Very, very tragic. I've been following the story closely. And it's ironic how these unfortunate people have become part of the Titanic's sad stroy.

Yes, but there are worst ways to go than an instantaneous death by deep sea implosion.

 

Yes, but there are worst ways to go than an instantaneous death by deep sea implosion.

I was thinking along the same lines ... it must've been quick and almost painless. But man, it's horrific to think the effects that 5,500 psi can have on the human body ...

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R.I.P. to all inside.

 

 

I was having a discussion with some friends of mine yesterday night, and here are a few observations that I found of interest:

• The implosion would've not produced a big air bubble that floated to the surface. Rather the released air would've instantly dissolved in the surrounding water, creating a soda-like mix around the sub that would've slowly flowed upwards.
• All of the bodies tissues would've been compressed instantly and turned to mush since most of their fibers would've been ripped apart. The two tissues most immediately affected would've been the eardrums, and shortly after that the eyes (which would've been compressed to the size of tiny marbles) and then the brain. This without even considering the torso.
• If those bodies are ever recovered, at the surface they would re-expand far beyond their original dimensions. And would end up looking like grotesque cabbage doll toys.
• But what got me mostly thinking, is that someone brought up the immediate raise in temperature that must've happened due to the rapid compression. That temperature raise must've been extreme, but then again the surrounding water is at a very low temperature. So maybe the bodies were subject to an "annealing" process of sorts whose final effect I cannot imagine at this point.

 

It's long been known (though I couldn't find any reliable references quickly) that if a submarine suffers a catastrophic hull failure at depth that any crew in areas subjected to the inrushing water (as opposed to being in water/pressure tight compartments away from the point of failure) would most likely be incinerated due to the adiabatic heating (not to mention the autoignition of various hydrocarbon fumes and films that are invariably present) from the rapid compression before they had a chance to drown. I don't know to what degree that mechanism would play out on a small submersible since there are lots of competing effects acting over such a small distance that they are all pretty simultaneous. In addition to the rapid compression of the bodies, you would also have the effect of the mass of water hitting whatever wasn't incinerated at very high speed in a very chaotic fashion -- not to mention parts of the shredded hull -- which would almost certainly rip them into very fine pieces and scatter them quite efficiently over a large volume of the surrounding seawater. It would be an incredibly gory and violent end, but almost certainly over, from any meaningful standpoint, long before their brains had time to recognize that anything had happened. There are far worse ways to go.

 

After just being knocked unconscious by far fewer PSI at less velocity, I don't think they had time to know what hit them. It was near instantaneous.

 

Here's my experience and my $0.02 for your consideration:

I had cataract surgery about a decade ago. I opted to have both eyes set at 18" given how much computer work I do. So I have to wear glasses for distance and reading glasses for close up. I am still able to work on the computer very comfortably without glasses. I used to wear progressive lenses, but last time I got glasses I opted for single vision, which are much lower cost, figuring that I would just use reading glasses when I needed to since I had been doing that for years instead of always trying to find the sweet spot on the progressives. But I didn't realize how much I actually was using the progressives to read close up things, and so next time I get glasses, I'm going to pay for the progressives again. I don't know whether I am really happy with my decision to go for the 18" focal distance -- if I had to do it over, I think I would go for both eyes set to far and just use a lower-powered set of reading glasses for computer work and then just keep a couple pairs near the computer so that they are handy. But I can't say that I really regret the choice I made.

For me, they did one eye at a time, but only separated by about a week. The healing was very fast with very little discomfort. The difference was night and day -- but I had very aggressively growing cataracts in both eyes that went from barely noticeable to effectively blind in just a month or so.

Hi,

Not sure if it makes much difference as glasses come in one way or another i think.

I opted for long distance lenses, or rather the doctor did an I agreed. You can read the computer that is not directly 8 inches from your eyes, but you still need reading glasses for fine print on paper or in a book.

What was most amazing to me about the surgery was that there was no pain at all. I could never imagine someone sticking a knife or whatever into my eye and not feeling a dang thing. For mine though they used that very small tube method where they stick a very, very narrow tube into the eye and first break up the old lens and suck it out, then pipe in the new synthetic lens and it unfolds inside the eye.

When I talk to other people that need the surgery, they all say the same thing, that they dread getting something stuck right into their eyeball. I was worried about that too and wasn't sure how they did it. By the time I got to the surgery center I could barely see the TV they had hanging on the wall. An hour later I was on the way home and I could see crystal clear with that one eye they did. It changed my whole life after that.

