipment is used to extract the oil, reaching a peak, and then equally as quickly declining in output due to the increased difficulties of lower pressure, lower quality of oil, and other such issues. This is a proven concept on the individual oil well, field, region, and nation oil production level.

For the purpose of this essay it is assumed that the theory of peak oil applies to global production rates as well. It is a common misconception that reaching peak oil means that the world is running out of oil. In reality, that is far from the truth. Peak oil simply means that the maximum production RATE of oil has been reached, and then irreversibly declines from that point on. This would have a disastrous effect on the world.

It is common knowledge that almost everything that humans do in the western world depends heavily on fossil fuels, and oil in particular. Even relatively small changes to the ratio of supply and demand can have huge effects on the cost of oil. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example. For several weeks key oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico were shutdown, which decreased gasoline supply in the USA by several percentage points. As a result, gasoline and diesel prices around the country increased, in many places, dramatically. Running out of gasoline was not the problem (in most areas); it was the increasing cost of gasoline that was the issue.

At this point I’m going to begin my speculation. Based on the previous information I am going to extrapolate one possible outcome. The year is 2015 and although the global economy has been struggling to recover from the American financial crisis of 2008, life has been continuing more or less, business as usual. Crude oil prices have recently sharply risen due to a particularly cold winter, but nothing is really out of the ordinary. Spring comes and goes, but oil prices continue to rise. As the summer driving season begins oil prices set new records, beating out the previous highs of $150 per barrel set in 2008. Many families cancel summer vacations in order to save money.

The fall season has arrived, but oil prices are begging to rise at increasingly rapid rates, and most people are not sure why. People are driving less, there haven’t been any natural disasters of consequence, and the weather is mild, and yet still oil prices continue to rise. Most of the population still has no idea as to why prices continue to climb.

As the winter comes, things take a turn for the worse. It is now known that the reason prices are rising so quickly is that although global demand for oil has slowed in growth over the past year, oil supply has fallen from the year before. In particular, several key oil fields under OPEC have cut oil production rates after maintaining them at constant levels for the past two years. Global supply of oil has only shrunk 5 percent, but that was enough for demand to outstrip supply. This has the immediate effect of raising gasoline prices, but it also has many deeper reaching effects. Food prices will increase dramatically because the oils that fertilizer is made from have increased in cost. Transportation cost for everything from t-shirts, to building supplies, to food at the supermarket have skyrocketed due to rising diesel prices.

As time passes prices for all goods begin to increase as the cost of oil derived plastics, Styrofoam, and even medicine begin to feel the pressure from crude oil prices. The United States decides to take military action in the middle east in order to “spread democracy” and “liberate the local population”, while in reality is only interested in securing oil supply to itself. The action backfires and a shipping port is destroyed, cutting off a major trade route and further reducing the oil supply to the world, because most oil is transported by large ships. If the tanker ships can’t reach a function port to be filled with oil, then there is no way to transport the oil from the Middle East to other countries. What ports remain are stressed to the breaking point in order to keep up with demand.

Due to the further reduced global supply of all sorts of goods, the middle class struggles to stay functional. Some people resort to crime, stealing food from super markets, robbing gas stations late at night to get free gasoline, trucks and SUVs sit parked in driveways with empty fuel tanks. During the coldest parts of winter there is no longer any source of affordable heating oil, causing extremely cold conditions in northern regions. Soon mobs form, robbing downtown areas for much needed supplies. The government and police step in to try to contain the situation, but are stretched very thin themselves due to insufficient fuel budgets. Small unprepared police departments are soon overrun and a sense of lawlessness ensues. Governments are virtually powerless to help, immobilized by their un-prepairdness. As the winter nears its end, gasoline becomes so scarce that it is difficult to find a functioning gas station. Economies worldwide come to a crashing halt. These conditions could easily lead to war as countries try to fight for the few remaining large oil fields.

Whether these dire events actually take place in the manner previously described is up for debate, and should most likely be taken with a dose of salt, but the point illustrated remains valid. If even small disruptions in oil supply can cause gasoline prices to rise dramatically, peak oil occurring in an unprepared world could cause disastrous results.