A Vision of a Cold Fusion/LENR Future — How to Adapt to Abundance?

Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed to the ‘how big a deal’ thread. It’s gotten a ton of comments, and sometimes those threads become somewhat unweildy, so I thought I’d start a new one and use the following thought-provoking comment by ‘friendlyprogrammer’ as a starting point. His/her post describes many things that I have certainly considered as being possible if cold fusion is what many of us believe it to be even though the picture he/she paints is alien to today’s reality. Here’s the post:

“Your car will be big enough to hold a bathroom because lets face it, all the service stations have closed.

“With travel becoming so cheap it will become the experience instead of the mode to reach an experience.

“A look to the skies will see Helium/hot air blimps that are floating hotels with no explosion risks. The rich will dispose of their sailing yachts (hint sell your sailboat now), and the poor will convert them to new energy. Someone with a 35′ sailboat known for ease of operation will now be comfortable driving a 200′ ship with a garden and a pool..

“Cities will need to limit vehicle sizes or everyone and their dog will drive a motor home to work. Why not go big if fuel costs are nothing.

“LENR/HHO will be UBER cheap very quickly, because the processes involved are less complicated than a dollar store flashlight, and a million unemployed from the Solar and Wind Energy sector will start building cheap knock offs in their basement. There will be no way to stop the pirating of this technology because of its simplicity. The demand will obviously outweigh any production capacity. i.e. would you go on a 10 year waiting list or build one yourself?

“600 million less smog producing vehicles will mean fresh country air in the heart of major cities. Less health damage equals longer lives for all.

“It will take some time for car manufacturers to adapt. Small electric cars will be too small. Big gas cars wont run on electricity so the solution will be hydrogen conversions to gas vehicles (possibly a trailer unit). Some suggest Steam cars will come first, but any car manufactured today is a result of a decade of research (more) and steam prototypes will be years off.

“Nobody will shovel their driveways or roads. Cars will have heaters under them to melt snow and ice. You can move your car around your driveway or just install heaters in the asphalt. Roofs will melt the snow the same way.

“Every roof and road will be white. With all our extra energy capacity even the solar effects of black roof shingles will be too much, and we will be better off reflecting that heat back into space. Artificial cloud cover might be created for similar effects.

“Off grid living will become popular. Since everyone has a huge ship and motor home why live in a house. I’m sure there are reasons, but I’ll be in the South Pacific Catching fish, Breeding Chickens, Desalinating water, and making my own wine aboard The HMS Friendlyprogrammer. I will be surrounded by a million others doing the same thing.

“Everything, everything, everything, will become cheaper. A $500 television will be much cheaper to produce. Imagine,,,, Every manufacturer of every nut, bolt, wire, chip, will pay less for transport (supplies and delivery), less for electricity, less for A/C, less for heat and these cheaper bolts will pass on savings to the next manufacturer so that $500 television is now in an ecat (or other) heated store selling for $75.
IMAGINE THE BUILDING BOOM. We will all have wall sized televisions for cheap.

“The Middle east will see a poverty strike them as their dependence on Oil Cash fails them. They will need to compete in a global market place and be forced to educate their women and adapt more responsible laws regarding religious tolerance. They will need to be liked for a change.

“Starvation will dissipate as cheap desalination provides clean water not only to people but can cheaply pump clean water into the soils of the earth. Cities in risk of collapsing into sinkholes (like Mexico City) can replenish their underwater reserves.

“A slow moving cruise ship will be replaced by hydrofoils or at least quadruple their speeds.

“I’d invest in electric motor companies. Magnet manufacturers. Boat builders. RV Builders, and avoid any energy investing. I would not invest in AR Rossi in case Blacklight wins. I would not invest in Brillouin in case Rossi wins. I would not invest in any of them until a winner is announced. Maybe it’s HHO.

“The days of burying a technology is over. Too many know about LENR/HHO/Blacklight Power (or whatever).. Internet has been a game changer in that regard. A mere 20 years ago we would be trying to find non existent library books about LENR as our only source of information.

“Bus shelters will be air conditioned and heated. Every park will have a play fountain.

“This is only a fraction of how I see the world in 10 years.”

My response to this post is, perhaps this could happen (although I’m not sure about in 10 years), but I wonder about the ability of societies to adapt to such a radical new technology, and all that it implies. How does any nation built on an economy, social system and political system designed to deal with the current reality of scarce resources adapt to a totally new reality where abundance of resources suddenly becomes possible?

I think that if and when CF becomes widely recognized as being a viable energy source there will be meetings of people in the highest levels of all kinds of organizations trying to figure out how to deal with this new reality. I don’t know what the prevailing response will be. Will it be to get behind this technology and use it for the benefit of the common person — or to try and put the brakes on in order to protect the status quo as much as possible? I would like to think the former, but I think we should prepare for the latter — at least in the early stages.

Like friendlyprogrammer says above, I don’t think the information can be hidden or suppressed in this day and age. If the regular person knows something is real and possible, I can’t imagine any forces of authority being able to keep it down. But I guess some could try (North Korea has been quite successful in maintaining rigid control over its people’s use of technology, for example).

The transition from a state of scarcity of resources to one of abundance could be one of the most difficult things the human race has faced — I hope we can make the journey successfully.