Troublesome Topic: PHASE 7.1  SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS ON THE ARK

LIGHTS IN THE ARK

Because the ark had no windows, they had to have lighting inside the ark. If they burned a type of fuel, it would have caused fumes, in which case, good ventilation was crucial.

If they had a modern form of lighting, it would have eliminated the problem of fumes, but did they have such things?

If the animals were awake, and not hibernating, they would have generated lots of manure which includes methane, a gas which burns easily and quite cleanly. Thus, a slurry that included manure could have fueled a series of lamps.

Lamps with fuel would have required refueling many times during the year-and-17-days they were on the ark. Imagine the difficulties of removing the reservoir from a hanging lamp, refilling it, and replacing it while it is swinging back and forth as all things do on a boat on rough seas. This would have left open the possibility of spilling some of the flammable substance on wooden surfaces each time they did it, and it would have been required many, many times.

THE BEST OPTIONS FOR VENTILATION IN THE ARK

The best options are:

Moon pools 

A source of power as useful to them as electricity is to us

Moon pools have been known since ancient times. The book, Inside the Ark, Why it Worked, by Tim Chaffey and Laura Welch describes moon pools as tall hollow sections built into a structure that are open at the bottom and at the top, thus allowing the flow of something (such as water and air) up and down inside that structure.   The water level inside the moon pool would go up and down along with the water level on the outside of the boat.   If Noah built moon pools into the ark, I think he had one for waste and either one or two for ventilation. **  When the water in the moon pool went down, it would suck air in through the narrow vents at the top of the ark; as the waves pushed the water up inside the moon pool, it would push air out of the ark by way of those narrow vents at the top. If the ark were constructed with ductwork, this process would mix the air in the ark with new, fresh air so that the ark was constantly being ventilated.

But — whatever system the ark had for ventilation had to handle resting on dry ground instead of in the water for long periods of time, (about 40 days at the beginning of the flood and over 7 months at the end of the flood). It also had to deal with the largest types of waves in the open sea.

Storms with high winds can cause one large wave after another. But the largest waves on the open sea are called rogue waves or monster waves and they are not always driven by the wind. Various factors can cause waves to travel at different speeds and different angles. If one wave catches up with another and they join together (called constructive interference), they become huge rogue waves for a short period of time, or for a specific spot on the ocean surface.

If a ship is caught by such a wave at that precise time and spot, even large ships will tilt steeply upward going up one side and tilt steeply downward going down the other side.  

Moon pools would have worked ok while the ark was sitting on dry ground because both of their times of waiting were characterized by strong winds. And they would have worked well when the ark encountered normal size waves. However, there is one major problem with moon pools. The level of water in a moon pool is equal to the level outside the boat, right? So, when the water comes onto the deck of even a large ship during a rogue wave, the moon pools would have overflowed into the ark. They had no easy way to clean up after such an overflow.

What if the moon pools went to the very top of the boat? Would that have been safe during a rogue wave?   Maybe, but probably not.

A huge wave that reached the roof of the ark would have sent sea water into their holding tanks for rain water, requiring that they be emptied before using them again, but that was probably possible. A bigger problem would have been a rogue wave that made the bow of the boat dip into the trough and cover part of the roof of the ark for a few moments. This would have sent lots of water in through those vents at the top, and overflow the moon pools if they had them. Gen 8:6 indicates that Noah had made a window in the ark that he could open or close. We don’t know if he could also close the set of ventilation gaps at the top of the ark or not.

One way they could have done that was to use something similar to a one-way valve. A strong wind would only close the ones on one side of the ark at a time, leaving the vents on the other side open for ventilation; a wave of water could close one or both sides depending on how it struck the boat. The harder they were struck, the tighter they would seal.

But I can think of no way to seal a moon pool against being overflowed by a rogue wave.

A “modern” source of power. I believe that people before the flood had the intelligence to come up with useful sources of power.

If they could precisely cut stone using tons of pressure, make straight lines and perfect corners with mind-blowing precision, make guidance systems for cutting stone vessels with walls the thickness of a credit card, create extremely precise tools of measurement, create design-systems that could guide them in making large chambers to very precise specifications, build airplanes, if they could built to a specific resonant frequency, and if they could understand resonant frequencies better than we can, then they could also create a source of power that was as useful to them as our electricity is to us. (For more on the advanced level of technology in ancient times, see my study called – Don’t Be Like the Technologically Advanced People of Ancient Times that Disappeared; Here is a link to the first lesson: ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY HAD TO EXIST IN ANCIENT TIMES.

In the case of the ark, there may have been enough methane produced by the animals to run more than just the lamps, it could have run a generator or some other system that produced power for fans, pumps, lighting, and other needs. The boat did not need to move under its own power, so there was no need for the high level of power required to turn a screw. But ventilation and removal of waste were necessities, and if they had a source of power on board, there would have been many ways in which they could have managed both those needs. This is probably the best option as long as they had enough fuel, and for the most part, methane from animal waste was a good source of fuel for them.

Could they have used solar or wind energy? 

Solar energy can quickly be ruled out because the ark was in dark, cloudy, rainy weather so much of the time.

The strongest winds would have been during the first 40 days, and then at the end, when part of the process of bringing the water level down was a wind sent by God. But from day 40 through about day 135, there was less wind, and that was the bulk of the time the ark was floating on the water. During that time there would have been some wind, but I struggle to envision how one would affix wind turbines to the ark and have enough of them to garner a reasonable amount of power. In real life today, wind power is not usually enough by itself, if needs to be paired with at least one other source of power.

The conditions which would make the moon pools ineffective (extremely large waves) and which force us to look for a different solution, would make the animals feel sick and not want to eat, resulting in less manure and less methane. Had they been on open water during the first 40 days of the flood, they probably would have faced one very large wave after another. In such a storm no work would have gotten done on the ark; it would have been a matter of hanging on to something solid and enduring the storm until it ended.

However, by God’s foreknowledge and grace, the ark was not yet floating during the part of the flood that saw the highest wind-induced waves, i.e. the first 40 days of hypercane conditions. While rogue waves were still possible during the rest of the flood event, and the people and animals on the ark probably did experience at least a few monster waves, those waves would not have been a series of lots of them back-to-back, rather they would have come alone, when several normal waves converged to form one huge wave. After each huge wave passed, life on the ark would return to normal.

WHAT ABOUT RESTLESS, UNCOOPERATIVE OR VICIOUS ANIMALS?

It is possible that God put some of the animals (the biggest one or the most dangerous ones) into a hibernating or semi-hibernating state during the worst of the flood event. In that state they would consume far less food (a good thing) and produce far less methane (a bad thing if they used Methane for fuel). A different source of power would have required much of their storage capacity taken by fuel for the generators, an impractical idea. Therefore, if they used methane for fuel, God would not have place all the animals in a deep sleep, and not for the duration of the flood, that would have been too long.

The next lesson in this study is PHASE 7.1  SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS ON THE ARK