The survival aspects of Noahs Ark

There aren’t many people who haven’t heard about Noah and his Ark, even if they aren’t familiar with the story or follow the religion, they still know the name. The story of Noah and the religion it belongs to can be debated until the end of time, but today we’re going to look solely at the survival aspects of Noah’s ark.

With all arguments about whether the story is true or not put aside, we shall look at the survival factors surrounding the story and determine if it would be possible for humans to follow in the same footsteps as Noah.

What is Noah said to have done?

Noah was tasked with building a huge boat that would allow him and his family to survive a global flood that would end all other life on Earth. He went around the world and gathered two of each animal and loaded them on his boat. They survived on his boat for 150 days until the waters receded and the animals were able to leave again.

The Ark

The instruction given to Noah by god was to build a boat with the following dimensions, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Today this measurement is approximately 134×22×13m or 440×72×43ft if you prefer. Due to the size of the ark and how many people were on board, it would have been impossible to move the ship by rowing, but all illustrations of what the ark is supposed to look like show a roof covering the top. There doesn’t appear to be anywhere to place a mast or operate rigging for sails, leading to the assumption that there was no way of steering the ship.

Even if a rudder were present, this wouldn’t do much for a ship this wide and heavy, and it could only make the tiniest difference when being moved by a current. At this stage, we have a large ship with the mentioned dimensions and no way of steering it.

Noahs Challenge

It took Noah 50 years to build the ark, and at the time of completion, Noah was said to be 600 years old. He was then tasked with collecting two of every species of animal on earth so that their populations would be replenished when the flood waters receded. It would be possible for someone fit and knowledgeable to build an ark over 50 years, but getting hold of the animals is another issue, and the first major problem to look at.

Rounding up the animals two by two

Estimates for the number of living species on earth vary widely between 8 million and 100 million, with over 10,000 species being discovered and added each year. These animals are spread around the entire planet and are located in some of the most hostile and dangerous areas of our earth. Assuming sea mammals would be fine and anything that could fly would also be ok, he would still be left with collecting around 3 million different creatures.

The voyage between England and the Northern coast of South America during the 1700s would take around 3 months one way, and that’s on a well-built sailing ship with a full crew and numerous masts and sails. South America to India would take between 4 and 6 months, with several years of sailing just to reach the coasts of the rest of the world.

If his ship landed in Suriname, a country on the northern coast of South America’s eastern side, and walked around all the countries in South America in a straight line, his journey would be about 8,000 miles (12874.75 km). The average travel time through the Amazon jungle is about 5 miles a day for someone with the right equipment, which would make his trip around South America last for close to 4.5 years

To walk through all the countries in Africa in a straight line would be a journey of around 15,000 miles, and assuming Noah had a high level of fitness and did 10 miles a day, his Africa trip would last 1500 days, which is just over another 4 years. To complete a trip around all the countries in the world in a straight line would take around 40 years to walk, and that’s assuming everything he found could keep up, didn’t die of hunger or environmental conditions, had enough food, didn’t walk off, didn’t die in an accident and didn’t kill or get killed by the thousands of other animals in the convoy.

(A funny-looking hill somewhere in Turkey that people are convinced is the resting site of the ark, even though no ancient timber, artifacts, metalwork, or evidence has been found to support a boat ever being there)

Living conditions on the ark

One of the problems with the measurements of the ship is that no one can agree on which scale the cubics are referring to. On the two main scales that exist, the measurements of the ark suggest that the internal volume of the ship would be between 43006.2 and 78515.9 cubic meters. If we are generous and round the higher number off at 80,000 cubic meters of internal ship space, and we have a lower number of only 2 million different species, this would give us 4 million animals that would be sharing this space. This would give each animal 0.02 cubic meters of space, which is a box with sides less than 12 inches.

This food would have taken up an almost equal amount of space, with the larger species making up for the low consumption of the smaller animals. On top of this water would need to be provided with tens of thousands of gallons, and then there was Noah himself and the 7 other people on the ship.

Problems with the story

Ignoring the argument of if the story is true or not, and focusing solely on the survival aspects of Noah’s ark, there are a few problems with the story.

The argument of it being impossible for a few people to sail around the world and gather two of each animal is met with the biblical account of the earth at the time. Apparently, Noah only needed to build the Ark, which was constructed on the supercontinent that made up all the land mass on Earth, later being reshaped after the flood into what we now see as the current world’s continental layout.

He didn’t need to go around the world and gather the animals as god and the angels brought them to Noah, along with plenty of food and water for them, leaving him with nothing more than the task of building the ark and waiting for everything to come to him.

From a scientific perspective, the ship would have to be the size of a city to give all the animals enough room to live and eat. It would need some form of propulsion or at the very least a method to steer, and a way to stop the animals dying.

Noah’s Ark would only be possible with the following conditions:

• The ship was structurally sound and wasn’t affected by the weight of the animals and their supplies.

• None of the animals could be infected with or die from any kind of illness.

• None of the animals killed each other or died from accidents.

• The animals were somehow kept calm and didn’t become aggressive from over-crowding, lack of space, fear, seeing rival species, etc…

• All animals remained fertile and could reproduce afterward.