From the article:
When a submarine hull collapses, it moves inward at about 1,500mph (2,414km/h) - that’s 2,200ft (671m) per second, says Dave Corley, a former US nuclear submarine officer.
The time required for complete collapse is about one millisecond, or one thousandth of a second.
A human brain responds instinctually to a stimulus at about 25 milliseconds, Mr Corley says. Human rational response - from sensing to acting - is believed to be at best 150 milliseconds.
The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapours.
When the hull collapses, the air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion, Mr Corley says.
Human bodies incinerate and are turned to ash and dust instantly.
That’s so fast it won’t even hurt, so it’s probably one of the better ways to die.
Yeah, one second you’re there, the next second you’ve just been… deleted. Too fast for pain, too fast for conscious thought. If you’ve got to die, this is the way to go.
This is an interesting fact, related to Titan, enclosure may not have been instantaneous because they were 90 minutes into the dive. Based on all the information I know it took at least several hours to reach Titanic death. So it’s possible these folks didn’t die instantaneously, and frankly speaking more information is not helpful at this point
This doesn’t make sense to me. Where is the hydrocarbon supposed to come from? Are they farting the whole time? And why should the bodies turn to ash instantly? They consist mostly of water and there is water all around. All this must be heated and evaporated before anything can burn. Where is the oxygen needed to burn 5 bodies coming from?
Damn, that kind of death is getting worse and worse. But luckily they didn’t see it coming.
@Guadin I read this and it sounded so gruesome, but at the same time, as you said, they didn’t see it coming at all.
Speculation says they did see it coming. Not the actual implosion event of course, but the inevitability of it.
I believe they sent out a message that they had heard a loud pop and were aborting the mission? So the people on the support ship were basically waiting for them to emerge, and the worrying only really started when they took too long.
@PlutoniumAcid So you’re thinking they heard some type of creaking or crunching of the carbon fiber hull then splat?
There have been credible reports that they had initiated an emergency ascent, though I am not sure if this is a certainty. If it’s true, they were definitely aware that they were in serious danger long enough to make and enact that decision.
