>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
It is pretty amazing how little force is applied.


It is a minivan traveling at high speed. He probably could have spit on it and thrown it into a spin.

Cars were hideous overall until the 90s. In the late 80s, when Robocop came out using repainted Ford Tauruses to stand in for the SUX 9000, I noticed that mainstream cars were finally starting to get some attractive lines again. But compare a 90s Ford Taurus to the mainstream Ford offerings of the 50s and 60s, and you can see just how fucking ugly the design trends had made things by 1980.

I used to look at vans, minivans, station wagons, K-cars, town cars, Cadillacs, etc. in the 80s as a little kid and wonder why the hell everything was made so ugly.

There is definitely a person flying out of the bed of the truck.

It's harder to tell, but I think there is someone either coming out of the suv that the tire flew off of, or the black minivan. That might be some shrapnel though.

if i hadnt crashed my minivan i would have totally bumped this after i transferred it to cassette tape format

usually i blasted spanish folk music because it made for a very confusing scene.

I feel the same way when I take my minivan for a morning spin.

Moving freight, airplanes and battleships requires different solutions (in my opinion) then the problem of getting your kids to the hockey game.

The engines that run minivans are identical to the ones used by freight ships, freight trains, Farm implements, highway tractors, backup generators, battleships and prop planes. The same solution applies to them all. In fact, large enough ships like carriers and subs already run off electricity instead of oil because it is cheaper.


Even if energy storage technology was to rapidly become what we would need it to be, where would the energy come from if the source for more then half of our current use was to vanish?


We have enough sources of uranium and thorium to meet global energy needs for 100's of years. With any luck, we can develop renewable sources like wind,tidal and solar with that kind of time to get them ready. If we're really lucky, maybe we'll even get fusion power before that and then we are good for the lifetime of the solar system. As a bonus, nuclear is cheaper when developed on a large scale, France is making good money running over 80% nuclear power and exporting it's cheaper electricity to the rest of Europe.


A battery won't move an 18 wheeler. The only thing that will move an 18 wheeler is foreign oil, diesel and gasoline, and our domestic natural gas.

That is utter nonesense. Lookup Tesla motors, they've actually managed to use current battery technology to make a Lotus Elise that is FASTER than it's oil driven counter-part. The argument is as silly as when people felt automobiles where worthless because they couldn't go as far as a horse without a fill-up. Batteries don't need to improve too much more to be a viable replacement and then a landslide shift will take place to cheaper more powerfull electric vehicles.


In the mean time, let me know when you've found a battery that can power an ocean liner.


And this is your fundamental and underlying misunderstanding. The navy is currently using compact nuclear generators as giant batteries to power their largest ships more cheaply and without any dependence on oil. The problem for ocean liner's isn't building a battery that is big enough, it's building them SMALL enough. If a battery can be made small enough to replace the gas tank in a car, then you can power ANYTHING bigger than that car as well by using 2,10 or 1000 such batteries. Already with current laptop battery technology we are almost there. We don't need a breakthrough, a few small improvements to weight and cost and the solution is there. Anything to small to be powered by a compact nuclear generator can instead be run off of batteries without a loss in performance or ability.


The social attachment to oil is much deeper the powering the transportation to get to the grocery store or the beach. It is in every piece of food you get at the grocery store or bring to the beach. It is in the road you drive on, the oil that lubricates the engine as well as just the gas tank.


But moving goods is all still part of the transportation network. And ALL of those applications use internal combustion engines that can be replaced with only a moderately improved battery over those available today.


The agricultural attachment to oil is not just that it is used in the production and delivery of the fertilizer that grows the food to feed the citizen or just the fuel in the gas tank of the grain harvester and other farm machinery.


I grew up on a farm. The agricultural attachment to oil is again dominated by the use of internal combustion engines for machinery, which is easily replaced with a better battery.


The political attachment to oil is not just ensuring that a population have access to the cheap energy for their car, but the cheap fuel for the cheap power plant the provides the cheap electricity for to run the fridge for the cheap food brought from all corners of the earth.

