I

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

V

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

VI

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

Notes from RE: 1- Although the title says 500, I actually took this snapshot of the Stats when the numbers were between 430-435. They are now at 535 as I publish this article. I chose 500 because it sounds good and it's right between the 300 of Thermopylae and the 600 of the Light Brigade. Percentages haven't changed much with the additional submissions since the snapshot was taken. We will no doubt add quite a few more respondents with this article since I am leaving the survey open for the time being. 460 respondents marked the point at which the survey gained a 99% Confidence Level with a 6% Confidence Interval for a population size of 100,000, but more is always better when it comes to surveys. Respondents who added their email addys will get a pdf of the survey results right around 500, depending when I take the snapshot. More in depth analysis can be done with the spreadsheet, you can parse the numbers with that. Contact me if you are interested in doing a more detailed numerical analysis and have verifiable background with which to do it. If you use the results of this survey in any academic papers or documents, please reference the Doomstead Diner as the source in your footnotes. Also please inform me through the Contact Page on the Diner if you are going to use the survey or its charts and graphs in this way, or on your blogs if you have one. No parts of this study may be used on commercial websites that use Advertising or sell Merchandise such as the Author's books, or which have Paywalls without the express consent of the Doomstead Diner and the Sustaining Universal Needs Foundation. None of the charts and graphs may be altered in any way or the copyright and logos removed from those charts. The Survey remains OPEN at this time. Responses keep dribbling in and I don't want to leave anyone out of the final Tally. 2- Most of the questions don't tally to the full 430 or so when I took the snapshot. This because all respondents don't answer all questions. 3- Statistical Significance: This is always a bone of contention with any survey. How significant is it really? How big is the population you are surveying? It's tough to estimate exactly how many people were surveyed here across all the websites, but I'm putting the Outer Limit at 100,000. r/collapse has the largest circulaton with almost 90,000 subscribers, but many of them no longer participate or read the sub anymore. Also unlikely that in 2 weeks all the currently active redditors saw the links to the survey. All the rest of the blogs and forums are much smaller, so 100,000 seems like a good outer limit here. At this level of population, the Survey comes in with a 99% Confidence Level and a 6% Confidence Interval, IOW it's very significant for this size population. It's likely quite accurate in its numbers. Caculations done with the Survey Calculator on SurveySystems.com. 4- Question Structure Complaints: Once again with all surveys, complaints come in with the way the questions are structured and what the answer choices are. In this case I tried to give as many places for a free form write in response as possible. Many respondents took advantage of this and I will publish their responses in follow up articles or Inside the Diner in the Surveys thread. 5- "Americentric" Complaints: Specific to this survey, several complaints came in that it was "Americentric", which really is not true. There are a few questions specific to the Amerikan Political Sewer, but most of the questions are applicable to Kollapsniks who live anywhere at all. Thanks to all the Kollapsniks from all websites who dropped in their 2 cents on this survey. Special thanks to the following 7 websites which contributed the bulk of the opinions (sites with >5 Repsondents): #1- Reddit r/collapse with 168 Submissions #2- Cassandra's Legacy with 121 Submissions #3- The Burning Platform with 98 Submissions #4- The Doomstead Diner with 68 Submissions #5- Economic Undertow with 16 Submissions #6- Our Finite World with 13 Submissions #7- Truthdig with 7 Submissions Each of these websites has a somewhat different readerhship, I'll make some general obserations here from my time participating on all of these websites as a (rather prolific, lol) commenter and TROLL. Before Admining my own site, I was a first class annoying troll in the commentariat of NUMEROUS websites, I can't even count them all anymore. I was BANNED from most of them. lol. #1- r/collapse: Like the rest of Reddit, r/collapse is dominated by social media freak Millenials. Their education and knowledge of the problems we face is very diverse. Some are well read up, others are fucking clueless idiots. Their numbers are HUGE, dwarfing any of the single collapse websites. Their Political viewpoints vary from the far right to the far left, leaning more toward the left. #2- Cassandra's Legacy: Prof. Ugo Bardi's Blog. He teaches Physical Chemistry at the Univeristy of Firenza in Italy. Ugo is a member of the Club of Rome and participated in the original Limits to Growth study done in the 1970s. The website is LOADED with Academics with Ph.Ds. It's one of the reasons we have such a high education level recorded in this survey. Ugo and I collaborated on many video discussions of Collapse Issues which can be found on the Diner YouTube Channel. #3- The Burning Platform: Run by Jim Quinn, a CPA who handles the books at the Wharton Biz Skule in the Ivy League. A Baby Boomer who denies he is a Baby Boomer, for whom the 4th Turning by Strauss & Howe is the Bible of Collapse. Very Right-Wing/Libertarian leaning website, with quite a vocal commentariat. I participated on that site for a couple of years and wrote numerous contrarian articles there. It was very entertaining. lol. #4- The Doomstead Diner: My Doom Website, established in 2012 by myself and my co-Admin Surly and our Code Jockey tech designer Peter. The #1 Go-To Website on the net for Collapse Newz. Generally Left leaning politically, but we do have a few contrarian Libertarians who chip in their 2 cents as well. A very contentious commentariat, not a place for the meek. Don your Fireproof BVDs before you sign in. lol. #5- Economic Undertow: Run by Steve Ludlum, aka Steve from Virginia. An economic technical site with a very different from mainstream analysis you can get anywhere else, and usually right on the mark. Steve also collaborated with me on many videos. A relatively apolitical website. #6- Our Finite World: Run by Gail Tverberg, a former professional Actuary who does many charts and graphs to illustrate her POV on the energy problems we face. OFW has become increasingly Doomerish over the years, although the site has little political spin at all, just some very vehement Nihilists. Gail also collaborated with me on numerous discussions and videos. No discernible Political Spin to this website. #7- Truthdig: Chris Hedges website. Chris is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and an unabshed Socialist with a Capital S. He himself does have a net worth in the $Millions$ though. lol. He's a fabulous speaker and does great interviews as well. Now, on to the charts from the survey. For today, we look at the Energy & Technology Questions. I'll make a few brief comments beneath each chart. For further analysis and discussion, visit the Survey Table inside the Diner.

