One common thread I see over at the Seasteading institute, and with other variants like the Atlantis project, is that while they’re quite aware of the engineering challenges posed by severe storms and the like, they don’t appear to spend much time thinking about how harsh an environment the open ocean is even when it’s calm, or just how challenging remote living can really be.
Mariners and shipping companies have a saying: “A ship is a hole in the water you pour money into.” Salt water is very corrosive to metal, and to so many other materials. This doesn’t impact somebody much if they go on a cruise for a few weeks, but it’s utterly non-trivial for the long term. Even the air out there has an erosive effect on materials—I spent a fair bit of my childhood on the seaside, and even new buildings get to look aged and weathered pretty quickly.
Where does fresh water come from? This is also non-trivial as yet—desalination is nothing like cheap yet, although I expect it’s one of the easier problems to solve in the long run (water filtration and desalination are areas of considerable research, after all, and there have been some breakthroughs at the proof of concept level recently).
Growing enough food to be self-sufficient in that environment? Forget it. This is beyond just setting up a sealed greenhouse—you’re going to need a degree of climate control and containment, in addition to indoor growing techniques, that I don’t think has even been invented yet. Hydroponics are your friend here, but they carry their own challenges, and the crop variety will be quite limited in any case. Setting up a big enough growing area to actually feed the population independently is going to cost a lot more than any such plans I’ve seen, and I think it’s more than one or two design generations away.
So they’ll be importing food. I invite you to research the cost of food in Iqaluit, Nunavut or Barrow, Alaska. We are talking about someplace more remote, and very possibly less easily-accessible, than Diomede island. The Seasteading institute assumes that if a cruise ship can function while charging passengers 60 USD a day (about 1800 USD a month, during which you’re not doing much but leisure) then it should be possible to arrive in a similar ballpark of prices, making this middle-class accessible. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the average middle-class family in North America is not used to paying 6 dollars for a loaf of plain white bread, 10 dollars for a box of Rice Krispies, over 10 dollars a pound for Red Delicious apples, 25 dollars for a 12-pack of soda...it all has to be brought in by container ship, usually.
Living that rural comes with hidden costs. “The middle of the ocean” is about as rural as you can get while still technically being on the planet Earth.
There are further issues. I don’t think this place is going to be the libertarian paradise that most of its boosters yearn for. An isolated community in a hostile environment with extreme vulnerability if anything goes wrong will not be governed by anarchic or even entirely democratic methods. There will pretty much have to be a captaincy—the moment a typhoon kicks up or entropy makes itself known in ways that the engineers didn’t plan for (or the contractors cheaped out on...), or basically the first time the plan disintegrates on contact with reality, this is going to be their best hope. Not to get down on the social and political urge to experiment with other types of society, but if you really want a Libertarian utopia without having to face insane food prices or the sneaky, deadly surprises of a high-entropy environment, go to Burning Man.
Edited to add: Expect elevated rates of arterial hypertension, too.
Seems to be more common among deep-sea fishermen and other populations who spend a lot of time at sea than in the general population, is all. Possibly to do with all the salt, but I really don’t know why.
Actually, doing a bit of a look on Google, I can’t back that up for cruise ship personnel, and it looks like there’s some evidence in the other cases that it’s due to stress factors. I retract the statement.
Well, presumably being at sea in a non-stressful environment would have some chance of not causing that.
I’m not sure what such a thing really looks like, mind (luxury cruise passengers don’t usually live on the boat long-term) or if it’s feasible to talk about it within the space of current nautical engineering. I certainly have never been on a boat that didn’t feel like a fairly controlled, sensitive environment in which one couldn’t just relax without having to keep tabs on everything else, but my experience is limited to fishing, crabbing and similar boats, which are very high-stress environments if you’re doing more than a quick excursion, especially in the waters I’m familiar with.
I’m going to suggest it’s not very likely.