 

I was having a discussion with some friends of mine yesterday night, and here are a few observations that I found of interest:

• The implosion would've not produced a big air bubble that floated to the surface. Rather the released air would've instantly dissolved in the surrounding water, creating a soda-like mix around the sub that would've slowly flowed upwards.
• All of the bodies tissues would've been compressed instantly and turned to mush since most of their fibers would've been ripped apart. The two tissues most immediately affected would've been the eardrums, and shortly after that the eyes (which would've been compressed to the size of tiny marbles) and then the brain. This without even considering the torso.
• If those bodies are ever recovered, at the surface they would re-expand far beyond their original dimensions. And would end up looking like grotesque cabbage doll toys.
• But what got me mostly thinking, is that someone brought up the immediate raise in temperature that must've happened due to the rapid compression. That temperature raise must've been extreme, but then again the surrounding water is at a very low temperature. So maybe the bodies were subject to an "annealing" process of sorts whose final effect I cannot imagine at this point.

Hi,

Yes, the temperature rise can be explained in part by the ideal gas law that relates, among other things, the pressure and temperature.
Many times, we think about this as being a static calculation, where everything has settled to some constant value, and this is indicated in the usual static expression we often see around. With a given pressure and some other constants, we get a result of some temperature level. But this would have been different because we have a localized temperature gradient that varies from extremely hot (maybe a million degrees) to extremely cold (maybe around 5 degrees C) and in that one small area the temperature can still be a million degrees at least until conduction and convection can average out the temperatures. Amazingly, the convection currents could be very large too, causing an effect similar to a violent tornado that adds to the mayhem, for a short time. The minor differences in the rigidity would cause unusual warping also.
The result of all this would be a sudden fireball that super heats everything within the region and turning some of the water into steam, effectively cooking anything nearby in an instant. The kind of energy there is hard to imagine.

The pressure at that depth would be so huge it would be so fast they would be alive at one instant, and dead and completely unaware of what had happened as little as 10ms later, which is faster than the brain can really comprehend anything. There would be no suffering, just instant annihilation. Human one instant, a soup of burnt chemicals the next. That's got to be one of the quickest ways to die even though it's still so horrific to think about.

The pressure could be 6000 psi or even twice that due to the density at that depth, which is greater than the density near the surface. To give us some way to comprehend what that means to the durability of the human body, imagine we had someone lay on the ground, then place a rod with diameter around 1.2 inches on top of their body say at the mid section, such that one end was on their stomach and the other end sticking up like a flag pole. Now using a crane, place a SUV on top of the upper end such that the force pushes down through the rod and into their stomach. That end would squash their stomach into a small pancake in a heartbeat.
Now, imagine having one of those rods for EVERY square inch of their body, arms, legs, torso, neck, head, etc., and coming in from ALL angles all at the same time. That would literally crush a human into a mush of nothing, and although some of the bones might survive, the other effects would either burn them up or rip them to pieces.
As someone mentioned the ear drums and eyes, there are also other orifices i won't mention here that are effected even with high divers that jump into the water from very high heights. If the body could withstand the crushing force for an instant, the water would rush into their head and bodies and cause extreme internal damage, but it depends how fast the pressure equalizes in and out of the body as to if they explode first or just get compressed all at once. This would all happen so fast though it's hardly worth mentioning.

The saving grace, if you want to call it that, is that it happened so fast that they had nearly zero time to comprehend what had happened and so there was no suffering. The only exception there is that if they lost oxygen first, they would have suffocated before that. There is still this possibility because we don't know the complete sequence of events that took place. It could be that the systems went haywire and that is what caused this to happen, and if that is the case then there could be other scenarios. My guess though is that there were micro cracks in the sub hull before they went down, and it finally reached the breaking point. The stress of the many previous dives weakened the hull little by little, and eventually it reached the point where the forces in the walls could not distribute evenly anymore and thus caused an anomaly in one region where that part could no longer handle the forces. Once that gives out, it's milliseconds later until the entire structure gives out.

It's an incredibly nasty thing to have happen that's for sure. They are at rest now though, regardless how it unfolded.

 

Accident update

The car is still in limbo although a claims adjuster has been assigned. So far, the ophthalmologist says my visual problems are brain trauma related and are pretty much gone. Urologists says he wants to borescope my urethra and bladder to find out where the blood was coming from (What fun!), we all saw the Orthopedic specialist who has scheduled all of us for MRIs but don't know when. Still have not seen the Neurosurgeon as to the status of post-concussive injuries but I no longer have visual and auditory problems so guess healing well there. We're all still very sore and achy and out of pain meds so suffering through it. Four of our grandkids have arrived for the week to keep us entertained so we at least have some distractions to keep us very busy for a while. If I can survive their screams and squeals for the week!

 

 

The keyword I hadn't heard until now ... but it was the elephant in the room: "fatigue" ...

 

The keyword I hadn't heard until now ... but it was the elephant in the room: "fatigue" ...

