Lol gtfo
'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#32Maaaan gtfo
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
1.4 million is an exceptionally small number of people compared to the size of the oceans. You could fit all 7+ billion humans in New Zealand if we all lived as densely as Manhattan. [1] So 1.4 million people on the oceans is still virtually empty overall. Think about it this way. There are 3.2 million Mongolians and Mongolia is quite large -- thus, Mongolia is extremely empty. There are less than half as many seafar…
> You could fit all 7+ billion humans in New Zealand if we all lived as densely as Manhattan. [1] Can stop spreading these factoids as if they would be feasible in any way? You can't just stick people vertically on a small plot of land ad infinitum, it doesn't scale. Think about all the services required for all 7 billion people to function properly, New Zealand would collapse on itself.
I ran some calcuations, and the mass of 7 billion people at an average of 60kg each, spread uniformly over New Zealand, would definitely not cause it to collapse, sink, crack, or tip over. Please stop using such hyperbole.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#34This is an aside to the overall story, but > At any given time, there are more than 1.4 million seafarers plying the world's waterways, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. I mean, I guess this is obvious because SOMEONE has to ship all the stuff everywhere, but that's a truly crazy number of people to me. I guess it goes to show that the oceans are almost unfathomably huge that they can still be compl…
There's about the same number of people (not workers) in the air at any time.
And the air is orders of magnitude bigger.
Which is cool, we got our flying city, but unfortunately we made it evenly distributed.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You could fit all 7+ billion humans in New Zealand if we all lived as densely as Manhattan. [1] Can stop spreading these factoids as if they would be feasible in any way? You can't just stick people vertically on a small plot of land ad infinitum, it doesn't scale. Think about all the services required for all 7 billion people to function properly, New Zealand would collapse on itself.
I ran some calcuations, and the mass of 7 billion people at an average of 60kg each, spread uniformly over New Zealand, would definitely not cause it to collapse, sink, crack, or tip over. Please stop using such hyperbole.
I think they mean the utilities and services, not the land mass.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#36This is an aside to the overall story, but > At any given time, there are more than 1.4 million seafarers plying the world's waterways, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. I mean, I guess this is obvious because SOMEONE has to ship all the stuff everywhere, but that's a truly crazy number of people to me. I guess it goes to show that the oceans are almost unfathomably huge that they can still be compl…
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Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#37I don't see how they can justify keeping these people trapped on ships while plenty of business and leisure travellers jet back and forth around the world. I'd understand if we were actually enforcing a real quarantine with closed borders, but we're not. What makes these maritime workers such a greater risk? Is it just that they're not wealthy citizens of western nations?
> plenty of business and leisure travellers jet back and forth around the world.
Not any more, the last few weeks have seen several countries completely prevent people setting off for leisure travel, closing their borders not just to entry but to exit. Australia did it already early last year.
The argument is that those travelers will return at some point and bring new COVID strains back, but I’m uncomfortable with countries banning their own citizens from freely leaving, that sounds like old Eastern Bloc restrictions (which were also ostensibly about protecting the common welfare), and it could be that some leisure travelers, if they could only leave, would be gone indefinitely and therefore would not necessarily be coming back during the lifetime of the current epidemic.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#38It's sad, but at this point, I don't think we should let them back ashore. There's a point at which these sea people can't really adjust and are a danger to society. Something similar happened 3198 years ago and it collapsed all major civilizations. Egypt was never the same again. We'll have to try seasteading or something.
Wow haha, only on HN would I read a sea peoples joke. Did you also watch that informative YouTube lecture [0] or did you find out about them elsewhere?
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#39On the other hand, I'd love to be able to stay far away from the rest of society on a ship along with other uninfecteds until the pandemic is over.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#40Similar things happen without covid involved. Lack of pay and upkeep for fuel can strand ship and crew in a foreign harbour.
Back in 2002 a Russian transport ship and crew spend the summer moored by my birth town without being able to leave the ship. The crew hadn't received any pay for 9 months, lacked provisions, and refused to keep working. The shipping company send some goons to ruff them up, but ended getting arrested and deported. Eventually they sailed on, though I don't know the outcome of the conflict.
At the end of the 10's I attended a party on a large Russian freightship (in another city). The crew and ship had apparently been abandoned by their company without any communication, and they had been stuck on the ship for half a year. Never got it confirmed but I think they had made a deal with the party organisers to host parties to cover food cost and tickets home.
Shipping is a hard business.