What happens to the world if Saudi Arabia gets taken out?

[Lancer]

I'm watching a show on FX 'Oil Storm'that postulates SA having its ports taken out by terrorists, wells blown away, or something like that. I'm at work so it's hard to catch it all. Right now they are up to massive economic effects and gas over $8 a gallon, oil over $200 a bbl. It's all doom and gloom on the tube, but would it really be so bad? We could produce alot more electricity from solar and fuel from coal...

Are they just BSing to hype the show or would losing SA be really bad?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Losing SA would be really, really bad, but only for a while.

The bright side is it would force the United States to become more reliant on alternative energy sources.

[Jaguar]

Gas is practically 8 dollars a gallon in Europe already.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

**** Europe.

And WTF is this whole red china face avatar thingie? I don't read ALL the threads on this site.

[Urban Ranger]

That will definitely spur research in alternate fuel sources and energy efficiency.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
**** Europe.

And WTF is this whole red china face avatar thingie? I don't read ALL the threads on this site.

It's a protest against Chinese censorship

[OzzyKP]

pssh, the US would never allow that. We'd sweep in quickly to protect the oil... er, our allies.

[Az]

oil at 200$ per barrel?

coal liquification. We did that **** in the 80s.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
pssh, the US would never allow that. We'd sweep in quickly to protect the oil... er, our allies.

Either way...we'd be defending a country that has no right to be considered an ally.

[our_man]

We might be sore for a couple of years, probably a worldwide recession, but this would be the trigger to switch over to nuclear power and once we've got that going, no more problems, period. This is provided of course that we use this as an excuse to make a clean break from the Middle East, and Bush doesn't decide to go on another crappy little Middle Eastern adventure. If he sends in troops to try and re-establish oil supplies then all bets are off.

The only ones who would be well and truly screwed are the Saudis. With the exception of a few of the Gulf States, the Arabian Peninsula is completely reliant on oil. The economic devastation would cause the royal family to be overthrown, if they haven't been deposed already. Unfortunately a few of them are Irish citizens so we'd probably have some of that trash come our way.

The fundies take over Saudi Arabia, and they get to create their 7th century Mohammedan paradise on Earth. The rest of the world leaves them to their business while we bask in the warm embrace of nuclear power.

[BeBMan]

People here would suddenly start to use more train, city rail, subway and stuff than their own cars.....

Maybe the car industry would seriously go forward with models using other stuff than oil-based fuel. And maybe then these models would be even accepted by a larger number of people

[Dinner]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Losing SA would be really, really bad, but only for a while.

The bright side is it would force the United States to become more reliant on alternative energy sources.

I'm seeing this as a major upside.

[MrFun]

Another bright side is that United States would no longer be a vassal to Saudi Arabia.

[alva]

Except that the Saudies have huge investments in the US.

[Pekka]

8 bucks a gallon? Yeah.. close to that I'd suppose.. in here about 1.2 Euros per liter. It rises all the time, the bad thing is it never gets down, we are used to these prices already.

Actually, I never thought about scenario were terrorists would blow up stuff in SA.. that's actually a brilliant idea for terrorists. That, and very doable I feel like, especially when considering terrorists already are in the country and should have no problems with logistics and support, it's all about coming up with the gameplan and doing it.

In the big scheme of things, I don't know how devastating that would be... for us? Not really.. for US? For a while.. but they'd get over it and come up with more sustainable solutions as well, and at the end of it, they'd be off the SA hook a little which definitely is good, and could strike on terrorists in SA. It would mean in bigger scale, that terrorist would lsoe very much funding. This is why I suspect they are not going to do it.