A shipful of devices – the Morning Midas – has reportedly been abandoned in the Pacific Ocean somewhere near Alaska because one of the devices (at least) stored in the hold spontaneously combusted and the crew was unable to control the conflagration that ensued. There were reportedly 800 devices on board, headed from China to Mexico.
The Coast Guard released the following statement:
“USCG responding to fire onboard 600 ft cargo ship Morning Midas with 22 people aboard 300 mi SW of Adak – No reported injuries – Ship’s crew actively fighting fire – 3 vessels on scene to assist – USCG aircrews en route to Adak – USCG Cutter en route to the area.” 
It was reported later that all crew members were safely evacuated but the ship’s a goner. Another one. You may remember the Felicity Ace, which had a bellyfull of devices (including VW, Audi and Bentley devices) in its hold when – again – one of them lit up spontaneously, resulting in an uncontrollable fire and an abandoned ship that later sank. This sort of thing has never happened even once – over the past 100 years of shipping vehicles by ship across the ocean – because it takes both fuel and fire to get a vehicle burning. This is why vehicles are inherently safer than devices. Even in the aftermath of a severe accident – severe enough to puncture the gas tank, leaking gas will not catch fire unless there is an ignition source, such as a spark or a flame caused by an electrical short or some other such thing. You can fill a swimming pool with liquid gasoline and that alone will not result in a fire. There has to be something else – the spark or flame – to trigger the combustion.
It’s a kind of fail safe.
Battery-powered devices are very different in that the battery that stores the device’s power (electricity) is a source of its own ignition. The device can light up while parked. Or being transported. It has happened numerous times. An accident is not necessary.
There is no negligence involved.
Put another way, there is nothing that can be done to eliminate the possibility of spontaneous combustion. The possibility of a gas fire on the other hand can be almost entirely excluded by simple common sense, such as not smoking around gasoline. If the vehicle isn’t badly damaged in an accident severe enough to rupture the gas tank or otherwise cause a leak – and no one is careless about smoking a cigarette or using a welder (and so on) in the vicinity of gasoline leaks/vapor – there is as close to no chance of a fire as it gets. It is possible – because anything is at least hypothetically possible – but it is as unlikely a thing as the Moon possibly being made of Gruyere cheese.
If a gas fire happens, it is also much easier to put it out. A device fire is not only hard to put out, once out it can re-start, spontaneously. A device fire can burn under water.
Yet the Safety Chorus is silent – about the inherent and irremediable danger of devices that can and have spontaneously combusted and will again. Relative to their numbers, there have been a lot of spontaneous combustion. .It is ignored or glossed over. More finely, the fact that it is a built-in danger is glossed over and ignored.
This says a great deal about the true motives of the Safety Chorus.
And what of the “environment” – whatever that means, exactly. The lack of specificity is interesting all by itself because it suggests oily mutability. The “environment” can be anything that “environmentalists” feign “concern” about and it is very difficult to rebut because it is non-specific. But it is fraught with moralizing unction – which makes any attempt to rebut it vulnerable to accusations of moral cretinhood. Who, after all, would do anything that is harmful to the “environment”?
Why, the same people who “deny” that the “climate” is “changing”!
Interestingly, the people who denounce these “deniers” are the very people who deny the very real effect upon the “environment” of EV battery fires. It is probably true that a single EV fire emits more actually harmful gasses into the air than a gas-engined car does – via its exhaust pipe – over the course of a year. And what is the effect upon the “environment” of a whole container ship full of these devices – including tens of thousands of tons of extremely toxic materials – receiving an impromptu burial at sea?
The same people who stage marches to raise awareness about sea turtles getting their heads caught in discarded plastic six-pack soda holders are silent when it comes to discarded devices that are certainly more lethal to sea life and much worse for the “environment.”
It would be amusing – if it weren’t so obnoxiously hypocritical.
. . .
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https://splash247.com/salvors-unable-to-reach-fire-stricken-morning-midas-until-monday/
**”Adding to the risk is the toxic vapour produced during battery failure. Industry sources indicate that up to 6,000 litres of vapour per kWh can be released, containing highly toxic substances like hydrogen fluoride.”**
The first §0 minutes of this Mike Adams HRR has long and detailed footage of several Waymo electric vehicles that have been torched by “protesters” in LA. “Rioters” are standing all around these toxic infernoes. The black smoke from those EV’s is highly toxic, yet these likely vaxxed marxists are too stupid to figure it out.
https://rumble.com/v6uixe1-bbn-june-9-2025-the-l.a.-insurrection-is-just-the-beginning….html
The aftermath: molten toxic canker sores left over after the communist “rioters” burned the Waymo electric cars. Who knows how much toxic smoke was released into the heart of LA.
https://x.com/iluminatibot/status/1932514651675504729
Ah, Brother Brosi- you say that like it’s a bad thing. I’m no fan of Darwin, but if I were, these barbarians making themselves sick or even dying from toxic inhalation has no down side.
