Solar Radiation Threat

[RickD]

I'm going to say something rude.

If you trust electronics, you're a fool. I have been working on electronic systems for over forty years. Anyone who trusts ONLY a GPS and won't learn anything else is dealing with the devil... Electronics WILL fail.

As an amateur astronomer I can also tell you that we've been damned lucky for a long time. There weren't many satellites in the 1960s... but we had several large flares (aka coronal mass ejecta) in that decade that, had we had then what we have NOW would have fried everything in orbit.

Since then we have had a few small hits, one of them taking out most of the power grid in Canada a few years ago.

Counting on GPS alone is courting death... sure you might do that in an ocean crossing anyway, but why seal your fate by not even knowing how to figure out what your latitude is, let alone being able to find a landmass?

[LakeSuperior]

I think the standard rule for mariners is to "never depend on one method of navigation"

[delmarrey]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Can you make a fire without matches? Can you make a flint arrowhead. Can you identify flint? Can you make a bow and and arrow good enough to kill a deer? Can you hitch a horse up to a plow? Do you know how to preserve venison without a refrigerator? Can you build a wagon wheel with hand tools?

Yes! We just need to teach our kids this.