Concerning the titanic tour / #oceangate I would just like to say it's never funny when people suffer or die. But I feel like a lot of people do not have an appropriate amount of fear and respect for just how many ways the world will kill you absolutely dead.
The ocean in particular is a SCOURGE of humanity. So many people have died at sea in various ways. Just being on top of the waves has been a risk since the dawn of sailing.
Once you get into it though then pressure kicks in. The entire atmosphere from sea level to space weighs about the same as 33 feet of water. Miles of air weighs 33 feet of water. Go down another 33 feet and boom, a whole other atmosphere.
Recreational scuba divers don't go much below 100 feet of water. More than that and you start getting dissolved nitrogen gas in your joints. Down deep it's teeny tiny bubbles but when you ascend and the pressure releases those tiny bubbles expand and damage you in the process.
That's called "the bends" and it can cause serious health problems. All that from spending a few hours at around 100 feet in depth. Just that much water and pressure can wreak havoc on a person.
Now the wreck of the titanic is 12,500 feet (3800 meters) down. Over 125 times deeper than a default human body can manage. Three hundred and eighty atmospheres of pressure!!
The utter hubris of sending people down that deep astounds me. It's so staggeringly dangerous I can't even imagine. If the submersible fails for even a second that's it. You're dead. You're crushed into paste so quickly you probably wouldn't even notice it.
If the people turn up dead it's a tragedy for sure. But anyone who willingly got onto a submarine to go that deep had to have some notion of how utterly dangerous the trip would be.
I really hope they had some minor malfunction or they can't communicate yet and get it fixed but I do not have a lot of hope.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh