Collapse is a great documentary starring Michael Ruppert. In fact he is the only person shown in the movie, other than clips of older footage thrown in to help the viewer visualize what Ruppert is talking about. The whole time Ruppert is sitting in a chair in what looks like a shitty, concrete basement, just talking to the camera. But as terrible as this sounds, it is everything but boring. I didn’t get bored once during the entire one hour and twenty minute film. Ruppert is a genius of his field.

Michael focuses his discussion on oil, or the lack-there-of. He talks about how the world is running out of oil, which will mean the collapse of civilization as we know it. He tells how twenty-five percent of the world’s oil was under Saudi Arabia, but they have past their peak oil production, even though they won’t admit it. He knows this because they have begun off-shore drilling; why would anyone begin more expensive drilling if they still had tons of oil under their own land, which can be mined much cheaper?

Tar Sand in Canada, near Alberta, is strip mined and it is refined by using thousands of gallons of oil: in the transporting, boiling, cleaning, mining, etc. Most people think of cars as using oil only to make the car move, so they wonder why we don’t just solve this problem by making all cars electric, but they fail to realize that each tire is made up of seven gallons of oil, not to mention all of the plastics in the interior, the transportation of parts, the oil that fuels the machines which assemble the cars, and the transporting of the finished product to the dealer.

Not only is oil used in plastics, rubbers, toothpaste, and fuel tanks, but it is used to make pesticides too, which is on many of the foods we eat. Not only does this harm our bodies, but it harms the soil these foods are grown in. No longer is there crop rotation and natural nutrients being returned to the soil, but pesticides and other chemicals are being put into the soil, making it worse and worse every year for growing plants.

The graph shown represents human population over time, from 1000 AD when there were only 275 million people on the earth, to 2006 AD when 6.5 BILLION people now reside on our planet. The world was not made to sustain this many people, and the population increase is directly related to oil. When it was first discovered that machines could be powered by steam, the graph shows a slight increase in population. When coal was discovered there was a slightly larger increase. When oil first came about the graph skyrockets. Only because of oil are we able to sustain this many people. Just think about hospitals, the place that keeps all these people going. Most of their equipment is plastic, and most of it is powered by electricity, which is mostly created by fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The government pretends like this decline in oil isn’t happening, but there is evidence that they know it is. So in twenty or thirty years when they say, “Nobody could have predicted this,” they are lying through their teeth. You know now and you can predict it. To quote the movie, “How can you say there’s no hope?” “Just change your mind!” Changing your mind and deciding to prepare yourself for this crisis, by growing your own food and learning to live off the land, is the only way to avoid inevitable peril. “Stop thinking like the dinosaurs!”

*Graph from ThinkCreateDesign

William Hearst is often considered the biggest and best influence ever in mass media. That is a huge accomplishment. When Hearst was young and failing out of college he told his father, George Hearst, that he wanted to take over one of the newspapers that George happened to own. His father couldn’t understand why he did not want to inherit something more profitable, but agreed nonetheless. Will’s plan was to publish any story, whether it had been covered already or not, and make it his own. He would even pay people to create news. For example he paid someone to jump off of a ferry and see how long it took to be rescued by the crew or other bystanders.

Orson Welles used Hearst’s own moves in creating “Citizen Kane,” which ultimately led to the conflict between Welles and Hearst. Just as Hearst’s career was to destroy the life of others, Welles’ career meant destroying the reputation of Hearst. Welles portrayed Hearst as a cruel man who exploited anyone and everyone he could to get ahead in the media business. His life was work first, relationships second. The greatest similarity between Welles and Hearst seemed to be that they have both built careers on controversy.