The irony is that when I talked to my dad about it he just scoffed and said "there is always someone claiming the world is coming to an end and it is never true". I couldn't believe he had that opinion. I thought he was ignorant for ignoring science like that. Turns out he was right. Not just about peak oil but about the whole paradigm. There is always another bullshit doomsday claim. Over population, global cooling, global warming, nuclear winter, water shortages, running out of helium, Y2k, supervolcanos, blackbody asteroids, super bugs, financial meltdown, end of days, automation, AI, etc.

The most over used propaganda fear tool has got to be the doomesday clock. The one where they tell you that something can be happening for any amount of time without causing harm, but once it reaches the 11th hour shit gets real. It gets dangerous at the very last minute and by then it's too late to do anything about it. So they can literally take any every day occurrence and turn it into a massive threat that needs you do panic and do whatever they want you to do to save the world from this thing that has existed forever.