At the risk of recycling football coach Jim Mora.
We skip to the end of biographies to see how the hero of the story died. Was he brave? Did he suffer?
So we had a morbid interest in how the five deep-sea Titanic visitors met their watery end. Catch Anderson Cooper’s interview last night 06-22-23 with movie director James Cameron. The man is an expert on deep sea submersibles. Went down to the Titanic 33 times. Rolled his own, one-man submersible and descended into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, which is three times deeper than the 12,600 feet grave of the Titanic. Talk about a sensory deprivation tank! (At least, Cameron did not come out of it wanting to play for the Jets!) Cameron was merciless on OceanGate. (Is that like Watergate?) Contended that its carbon fiber construction does not have the physical properties to withstand 5,000 pounds per square inch at that depth — not after repeated uses, anyway.
Seems to us that the Titan was the wrong shape, as well. A sphere would seem structurally more rigid than a cylinder.
Said he knew Monday that the crew was lost. Cameron said the captain may have had an inkling that something was wrong because he jettisoned the sled underneath the capsule. Don’t know how he knows that, if he does. Maybe the crew heard a creaking as the chamber was about to give way. When it did, it was instantaneous. A retired Navy doctor followed to say that the chamber collapsed at a rate of 1,500 mph.
As predicted, election deniers blame Joe Biden for conjuring the implosion of the Titan to distract us sheep from his [possibly real] criminal activities. Who knew Uncle Joe was so clever?!
Recover the bodies? They were puréed! If they searched and searched, they might find some DNA, Dr. Aileen Marty said. It happened in a fraction of a millisecond — it takes about 0.25 seconds for the human brain to even realize something is happening, the retired Navy physician told CNN. “The entire thing would have collapsed before the people inside could even realize it was a problem,” she said. “That’s the one good thing about this horrific tragedy. These people … died in a way they didn’t even realize they were about to die. … That’s painless.”
“There would be virtually nothing; these peoples’ bodies were completely collapsed into tiny fragments. … If you were to search for DNA you might possibly find it.”
— Retired Navy doctor on CNN
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Which explains why no skeletons have been observed at the site. Now there’s a new debris field — another attraction for future visitors to Davy Jones’ locker. And there will be many more — visitors and debris fields.
6 responses to “Bodies? What bodies?”
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We all want to believe they had no idea what was about to happen to them. But there were probably sounds preceeding the fatal implosion.
The demise of the submersible Titan on its way down to the wreck of the Titanic resonates with another maritime disaster 60 years ago. In April 1963, the U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine Thresher imploded at 2,400 feet below sea level — well below its test depth of 1,100 feet and 400 feet below its projected collapse depth limit. All 129 aboard lost their lives. It came to rest 8,400 feet down, 220 miles east of Cape Cod MA.
Seeking funding for his new deep-diving robot submersible to search for the Titanic, Robert Ballard was required first to survey the wrecks of two submarines, including the Thresher. The only recoverable piece was a foot of mangled pipe. “The implosion took one-tenth of a second, too fast for the human nervous system to perceive,” according to Wikipedia.
An electrical failure of the reactor’s coolant pumps was blamed, causing the reactor to shut down and the vessel to lose propulsion. Thresher could not rid its ballast because ice had formed in the high-pressure air pipes. A leak was ruled out, as the crew of the surface ship Skylark did not report hearing any noise that sounded like flooding, “despite the fact that, at test depth [of 1,100 feet], even a small leak would have produced a deafening roar.”
Ironically, a search ship heard banging noises. “interpreted at the time as originating from Thresher.” That, too, was ruled out.
Phil Ochs fine 1960s era folk/rock song The Thresher:
My neighbor was a Senior Engineer who worked on the building of the Thresher. He was scheduled to go on that test run, but he had a junior kid who had never been on a sub, so he gave up his place as a reward for the kid’s good work. That kindness haunted him to his last days.
Sorry, late to the party.
No biggie re: distraction. BlackRock and JPMorgan are buying Ukraine:
https://www.businessworld.in/article/BlackRock-JPMorgan-Chase-Partner-With-Ukraine-To-Launch-Reconstruction-Bank/19-06-2023-480986/
and the Pentagon lost $6.2 billion in Ukraine:
https://www.businessworld.in/article/BlackRock-JPMorgan-Chase-Partner-With-Ukraine-To-Launch-Reconstruction-Bank/19-06-2023-480986/
But let’s make sure we launch multiple investigations into what stupid rich people do.