Floating Countries of the Future

There's no reason he couldn't grow potatos. They actually have a high nutrition yield per given area. He just needs a patch of suitable soil.

The clip said he's already survived a couple of storms and hurricanes, so it isn't too fragile. Being a flexible structure helps. I'd be wary though.
 
Christ... have any of you ever spent any time sailing? Or spent time in the open ocean!? Seriously... this is a joke. It's so bloody far off. Look at the problems they have on oil rigs when the seas get rough or on massive shipping tankers... and yet look at the sheer size of them. Your island gets caught in a current and ends up in the north sea and you are done for. Gone, finished, finito.

This stuff is total fantasy.
 
Well, it also helps that these isolationist groups also tend to be primarily crazies/sheeple/not very bright people stuck to a cult of personality sort of figure, topped off with a relatively hostile attitude towards the society they're separating from. It's not a very stable situation.

The Amish are an exception to this, and they seem to do alright. Although I couldn't tell you much about the mechanics of their politics or exactly what degree of sovereignty they hold.
 
Yeah, I've been out in the open ocean for a short jaunt before and I'd guess it'd take some serious ingenuity to get around some things. Even if you could engineer the island to withstand the environment, you'd have to have some pretty salty people onboard to want to stay longterm. Some people seem to tolerate it better than others but I'm not a big fan of sea sickness.

A cruise ship sized experiment might be the most realistic version of what they're looking at for their social goals but that'd fall short of their other goals. I thought the same thing with the oil platforms and wondered how they were planning on getting around those problems out where things would be a lot worse. The fantasy comment was more in line with why I posted this for discussion. From what I could tell by skimming through their website, even they are treating it like an idea to be explored and fleshed out if possible. Fantasy or not, I still think it'd be interesting to see what comes of their efforts.
 
I think underwater habitation would probably be more fruitful, since a lot of the sealed environment tech would translate well, especially if we want to look at more exotic environments like Jupiter eventually.
 
The two biggest issues I see right off.... fresh water and you are in a closed loop for infectious diseases. Just look at cruise ships... one person gets something the WHOLE ship gets its. Food poisoning usually. As for the fresh water.... it'd have to be shipped in. This is always the issue with living remotely. Even on land unless you have a well system. People adrift at sea often get done in by lack of drinkable water. The irony.
 
How would I get away from people if I was stuck on a small island with them?
I know I'm on an island already but at least it's still large enough to find some forest or wood with no one in.
 
Surely a big enough vessel could in theory have a desalination plant? That would give enough fresh water as long as there was sufficient power.

It wouldn't be the nicest tasting water, but it would be drinkable.
 
Yeah desalination is always a possibility. The issue there would be cost perhaps. Overall cost is always going to be an issue. Those who pay the most have the most control... or seems to me that's how it'd work. I don't see any sort of man made island as having any less problems than do any other sort of society or habitation. In fact I see them as potentially having far more due to one thing... human nature.

Greed, avarice and jealousy go a very long ways with humans. No one ever wants the same as their fellow man...and given enough time and space there will always be an element who will figure out how to work that system to his advantage and to the detriment of others. Because the system is a closed look it would appear rather simple to leverage some element of it into a situation where a very few controlled the lot. Not that I suppose that's any different than how societies work now though.

I don't hold out much hope given how the human ego works. I suspect it'd only be a short amount of time before things we haywire with one or a few individuals trying to maneuver the others into a position of servitude of some sort. Any time this type of convo comes up it always seems to bring the idealistic hippies out of the woodwork - and then there is all sorts of nonsense that ensues about how everyone should be able to do whatever the hell they want. Complete retardation at that point.

It's a topic covered often enough in science fiction. Trying to think of a particular title but it escapes me. Though something similar would be one of my favorite films of all time... THX1138 and another oldie... Logans Run. Both have a similar theme as it relates to humans.

One other issue that would given time come to the table would be piracy. Depending on where this floating island is... there would be an issue of fending off pirates. The shipping lanes not far from here off of Singapore and quite often the Philippines are rife with pirates. And you be hard pressed not get news of the amount of piracy of the coast of Somalia and such. The ransoms that are often payed are MASSIVE... and when they're not payed the military often comes down hard... but it comes down hard because commerce is effected. If you had a floating platform full of hippies, malcontents and paedophiles... my guess is most navies aren't going to lift a finger to help them out. lol... I jest.. but only sort of.
 
Read this today on Yahoo:

The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."


anarchy anyone?

Heres the whole article: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html
 
If they can't even get Libertarians voted into office, what are the odds that they can build a habitable floating island?
 
it could be worse- you could find yourself living on the conservative island. A lifetime of teabaggers and cliché-ridden speeches from moronic tits like David Cameron...
 
WE'RE #1, WE'RE #1!!! We seem to have a better track record than the Imperial British a couple hundred years ago so far....We're not satisfied to trash our own country, we're an equal opportunity killer/rapist/trasher....
 
As far as social issues go, I doubt such a project would work as a "new country". If it was a commercial enterprise however, run by a company big enough to foot the bill, you already have a social/coofftopicnd structure that all your employees have agreed to work with.

An alternative construction method is ice.



"Pycrete" is stronger than regular ice and takes far longer to melt. Obviously it needs its own refridgeration system, but when it comes to "unsinkable" you can't beat an iceberg!



Funny, people said similar things about the Kon-Tiki expedition.
 
uh what? I'm quite familiar with it - Thor Heyerdahl (and there were others that he went on as well)... all along similar lines as the Voyage of St. Brendan (the Irish navigator/monk) that was essentially recreated by Tim Severin... and to a certain extent the adventures of the travels of the Moroccan Berber, Hajji Abu Abdullah Muhaofftopicd Ibn Battuta.

But it doesn't really matter as they are two entirely separate set of circumstances and goals here. So to my way of thinking you're comparing apples to oranges. They all happen to be at sea... but living at sea versus traveling at sea even for extended periods is a fairly different endeavor.

Care to illustrate how you figure they are similar?

*as a side note I was a fan of Thor Heyerdahl since I was a little kid. There we several books by him kicking around on my parents bookshelf and to a young kid that's what dreams are made of. But I really see the two issues as fairly different in terms of execution and end goal.
 
The similarity is that Thor H and his friends were told the raft wouldn't hold together, would get torn to pieces etc. None of which happened. You're asserting that a floating island wouldn't survive the open ocean - properly designed there's no reason it couldn't. As for "living at sea": no reason that can't work. Fresh water (rain/desalination) the capacity to fish and grow food - perfectly possible. The goals and execution are quite similar. A floating island is a raft, the "voyage" is ongoing rather than finite, but it's the same principle. Besides, you don't have to be 100% self-sufficient, extra supplies/materials etc can be brought out to you when you come closer to land. The only real problem I see is guiding your raft so that it stays in the desired current stream.
 
I'd like to see one of these islands survive the swell of the open ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-HaTWIznGE&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvh2hCxUvJA&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwKXfc_a4Ag&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMGPniLUJ7o&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fapXUqagiFQ&feature=youtu.be
 
There's a tribe of people who practically live their entire lives at sea. But their health suffers somewhat and they still have a need to trade with the land. These people live on smallish boats with none of the comforts we're used to. Not even any sort of privet space.
 
Its sounds like a billionaire's fantasy.

They better be growing some badass hydro if they're going to hope to make enough money to buy supplies to support this seastead.
 
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