The nice thing about coal is that you really just need a pickaxe and a bucket to mine it, and it's relatively close to the earth. Keep in mind that an Industri

The nice thing about coal is that you really just need a pickaxe and a bucket to mine it, and it's relatively close to the earth. Keep in mind that an Industrial scale coal mine needs to have massive veins in order to be efficient, so they aren't really interested in the smaller veins - but there is enough coal out there to jumpstart a new civilization many times over. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_reserves http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_reser...