Your future is being created now -for better or for worse?

100,000-1: according to some metal men those are the odds against finding a new metal mine. But unless we begin finding unprecedented amounts of minerals very soon, by the turn of the century industry could grind to a halt for lack of raw materials. The odds have got to be shortened - not only by prospecting every square yard of the earth but by exploring the deepest parts of the oceans, possibly even the moon.

The only hope is that technology, which created the problem of exploding metal consumption, will also create the means to solve it - by providing new tools to tip the balance in the prospector's favour.

Written by Stuart Harris and Ramsay Short