According to my friend Crystelle Wilson, a former newspaper reporter in Durban, "Last month a massive storm led to fears that airline routes, power grids and satellites would be disrupted. Scaremongers speculate that these solar flares can lead to irreparable power outages. And when electricity dies, so will the human population. The majority of people will be unable to maintain their current lifestyles without fuel and electricity. Subsistence farmers may fare better for slightly longer."
All of which makes me think that people with sailboats
may fare even better than subsistence farmers if the worst really does
happen. The human race managed to
survive for many thousands of years without electricity, of course. It also managed to survive quite well without
radio, TV, e-mail, text messaging, Twitter,
and Facebook, although the current, digitally obsessed generation might find
that hard to believe.
Cruising sailboats are able to generate all the
electricity they require, one way or another. They have wind generators,
dragged-propeller generators, solar generators, and engine-driven generators
and alternators. And sailors didn't suffer too badly in the days before
generators, either. They certainly managed to keep the human race going in a
manner that required no reference to what was happening on the sun.
And there is always something else available to the
cruising sailor: the electric eel. This
creature has been much overlooked, but a pet electric eel in a small aquarium
might be a wonderfully clean source of energy for a small boat. These eels put out some 600 volts, about five
times the voltage of an American household electrical outlet. If you hooked one up head and tail to a
12-volt battery you'd have an awful lot of amp-hours at your disposal in
exchange for a few meager scraps of electric eel food.
As for human food, the sea is one of the Earth's greatest
suppliers. I have a fascinating little
book somewhere that explains how you can live entirely off the sea, gathering
and catching and eating everything from seaweed and barnacles to rock cod and geoducks.
If I remember right, it's called Living off the Sea, by Charlie White. I
really must dig it out and have it ready for the next round of solar flares.
Today's Thought
Nature has
endowed every species of living creature with the instinct of
self-preservation.— Cicero, De Officiis
Tailpiece
Now that
Iran is in the nuclear reactor business, all the savvy businessmen in Tehran
are moving into the catering field. They're opening fission chip shops.(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
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