Survey still OPEN

Survey now @ 534 Submissions

I found it pretty hard to believe that roughly 1/4 of Kollapsniks characterize their attitude as "Optimistic", given all the evidence coming in here nowadays. However, hope springs eternal even amongst Doomers. I voted in the Pessimist category. The Nihilists are still a fairly small but very vocal community, led by such pundits as Dr. McStinksion from Nature Bats Last.

The plurality of Kollapsniks think that Renewables can provide enough energy to maintain the technological lifestyle, at least for a smaller population of Homo Saps anyhow. I fall into the Pipedream category, I don't think most of these techno-gimmick solutions will work for any more than a few decades at best.

Here most Kollapsniks feel we should put the bulk of our resources into developing Solar Photovolataics. An oversight here, I didn't include Solar Thermal (stuff like Stirling Engines) which might have a longer lifespan overall than photovoltaics. I'm down there at the low end favoring putting our resources toward biomass and animal power. It's going to take quite some time to breed up a population of horses again sufficient for even a reduced Homo Sap footprint on the planet. Developing biomass is good for the environment also and doesn't require complex factories or machinery to use.

Given the disasters of 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, it's hard for me to understand how anyone can be in favor of Nuclear Energy. And those disasters (along with smaller ones at reactors you don't hear about) happened during GOOD TIMES, when we have some resources to throw at the problem and try to contain it. The spent fuel waste continues to pile up with no solution to that in sight. Thorium Reactors and Fusion Power are both Pipedreams of the technogimmick Futurologists, they don't exist in practical working form anywhere. It's time to give up on this Planet Killing system and decommision the plants while there is still time.

This one truly astounds me. Even today, more than 1/5th of Kollapsniks buy into the Star Trek Futurology Mythology and think we will leave this planet to set up colonies on Mars and Beyond. We can't even set up a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica, and it has air, water and suitable gravity for Homo Saps! The "Space Station" we have up is decades old and is just a bunch of glorified RVs hooked together in space. It's no 2001 Big Wheel in the Sky. We don't have a propulsion system that is going to drive us through Interstellar Space and then be able also to land on and take off from any planets we migt find out there. Yet this whole meme continues to be sold by dingbats like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who waste $Billions$ in debt money and Wall Street keeps funding them! It's just preposterous and the stuff of childhood fantasies. Grow UP people! The Human Race was born on this planet and it will die here at some indeterminate point in the future. Live with it.

These questions were covered in The Human Extinction Survey, which we ran a couple of years ago here on the Diner. However, attitudes do change as time goes by and Collapse progresses, so I included a few questions on the future of Homo Sap and when we might go Extinct in this survey as well. It's always a popular topic in the commentariat of Collapse websites.

