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Frank wrote:
>but longitude? That could prove to be more difficult than DC electric power!

You have to buy a chip scale rubidium clock well before the apocalypse
becomes inevitable.  That said how long could we manage with a bunch
of well calibrated quartz watches before we would be better resorting
to lunars?  I suspect one would find some recognizable land (depending
on your apocalypse) before it came to that.

Bill

On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 at 14:37, NavList Community  wrote:
>
> Re: CHU Time Signal Canada
> From: Frank Reed
> Date: 2024 Feb 24, 06:11 -0800
>
> Todd,
>
> Thanks! I haven't tuned in CHU in at least a decade. That's a sound of my 
teenage years. Every tone of the voices and beeps and clicks, every aspect of 
the timing and cadence. I used to tune in CHU every day when I was first 
learning celestial navigation. I can still hear that "song" in my head when I 
count seconds, and that guarantees the pace of my counting.
>
> But that radio?! You can get CHU using that simple receiver? I had no idea. 
Just to clarify, did you make this recording with that receiver?
>
> This reminds me of one of my favorite bits of conversation about "life after 
the apocalypse" (not a real conversation but one of those things that comes 
up with friends after a few beers). If there was a real collapse of 
civilization, like a "Dark Ages", what technologies would recover most 
quickly? I like to point out that, first of all, basic DC electric motors and 
generators will never be forgotten. They're too simple and too miraculous 
(rare earth super-magnets might be a scarce, expensive "before time" enabling 
technology however). And second, AM radio for similar reasons. Transistors 
might be rare items "from the before time" but they would still exist in 
large enough quantities to supply a market for decades. Even without, it's 
back to the traditional homemade (or natural) crystal diode. Low-power 
speakers or earphones, like the ones traditionally sold for crystal sets, 
might turn out to be a bit of a bottleneck in the technology. Otherwise... 
radio would come back fast and... "it's a sunny Saturday morning after the 
apocalypse, and here's the radioactivity report at noon." :)
>
> Frank Reed
> PS: You may wonder, where is celestial navigation "after the apocalypse"? It 
can recover quickly with a couple of conditions. Latitude by Noon Sun could 
be available early (if someone can publish a basic nautical almanac, which 
shouldn't be too difficult for the Sun and some stars), but longitude? That 
could prove to be more difficult than DC electric power!
>
> 
>
>
>  

   

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