I was also at Petrocollapse today and enjoyed it immensely -- especially Mike Ruppert and James Howard Kuntsler.  I found Mike Ruppert to be truthful, honest and sincere in his intentions to help those who are willing to be helped.  James Kunstler is just pure fun to listen to -- outrageous and forthrightful...there aren't many who are willing to go out on a limb and both of these men are.  They both seem to be fully enjoying Peak Oil and Life and is there any difference between the two?
I find these points very interesting (except his last point on population reduction - a bit much to swallow that one).  I have actually come across opinion peices (not in mainstream media) that discuss the Bush administration's intention to expand the role of the military in the U.S., particularly noticed more commentary along this line in the summer (If interested I may try to dig up some links) but of interest is that the commentary pointed to the fall as to when we would start to see signs of such intentions.

I thought such talk was a crock of Shit.  However, Bush commenting on using the military for purposes of quarantine during a flu pandemic had my jaw dropping to the floor (is this Bush testing the waters?). None of us should take democracy for granted and any developments in this direction should be followed closely.  If other PO people have further info, please share.

My understanding that using the military to enforce quarantine goes way back(*).  Do you remember the movie "Outbreak" with Dustin Hoffman?

There is actually a very brutal fact in this ... simulations show that to enforce a true quarintine, troops would have to be willing to kill Americans attempting to run roadblocks.  In all simulations, even when the soldiers and National Guardsmen were shootin blanks ... they refused to shoot those blanks at the civilians.

This is harsh math, but in the simulations "not killing" a few hundred at roadblocks leads to (in worst cases) millions dying in other cities.

Not nice, but I believe that really is the way it goes.

* - I suppose a historian would say it goes by thousands of years.

"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there's only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat." -Pentti Linkola, finnish fisherman

When thinking about big picture, when the question is about saving human species, you have to give away such humanism-christianity which tells not to kill a human. When there is 5 billion large carnivorous too many on this tiny planet with huge consumption rate, this species nor, in the worst case, even the whole biosphere has no future if human population is so huge. If human species if important to you, start killing people. If not, why not kill yourself right away, how can one human life be important, while the whole species future is not. Every act of terror which decreases consumption and/or production will give this biosphere few more minutes, days or perhaps years.  

The most amazing thing to me is all the articles that claim that high proces have curbed consumption and that the reduction in demand is the natural operation of the "invisible hand" that they learned about in eco101.  WAKE UP!!!  We just lost an area of the US that is greater than the size of Great Britain.  Isn't it possible that the reduction in demand is because 100s of thousands of homes were underwater and are no longer drawing on the energy bank.  What do you think will happen when resources are applied to the reconstruction and as houses and infrastructure come back on line.  And then we have to pay back what we borrowed in oil and natural gas and make up the difference and make up for growth.  If we make it to Christmas, the new year is going to see some great changes.