"Here is a preliminary list of things which would be useful for our chosen scenario," Herwald offers, pushing forward a hastily-scrawled list.
1. Safe and replicable hydrogen fusion, miniaturized sufficiently for shipboard use. With an ocean of seawater we can electrolyze all the hydrogen we need.
2. Advanced solar-cells, preferably both highly modular versions and extremely large sheets. This would provide startup charge for fusion plants as well as a good deal of day-to-day power consumption.
3. Advanced batteries and capacitors with high storage capacity and low loss of charge over time, both for everyday use and for submersibles too small for fusion plants.
4. An alloy or material of some other type which is durable, light, and easily replicable, and which is in particular resistant to impacts and high pressure environments.
5. Hydroponic systems capable of highly space-efficient and rapid food production.
6. High-efficiency small-scale desalinization plants.
"Those are only the initial essentials, of course, but those six items combined with my existing infrastructure should be sufficient to begin construction of a fleet of these arks. I will need to confer with my subordinates about the exact capacity available, but if I halt all non-essential production I should be able to complete a decent number in time. Ships? Ships I can do."((Did you guys just re-create waterworld?))
((Yes. Yes, we did. I don't know who else was doing it semi-intentionally, but it's gonna be a riot and we're gonna do it right.
))