Fernlicht goes further. At night in the countryside, you can often use it because you're literally the only car on the road.

Or maybe that's just me because when I drive long distances at night, I make it deep in the night so there's no traffic.

I've rarely driven through NRW, but at the northern edge to Niedersachen, around Osnabrück for example, there's definitely lights on the Autobahn. There most definitely are in Berlin, Hamburg, etc. But yes, it's mostly near and in the large cities.

Liar! They have water and they have land. What more of topology do you want? Ok, they sometimes turn the former into the later for no reason other than forcing all the map makers to redraw and all the encyclopedias to update the "land size" entry every few decades, but aside from that...

Someone posted a video link above. Not karma whoring, so I'm not repeating it here. If you want an actual image of the actual road, look a few comments further up.

If you give your cones time to adapt to night vision. Even a small bit of non-red light falling on them will ruin it instantly for about 20 minutes. Good look keeping night vision up in a car.

Uh... I am german and I've driven thousands of kilometers on the Autobahn at night. While long stretches of it do in fact not have lighting, the parts in or near cities often do. And that's where even at night you get some traffic.

But since the Autobahn has a mid-divider, there's really nothing that you need to see. You see the tail lights of cars in front of you much better in the dark anyways, and at 160 or 200 kph, a deer jumping in front of you isn't a problem of visibility.

Much of it all is, however, due to the specific design of the Autobahn. When you're on an Autobahn, you know with absolute certainty that there won't be any traffic lights, crossings or intersections. You know that the street was built to handle speed, so there won't be any sudden turns and twists, and if it turns by anything that remotely resembles a curve, there will be fat signs warning you of a "sharp corner" that is probably really dangerous if you go Mach 1. So even at 240 kph, the max I've ever driven at night, you feel strangely safe coasting down a road where your lights illuminate maybe the next 3 seconds in front of you.

As a matter of fact, if civilization were to break down, starvation would be our main problem very soon, because for the first time in history, we have > 50% of the population living in cities world-wide (and > 90% in the west), and we have maybe 1% of the population involved in food production, so if something catastrophic were to bring down the logistics of moving the stuff into the population centers, our supplies would run out really, really quickly.

There's often someone who did predict something, or something similar. But in general, the future predicted 50 years ago is not the future we're in today, and the same will be true of any catastrophy scenario.

Submitter has read too many bad books.

Remember, in stories, the world works the way the author needs it to work for dramatic purposes, not necessarily the way that it most likely would in reality.

The typical Mad Max scenario is unlikely. Just like SciFi authors thought we'd have flying cars and take our vacations on the moon, but didn't forsee the Internet and mobile phones, the real scenario will very likely be quite different from the movies you've seen.

Which basically means: Who the fuck knows which skills will be useful and which ones won't? Maybe computers will be worthless and shooting is important. But maybe supply of ammunition runs out a lot faster than electricity which we increasingly generate decentralized with solar and wind farms.

Maybe something entirely unexpected turns out to be the most important skill to have.

Also: Looking at history, civilization-destroying catastrophies are incredibly rare. Most civilizations enter a phase of decline and slowly fade away.

That's because our attitude to guns is different. Ownership is a secondary concern.

For example, in Switzerland pretty much every adult male owns a weapon. Locked away in a gun cabinet, intended for defense of the country in case it ever gets invaded.

Europeans, even where gun ownership is common, don't have the "gun culture" of the US. It doesn't have the same level of cool to go into the woods and shoot some rounds. There's a lot less presence of them in the public, it's not as easy to buy one (can't get them at WalMart), etc.

Basically, we're adults who handle guns, americans are kids who play with guns. The results are roughly what you'd expect from these two scenarios.

Yes, that's probably the reason why around the world, governments seem to be much less interested in following those revelations than one would assume - they fear their own dirty laundry could show up if a serious investigation would be launched.

Please don't feed my troll.

I'm serious. He has serious mental issues and everything you write to him only adds oil to the fire, no matter how well-meaning it is. People with mental problems don't read your words the way your write them. It takes a professional to even talk to them.

It gets old quite fast. But I think he's going to go away soon, he's already started simply copying the same nonsense post everywhere.

Anyway, if you want him, you can have him. :-)

The crazy thing is that with what we've learnt about the US the past years, and the governments total disregard for anything besides their own power, I'm not really sure if these claims are as outlandish as they sound.

I think we've come a good way when we no longer think that the claims of the crazy are untrue just because they sound crazy.

And yes, the volumes given are so tiny that it could very well be something that some agency discovered on their TODO list under the "do when you've got a minute" section.

Ben Goldacre has some things to say about that, the placebo effect part starts at 6:20 but the rest is worth watching:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_g...

If they pay for it 100% with their own money, including all the research and assorted other stuff that tags along, we can discuss the point.

As long as I pay a part of it with my tax money and my insurance premiums, I get a say in the matter.