In addition to what you take with you onto the ship, you could have a separate strategy for stockpiling after boarding. I've never been on an overnight cruise but surely these things would be obtainable once on board and could be stored in the room for the duration:

water bottles, soda, juice

fruit, bread, nuts, chips


It's my understanding that the big ships are 24/7 floating buffets.


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It sounds like the "lucky" cruise ship patrons only come down with projectile vomiting and diarrhea due to norovirus. The unlucky ones end up on some floating disaster like this. It sounds to me like it'd be more fun to take a "cruise canoe" through a mosquito, crocodile and snake infested swamp. At least that would be a more fun survival scenario. Trapped on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of people dressed to the hilt sitting at dinner tables whining about the delay of their expected lobster dinners would be a nightmare.

things are getting better.

cnn story

It seems to me that these ships are built with zero power/vital services back-up or redundancy. Everything is a "single thread" leading back to the engines. When you lose the engines, you lose everything.

If this is so, IMO cruise ships need to be designed with some back-ups, e.g. generators to power the basic services (water, sanitation, some A/C). Oh yeah, also the bilge pumps. . .I would have thought this would be basic to the engineering of the ship. No single fault should cause this much trouble.

When I had my sailboat, I had various back-ups in place for just about everything; some were pretty basic, but they were there.

In some ways, the folks on board would be in better circumstances if they had abandoned ship in lifeboats, and the ship let to sink. They would be at home by now, instead of suffering for 2 more days.

I can see no reason that I would want to go on one of these things.

It all started with the Titanic, and has gotten steadily worse ever since.

I doubt that there's no redundancy in the design (mainstream media isn't the most accurate source of such information) but clearly the casualty overwhelmed the crew and the available systems.

Ugly situation. Best preparation for it is to NOT BE THERE!

I'm going on a cruise in August because my wife wants us to go with her family. I won't hear the end of it if I don't go. I'd rather take the chance than rock the boat in our relationship, pun intended. Since I plan to go, I appreciate the heads up and the ideas for being equipped to survive a cruise ship.

I'd add a solar charger for the batteries that would power the flashlight, headlight and radio. The other option is to take a lot of batteries. A waterproof PLB would be great too.

I think the whole cruise ship concept is nuts. Back in the days of the Titanic, folks boarded the ships to get from the US to Europe and back, it was a means of transportation. It was made luxurious for those that could afford it.

I have spent some time on the Queen Mary, now a hotel in Long Beach harbor and although the old Altantic crossing ships were huge, they did not have the passenger capacity of a modern cruise ship, The old ocean liners had to be able to navigate the rough seas of the North Atlantic and were designed with that in mind.

The modern cruise ship is not usually capable of sailing across open oceans, they stay close to shore, relatively and avoid rough seas. They are also stacked very high off the water to make room for thousands of passengers and are somewhat limited in their ability to stay upright in rough conditions.

If there is ever an incident on the ship, it is a maze and very difficult to navigate around on when the lights go out and the ship is in danger. Refer to the Concordia that capsized and partially sank off the coast a few years ago.

Bottom line, stay away, if at all possible.

Most of us engage in a far more dangerous activity every day than going on a cruise, that is driving a car.

Have fun on your vacation. Cruising is safe and fun. Make sure you go out on deck after dark and check out the stars. Dark skies at sea are awesome.

Interesting! Haven't thought of this. I'm not much into spending hours in a floating hotel on a pre-packaged itinerary that herds me from destination to destination. But it would be really nice to see the sky at night at sea, I think.

I wouldn't worry too much about dying on a cruise. Like GarlyDog says, we drive every day and we're willing to take that risk.