Ever since the cargo ship, Dali, took out a Baltimore, Maryland bridge, my concern has elevated to think just how fragile our economy and resulting world actually is.

If you consider this one event and the havoc wreaked on a major shipping port, which ranks first among the nation’s ports for volume of autos, light trucks and heavy farm-construction machinery, you realize how vulnerable we are. All of this because diesel engines lost power and, as a result, control of a steering system. To put this in perspective, this was only a mid-sized ocean freighter which was not fully loaded (only 47 percent). If you stood the Dali upright, it would reach two-thirds of the Empire State Building; certainly nothing to disregard. 

However, there are active ships that are two-and-a-half times the size of this particular ocean-going vessel. In addition, the speed of the ship before impact was merely nine miles-per-hour. This one accident resulted in the loss of lives on the bridge collapse, but also had effects on the logistics and distribution of major global brands like Amazon, Home Depot and FedEx, which then trickled down to affect you and me.

In the crazy and depraved minds we are witnessing in tragic situations recently, just how vulnerable are we? Our world seems to be changing and not always for the better.

Just imagine, since we are so dependent on computer systems these days, if someone with evil intentions gained control over our defense systems, satellites, banking industry, power grids, airline flights, autonomous drivers, dams and even our traffic signals, how catastrophic this could be to us.

I am thankful for the people who are a lot smarter than I am, and after they anticipate these breaches, put safeguards in place to protect us and make us feel less vulnerable.

Standard contributor Don Alexander can be contacted at dalexander@southernstandard.com