Look At What They Make You Give: The Extreme Risks We Endure For A Fossil Fuel Economy

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Next month, I’m hooking my travel trailer up to my Chevy Silverado EV and heading out on a coast-to-coast trip from Los Angeles to the Outer Banks along Route 66. It’s supposed to be a fun, relaxing drive that you can come along for on BlueSky or on my website.

But as I’ve been planning for the trip and prepping the rig, some of the news we’ve been discussing at CleanTechnica’s secret lair threaten to make the trip more complicated than I had originally planned.

Right now, everybody is glued to the footage of Trump’s debacle in the Middle East. He’s calling it Operation Epic Fury. The US media is obsessed with the explosions, the drone strikes, and the political shouting matches in Washington. They’re treating it like a tactical scorecard or a reality TV show they can make a buck off of.

But, they’re completely missing the actual story. The real crisis isn’t happening in the sky over the Middle East. It’s quietly making its way across the ocean on the last remaining oil tankers headed all over the world.

We’re just weeks away from a systemic shock to the global supply chain. The people in charge are trying to solve a 21st-century logistical nightmare with 20th-century bombs, and the math is completely falling apart.

If you stick with me through this deep dive into the military reality and the economic fallout we’re going to soon face, you’ll understand exactly why the centralized fossil fuel economy is a literal death trap.

We’re all stuck for the ride on a geopolitical gamble that’s a lot more dangerous than most people realize. And for what? For the great glory of keeping internal combustion vehicles in the driveway? For the privilege of paying out the nose for a volatile commodity that requires constant warfare to secure?

The sane solution is to take the advice of the WOPR supercomputer from the movie WarGames. When it comes to the global fossil fuel conflict, the only winning move is not to play.

Let’s take a hard look at what they make us give for fossil fuels.

The Math of the Mountain

To understand why things are spiraling out of control, we have to look at the interceptor deadline. The United States and Israel are quite literally running out of bullets.

The backbone of the defense against Iranian ballistic missiles is the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, commonly known as THAAD. It’s an incredible piece of technology, but we simply don’t have enough of them. Iran has already launched over 800 ballistic missiles since late February. The burn rate for our interceptors is completely unsustainable. Lockheed Martin currently produces roughly 96 of these interceptors a year. You can’t just flip a switch and build highly advanced rockets overnight. At the current rate of fire, defense analysts estimate that the U.S. and Israeli defense grids will completely run dry somewhere between April 10 and April 17.

So, if Grump and Netan-yahoo can’t shoot the missiles down forever, why not just blow up the launchers? That brings us to the geological reality of the Zagros Mountains.

Iran has spent decades building sprawling, subterranean missile cities carved directly into the bedrock. Facilities like Oghab 44 sit underneath hundreds of meters of solid mountain granite. The U.S. military has the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bunker buster. But even on its best day, that bomb can only dig through about 200 feet of rock or concrete. It just bounces off a 1,500-foot mountain. The US military is stuck playing a lethal game of whack-a-mole at the tunnel exits.

The Trump regime thought they were picking a fight with an old man who had long been a nemesis. But, they ended up picking a fight with mountains. As of right now, the mountains are winning.

The May Logistical Desert

While the US and Israeli militaries burn through missile stockpiles, the clock is ticking on an even bigger threat. On March 2, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to commercial shipping. The missile cities built beneath the mountains were set up to fire missiles on the Strait, and now nobody wants to pilot an oil or LNG tanker through it. The crews have families to go home to, and their insurers aren’t interested in promising to pay if the boat gets destroyed.

The physical reality of the global supply chain is about to hit us like a slow-moving freight train.

The ships that managed to escape the Gulf right before the shooting started are currently sitting in the middle of the ocean. It takes roughly 30 to 40 days for a massive tanker to travel from the Middle East to Western ports. Those final ships will keep arriving for another two to three weeks. Once they dock and unload, there’s nothing but an empty ocean behind them. We’re staring down a massive gap in this oceanic pipeline.

If the politicians shake hands and sign a peace treaty tomorrow morning, the first post-war tankers would show up in mid-April. That still leaves us with an 11-day crunch where the domestic pipeline goes dry. But if we look at the political and psychological theories dictating Iran’s survival, that quick handshake is highly unlikely.

How long will this oil hostage situation last? To understand that, we need to dig into some theory.

In political science, there is Selectorate Theory, developed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. It states that a leader only stays in power if they satisfy their “winning coalition.” For Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei (son of the original leader Trump killed), that coalition is the hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If he caves too early, he looks weak to his generals and risks a coup.

Add to that Prospect Theory, pioneered by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. This framework proves that people will take massive, seemingly irrational risks to avoid cementing a loss. Iran has already taken heavy physical damage. Accepting a deal now makes that damage a permanent loss. Holding out keeps the gamble alive and maybe gives Iran a chance to come out ahead.

Khamenei knows he’s playing against a U.S. administration actively utilizing Richard Nixon’s old Madman Theory, projecting extreme unpredictability to force Iran to blink. But Khamenei, Jr. also knows the U.S. has a short political timer because of angry voters paying at the pump. He is heavily incentivized to drag this out to extract maximum concessions.

Because he is highly likely to wait until the absolute last second in mid-April to get the best deal, that phantom shipping gap stretches out for over a month.

That means that the entire month of May is going to be a logistical challenge for everyone. Domestic refineries will burn through their on-site storage tanks. The physical fuel pipeline in the U.S. will go dry. We’re looking at a highly realistic scenario where diesel hits $8 a gallon almost overnight.

This is the diesel death spiral. Diesel runs the cargo ships, the freight trains, the agricultural equipment, and the semi-trucks that restock your local grocery store. When the diesel trucks can’t afford to run (especially independent operators), those shelves go bare incredibly fast.

