I won’t speculate about cognitive biases, but you have some things wrong here. You mention that food will become more expensive as fuel prices and fertilizer prices rise. But the commodity price of food (i.e. wheat or pigs or whatever) is a very small percentage of the retail price of the food we buy in stores (even more so for restaurant meals). Commodity price increases of orders of magnitude become increases of degrees at retail price levels.
As for the idea of lights going out due to energy shortages, only a very small fraction of our electricity is generated by oil. In United States, the overwhelming majority of our electricity is produced by coal, nukes, nat. gas, hydro, etc.
Synthetic fertilizer and other chemicals can be produced using other kerogen rich feedstocks. Transportation is the industry which faces the biggest shock, but I think there is good reason to believe people are flexible enough to prevent transportation problems from ending civilization and returning us to the stone age. For example, in Japan in WW2, there was virtually no available oil in the last months. All available fuel was being saved for the military. Yet people found still found creative ways to get around: on motorcycles powered by turpentine.
ETA: Are you investing heavily in oil futures, or stocking up on canned goods and ammunition? If not, why not?
I won’t speculate about cognitive biases, but you have some things wrong here. You mention that food will become more expensive as fuel prices and fertilizer prices rise. But the commodity price of food (i.e. wheat or pigs or whatever) is a very small percentage of the retail price of the food we buy in stores (even more so for restaurant meals). Commodity price increases of orders of magnitude become increases of degrees at retail price levels.
As for the idea of lights going out due to energy shortages, only a very small fraction of our electricity is generated by oil. In United States, the overwhelming majority of our electricity is produced by coal, nukes, nat. gas, hydro, etc.
Synthetic fertilizer and other chemicals can be produced using other kerogen rich feedstocks. Transportation is the industry which faces the biggest shock, but I think there is good reason to believe people are flexible enough to prevent transportation problems from ending civilization and returning us to the stone age. For example, in Japan in WW2, there was virtually no available oil in the last months. All available fuel was being saved for the military. Yet people found still found creative ways to get around: on motorcycles powered by turpentine.
ETA: Are you investing heavily in oil futures, or stocking up on canned goods and ammunition? If not, why not?