Lucifer's Hammer

Anyone here read it? 

I have to say that I love the book.  It's written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and I would have to recommend it to people here.  Besides a comet being the reason for the collapse of civilization, the book does a good job of exploring how we would react as a populace.  It's a fun read, total fiction but good fiction.  If anyone reads it, let me know what you think.

Hmmm sounds like an interesting read.

I'll google it

mnewby wrote:
Anyone here read it? 

I have to say that I love the book.  It's written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and I would have to recommend it to people here.  Besides a comet being the reason for the collapse of civilization, the book does a good job of exploring how we would react as a populace.  It's a fun read, total fiction but good fiction.  If anyone reads it, let me know what you think.

ive read this book and agree its a great classic book. check out "earth abides", "on the beach", and similar but different "atlas shrugged". all touch on various extinction/ collapse scenarios and our reaction to them. most of my non permiculture/small farm reading trends in this direction, and includes similar non fiction subjects such as population overshoot/collapse, peak oil, anarcho-primitivism, society collapse, and luddite/anti-technology.

my personal opinion is that climate change and overpopulation/collapse would be the most sensational thing we would probably see in our future (not so much a sudden catastrophe like comet), but more likely a slower decent into a "dark age" due to energy/oil shortages. very few people in american mainstream can live a slow life with no or little electricity and super expensive gas. unfortunately, this would probably lead to famines and disease due to reduced food production, and eventually to a large population collapse. unless you subscribe to the idea that we will come up with some new technology to get us out of this mess while sustaining our current energy hungry lifestyle, and the ever increasing human bioload.

of course non of this matters....... everyone is to busy being caught up in american idol, and charging up their credit cards chasing the american dream to notice the crumbling empire around them

One of my favorite all-time books!!!

I'm a sucker for the major disaster genre [at least in print, don't care much for film]!

On the Beach is great, but much more of a downer, IMHO.

"this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but a whimper."

very memorable.

I'd be remis if I didn't mention Alas, Babylon - another classic.

Read it, loved it.

FWIW, I think the Big Crisis will be driven by the collision between diminishing oil supply and a global economy reliant on constant growth.

If aliens visit us, they must think we are insane, such mindless slaves to little green pieces of paper.

When those pieces of paper don't dance the way they're supposed to, there is hell to pay, because we won't exchange goods and services without them.

And with  the system we've inflicted upon ourselves, those pieces of paper won't dance right in the absence of constant increase in production and consumption. The system is not set up to function in a time of contraction. And we are an oil technology; For all the blather about photovoltaics and wind turbines, there's no way that they can take over the role petroleum plays.

So I really think that peak oil=global economic collapse=a real bad time for us hairless  apes. Scares the crap out of me. I think it scares most everybody, which is why 99 percent of us are in deep denial about what is fast approaching.