The Nuclear Temptation

The above logistics problems are the most likely outcome. When Americans and others around the world are feeling maximum financial and logistic pain, Iran’s leadership will be able to beat Trump at the Art of the Deal.

But, it’s possible that Khameini could miscalculate and wait a little too long.

If the standard diplomatic off-ramps fail, we approach a truly horrific desperation point in mid-April. What’s left on the table when conventional bombs fail to neutralize the mountain fortresses, Israel runs out of interceptors, and missiles are threatening the very existence of Israeli cities?

For Israel, this conflict is being framed as an absolute fight for survival, which triggers the terrifying “Samson Option”. If the interceptor grid fails, they’ll use their nuclear arsenal as an ultimate last resort to permanently erase the threat.

The United States also has the exact tool needed to bypass the granite mountains. It’s called the B61-11 nuclear earth-penetrator. You don’t need to drop a weapon 500 meters down a shaft. The B61-11 buries itself just a few dozen feet into the solid bedrock before detonating. The explosive energy transfers directly into the mountain, triggering a massive, localized earthquake that physically crushes the tunnels from the inside out.

When you combine failing conventional weapons, a collapsing global economy, and leaders trapped by their own psychological survival instincts, the odds of a nuclear strike sit uncomfortably high, perhaps as high as 20-30%. I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot higher than I’m willing to just ignore.

Finding the Emergency Exit

As Yogi Berra famously said, predictions are hard, especially about the future. It’s tough to know exactly how this massive staring contest ends.

Thankfully, even minimally rational people will usually find a way out before a situation goes completely to hell. Politicians have an incredible survival instinct. Trump and Netanyahu are very skilled at avoiding consequences. A wrecked economy right before an election is political suicide, so they’ll be desperately looking for a trapdoor.

If this resolves before someone pushes the nuclear button or we see financial ruin, it’ll likely be through one of these early escape hatches:

China Drops the Hammer. Beijing relies massively on Middle Eastern oil. If the Chinese economy suffocates, Xi Jinping could quietly but forcefully tell Tehran to open the shipping lanes immediately, threatening to pull all economic support. Iran can fold to Beijing’s demands and spin it domestically as an alliance decision without losing face to Washington.

The “Declare Victory” Play. The White House hates messy foreign entanglements. The administration could order a massive, highly visible strike, declare the Iranian nuclear threat permanently neutralized, and order a unilateral pause. It gives Tehran the breathing room to quietly stop firing missiles and reopen the strait without officially surrendering. But, keep in mind that Khameinei might not let the oil hostage free until he gets concessions Trump isn’t willing to publicly provide.

The Gulf State Bribe. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are bleeding billions every day the lanes are closed. They could use backchannels to essentially buy a ceasefire, offering to unfreeze Iranian assets or provide quiet economic relief in exchange for Tehran standing down.

An Internal IRGC Fracture. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is full of generals who enjoy their wealth. If the U.S. specifically targets their personal assets and luxury supply chains, a pragmatic faction might decide that pushing things to a nuclear brink is bad for business. They could sideline the hardliners and force a diplomatic pivot.

You know what really sucks? Very little of this is in the average person’s control. Powerful idiots are playing chicken with the world financial system and World War III, and we’re all just along for the ride hoping they get lucky or wise up before it’s too late.

Look At What They Make Us Give

Even if they find an exit, we’re still locked in for a brutal supply crunch for at least two weeks in April at this point. This entire nightmare proves exactly why our current energy setup is a massive liability. Every time a conflict flares up in a choke point halfway around the world, our daily survival and our household budget is put at risk.

Think about how insane this really is. We’re watching nuclear powers play a game of chicken that could end civilization as we know it, just so we can keep burning a dirty, finite liquid in our engines. The absolute best case right now is that we endure two to three weeks of economic disruption. At very worst, we risk nuclear exchanges that end the world as we know it.

To quote another movie, we need to take a hard look at what they make us give for the privilege of the fossil fuel way of life. The economic disruption, the deaths of school children in Iran, and the existential dread take a toll on everyone. As a mom, as a daughter-in-law, as a wife—it’s terrifying some days. When I leave for my trip, I’m going to need to pack a month’s worth of emergency rations along just to be sure we don’t miss any meals. Like you, I’ll be watching the news hoping I don’t hear that nuclear weapons were used in anger for the first time in 80+ years.

Look at us. Look at what they make us give.

There Is A Better Way!

We need a completely different approach to national security. True security is personal and local. It’s having a solar array on your roof, a battery bank in your shed, and an electric vehicle in your driveway.

When the diesel trucks stop restocking the gas stations next month, millions of people are going to be completely paralyzed. But my Chevy Silverado EV doesn’t care about the Strait of Hormuz. The charging stations I’m visiting largely rely on domestic sources like methane, nuclear, coal, and renewables. Those are less sensitive to global events.

I can pull power directly from the sun in a worst case scenario (my trailer has enough panel to Level 1 charge), bypass the crumbling logistics networks, and keep moving, even if slowly. Having your own energy source transforms you from a helpless victim of global geopolitics into an independent actor.

We can’t control what idiot, short-sighted politicians do with their arsenals. But we can absolutely control where our own energy comes from.

To quote the WOPR supercomputer from WarGames: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

Playing the fossil fuel game because it’s convenient or because it’s what we’ve always done clearly isn’t going to cut it. It lets madmen ruin our lives or perhaps end them from the other side of the planet. It leaves us desperate, begging for scraps while oil companies make record profits.

If the US had focused for the last 20 years on true energy independence, not the “drill, baby, drill” kind, but real independence from global markets through renewables and electrification, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Featured image: A GM EV1 next to a combustion engine on a stand. The US faced this choice two decades ago, and chose wrong. Photo by Jennifer Sensiba.