Rescuers are under (ahem) a lot of pressure.
President Benjamin Harrison was afraid to turn on the lights when electricity — that strange phenomenon — was wired into the White House in 1891. Blaska is not risk averse — he does ride motorcycle, after all.
But your internet tour guide will be damned if he would squeeze his fat belly into a chamber with four other foolhardies aboard the submersibleTitan and take the two-hour plunge 12,600 feet to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for an up-close glimpse of a wreck. No shoes and no life jackets! Did OceanGate forget extra AA batteries for the GameBoy joy stick that steers the submersible? Or is the oversized soda can caught up in Rose’s stateroom?
• The average scuba diver becomes incapacitated at 250 feet of depth.
• The water pressure at the Titanic’s location is 390 times greater than sea level — about the same as having 35 elephants on one’s shoulders. (And how they got into my pajamas I’ll never know.)
• Sunlight only goes down 3,000 feet.
• Cold.
• No GPS!
“Before you even get on the boat, there’s a long, long waiver that mentions death three times on page one.” — Townhall
Lost in space or trapped in a mine resonate because the doomed, presumably, have time to contemplate their fate. This morning it is reported that rescuers picked up the sound of tapping — with breathable air running down to only a few hours.
Recalls the frantic tapping of sailors trapped in the hull of the upended battleship Oklahoma in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Or that early television media sensation in 1949 when a 3-year-old girl fell into a well in small town in California. The attempted rescue was broadcast live on early television. Wikipedia recounts that “Within hours, a major rescue effort was underway with drills, derricks, bulldozers, and trucks from a dozen towns, three giant cranes, and 50 floodlights from Hollywood studios. At one point a rope was lowered to her but she could not maintain her hold on it and fell even further down the well.”
Inspired the 1951 Billy Wilder film starring Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole. How many times did Lassie save Timmy after he fell into a well? Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 captured some of that angst. He revisited the theme in 2022’s Thirteen Lives detailing the 2018 rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand.
In crass monetary terms, how many “assets” are being expended to rescue the wealthy Titanic sightseers? Do they deserve their fate for their hubris? (For that matter, how many millions were devoted to bringing Hunter Biden to justice — for two misdemeanors and a suspended gun permit violation? Or for investigating and then debunking the Russian Collusion hoax?)
Maybe the submersible five will survive like the Unsinkable Mollie Brown in 1912. Maybe they have already perished and the knocking is random like that ticking telegraph tapped by a blowing window shade in On the Beach.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The paranoids will claim this is yet another Deep State diversion — this time to draw attention from the Hunter Biden wrist slap. We’ll go crazy if it’s determined that the Titan hit an iceberg. Then they can blame global warming.
13 responses to “How low can you go?”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/06/21/how-low-can-you-go/ […]
Awful irony if the five zillionaires perish for want of that which every person breathes freely on the surface.
I never thought of the conspiracy angle. It does give a guy pause as to why it’s being reported in the first place. I assumed it is the soap opera/WWE crowd keeping the narrative moving.
an old military phrase…”what goes up alway comes down, what goes down does not alway come up.”
Big shift in wealth if all these guys die. Maybe an investigation into who benefits from this tragedy. Who inherits the Mar-A-Largo club membership?
Rumor is 4 classic Wisconsin frat boys inherit everything.
“I can’t breathe.” — George Floyd.
Hands Up/Don’t Shoot…THIS_IS_MAGA_COUNTRY.
#Sad! In LaLaLoopyLoonyLeftyLand the supply of HATE ever lags the demand.
The Gotch
I vote that Richy L. goes on the next descent.
Agreed!
The Gotch
Maybe the submersible got caught in a fishing net or mired in plastic waste ejected from a garbage scow, or is trapped in Titanic wreckage. In their next lives, these five men can try lunar tourism.
As the world holds its collective breath awaiting the fates of five rich WHITE Guys, Blaska asks the question —
“Do they deserve their fate for their hubris?”
The answer is “Only if they were to be a Jewish/Black/Hispanic who identifies as a woman”.
Three years ago this Saturday, a Jewish person of color (who identifies as a woman) was attacked by at least four Bugaloo Boyz. They stopped her in her car at an intersection, doused her with accelerant, lit her on fire, and left her to die. But she survived, (though she said she would require skin grafts).
She was all too aware of the history of “systemic racism” in Madison WI. She knew of the reports that “White Supremacists” were streaming into the city to do harm to the peaceful protesters, and deny them the right to peacefully protest “peacefully”. —Yet, she ventured out anyway.— Perhaps she was skeptical of the reports, perhaps she overestimated her ability to travel undetected. Perhaps she had a foolish hope that her fellow citizens would come to her aid if she were to come under attack.
The international attention being heaped on the WHITE submariners was lacking three years ago for this poor soul. Although covered extensively on the local level, national/international coverage was mostly limited to one day. ONE DAY!!! Few interviews were conducted, only ONE television appearance. Members of only ONE royal family reached out to offer support.
Madison is home to a small, but growing, community of “woke progressives” who could have used their limited influence to enact change through “direct action”. Businesses selling Hawaiian shirts could have been picketed, cancelled, and put out of business. During times of racial tension, certain streets could be closed to White traffic, thus giving minorities routes of safe passage. And why, to this day, are groups of white men allowed to walk the streets unchallenged? A wasted opportunity in a time of such great need. “But, we were busy with the riots” is no excuse.
Multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies “investigated” the crime, costing a fortune in time and resources, and turned up NOTHING. NOTHING!!! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Fourteen weeks of exhaustive “investigation”, $10,000 reward for information, and the best they can do is “It never happened”? There are people out there who KNOW the truth!!! Someone is lying, and needs to come clean. In The Name Of Justice, I call on everyone to SAY HER NAME and give her the closure she so richly deserves.
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