All of us in the WWO community who have spent months documenting the crisis – we won’t just forget it. We know we’ve done something important. We’ve shown the world what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like -- even what it smells like and what it tastes like! -- to live without oil.

It’s a life most of us never imagined until we lived it. When things got really bad -- I mean really bad -- I kept thinking – we should have thought about this sooner. Maybe then it wouldn’t have been such a shock when it actually happened. But we never figured out how to imagine our world without oil, until it became a reality.

In the end, we managed to snap out of our shock. We put our minds together. We talked about our neighborhoods and our cities. We shared the details of our families' lives. We traded strategies, and we argued about whose strategies were right.

You all came up with so many creative solutions. You gave each other reasons to be optimistic, and tons of ways to make little changes.

So, yeah: People working together, sharing ideas, and experimenting with different ways of going about their everyday lives. That’s how I plan to remember the Oil Shock of 2007.

Of course, it’s not enough just to remember. To keep us moving forward, from a world without oil to a world beyond oil, Emil and I have put together our complete A to Z kit of life without oil. 

Some of it’s silly, some of it’s serious, and some of it's just plain strange -- and awesome.

Our A-Z list barely scratches the surface—you could make this list a dozen times over and never repeat a story. But for the rest of the big picture, there’s always the full week by week archives on the WWO site. We promise to keep the archive up there.

Because it is truly an amazing story you’ve told.

 
A World Beyond Oil, from A to Z

Architecture Without Oil 
Breathing Without Oil 

Car Culture Without Oil

Dating Without Oil 

Eating Without Oil 
Fellowship Without Oil

Guerilla Gardening Without Oil     

HealthWithout Oil

Immigration Without Oil
Jobs and More Jobs Without Oil

Knowledge Without Oil

LOL Without Oil

Music Without Oil

Neighborhoods Without Oil

OMG Without Oil

PDAs Without Oil

Quick Thinking Without Oil

Real Estate Without Oil 
Soldiers Without Oil
Teens and More Teens Without Oil
Urban Adventure Without Oil 
Vision and More Vision Without Oil
Wacky Without Oil  
Xtreme Partying Without Oil 
Your Mama Without Oil
Zoom Zoom Without Oil

Lisa writes:

"Everyone is now feeling the oil crisis. Over the past few weeks I have witnessed a trickling down of anxiety to our kids. At Valley Vista Elementary where I teach, there are fewer and fewer children coming to school and many teachers, especially those who used to drive in from other suburbs, are not making it to work. Since I live in walking distance, I have continued to come in everyday. I am absorbing additional students into my class as I am loosing others who are no longer attending. None of us have the attention span to focus on regular lesson plans, so we are inventing ways to learn and play and cope with the state of our world. Yesterday we decided to invent games that kids could play in our current situation. We talked about oil and how it is usually delivered and changes that we are seeing due to the shortage. With this the students and I came up with a game called Pipeline. There are 2 versions of the game. One that deals with the frustration of the shortage by more aggressively playing with running around and breaking the pipelines of other teams. The second version is more meditative and cooperative in its approach by encouraging teams to work together to build pipelines that can encircle things around us. Play these games with your students and let us know how you like them."

Here are the two games LIsa submitted! I'd love to see photos or hear reports of you guys making your own pipelines...

Jake, who claims to be from a recently formed group called "People for the Survival of Amusement", writes: "Gas bandits have been plaguing our streets. We must stay positive and respond with playful optimism." Here are his instructions for playing gas bandits! We are definitely playing this at my next ped party.

This just in from Emil - the first World Without Oil drop spot is live, out in San Francisco.

(What are drop spots?)

I love drop spots. Sneaky, alternative mailboxes hidden in plain sight! Think geocaching, only without the GPS coordinates.

Emil wrote this:

"i've set up a drop spot for exchanging essential goods. hopefully only fellow world without oil heroes will use it. i've kicked it off by leaving one of your favorite books, evie. you were right -- the chapter 1 explanation of how we got into this oil mess was, well, mindblowing just like you said. and the rest of the book should help any wwo hero think of some ways to innovate our way out of this crisis."

I think we should set up drop spots for WWO heroes EVERYWHERE! A network of secret caches for us.

Remember, pick spots near public transportation so folks can get there without driving!

If you set one up, log it on dropspots.org and submit the entry as a story on our 8TSOC site. That's your mission! Got it?

Would you allow me to alter your neural structure if it might help to save the world?

View Answers

yep, sounds like fun
11 (37.9%)
er - is it reversible?
14 (48.3%)
save my brain, screw the world
0 (0.0%)
awwa. brain hacks! so cute!!
4 (13.8%)