The risk of fire can be mitigated by different battery chemistries; for example Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries are much safer vs. Li-Ion. However, they don’t have the energy density, i.e. they have less range.
I find it curious that the mass media aren’t kvetching about this like they did the Ford Pinto’s fire problem back in the 1970s. I’m old enough to remember that, and the reaction was markedly different then vs. now with the Li-Ion fire problem; I don’t see or hear that being mentioned, let alone trumpeted, on mass media.
Hey Marky,
I’ve been saying that very thing. I sit a few feet from a LiFePO4 battery bank everyday and I never worry that it will burst into flames. Though the chemistry has a lower energy density than standard Li-ion, it’s less sensitive to deep discharge, so the actual usable capacity may be a wash, and LiFePO4 is expected to have a much greater cycle life.
Good LiFePO4 batteries are said to have a life of 4,000+ cycles at 80-100% discharge. Think of what that would mean for a car with a range of 200 miles. 200 miles * 0.80 =160 miles. 160 miles * 4,000 = 640,000 miles. Of course, that’s quick math, and the capacity is expected to wane to 80% after those 4,000 cycles, but you get the idea. Temporal life might be a different matter, but many battery manufacturers will give you a 10 year warranty. In reality, who knows?
Why they continue to use the other chemistries and incinerate all manner of things is just willful negligence at very least.
Hi Mark!
In re the kvetching: I don’t find it curious. This isn’t about EVs, it is about pushing them. The distinction’s important…
I wonder how swell those electric cars are in Keeeeeeeeev when Russia blew the hell out of the electrical supply lines.
Volodymyr, vee must escape Keeev tonight, the Russian army approaches.
Dmytro, quick lets take the Tesla across the border.
Oh shit, there’s no juice in the battery.
Take the horse and buggy.
Comrade, don’t you remember, we ate the horse last week.
be sure to turn on the sound for dramatic effect:
https://x.com/MonitorX99800/status/1930771829750223027
I guess the insurance mafia is going to get their piece of the EV pie by raising the rates on these devices for transportation risks. More costs passed on to the customer to an already overpriced unpractical device.
I guess Tesla stock is going to take another hit over this as well. The Stock took a hit over the kerfuffle between the grifter taking on his benefactor and accusing him of being on the Lolitta Express. That better be true for Musk’s sake, or Musk is going to lose a substantial portion of this wealth for that libelous statement.
The Ford Pinto probably would have been reasonably safe were it a diesel. Diesel fuel is not explosive at ordinary pressures and temperatures like gasoline. That is why the Soviets demanded diesel powered Shermans during WWII. FDR and the Jews running the US didn’t care as much about their soldiers landing 81 years ago on D-Day. That is why they where called “Ronsons”, after the famous cigarette lighter.
EV fires are just one small aspect of the many of Bastiat’s “unseen costs” of EV implementation. Just wait until a few of those Hydrogen Fuel Cell’s explode, leaving a crater the size of a bunker buster.
It’s also why, I think sometime around 1988, school busses have been required to use diesel and not gas. I think it had to do with the infamous 1988 Kentucky school bus crash that burned up with people inside (it was not diesel, and had poor emergency exits).
EeeVee maker goes nuclear:
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Time to drop the really big bomb:
@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
Have a nice day, DJT!
3:10 PM Jun 5, 2025
————
Only one way to resolve this little misunderstanding … CAGE MATCH!
Vuela la sangre, batida de fresa
Salsa boloñesa, syrup de frambuesa
Una cascada de arte contemporáneo
Color rojo vivo, sale por el cráneo
— Calle 13, La Bala
Jim H: Next step in Donnie’s 27 dimension chess game: He nationalizes SpaceX and gives it to NASA (to ruin).
There are reports that he has advisors suggesting that he deport Musk to South Africa.
Oh, GREAT. Another president who wants to send the Africans back where they came from.
I wonder if most EV Manuf. are actually grateful it happens.
The environmental damage is off the charts.
Remember the gulf oil spill that was going to end the gulf. yeah, not so much, the earth eats it back up. There are natural ‘oil spills’ in the ocean all the time. The oil is ‘natural’ is the key.
Just more proof that saaaaaafety is BS, just a pretext to keep the proles from owning vehicles.