In this particular iteration of the question we do have 2 complete Fanatics who think the entire population of Homo Sap will be DEAD by next year. These are the acolytes and True Believers of Dr. McStinksion on Nature Bats Last. Sorry folks, the only way you get 100% Dead People by next year is if the Earth collides with a Planet Killer Asteroid. You need 100% for Extinction, 99.99% just won't do here. Even full on Thermonuclear War couldn't do it, nor could a Supervolcanic Eruption.

Only slightly more rational is the cohort that thinks we'll have Extinction by 2030, there were 7 of those responding to the survey. Again, you just can't get an extinction that fast, there will still be some habitable neighborhoods even under the worst projections for climate change by 2030.

2050 to 2100 starts to get more rational, but in neither case will I be alive that long, so after about 2040 (really, if I make it to 2025 that will be miraculous) it's irrelevant to me when Extinction arrives. Not so for some younger and healthier Diners of course. In the meantime though while you are waiting for the last Homo Sap on Planet Earth to expire, WTF do you DO with yourself? Are you going to just throw up your hands and give up? Pull your own plug and commit Seppuku? What?

I put in my vote for In the Year 2525, because that was what was prophesied by Zager & Evans in 1968, 50 years ago.

This is one of my favorite Collapse Questions, because my own opinion on this has changed over the years of observing and writing about Collapse.

When I first began in 2007 on the Peak Oil Forum, my opinion was we could stabilize at a 19th Century level of technology, with stuff like Steam Engines and Railroads. At the end of my years there but before I launched the Doomstead Diner with my Comrades Peter & Surly I was back to the 18th Century, prior to the invention of the Steam Engine.

My estimates have continued to retreat in time however, to the point now I don't think anything is truly sustainable beyond Stone Age Technology. There is only a small cohort of submitters who agree with me on this estimate, 2% or 9 submitters in total. I have numerous reasons why I have come to this conclusion, too numerous and detailed to expand on here. If you are curious to discuss it, drop in at the Survey Table inside the Diner and I'll be happy to explain the rationale for this.

Stone Age Tech really isn't so bad though, when you consider what Stone Age people were able to accomplish and how long they lasted before the discovery of Metallurgy and Ceramics and before intensive Agriculture began for them in their neighborhoods. The Polynesians who explored the breadth of the biggest Ocean of them all, the Pacific, were Stone Age People.

Don't you wish you were the Navigator on that first Cat-Rigged Sailing Canoe that made it to the Big Island of Hawaii when it was still pristine and unspoiled? When I shut the eyes of my crippled body, that is where I am, on the deck of that boat with Mauna Loa off in the distance.

This is another of those stats that is incomprehensible to me if you at are at all familiar with the history of the growth of Homo Sap population and when it started to max out in some neighborhoods. In Europe at the time of the Plagues, the population leveled off with a Global Population estimated at around 600M in that era.

After that of course, the New World was discovered, Native Inhabitants of that location systematically exterminated and then came the discovery of Fossil Fuels and how to apply them to Agriculture with Industrial Farming apparatus, Fertilizers and Pesticides, rapidly increasing the doubling rate for the Homo Sap population inhabing the Earth. However, how much of that population is truly sustainable once the FFs have run out, not to mention the depletion of topsoil and aquifers and the pollution left behind here? If that number was 1B even with all the Best Practices Permie techniques and hydroponics and aquaculture I would be flabberghasted. I lowballed my estimate at 10M to 100M. Maybe more than that, but I expect an Undershoot to persist for quite some time in the aftermath of the Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

One of my favorite categories from this survey, because it is so far over the top. The typical distribution of education levels in the FSoA comes up with around 30% with a Bachelor's degree or above, and around 2% with Doctoral level education sheepskins.

Doomers however come in with about 3/4s (73%) of them with a Bachelor's degree or better, and an astounding 13% with the coveted "Dr." preceeding their name and letting everyone know you are an important and smart guy who gets paid a lot of money to sneer at nurses and any other staff below him on the hospital hierarchy list. I'm not a big fan of Credentialism in general, and frankly I haven't found "Dr."s to be any smarter than the population at large, and often enough dumber. However, this is an amazing statistic, demonstrating that in general Doomers are much better educated than the population at large. Does that make them any more prescient? Only time will tell on that score, but it does lend gravitas to the survey.

One of the more common critiques you get if you are a Doomer aware of the Climate issues with increasing CO 2 levels is if you use an Internal Combustion Engine car for your transportation. Cries of HYPOCRISY are heard throughout the Commentariat of the Blogosphere! Well, the stats show that said doomers are in fact "hypocrites" in this regard, with 2/3rds of them using carz as their primary mode of transportation. Does this in REALITY make them hypocrites? IMHO, no it does not.

