NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Rommel John Miller
Date: 2015 Oct 22, 18:57 -0400
Wow, I feel I need to comment, having been one of the first students at my college to study the literary aspects of film, we looked at a lot of the Kramer’s interpretation on Norway’s “On the Beach” was one film.
It is hard to imagine a nuclear holocaust, what one might truly be like that is, because well it has never really come to that. I was a cold war sailor too and when you consider that the US and USSR were at loggerheads over ideologies and thought we were close with our hands on the button then, just look at the mad rush today to allow Iran to acquire the ability to flatten Israel, and Israel wouldn’t stand by and let it happen they might strike the Iranians first.
I remember Kuwait during the First Gulf War, and when Saddam lit off as many fields of oil wells as he could when he saw himself loosing.
The sky was thick with oil tar just causing a quasi-rain to make the sand mushy and slippery and to get in the soldier’s eyes and stuff. Men had to carry their rifles upside down and if you looked up you risked a face full and eye full of the oil tar coming down.
Oil tar burns, it will burn dry skin and bug the crap out of mucus areas like eyes, nose and ears.
Thing is Saddam imposed a winter of sorts during that offensive. And it is nothing I nor a lot of my comrades want to relive. It was sick.
Sadly, when Kramer’s film came out in 59 it was panned as being too alarmist.
Then that Henry Fonda film “Fail Safe” came out in 64 and was directed by Sidney Lumet and it was right after JFK was assassinated.
The assignation does open another can of worms in this Nuclear Nightmare possibility. The closest we came to annihilation was with Bay of Pigs and in 1983 when Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear the Berlin Wall.
The Berlin Wall came down and the USSR fell, and yet it gave rise to Radical Islam and relative lawlessness in the former Soviet Empire.
What does all this have to do with CN and Astronomy? Very little, and yet our only hope is to be somewhere in the middle of an ocean when the stuff hits the fan.
But then what will life be like after? Will GPS be able to penetrate the nuclear clouds? Will the clouds simply envelope the earth, allowing the Polar caps to melt and the sea level to rise?
Better to be in a boat out in the middle of the ocean when that happens.
Truth is, the future is scary for those of us who have lived through some strange crap. And my fear is that it is only going to get stranger.
Rommel John Miller
8679 Island Pointe Drive
Hebron, MD 21830-1093
410-219-2690 (Land and Home)
443-365-7925 (Cell)
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of David Pike
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 5:37 PM
To: rommeljohnmiller@gmail.com
Subject: [NavList] Re: Quartz article: reinstating celestial...
It’s sickening even to think about it, but if one’s going to consider using celestial in a post nuclear World such as described in Nevil Shute Norway's novel 'On the Beach', or even in a pretty smoky conventional situation such as oil wells ablaze, one ought to consider what might be up there before assuming celestial will be possible from the surface. There’s going to be an awful lot of soot and pyrocumulus cloud up there, even before a nuclear winter does or doesn't set in. The stars might not be visible and the Sun might be dificult to define accurately. DaveP
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2015 Oct 22, 16:39 +0000ondSince the fact that nuclear explosions release a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP for short) that can wipe out electronics has been well known since the 1940s, I suspect that electronic equipment aboard US Navy vessels is well protected against EMP. And that backup equipment, sealed in EMP-proof storage, is at hand.
For that reason I believe there is no reasonable scenario where all electronics (including hand-held devices, ranging from GPSs to tablets to laptops) are suddenly inoperative but the ship is otherwise functional.
From: Bob Goethe <NoReply_Goethe@fer3.com>
To: luabel{at}ymail.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 1:07 PM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Quartz article: reinstating celestial...If the Navy is well-and-truly concerned about cyber warfare taking out their computing capabilities, then they would want to ensure that the computers they have STELLA on are "air gapped" from the rest of the ship's network. But unless the STELLA computer lacks USB ports, you can't depend on that workstation being totally isolated, air gaps or no. If their STELLA computers are NOT air gapped, then they would want to be teaching people to use Pub. 249 or their hand-held calculators.
Taking it a step further, if they are concerned about EMP from a nearby nuclear blast frying the chips on computers and calculators alike, then they would want to be teaching people to use Pub. 249.
Being children of the 21st century, they may well be using electronics in one way or another to do 100% of their sight reduction. If so, it would seem to be slightly counter productive to teach an "emergency navigation method" that you may be unable to use in an actual emergency.
Bob