Hi Mike,
The whole saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety thing has been BS for who knows how long. Just look at the slogans uttered by governments, the global elites, and corporate media during the COVID vaxx rollout, e.g “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe!” or
“Nobody is saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe if not everyone is vaccinated!”
Yep, the vaccines are so “safe”, 80% of health care workers refused COVID and flu shots last year. And even then, the Feds are doubling down on the insistence that the serfs take more! When even the healthcare worker/masses will not bow to such “saaafety” measures, you know something is wrong. Or maybe-finally-they are waking up and figuring out what a fraud the system is.
Hi Shadow,
You may like this clip from yesterday’s The Highwire. Over in England, 90% of NHS staff REFUSED to take a flu shot last winter, and there are calls to reimplement mask mandates over an alleged new COVID variant spreading around the world. Hopefully the next time authoritarian governments try to implement mask/ vaxx mandates, there’ll be MASS refusals to comply, because you can just bet they’re itching to try to implement the COVID era tyranny all over again since so many people rolled over and complied with nonsensical diktats the last time.
https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/nhs-staff-reject-flu-shot/
OH yes, I listened to this podcast. Most interesting indeed. This last year, I filed my usual, religious exemption for the flu and COVID jabs, just as I have every year. Work is not pushing the COVID jabs, and have not for the last several years. However, now they have switched to sending me annoying, never ending e-mails about the Tdap vaccine, and how I should get “up to date” on those. My MD this year, her assistant tried to get me to take six vaccines that morning. I politely said no, while inwardly thinking that a bullet to the head would be a much quicker way to die. But then again, Big Pharma would not be able to bankrupt me ahead of ending up in the grave, either. If I did not end up drooling and withering away in a nursing home, first.
“ never ending e-mails about the Tdap vaccine “
Yea, they did that to me at 64 “you really need a Tetanus booster”. Humm, well OK. It was TDaP NOT just Tetanus. I have never been so sick in my life. Apparently there isn’t “just” a Tetanus booster any longer.
That was the end of vacc shots for me. Shoulda learned as prior I had a tennis ball size lump on my arm from the shingles vaccine, lasted for two weeks.
Yes, the Tdap I believe, is three vaccines. MMR, of course, is three. But, and especially for new mothers, they do not know. So, they think their baby is only getting one jab, when they may be getting 3 or more. It is a sleight-of-hand. Hmm, I think maybe the Shingles vax was in that bunch, I do not remember. I have known folks to get shingles, and it is NOT fun. And there again, vaccine injury is even worse so I think I will take my chances. Whether an atheist or religious, I say that God (or mother nature) did not screw up when our immune system was made, and I see no reason to mess with it.
‘the Safety Chorus is silent’ — eric
They were just waiting for the bass player. Now let’s all sing along:
I been all around the world
Don’t nothin’ bother me
I been all around the world
Don’t nothin’ bother me
You know I’ve seen everything baby
But EeeVees on the bottom of the sea
Lots of pretty EeeVees
Ya know they can be mighty sweet
I’m so glad, I’m so glad
No EeeVee bother me
Ya know I’ve seen everything baby
But EeeVees on the bottom of the sea
— George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Bottom of the Sea
I do like your turn of phrases Eric! Moral cretinhood lol! Our entire neighborhood experience a sudden power fluctuation followed by power outage yesterday evening. For an hour or so neighbors were running around like a disrupted bunch of bees trying to figure out what to do. People with EVs had just gotten home from work ready to plug their evs in and…..oops now what? Everyone had their cell phomes getting pinged by PG&E informing about the outage. Ive never seen people so kind if rattled by an outage before. Including ourselves. What does that say about the current state of affairs that we all seem a bit more wary of life now. Or are we just so constantly plugged in to the matrix we get disoriented when it suddenly shuts off?
The weirdest thing was right before the outage a neighbor noticed two light planes flying erratically very low over our houses. She said it looked like they were fooling around trying to buzz people. She actually pulled over because it looked like they might crash into one of the rooftops.
Thanks, RS!
And we had (weirdly) a similar outage the other day, too. I wonder if this is a new thing…?
They did this to us last summer. Quiet day (our valley is very windy) around 2PM the power quit. Got on the PSE website, no explaination, no ECD for restoration. 6 hours. No follow-up from PSE. Usually they quickly have a reason online plus crew status and estimated restoration time.
A lack of respect for a simple thing. Truth. In the world of woke it only matters when it agrees with you.
Another thing to consider is vehicles are shipped with very nearly empty tanks, which is mainly to save weight but also reduces the amount of fuel available to combust in an accidental fire. You could in theory have nearly zero fuel in the tank and be fairly safe, although they will get some fuel at the factory during their quality checks and that fuel is not evacuated so some liquid and vapor will always be present after that.