The fact of the matter is if you live inside Industrial Civilization in most places besides a few Big Shities with decent Public Transit systems, you simply can't get along or make a living for yourself without driving a car. Even Public Transit though burns a shit load of fossil fuels, ever consider how much energy it takes to keep all those subway trains running in NYC 24/7/365? At 3 AM sometimes I would get on the No. 7 Flushing Line and there would be NOBODY else in the train car, one of maybe 7-10 of these huge hunks of metal in the whole train. How efficient a use of energy is that?

People who drive Teslas, Volts and other EVs consider themselves "Green", but of course they also use electricity which is generally produced by burning fossil fuels. The amount of energy contributed to this so far by Solar PV is marginal right now. Besides that, the manufacture of photovoltaic cells takes energy and is the source of quite a bit of mining pollution as well, so you can cross yourself off the list of Greenies if you are driving one of these overpriced hunks of metal, glass & plastic around.

You pretty much have to work down to the level of the Amish with a horse drawn carriage or use a bicycle all the time to be anywhere near "Green", and this just isn't practical for most people. Doomer or not, aware of Climate problems or not, we're mostly going to continue driving carz until we just can't anymore. How far off that day is remains an open question of course.

Concommitant with owning a car and using it for your transit needs is how many miles do you actually DRIVE that car every week? There's quite the range here as well amongst Kollapsniks, from the very low end of <10 miles/week (93 respondents/25%) to the high end of >1000 (3 respondents/1%).

For the low end folks, I suspect they are retired/crippled folks like me who don't have to commute to work anymore. Even if you only live a couple of miles from your workplace, you're going to drive more than 10 miles/week. Add in those trips to the Food Superstore to pick up a bottle of milk you forgot on the way home or a six-pack of Sam Adams Boston Lager, you're easily over 20 miles for the week, and that's just the weekdays. On the weekends you gotta chauffer the kids around to their various activities and play dates.

For the high end folks clocking in at over 1000 miles/week, if that is just for commuting purposes I feel truly sorry for these folks. 5 days/week they are stuck in their car for two 100 mile journeys across the Interstate and through traffic, taking a likely minimum of 2 hours each way. There's a great way to spend your time walking the earth! (or in this case, sitting & periodically rolling). Some might also be professional drivers though, like taxi drivers or truck drivers. When I was trucking, an average week would see me on the road for around 2500-3000 miles.

Needless to say, all this driving burns a LOT of Fossil Fuels, but at the moment it is pretty much unavoidable, for most people living inside Industrial Civilization.

Finishing off with the scurrying about Industrialized Homo Saps do each year is the issue of plane travel, another one which leaves you wide open to Hypocrisy criticisms if you are a self-proclaimed Greeny. Here the critics have more validity, since about nobody really NEEDS to fly around in jets all over the world, even to do bizness. There is little you cannot do via Teleconferencing these days, but even Dr. McStinksion flies across the globe to give lectures to his acolytes and let them know they are all hopelessly DOOMED.

In our survey, the plurality of Kollapsniks don't fly at all, at 38% (141 Respondents). Another 44% only fly once or twice a year, I fit in that category weighing in for an average of once a year. Some years I don't fly at all, other years, two plane trips but overall it's about once a year.

Then you have the cohort of Jet Setters getting molested by the TSA Goons 3-6 times a year. For the most part in my Guesstimation, these are the upper middle class and moderately rich people who take several vacations every year to Snorkel in places like the Virgin Islands and to Ski the Deep Powder in the Rockies. These people are now starting to burn some serious amounts of Jet Fuel. Finally you have your filthy rich people who are flying anywhere from 7 and up times a year, who knows maybe even in Private Jets. We have a couple of respondents in that category here, more on that next week when I chart out some of the demographics of Kollapsniks. If you just look at the folks from 7 & Up flights though, they burn more fuel than the whole cohort of people flying once a year or less! One rich fuck can put a shit load of carbon into the atmosphere every year, no problem. It's chump change for these folks!

Can we/will we stop the flying around before TEOTWAWKI arrives? Also unlikely. It's not quite as built in to the culture or as necessary as the driving is, but it's close especially for people at the upper end who have high maintenance lifestyles and have come to expect this freedom of travel to far flung places. I personally do not feel guilty when I board a jet plane to haul my crippled ass down to the Lower 48. That's just how it goes in the waning days of Industrial Civilization. Everybody Knows.

See you again next week here on the Doomstead Diner for more fun Stats about Kollapniks. Coming Soon to a Laptop Near You.