'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
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Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#2This 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 completely empty, even though a million people are living there on a daily basis.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#3It'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.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#4This 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…
The vast majority of them are along shipping routes, which are generally pretty crowded.. at least relative to the open ocean.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#5It'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.
i applaud the obscureness of this joke.
(for everyone else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples )
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#6At a certain point whatever COVID risk this prevents is surpassed by the inhumanity of not letting these people go to their homes, to see their families and loved ones. I think a lot of what has been done in the past year will not be judged kindly by history. Bare life is not the only thing that matters.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#7This 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…
For context, that's roughly comparable to the respective populations of Equatorial Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, or Estonia.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#8This 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…
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 seafarers as Mongolians, and they are spread over a much larger area.
That being said -- those seafarers are actually mostly just in shipping lanes -- which are actually quite crowded. So crowded such that when they intersect with whale migratory routes, the likelihood of impacts is extremely high.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3016331/think-the-world-is-crowd...
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#9It'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.
>sea people can't really adjust and are a danger to society
haha pure gold.
Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded
#10I 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?