There’s also the issue of “carbon footprints” that these fake environmentalists and the globalist elite constantly fret over, though they don’t say squat when an EV is on fire. And given that liberal morons have also blown up Tesla dealerships after Elon Musk joined DOGE, how much of a carbon footprint has that created? Crickets from Democrats, globalist technocrats, the political left, and corporate media. Instead, they double down on the demented EV push.
The Environment Worshipers may dismiss EV’s as not being dangerous, but the insurance companies have not. Two years of premium hikes of 25% each year proves that. That has amounted to $800 extra I’ve had to pay out to the mafia. Even though my newest vehicle is a 2014 and no tickets. That fiasco with that cargo ship will eventually hit all of us in the wallets in some form or another; count on it!
Same happened to me. My premiums went up by 44%. No infractions, no claims.
Continues maritime losses will spike insurance rates – not only the vehicles but the ships also get lost, and these ships are expensive.
The insurance increases will push up the point-of-sales prices which will require even more subsidies – or the governments will have to directly insure EV shipping.
Will be interesting to see how far this will go.
“Continuous” – duh!
The Lutine Bell rings once for the Morning Midas.
Lloyd’s of London will bill China for the losses.
Plenty of wasted labor and materials, you get what you pay for.
Tar and feather the EV snake oil salesmen!
Shouldn’t there be a safety warning on every electric vehicle of the dangers of spontaneous combustion?
Dinking around with electric vehicles increases risk, does not reduce it.
VW is forbidden to market a diesel engine that will be of value to the customer, you go to jail if you want to do the right thing.
Deport EV’s!
Besides, who is dumb enough to use the word ‘Midas’ in the naming of a ship?
Fools go where angels fear to tread.
Hi Drump,
Yup! The Edmund Fitzgerald sank because it was overcome by heavy seas. The Morning Midas was sunk by its cargo. The difference is important.
Edmund Fitzgerald is an interesting subject. Many things factored in to her sinking but the parallel here is that ultimately human ego, arrogance and greed seem to always be at the root.
We didn’t use lithium ion batteries much for a long, long time. It wasn’t because no one knew about them, it was because they were too unstable.
OK maybe now we are able package them up a little better, but they’re still unstable. Thermodynamics is a bitch.
The reason why we use them for cats, is because they are light / much less dense. Lead-acid batteries are way safer, and their discharge rate is self-limiting (lithium batteries’ discharge rate is not self-limiting, which is closely related to their lack of fire safety). But lead is HEAVY. You always have a problem with needing more battery just to lug around the additional batteries, lead has this problem on steroids.
Smaller ions (lithium, hydrides) are desirable because it’s easier and more reversible (which means more charge/recharge cycles before failure) to move ions through the solid lattice — to store energy you need to be able to achieve charge separation, and have it stay there in a quasi -stable state (battery is “charged”), then slowly move back towards equilibrium lattice structure (discharge process).
Fundamentally there is no new battery technology waiting around the corner, unless you invent a new stable element. The periodic table has been filled up already. The combinations are known. The oxidation potentials of all the elements are already known. The basic combinations have already been mapped out.
You can come up with a new material made out of existing elements, maybe (but the low/hanging fruit on this one has been harvested already). Or you can fuss around with the details of how to make a battery cell, and make marginal improvements over time using existing materials. If it’s going to be batteries, those are your choices. That’s it. There is no revolution in energy storage technology lurking right around the corner. Moore’s Law does not apply to chemistry, only to computers. “Computer science” is (for the most part) not science.
Also. “Science” is based on the assumption that there is a structure/order to the universe, and that it behaves reliably and predictably according to certain immutable rules, and you can figure out what those rules actually are by performing experiments in a thoughtful and logical way.
It is about discovering what you cannot do, basically.
Technology is about figuring out what you CAN do with stuff.
Both of these things are absolutely NOT about cleverly magicking into existence solutions for artificially induced problems. It is not a priesthood. It is most decidedly not a system of ethics.
And I am pretty goddamned sick and tired of laymen, but especially politicians, treating it like one (and, by the way, attempting to use us as pawns in their little power games). And I am positively disgusted with my otherwise-I reliant colleagues who can’t or won’t see this, and who okay along for the sake of winning research funding.
🤢 🤮
There are certain things you just can’t do. Suspending the laws of nature is one of them. King Canute was a wise man, indeed. I’d vote for him.
