Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/08/un-partnership-backs-floatin.html
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Still waiting for Sea City 2000, the floating pyramid I was promised by the Usborne books in the 1980s.
I still love that kind of book, the ones that showed very detailed, realistic drawings of things that didn’t exist but certainly would some day. It made it seem like the “adults in charge” knew what they were doing, before you were old enough to realize that there aren’t any adults in charge.
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The biggest question in people’s minds is if these cities can actually float
The biggest question in my mind is where does the fresh water come from, and where does the poop go?
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Not enough people who write SF or fantasy ask those questions.
[It is also a great way to make Creationists turn blue when they talk about Noah’s Ark]
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If you turn on the TV to watch a baseball game, and Waterworld is on, it means one thing: rain delay.
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I’m glad when policy makers ask those questions, but I’d rather not have SF and fantasy writers limiting themselves to strict reality.
As for creationists, of course the ark can float despite the weight of dinosaurs and whatnot. God keeps it aloft with divine power, the same way he made it rain unrealistically for 40 days. And then somehow all the water went away…ok that was God too!
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Same place, probably.
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Fertilizer.
Desalination plants, but this leaves the question of where does the excess sea salt go.
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Fresh water and sewage are simple problems.
How are you going to feed 10,000 people? A quick google tells me that it takes 0.5 acres of cropland to feed one person. If you want animal protein, that goes up to 1.5 acres. No idea how valid or accurate those numbers are, but let’s run with them anyway.
So 10,000 people need 5,000 acres minimum. That’s over 7 square miles.
(Rough conversion from Freedom Units: 2,000 hectares, 20 square kilometers)
I somehow doubt that they’ll be able to have that many scallop farms going.
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Whole Foods?
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Hydroponics, algae farms, aquaculture all come to mind.
Fish farming can be pretty big. The majority of the world’s salmon and tilapia in supermarkets comes from farmed sources. The unagi (eel) you see in sushi bars all comes from farms in China.
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Have you seen what the ocean does during a storm? Pretty sure i wouldn’t want to live on a city on the ocean. Now… if someone proposes building a city under water (Rapture) i’m on board.
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We’re on the same page; extreme weather would be real concern.
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More likely outcome
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Yeah expensive floating city + frequent storms x rising oceans. I think that comes out to… infinite regret.
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Considering how poorly things go when a cruise ship encounters a storm i’m not sure i would want to be in a floating city
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On the other hand: expensive floating city + frequent storms x rising oceans + Peter Thiel … Hoist with his own petard?
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It’s hard not to get the feeling that the folks who put these plans forward haven’t spent a lot of time near oceans. From the article: “One of the obvious issues facing Oceanix City is that it lacks funding.”
From Wikipedia on Rogue Waves: “It is now proven via satellite radar studies that waves with crest to trough heights of 20 metres (66 ft) to 30 metres (98 ft), occur far more frequently than previously thought. It is now known that rogue waves occur in all of the world’s oceans many times each day.”
I get the feeling that current, indigenous (for lack of a better word) “floating communities” look slightly ramshackle, at least to some degree, because they know they will be rebuilding on a regular basis.
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