One common thread I see over at the Seasteading institute, and with other variants like the Atlantis project, is that while they’re quite aware of the engineering challenges posed by severe storms and the like, they don’t appear to spend much time thinking about how harsh an environment the open ocean is even when it’s calm, or just how challenging remote living can really be.
Mariners and shipping companies have a saying: “A ship is a hole in the water you pour money into.” Salt water is very corrosive to metal, and to so many other materials. This doesn’t impact somebody much if they go on a cruise for a few weeks, but it’s utterly non-trivial for the long term. Even the air out there has an erosive effect on materials—I spent a fair bit of my childhood on the seaside, and even new buildings get to look aged and weathered pretty quickly.
Where does fresh water come from? This is also non-trivial as yet—desalination is nothing like cheap yet, although I expect it’s one of the easier problems to solve in the long run (water filtration and desalination are areas of considerable research, after all, and there have been some breakthroughs at the proof of concept level recently).
Growing enough food to be self-sufficient in that environment? Forget it. This is beyond just setting up a sealed greenhouse—you’re going to need a degree of climate control and containment, in addition to indoor growing techniques, that I don’t think has even been invented yet. Hydroponics are your friend here, but they carry their own challenges, and the crop variety will be quite limited in any case. Setting up a big enough growing area to actually feed the population independently is going to cost a lot more than any such plans I’ve seen, and I think it’s more than one or two design generations away.
So they’ll be importing food. I invite you to research the cost of food in Iqaluit, Nunavut or Barrow, Alaska. We are talking about someplace more remote, and very possibly less easily-accessible, than Diomede island. The Seasteading institute assumes that if a cruise ship can function while charging passengers 60 USD a day (about 1800 USD a month, during which you’re not doing much but leisure) then it should be possible to arrive in a similar ballpark of prices, making this middle-class accessible. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the average middle-class family in North America is not used to paying 6 dollars for a loaf of plain white bread, 10 dollars for a box of Rice Krispies, over 10 dollars a pound for Red Delicious apples, 25 dollars for a 12-pack of soda...it all has to be brought in by container ship, usually.
Living that rural comes with hidden costs. “The middle of the ocean” is about as rural as you can get while still technically being on the planet Earth.
There are further issues. I don’t think this place is going to be the libertarian paradise that most of its boosters yearn for. An isolated community in a hostile environment with extreme vulnerability if anything goes wrong will not be governed by anarchic or even entirely democratic methods. There will pretty much have to be a captaincy—the moment a typhoon kicks up or entropy makes itself known in ways that the engineers didn’t plan for (or the contractors cheaped out on...), or basically the first time the plan disintegrates on contact with reality, this is going to be their best hope. Not to get down on the social and political urge to experiment with other types of society, but if you really want a Libertarian utopia without having to face insane food prices or the sneaky, deadly surprises of a high-entropy environment, go to Burning Man.
Edited to add: Expect elevated rates of arterial hypertension, too.
Why this?
Seems to be more common among deep-sea fishermen and other populations who spend a lot of time at sea than in the general population, is all. Possibly to do with all the salt, but I really don’t know why.
Does it include waiters on cruise ships, etc? (Just trying to isolate for stress, etc.)
Actually, doing a bit of a look on Google, I can’t back that up for cruise ship personnel, and it looks like there’s some evidence in the other cases that it’s due to stress factors. I retract the statement.
I originally thought you meant it was caused by stress and I still thought it was valid.
Well, presumably being at sea in a non-stressful environment would have some chance of not causing that.
I’m not sure what such a thing really looks like, mind (luxury cruise passengers don’t usually live on the boat long-term) or if it’s feasible to talk about it within the space of current nautical engineering. I certainly have never been on a boat that didn’t feel like a fairly controlled, sensitive environment in which one couldn’t just relax without having to keep tabs on everything else, but my experience is limited to fishing, crabbing and similar boats, which are very high-stress environments if you’re doing more than a quick excursion, especially in the waters I’m familiar with.