"If anyone had said in 1950 that the world’s great economic powerhouses a half century later would be Japan and Germany that person would have been ridiculed. If you argued in 1970 that by 2007 China would be the world’s fourth-largest economic power, the laughter would have been even more intense. But it would have been no funnier than arguing in 1800 that the United States by 1900 would be a world power. Things change, and the unexpected should be expected."
George Friedman
What you see is a “well” for every oil spill on American soil since 1940. They start at the top and go down. The timing is to scale (1 year = .1 inch) but the size is not (though, smaller is smaller and larger is larger). The “wells” in the bottom right are the Afghan and Iraq wars respectively. With their casualties to this point.
