YM778.TV Chapter 223: 220: Professional Branch: Master of Meteorology
A drone even flew outside the tent, capturing the rise and fall of the life raft in clear detail from a high-altitude perspective.
In the face of dangerous Nature, humans are like this life raft, bobbing up and down, seemingly at any moment they might be capsized by the waves and thus submerged beneath the sea.
“I can’t take it, my head’s getting dizzy!”
Bi Fang held onto the edge of the boat, resisting the urge to vomit.
Life rafts are unlike boats.
Without a keel, the inflation valve can only be maneuvered by the waves. Every step taken is soft, without a single firm foothold. Add to that the psychological pressure of being shipwrecked; if a person gets seasick, their dizziness would be at least tripled!
The experience is definitely intense. A strong physique has little to do with seasickness. If it hadn’t been for Bi Fang practicing yoga for over half a year and mastering Tai Chi Traveling Dragon, thus having a strong sense of balance, he wouldn’t have been able to hold on at all. He would be doing more than just thinking about vomiting; he’d be considering whether to discard the vomit instead.
“It’s hard for me to imagine what it feels like to be trapped in a life raft for two or three days, or even a week. Just the thought of it makes me want to throw up.”
Bi Fang changed his strategy and began to lie down inside the life raft, trying as much as possible to go with the flow of the ocean currents and respond to unchanging amid constant changes, to cope with the dizziness.
Perhaps he would be able to adapt after a while.
“Although we are surrounded by the sea, you all should know that seawater is not drinkable. Drinking this high-salinity water will not only fail to quench your thirst but could also put you in fatal danger.”
Bi Fang touched his clothes and found that they were still a way from being dry, which only added to the torment.
Even though the temperature inside the tent was higher, that didn’t mean he could go without clothes. The cold was constantly draining his energy, a debuff that would inevitably leave him weakened over time.
“The salt concentration of seawater is about four times that of human body fluids, and the kidneys’ capacity to excrete salt is limited, usually not exceeding a concentration of 2%, which is below seawater’s salt concentration of 3.5%. This leads to the conclusion that drinking seawater is not only ineffective in replenishing water but causes dehydration in humans instead, not to mention the possible parasites and bacteria in it.”
“How are we supposed to get water then? Forget water, Old Fang doesn’t even have a container to hold water on his face, right?”
“Yeah, looking at the sea won’t quench thirst.”
“My head is about to explode; the production team is too pitiless, leaving us with nothing!”
The audience couldn’t help but feel anxious upon hearing this.
It was Bi Fang’s first live broadcast where he had nothing, but that was on land where he could at least gather materials and make tools himself. Now, there were no materials to be had.
It’s difficult to cook without rice.
“That’s why I’m drying clothes, aren’t I? Once they are dry, we will have water to drink.”
Bi Fang picked up a bath towel, which the production team had not taken, and he had not completely wrung out. He had left it slightly damp.
“There should be many things inside a life raft, such as flares, flashlights, whistles, food, and water, but obviously, the production team has taken all these. The best way to obtain water for survival at sea is, of course, rainwater, which is also what I am hoping for.”
“Do you remember my speculation on the airplane? This is the North Atlantic, where throughout the year, especially in autumn and winter, the winds are strong. Moreover, based on the temperature, I deduce that it should be close to the Arctic Circle.”
Bi Fang trusted his deduction to be correct. He had set off from Ugly Country, flying across the entire Atlantic, then traveled by car to the coastline before departing by helicopter. He had changed modes of transport twice and wouldn’t be more than five hundred kilometers from the coastline.
This allowed him to roughly determine his location.
The northern part of the North Atlantic!
Northwestern Europe!
In the autumn and winter seasons, the tropical cyclones over the North Atlantic transform into strong temperate cyclones, bringing gale-force winds to the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the stronger temperate cyclones can cross the Atlantic, bringing gales and heavy precipitation to Northwestern Europe!
[Whoa, here comes the Master of Meteorology again!]
[I won’t watch the weather forecast if it’s not you!]
[Got schooled again, I’m definitely going to pass geography this time. Don’t ask, if you do, it’s because of the Church of Bi Fang.]
[It must be fun having Master Fang as a teacher. Student: How do you know? Teacher: Because I once drifted at sea for twenty-one days.]
“So, during our drift, the probability of encountering rainwater is very high, but we can’t put all our hopes on that. In the absence of rainwater, of course, the best way to get water is still distillation,” he said.
Bi Fang turned the towel over and, pointing at the tent canopy, said, “The life raft is watertight, and one of the reasons I don’t open the zipper is so that we can trap the evaporated moisture inside, eventually condensing it on the canopy to form distilled water, which then runs down. Even though it’s inefficient, it’s indeed a good method.”
He tore off a strip of cloth, tied it around the center of the canopy, and fastened the other end tightly with a shoelace, using the weight of the shoe to sag the canopy, forming a funnel shape. This way, the evaporated water vapor could drip in one direction through the funnel, improving efficiency.
[666, learned a new trick, time to compete with the little pond!]
[Come back and tell us how much water you collected in a day.]
[But isn’t this efficiency too slow?]
“It is slow. This method of water collection simply cannot meet my water needs, but that’s survival. If necessary, I would even choose to drink urine.” Bi Fang swallowed hard, somewhat impatient for the water to drip down.
Drink urine!
This distasteful word startled many viewers when it came up.
Many people had heard from various news stories about earthquake victims trapped without water to drink, forced to survive by drinking urine. But no matter how harsh the environment or how dangerous the situation had been before, Bi Fang had never spoken of, much less done, such a thing.
But this time Bi Fang said it out loud, suggesting that the situation might be even more difficult than the viewers had originally imagined, forcing the always resourceful Bi Fang to resort to more extreme methods.
“If you can survive in the wild without any reduction in physiological function, then it’s not just survival anymore, it’s living, because you’ve established a virtuous cycle,” he explained.
“But real survival is cruel. The harsher the conditions, the more evident the cruelty. My goal is to use every possible means to keep myself alive longer, to extend the process of deterioration using every method at my disposal, to hang on until I make it ashore or am rescued,” he said.
Bi Fang spoke these words with calmness, but everybody could feel the brutality in them. It wasn’t his first time leading everyone to experience this feeling, yet it seemed like a brand new experience every time.
Everyone got something different out of Bi Fang’s live streams. Some loved the natural beauty within, charmed by its lethal allure.
Some were keen on seeing the infinite potential humans could unleash in times of crisis, that extreme vitality of life.
Some enjoyed when Bi Fang explained knowledge in various environments, satisfying their thirst for learning.
And of course, perhaps some simply liked Bi Fang because he was handsome—a simple and pure affection.
[Cut off from society, thou shall, no WiFi connect.]
[Ah, upper floor, you owe me for that touch of emotion!]
[Damn it, the emotions I was brewing just vanished. It’s true, the wilderness is terrifying. There’s not even WiFi.]
“Yes, that’s the scariest part,” he agreed.
Bi Fang couldn’t help but admire the creativity of the netizens. No matter how dangerous a situation, it always turned amusing through their comments.