The questions the first graders at Redwood Elementary School asked me had two major themes:
- Tell us about how you can die horribly and not be rescued. Add situational complications to make it harder for me to rescue the poor Antarctican
- Do you have/can you take *INSERT ITEM HERE* to Antarctica?
For the latter, I presented them with a challenge. It’s the same challenge every member of the United States Antarctic Program is presented with before they deploy: how can I reduce my life to 150lbs? Not 100 items, not 8cu.ft., but 150lbs. Yes, they do weigh you before you get on the the flight for Antarctica.
I suspect tonight there are 20 first graders that are going to be piling their possessions onto the bathroom scale much to their parents’ confusion. Go ahead and give it a try. Might encourage you to buy a Macbook Air if you really need a computer.
You get 150lbs of Important Things. It would be nice if it all fit in two suitcases and and carry on, but I’m not feeling too picky about that. Alright…GO!
Oddly, I ran into this interesting little article about something similar and it urged people to try to live a life with only X number of objects for their possessions, usually 100. But it got me thinking–and prepared me for the 150lb limit, actually.
If I were headed to the Antarctic, I'd take the same things I brought with me when moving between countries last time, only updated: About 40lbs of clothes, which is the equivalent of two week's laundry in addition to the day's worth I'd be wearing on the trip, and then my book collection (what was 9 books once, is now 350GB of text files, pubs, pdfs, and a portable copy of Project Guttenberg), 4lb laptop, 2lb netbook as a backup, 1/2lb rooted NookColor (+accessories) running Android, and an Xbox 360 with every game I can get my hands on packed in a 5lb binder. And then I'd add about 5lbs of extra security locks and such, because one never knows when sleep and light deprived coworkers will try to steal your stuff as a prank. Plus the usual 10lbs of sundries, etc, because I recall you can buy some of the shampoo/etc stuff at the facility. Though I may recall wrong.
I'd only be screwed if the power went out for a long period–but I'd be screwed by that either way, with the freezing and the death and all that.
Clothes, two Macbook Airs, two 1TB SSDs, two iPhones, two iPads and triple set of cables & power supplies & chargers.
This assumes sundries and personal hygiene items are available on site.
Add BBOE up to the 150 pound limit.
The BBOE will be used for bartering with the natives.
I'd guess that substituting cocaine for BBOE would be more profitable but less prudent.
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