Posted on 12/04/2013 4:59:49 AM PST by Hoodat
Being buried alive is usually near the top of any worst-ways-to-die list. But how about being buried alive 100 feet below the ocean surface in a tiny pocket of air? For Harrison Okene, a 29-year-old Nigerian boat cook, this nightmare scenario became a reality for nearly three grueling days.
The story began on May 26 at about 4:30 a.m., when Okene got up to use the restroom. His vessel, a Chevron oil service tugboat called the AHT Jascon-4, swayed in the choppy Atlantic waters just off the coast of Nigeria. What caused the tugboat to capsize remains a mystery, though a Chevron official later blamed a “sudden ocean swell.”
Okene was thrown from the crew restroom as the ship turned over. Water streamed in and swept him through the vessel’s bowels until he found himself in the toilet of an officer’s cabin. As the ship settled on the ocean floor, the water stopped rising. For the next 60 hours, Okene—who was without food, water, or light—listened to the sounds of ocean creatures scavenging through the ship on his dead crewmates. Like a living Phlebas the Phoenician, he recounted his life’s events while growing more resigned to his fate.
Unbelievably, Okene survived his underwater ordeal long enough to be rescued. Basic physics, it turned out, was on Okene’s side the whole time—even if Poseidon wasn’t.
When Maxim Umansky, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, read about Okene’s miraculous rescue, his interest was piqued. “For a physics question, it’s an interesting problem,” said Umansky. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Trapped alone in that confined space and in the dark for 3 days, I would have gone crazy
Mary Jo Kopechne?
She needed a bigger bubble! Or, a gentleman to save her.
...or just a MAN.
The physics of putting a heavy crane on a ship and pulling up ships fascinates me.
How do they keep from capsizing?
Couldn’t this guy have swum underwater after begin trapped in the water to the outside of the boat and then rose 100 feet? That sounds like a lot of depth but it can be down within 30 seconds.
My close friend, JB, told me a story years ago, when he was a commercial diver on the Gulf Coast. There was a Jack Up drilling rig being moved when a storm came up and sunk the rig. After the storm, He was tasked to search for the bodies of the unaccounted for crewmen. He said it was zero visability and he was searching by feel. He about came out of his skin, when a survivor grabbed his leg. He was able to rescue several crewmen, who were surviving in an air pocket.
Smithsonian used to have a show called Great Ships or Mega Ships or something. One of the ones they featured was the world’s heaviest lift cargo ship. They had outriggers that they deployed from the opposite side to counteract the weight. Using two onboard cranes they would inch the giant loads on board adjusting the outriggers and ballast tanks on the ship with every move.
“Couldn’t this guy have swum underwater after begin trapped in the water to the outside of the boat and then rose 100 feet? That sounds like a lot of depth but it can be down within 30 seconds.”
The hard part would be negotiating a water-filled boat upside down in the dark before you ran out of air.
You’re assuming he knows how to swim...
I’d want to use two. One on each side of the lift.
The mere thought of it makes my mind put up a blockade.
Yeah, just saw it yesterday. Seriously amazing.
The compressed air would have expanded in his lungs as he was surfacing. We would then explode like a balloon. Not a good way to go. Mr. Okene deserves a lot of credit for focusing on God and prayer as opposed to ill-advised schemes.
At 100 ft, the pressure would have been approximately 4 times atmospheric pressure. Surfacing that quickly would have caused air to literally boil out of his blood.
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