Science tells us with certainty that dinosaurs and humans did not walk the earth at the same time, nor within 4,000 years of each other.

And yet, ye have heard the dinosaurs roar! Certain walking-dead, or should I say rolling dead-creations, that is. The throaty roar from their over-powered engines and their undersized mufflers, racing around town showering the world with testosterone-induced showoffishness, and carcinogens and sooty toxins that damage and kill people.

A pair of meteors is landing that will bring their hundred-year reign to a close within a decade or so: electric vehicles and autonomous driving.

With no need for a complicated transmission, and with near-constant torque at any speed, an EV can out-accellerate almost anything on four wheels. So the show-off crowd will switch to electric vehicles: *Real Men Drive Electric!* And with the tons of money they save, these guys can afford to buy - what? More beer?

Autonomous driving will continue a trend fostered by millenials, the gig economy, and the insane cost of housing in metroplitan areas. Self-driving has the possibility to end private ownership of cars (and pickups) as we know it. Few people will need to own a car and pay insurance and maintenance and gasoline, when you can just call a self-driving rideshare. People in construction firms and many other small business that actually need a pickup or van will, of course, continue to do so. And some dedicated dickheads will continue to drive diesel pickups - as long as they can get fuel - just to be noisy or to "roll coal" or to show off their fake cowboy roots.

But wait - if these trends kill off the oil industry, where will we get plastic from? Plastic is one of many products made from petrochemicals and without which modern society would be impossible. So of course the oil industry will continue. But it will be nonavated - 90% killed off (the word "decimated" meaning "10% killed off" comes from the Roman Legions' practice of killing one man in 10 when a legion failed to take an enemy position or otherwise displeased Roman leadership. The prefix "deci" means one tenth, not nine tenths.

The end is near for 90% of the massive oil industry, and the players all know it. The sage ones are planning for it. The stupid ones are trying to fight the inevitable. Which side are you on?