ArkBuilders

Question:

How do you celebrate the end of an era? The end of civilization? The end of modern comforts and 50-years of relative peace and prosperity?

Answer:

I don't know. But if you are in Russia, you can celebrate it in the traditional ways: Vodka, banya, music, friends, a free spirit, a few laughs, an empty stare and general acceptance of difficulties endured in the past and yet to come.

Today, we substitute the vodka for imported beers and everything else remains the same. With torched industrial farm products over hot coals, we drink our liquid bread and endure the non-service of a resort 2 ours by a hardwood benched train outside of Moscow. The word "comfort" is a relative term to Russians, but consuming energy is not a new experience. Russians have not managed to connect a great deal of comfort to the burning of fossil fuels, and maybe that is all the better for them. Therefore, consuming Peak Oil products is a sufficient enough way to celebrate in Russia what the death of what consumerism means elsewhere.

And what celebration in Russia would be complete without a salute to the electric Russian banya?

The Russian banya is not just a room, it is an experience. It is a system of health rejuvenation. It seems like a disaster to the untrained eye, but look carefully, the Russian banya is pure craftsmanship.

First, you heat a pile of rocks with electricity (in the city) or coal (in the country) until the rocks approximate the glow of molten lava.

When the thermometer in the room hits 100 degrees Celsius, which is the boiling temperature of water, then you dump a few buckets of cold water over the rocks and endure the searing pain of volcanic steam the fills your lungs with a bottle of menthol extract which was designed to last for a week in the public house.

To calm the menthol effect, beer adds some of that rustic smell and balances the percent of menthol in the air with a caramel flavor even as the menthol continues to hit the naked eyeball like fresh-squeezed onion juice.

By some miracle, electric currents never seem to shock the person pouring all of these liquids over the temporarily cooled rocks. We are left to conclude that Russian electricians are genius enough to idiot-proof the wiring which leads to the molten rocks, or perhaps a more likely explanation is that all Russian banyas sit on top of a lava flow and no electricity is needed.

The cooled rocks turn back to lava in about 10-seconds, igniting our lungs with more menthol. The steam brings our skin into close contact with the wet variant of the 100 degrees boiling point of water that dry heat fails to deliver.

Since this is a farewell party to Peak Oil in Russia, comfort doesn't matter, even as we burn fossil fuel to American standards. None of that matters because one shouldn't concentrate too hard on philosophy at a farewell party. Or a funeral. Or the most enduring collapse of written history.

This is a time to enjoy the moment of having our bones begin to store up heat like lava rocks and we are forced by survival to consider a fast exit from this banya within 10 seconds of reaching our own individual boiling points. And we imagine for a moment what would happen if someone locked the door from the outside.

For some unknown reason, all Russian banya doors open from the inside out, tempting the murder alibis of: "Oh, he just had too much vodka with his shashlik and fell asleep. I was watching TV at the time. It was loud."

But what is on the outside of every respectable Russian banya door?

Ice cold snow or ice if in the countryside.

But we are in a city-version. So we celebrate a relief from our heated bones by jumping into an ice pool just two steps from the banya door.

Kerrrrpluuuuush! Water everywhere.

A funny thing happens if you jump into the pool for just 5 seconds and get out: Your pores close.

Here is a great secret of the Russian banya: People who jump in for 5 seconds stay warm for the rest of the evening. People who stay longer, may wish to return to the banya and start the whole process of pain all over again. You control your evening by controlling your time in the ice pool.

So how do you celebrate the farewell of Peak Oil, 50-years of relative peace? The era of relative peace and plenty? The golden age of "civilization" (in quotes)? The beginning of a massive population correction and an unprecedented string of global resource wars?

Well, such a celebration should be taken seriously.

In Russia, I don't believe that anyone will complain if we celebrate the passing of peak oil by using energy in a way the ridicules comfort and celebrates a friendly experience. What it all means was not even a topic of conversation on that particular weekend in mid-August 2005.