It's been being discussed even before they located the debris, though it was pretty low key and circumspect when everyone was still holding out hope for survivors.

A few people with experience in deep see submersibles, both manned and unmanned, have talked about how no one else in the industry uses composites for pressure hulls because of concerns over rapid degradation due to accumulating microdamage in the layers that is, on top of that, very difficult to detect. They pointed out that carbon-fiber composites work well for pressure vessels, such as oxygen tanks, because this they do well under tensile stress cycling, but not under compressive stress cycling. The other point that was raised several times was that simulation models for composites are not nearly as far advanced as they are for homogeneous materials such as titanium alloys, resulting in a much larger degree of uncertainty in the validity of simulation results and design decisions when targeting extreme environments.

I haven't confirmed those claims, but I can envision that it might well be the case. I did a very cursory search and what I ran across is at least consistent with the claims, especially the degree to which the mechanisms involved in fatigue degradation of composites is not well understood and a very active area of current research.

 

It's been being discussed even before they located the debris, though it was pretty low key and circumspect when everyone was still holding out hope for survivors.

A few people with experience in deep see submersibles, both manned and unmanned, have talked about how no one else in the industry uses composites for pressure hulls because of concerns over rapid degradation due to accumulating microdamage in the layers that is, on top of that, very difficult to detect. They pointed out that carbon-fiber composites work well for pressure vessels, such as oxygen tanks, because this they do well under tensile stress cycling, but not under compressive stress cycling. The other point that was raised several times was that simulation models for composites are not nearly as far advanced as they are for homogeneous materials such as titanium alloys, resulting in a much larger degree of uncertainty in the validity of simulation results and design decisions when targeting extreme environments.

I haven't confirmed those claims, but I can envision that it might well be the case. I did a very cursory search and what I ran across is at least consistent with the claims, especially the degree to which the mechanisms involved in fatigue degradation of composites is not well understood and a very active area of current research.

Hello there,

I just have to say yet again, very well put.

When I first heard about the problem before it was known if they were ok or not yet, I started to hear about the new type of hull. That was a downer for me right off the bat, but I held off for the time being. Then I heard that it probably gave way to implosion. I figured something just went wrong. THEN I heard that it had been used to dive 13 times before that and then I started to suspect micro cracks or some other type of micro damage which would have had to be tested for after each dive. The micro damage is somewhat like what happens when we might want to cut a piece of solid wire in half but we dont have any cutting pliers. We can fold it in half, then bend back and forth, back and forth, until it breaks apart. With each folding and unfolding the wire gets progressively weaker in that one place, and eventually it gives out.

THEN came the worst news of all, followed by even worst news yet. It was actually considered an experimental design, meaning it was not yet ready for prime time. That means there should not have been any 'customers' on board yet. After that, even worse news if that is even possible, was that the regulations state that the company can get away with the newer design because they built it for "themselves". To me that wasn't really true though once they let regular passengers on board. Apparently, you can build your own sub and go down and implode as many times as you like (har har) and still be within current regulations. It's also interesting that to test it they had to take it into international waters because it was not allowed to be used anywhere else.

Also, it seems many people in the industry were very concerned about the design, including the well-known James Cameron of "Titanic" fame, who built his own submersible too, yet they were probably afraid to speak up until it was too late.

Another sad part of it was that I read that the son of that one guy was just about forced to go on board with his father, because the father insisted. The son was very afraid and didn't want to go.

It's crazy to think of what happens when you are inside a craft with a 5 inch thick carbon fiber hull when it cracks and caves in. The people inside don't know what hit them, but it's still crazy to think about.

There are so many angles to this story now too. An ex-president said he was concerned that everyone was paying so much attention to this and hardly any to the 700 people that went down in a ship off the Greek coast just recently too. There are many dead and missing, many more than just 5, yet there was so much media attention to the 5. It may be the worst disaster to occur in that area with the death toll up to 79 or more, and many of the survivors in shock.

 

If you have trouble accessing the article, just open it in an incognito window:

He has flown 23 million miles. Here are his travel secrets.

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Anybody ever die up there with you?

“Four,” Stuker says.

Four?

“Yeah, four. All heart attacks. I’d met a couple of them, too. Just died right in their seats. The last guy was up in business with me, Chicago to Narita [Tokyo]. They covered him with a blanket and put the seat belt back on. What else could they do? I guarantee somebody in business was thinking, ‘Hey, if he’s not gonna eat his chocolate sundae, would you mind … ?”

 

The bare chested guy had the fire knocked down pretty low until the truck rolled on the site. Those guys took forever to get something on the fire again. Yes, I know it was already totaled from the fire but it's not a good look IMO.

 

 

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