This is why religion is important- human animals (by their nature) need something to believe in. Unfortunately the human folly of theism has obscured the reality of nature and nature’s god- and so many low to average intellect human animals turn their beliefs to science. Science doesn’t require belief- in fact it requires disbelief.
Hi Ernie,
That could be why so many people are drawn to the religion of Scientism/ Technocracy. Technocracy isn’t even a new thing. It’s been around since at least the early 1930s, though over the past few years, Western governments seem to have been hell bent on shoving it down their citizens’ throats. One example would be this demented push for Net Zero, framed as “Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaving the planet from cliiiiiiiiiiiimate change”, but it will do no such thing. Instead, it would likely enrich a handful of billionaires and the green energy lobby, as well as impoverish if not KILL countless numbers of ordinary citizens.
Hey Publius,
I wouldn’t say that we’re all out of options regarding battery technology. One of the less explored and potentially revolutionary systems is using oxygen as the cathode reactant in metal-air batteries.
My thoughts are that someone might perfect or greatly improve upon rechargeable aluminum-air batteries. The standard wisdom is that they aren’t rechargeable, but it has been done using ionic liquids as the electrolyte.
Now, if rechargeability can be accomplished with the expected high performance and a thousand-plus recharge cycles, that would be significant progress. I have an idea for a system that might work, but will take some testing.
If such a device were created and keep the promise of, perhaps, a 1,000 mile range but with a 200 lb battery that won’t spontaneously combust, made from something as ubiquitous as aluminum, that could actually bring the EeVee into the mainstream. Though, it still wouldn’t address recharging time, so there’s that.
https://newatlas.com/aluminium-air-battery-could-extend-ev-range-by-1000-km/32454/
Thanks for writing cogent, coherent content.
Read it about four times now.
Thermite reaction demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N50IjDB5Sk
‘sick and tired of … politicians … attempting to use us as pawns in their little power games’ — Publius
Here’s why we can’t have federalism anymore, as Governor Newsom threatens to withhold federal taxes:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
@SecScottBessent
I am certain most California businesses know that failing to pay taxes owed to the Treasury constitutes tax evasion and have no intention of following the dangerous path Governor @GavinNewsom is threatening.
I would warn state officials, including payroll managers, that federal law attaches personal liability to an “attempt to evade or defeat tax.”
https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/1931763601741635816
Before Amendment XVI was adopted in the annus horribilis of 1913, Bessent’s threat would have been impossible.
But now the US fedgov is top dog when it comes to tax grabs. State officials who attempt to nullify fedgov actions by sequestering tax remittances face personal arrest by
Lincoln’sTrump’s troops. It’s the RINO way — mend not end.Like your Obamacare? Pay your taxes! Or else …
This is the rule, not the exception. Just think, it could happen to your garage.
Imagine buying one used. Sure your chances of a fire are low if you’ve owned it since new, but what if you just got it from a guy who hit a speedbump at 30MPH, and unbenownkst to you, it’s 2 months away from catching on fire? I mean demographically speaking, the people who like those things generally can’t drive for shit. Just saying…
EVEES – Just say “Hell No” to stop the spread.
The plan is and always has been to
1. Get people in EVs because carbon
2. Mandate EVs once a certain percentage has been reached
3. Point to the power plant that charges them (whoops we forgot that carbon)
4. Now you’re not allowed to own a car or have electricity.
Remember, You’re the carbon they want rid of!
“Imagine buying one used.”
All EVs are used. They go through the battery draining/recharging cycles just sitting on the dealer’s lot. There’s no such thing as a “new” EV.
It depends on how you define it because a gasoline vehicle is also aging just sitting. Not just the battery is slowly draining but steel is rusting, plastic is oxidizing. Physics tells us the world trends towards chaos and disorder, entropy is the rule, not the exception. If you do nothing to prevent it everything will break down back to its elemental nature.
Yes, all vehicles age just from sitting. But we’re talking orders of magnitude differences here.
A new car will have a few dozen miles on it. An EV will have the equivalent of at least 1000, being a conservative estimate.
Plymouth Superbirds were known to sit in a dealer’s warehouse for years before someone bought them. An EV sitting in a warehouse for 2 years would likely be junked.
As the instability of these lithium ion batteries continues to present itself, a great irony is that the insurance industry/mafia appears to be completely unbothered by it.
Is there no amount of Teslas cooking off in residential garages, “diesel” Land Rovers burning down entire airport parking structures and cargo ships being sent to the bottom of the sea that raises an eyebrow of a single underwriter about any of this?
It keeps happening but nothing gets done about it. I remember when some smart phone could self immolate and they said you couldn’t fly with it but cars that burst into flames when parked are all good now?