The Dali ...

Even before the Baltimore bridge disaster crippled a leading port, the risks of depending on a global shipping supply chain were conspicuous. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

 

About three years ago, yours truly wrote a piece about fragility and how 

it relates to supply chains. To whit ...

The supply chain driving the inherently complex production and distribution of smartphones must overcome numerous events able to disrupt the system in a myriad of ways including war, revolution, disease, weather, material shortages, manufacturing issues, truck breakdowns, traffic accidents, container ship mishaps, piracy, etc, etc, etc. 

Well, the bit relevant to container ships is most apt considering the disaster befalling the Baltimore Bridge and the Dali, a cargo ship capable of holding nearly 10,000 containers at a time. The most interesting part of the NYTimes article is the fact the Dani's far from the largest ship of its kind as depicted by the chart seen below. 

Sources: “The Geography of Transport Systems,” by Jean-Paul Rodrigue; VesselFinder; the Empire State Building; the Eiffel Tower; ShipHub; Maryland Port Administration 

Note: Widths shown are for the widest point for each ship.

From this perspective, the acme of producing stuff on planet earth has arrived as climate change and the inherent disruptions it will cause will negatively impact how the world does business as civilization moves further into the 21st century.