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Vincent Price’s Most Terrifying Role: Colonel Drake, the Inventor of Oil Drilling [1]

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Date: 2024-06-19  

Now that another freakishly hot summer is preternaturally upon us, I will tell you a bone-chilling tale of subterranean evil and the impending doom rapidly approaching us all.

In the summer of 1859, Edwin Drake (not a Colonel), was ridiculed for his failed attempts to extract oil from under the sandy banks of an oily creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania. At the time, folks simply scooped up surface oil, as Native Americans had done for millennia. Then ‘Colonel’ Drake drove pipes into the ground to drill a deeper, structurally sound well, and struck oil, sparking the modern Petroleum Industry.

The reconstruction of Drake’s monstrosity.

As part of my quest to travel to national parks by electric vehicle to raise awareness of the Climate Crisis, I recently traveled to Drakes Well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, where I had a long conversation with a Trump supporter who demonstrated the reconstructed well. I learned a great deal, including the mechanics of the well, the specific type of oil found (a light sweet or low-viscosity low-sulfur crude similar to West Texas Intermediate), how oil saved the Union (debatable), along with a number of colorful conspiracy theories, such as how John D Rockefeller coined the term ‘fossil fuel’ to make oil sound more rare and valuable (he didn’t).

The foul engine dredging liquid death from the depths.

A gallon of gas takes about two gallons of oil to make, and the average American consumes enough petroleum in a year to fill a 5’ cube, plus a 4’ cube of coal and more natural gas. Each gallon of gas requires about 100 tons of plant material (plankton) aged for millions of years. So, every time you burn a gallon of gas, you’re actually burning ~100 tons of ancient ocean plant life, likely from about 2000 times as long ago as Homo Sapiens emerged.

So how much damage does it do to life on Earth to burn all the plankton from all the ancient oceans from thousands of times longer than we have existed? Turns out that—similar to locking yourself in a garage with a running car—it’s lethal. Humans have never experienced a mass extinction event like the last one that killed off the large dinosaurs. But the current extinction rate is already estimated at 1000 to 10,000 times the natural extinction rate. Our carbon pollution is changing our climate at an absolutely unprecedented speed, which may soon result in the extinction of most forms of life on Earth. Fossil fuel is a nightmare that will haunt us for the rest of our lives and beyond.

But many of us did not learn about this in school. Instead, we have watched untold hours of paid messaging supporting fossil fuels, and such brainwashing mind control continues today. Even you, dear reader, likely believe at least one fossil fuel industry supported myth, without knowing it. Lies are lethal but highly profitable.

Which brings us back to the story of Colonel Drake, which you can watch below in under 30 minutes, produced by the American Petroleum Institute in 1954 and starring Vincent Price. But you will need to add your own horror soundtrack and the voices of prescient kids warning Colonel Drake to keep the oil in the ground.

Beware the coming heat waves! Try to stay cool, free yourself from fossil fuel propaganda, lower your carbon footprint and support Biden-Harris. Or else we face our doomsday.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/19/2247418/-Vincent-Price-s-Most-Terrifying-Role-Colonel-Drake-the-Inventor-of-Oil-Drilling?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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