Wrong, the cheap power plant runs off of coal, not oil. Coal reserves utterly dwarf oil reserves, that's why not even crazy people talk about 'peak' coal. In fact, many talk about converting coal to oil if necessary.


I'm sorry, but the entirety of the arguments you make NEVER go beyond the assumption that nothing can replace internal combustion engines and so when oil runs out everything using them is doomed. Fortunately that is not the reality we live in. Even with current technology, battery powered electric motors are begining to appear in automobiles. The military has been running their largest ships on electricty and independent of oil for decades. We are not looking at a dire need for a major breakthrough. We only need small, incremental improvements to battey technology to being able to replace internal combustion engines with batteries, and oil with electricity. Then we are free to simply expand the electric grid, which we have been doing for nearly a century already and are getting rather good at.

>> ^bcglorf:

Thank you for your reply.

You made it clear that I may have made an error in my previous comment. I think I should clarify that what I meant by "personal transport" was light vehicles for personal uses, as is the minivan or motorcycle used to get to work, the store, not transportation in general, which I view as a different, though not unrelated, problem. Moving freight, airplanes and battleships requires different solutions (in my opinion) then the problem of getting your kids to the hockey game.

I think we agree that the transition from oil is an important issue. You seem to believe that better batteries (and electric engines) will solve every facet of every issue facing the end of oil, and that this will result in little or no social or political change or turmoil. While I deeply wish that the next century comes to be shaped after your expectations, I do not believe it will be so. I do not believe that batteries alone will solve the coming crisis. Even if energy storage technology was to rapidly become what we would need it to be, where would the energy come from if the source for more then half of our current use was to vanish? Replacing that energy by renewable means will require a huge amount of investment and several decades to implement.

What I see coming, is a myriad of interwoven problems of which the central spine is energy use. All of them are have energy use at the at the root of their problem. This is because oil has done more then just let people drive their cars around cheaply. Cities are no longer shaped after people's needs, but to suit the demands of the automobile. There has been a great deal of optimism in investing in electric cars to allow people to continue to access modern cities as they have been constructed.

"When people say that they want to go to the electric car, I love it! But remember, they say 'car' not 'truck.' A battery won't move an 18 wheeler. The only thing that will move an 18 wheeler is foreign oil, diesel and gasoline, and our domestic natural gas." -T. Boone Pickens (on The Daily Show)

However continuing to access these cities will get more difficult when costs of energy begin to come down from the bubble of cheapness that I and most of the people I know have grown up in.

"Consequently these (cities) will be places that nobody wants to be in. These will be places that are not worth caring about. We have about 38,000 places that are not worth caring about in the united states today, when we have enough of them we will have a nation that is not worth defending. -James Howard Kunstler on "The greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."

Even if cities are reshaped for the new economy of energy, there is debate on what that will be. Some people believe that there will be a magic-pill cure, like super batteries that will allow life to continue as normal. This will not be the case.

"The central delusion that we're seeing right now is the idea that we can magically come up with a rescue remedy to continue running the interstate highway system and all the other accessories and furnishings of the happy motoring system. I happen to think that we're going to be very disappointed about that. In fact there are a lot of intelligent thigns we can do, but one of the least intelligent things we can expect is that we can continue happy motoring. You can demonstrate that you can run cars on hydrogen, cow shit and fried potato oil, but can run 230 million cars and trucks on it? Forget about it.

And then you get into political questions, like if driving becomes something only for the elite. Right now 4% of americans can't drive for one reason or another. What happens when that number becomes 13% or 27% of the people do you think that's going to be politically okay? It would create huge resentments and grievances against the people who can still do it." - James Howard Kunstler

But when I said that personal transportation is not the biggest issue, I meant it. People will be less concerned with their car or the "happy motoring system" if they are hungry.

"Food prices are rising and they're about to soar. There have been a lot of rising grain prices that have not been passed on to the consumer, they're about to be. High food prices always create political peril, as we've known since the French revolution at least.

