In-Depth The Watch To Wear If You're Going Off The Grid For Good

Another related but different scenario involves what I like to call (as of five minutes ago when I made it up) the Mad Max Watch Hypothesis. This posits that a mechanical watch is inherently superior to a quartz watch because in the event of a collapse of technological society (which is beginning to seem more like a blessing in disguise than an apocalypse lately, depending on how grouchy you feel about the day's headlines) a mechanical watch can be serviced. A quartz watch on the other hand, will, in the fullness of time, run its battery down and die – not with a bang, but with a whimper.

In honor of Great Outdoors Week, I would like to consider a closely related – and indeed, very likely identical, at least from a consequences perspective – question, which is: What is the best watch to have with you if you finally get fed up with mankind and its mendacity, and decide to go off the grid?

The critical point here is that you are not just disgruntled – you are, in fact, terminally, permanently disgusted, and find the thought of never again seeing another human not only preferable, but a consummation devoutly to be wished. You have decided that we are not Homo sapiens, but rather, Homo stultus. You are essentially Robinson Crusoe, but you hope with all your heart to never see the immaculate blue sky over the wine-dark sea stained with a smudge of a sail.

I should say, right at the outset (if you can call being five paragraphs in "the outset") that the simplest and most obvious solution is to not have a timepiece at all. I ran the question of what might be the ultimate Off The Grid watch past some colleagues here at HODINKEE, including our commercial director, Russell Kelly, who replied rather drily that probably the last thing you need if you are vanishing into the trackless wilderness, is a wristwatch. This is unassailable logic.

However, this merely raises the obvious point that nobody needs a wristwatch, period, and so we are free to continue to entertain ourselves by considering the best solution for bringing a watch with you when you bug out for good.

Integrated circuits also tend to accumulate gradual damage, although this can to a great extent be ameliorated for considerable lengths of time by properly sealing the IC from the atmosphere, and preventing moisture or excessive heat from affecting it. The Voyager 1 probe has been in space since 1977 and is now technically in interstellar space – and 14.3 billion miles away – as mankind's first interstellar probe. Over 44 years, it has survived extreme temperatures, as well as very powerful radiation and magnetic fields (including that of Jupiter), and its chips are still chipper.

The spacecraft is powered by thermoelectric generators that turn the heat from plutonium-238 into electric current, and the three on-board Voyager 1 are expected to provide enough power for some operations through 2025. You might be able to power a wristwatch with a small thermoelectric generator, depending on how comfortable you are with having plutonium on your wrist (perhaps a reader with the relevant engineering background might help us out with power output, heat, and shielding requirements in the comments).

However, if you are a relatively young misanthrope, you might want more than forty-plus years of operating life and this is where the mechanical watch comes in.

Cleaning is a little tricky as you will probably not have access to the usual chemicals used to clean and degrease a watch movement, but soaps will do nicely as long as you remember to dry your components immediately after (watchmakers used to use boxes of dry sawdust to dry movements, which brushes off easily).

That leaves the mainspring. A plain blued-steel mainspring won't last nearly long enough, as they have a tendency to fatigue, "set" (that is, gradually lose their elasticity and become set in a tight spiral), and break. However, I ran this question by none other than Roger Smith, who told me that this is not an issue with modern mainspring alloys. Roger also pointed out, with I think pardonable pride, that one of his watches would be ideal, assuming you can afford one and don't mind a few years on his waiting list – you are probably selling all your worldly possessions anyway so springing, hahahaha, for an RS is as good a way as any to spend the last money you'll ever spend. The advantage to an RS watch is that the escapement does not require oil, so you will not see wear at the impulse surfaces, or rate variation due to lubricant deterioration. (Roger also pointed out that the same advantage would apply to any pocket watch with a chronometer detent escapement.)

The question of getting a clock to run for a very long period of time gives us more options, of course, and the Long Now Foundation has been working on a clock called, reasonably enough, The Clock Of The Long Now. It is designed to run, without stopping, for ten thousand years although as it is enormous, buried in a vault of solid rock, and really, something of a reminder of your depressingly short time on Earth, perhaps more of a detriment to your life of untrammeled freedom among the whispering pines, than not.

Me personally, I'll take a Roger Smith. It's completely irrational to bring a watch with you if you're vanishing for good, but it is also something of a symbol. The steady ticking and the motion of its gears and balance are an homage to what us humans used to call The Clockwork Universe – a place where Reason with a capital R was what made the merry old world (and the worlds around it) go 'round. For someone fed up with the unreason of human civilization, I can't think of a better talisman by whose ticking to fall asleep – the peaceful, solitary sleep of one convinced of the truth of Jean-Paul Sartre's observation, that hell is other people.