When the oil runs out, what do we do with all the tankers?

They likely have enough space in their existing sea-water ballast tanks to do just that as is.

Anyone who thinks ships are “immortal” has never worked on a ship. Don’t worry about what to do with them, they’ll go away.

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After not too long either.


This one made land in 1909 at the Skeleton Coast in Namibia.

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Is that book any good?

Load them up with all the world’s climate change deniers (two by two because I’m a fan of delicious irony) and scuttle them over the Mariana Trench.

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I’d use them to hijack ballistic missile submarines. And then I’d cleanse the surface world.

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If you’re going the super-villain route, I know where you can get a boatload of scorpions and spiders.

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Also, you need one of these for the command-center:

Plus, any self-respecting super-villain needs a laser.

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I am reminded of a passage from Bruce Sterling’s short story We See Things Differently:

He dictated in a low, staccato voice, not losing his place in our conversation, simply loosing a burst of thought. “'Let us be frank. Before I showed an interest you were ready to sell the ship for scrap iron. This is not an era for supertankers. They are dead tech, smokestack-era garbage. Reconsider my offer.”’ The secretary pounded keys. Boston looked at me again, returning the searchlight of his attention.

“You plan to buy a supertanker?” I said.

“I wanted an aircraft carrier,” he said, smiling. “They’re all in mothballs, but the Feds frown on selling nuke power plants to private citizens.”

“We will make the tanker into a floating stadium,” Plisetskaya put in. She sat slumped in a padded chair, wearing satin lounge pajamas. A half-filled ashtray on the chair’s arm reeked of strong tobacco.

“Ever been inside a tanker?” Boston said. “Huge. Great acoustics.”

We See Things Differently is an extraordinary work – Sterling at the top of his game, and one of my all-time favorite stories.

Update: changed link to point at page one of the story, rather than page six (where the quote appears).

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You do whatever’s best for the business, obviously. Sink them, leave them to wash up on beaches, sell them to the government for use as FEMA shelters… Whatever makes the most $$ for the industry is what should be done–unless you believe in job-killing over-regulation and hate America.

Do you expect me to to talk?

No, Mr Bond, I expect you to conform to externally constructed gender norms!

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Um… about that future tense…

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NB: WSTD is available online.

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I’ll be making mine into some kind of caged soccer match.

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Floating skate parks, obviously.

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Thank you for that.

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