The era of cheap food is over in this country, just as the era of cheap oil is over as well. (...) The old fix, ramping up production is not going to work this time, because cheap food depends on cheap energy, something we can no longer count on. Without reforming the American food system, it will be impossible to make progress on the issues of energy independence, climate change and the health care crisis because the way we feed ourselves is that the heart of all those three problems.

Let me explain. The food system, uses more fossil fuel and contributes more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere then any other industry. Between 17 and 34 percent. Meat production alone is 18 percent." -Michael Pollan, on The End of Cheap Food.

So when faced with the choice between fuel for their cars and fuel for their bodies, some will choose to fuel the car, leaving others to go hungry. And when people are hungry, they turn to first to the government for solutions. Governments know that they will need to bring resources to appease a population and avoid that political peril they have known about since the French Revolution. Remember that wars are always about resources.

"How curious, that the First World War is never taught in our schools as an invasion of Iraq. (...A reaction to) the Berlin-Bagdad railway, which commenced construction in the years leading up to the first world war," with the goal of bringing oil from Iraq to Germany. (-Robert Newman, A History of Oil)

"Oil is what drives the military machine of every country. It provides the fuel for aircraft, the ships the tanks for the trucks. The control of oil is indespensible. When you run out if your army stops." -Chalmers Johnson, Why we fight.

Oil is more then just a transportation issue. Riding the bus won't help much. The bus runs on gasoline, just like your car.

I like how she's sitting in her minivan.

I'm guessing for 1 of 3 reasons;

1. She doesn't have a stereo at home because she sold it for bingo money.
2. Her husband thinks CD players are the devil.
3. She missed her morning prayer, and bought this audiobook to make up for it. She is recording it to prove to God she really did listen to it (and she only bought it because she read "God" in the title).

Death is funny to me. Because its inevitable.

I know more about weapons of war than I care to.

You think that because I'm American I don't know what happens in countries where land mines are distributed by air, or designed to have chain reaction kill zones?

What a .40 caliber will do to impact on soft tissue? What a mark II frag will do when the spoon pops?

Or what an air bursting artillery shell will do to a squad? Or what a cluster bomb will do to a structure, let alone any living thing inside that house. Ive never seen it first hand, but I venture to say you haven't either.

Ive seen what a careless person in a minivan can do to a husband and his happy wife, laughing just before they get broadsided. Then being their to pick up the pieces.

Don't think that because I am American I am blind to land mines, and I know where half of the mines where manufactured.

That's the point of the video, to be absurd.

geico for the win.

i'd like to see them try and fit my bike in a minivan

Redneck in a minivan.
Am not surprised.

It looks really horrendous, but the man featured was fine. He made a blog posting the following day explaining that miraculously he only suffered cuts and bruises. Apparently he was able to slow the bike down to 20-30mph before he slammed into the minivan. Oh, and his very expensive custom-built motorcycle was fucked.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Stunt-Gone-Wrong
http://www.videosift.com/video/Worst-Hockey-Accident-Ever-Warning-Graphic
http://www.videosift.com/video/Compilation-of-Models-Falling
http://www.videosift.com/video/Question-Will-this-driver-avoid-that-HUGE-mass-of-water
http://www.videosift.com/video/Minivan-crashes-into-ABC-Studio-during-live-broadcast
http://www.videosift.com/video/Tatt-Screwed-40-seconds
http://www.videosift.com/video/Nanny-Tosses-Babies-Like-Bails-of-Hay
http://www.videosift.com/video/Boeing-C-17-Bounces-Off-Runway

There are more, but I'd say you are well qualified to be the steward of *ouch or *oops, which the sift sorely needs.

$.02

Tags for this video have been changed from 'wmd, minivan, iraq, checkpoint, harry carry, hilarious, gi, impression' to 'wmd, minivan, iraq, checkpoint, harry caray, carry, hilarious, gi, impression, farrell' - edited by my15minutes

MINIVAN TEEN!

I totally didn't remember this until now.