The Many Possible Fates of the Missing Submarine
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat Was the Fate of the OceanGate Submarine? There’s Some Wild Speculation., OceanGate’s Titan is presumed to have run out of oxygen., Missing Titanic sub: the most likely scenarios for what happened.
Update, 3:10 P.M.: According the the United States Coast Guard, the debris found are consistent with a ‘catastrophic implosion.’
The crew aboard the OceanGate sub has likely run out of oxygen, given that they reportedly started with 96 hours of breathable air when they ventured underwater on Sunday morning.
That is—if they even survived long enough to run out of oxygen. The United States Coast Guard announced Thursday afternoon that a remotely operated vehicle had found a debris field ‘discovered in the search area’; the Coast Guard is holding a press conference at 3 P.M. Thursday to share more.
The submersible story is evolving quickly, but in the meantime, speculation about what could have happened is rampant. It’s been hard to look away. Here are the possibilities.
The pressures at Titanic-wreck depths are crushing—’greater than the bite pressure exerted by some of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom,’ as Sophie Bushwick at Scientific American put it. The submersible protects passengers from that pressure, but if something is wrong with its structural integrity, the crushing pressure can rush into the vehicle, causing it to implode. It is unclear at press time if this is what the Coast Guard thinks the debris might be, but … one can infer.
Honestly, going quickly sounds like a pretty optimal scenario, given the alternatives that are in play now. As for the underwater banging noises that were heard earlier in the week, an analysis by the Navy as to what they were, exactly, was reportedly inconclusive.
If this was the case, a rescue would have been basically impossible. As the chair of the Marine Technology Society’s submarine group explained to the CBC, only 10 submarines on planet Earth can travel to the depths of the Titanic‘s wreck. Just getting there is an ordeal, let alone figuring out how to somehow unstick—or otherwise rescue—a crew.
Also, it is very cold down there, so in addition to the oxygen issue, hypothermia may have set in.
The sub could have made it to the surface, intact. That would have not been much help to the passengers, as the door does not open from the inside.
Maybe something in the electrical system short-circuited, marine robotics researcher Stefan B. Williams speculated in a piece for the Conversation. ‘Fires are a disastrous event in enclosed underwater environments, and can potentially incapacitate the crew and passengers,’ he wrote.
This is where things get a little … imaginative. At some point, folks on Twitter and TikTok gripped onto the math of the oxygen and the number of people on board to do some truly harrowing armchair calculations. If there was 96 hours of oxygen for five people … it could last longer for four people, or one person right? Who would ‘go’ first, and who would decide? But setting aside the ethical and emotional considerations of this scenario, the math isn’t straightforward, given that corpses would bring a new competitor for the oxygen in the sub: the bacteria feasting on them.
This final scenario is grim, and probably just wild speculation with little basis in reality. But as the world waits for an update on the fate of the missing OceanGate sub, there are still several possibilities for an outcome. A co-founder of the company that operates the sub said on Thursday to CNN that he continues ‘to hold out hope’ for the crew on board. But the ocean is vast—we might never know the fate of the OceanGate sub for sure.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/missing-titanic-sub-scenarios-oxygen.html
Ref: slate
MediaDownloader.net -> Free Online Video Downloader, Download Any Video From YouTube, VK, Vimeo, Twitter, Twitch, Tumblr, Tiktok, Telegram, TED, Streamable, Soundcloud, Snapchat, Share, Rumble, Reddit, PuhuTV, Pinterest, Periscope, Ok.ru, MxTakatak, Mixcloud, Mashable, LinkedIn, Likee, Kwai, Izlesene, Instagram, Imgur, IMDB, Ifunny, Gaana, Flickr, Febspot, Facebook, ESPN, Douyin, Dailymotion, Buzzfeed, BluTV, Blogger, Bitchute, Bilibili, Bandcamp, Akıllı, 9GAG