There’s a picture going around which purports to be of a diver who was accidentally taken from nine atmospheres to one very suddenly. Frankly, it looks more like the remains were torn to shreds and then left to decay, but what do I know? I’m less interested in that specific picture than in what would happen in that case of explosive decompression. I know what happens when you go from one to zero; nine to one is new to me.
And, if going from nine atmospheres down to one isn’t enough to give someone an accurately-named case of exploding head syndrome, what would be? Could a human survive being pressurized that far to begin with?
The incident in question is probably the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident, in 1983. There’s a link to an article in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology if you want the grisly details.
Sadly, the abstract, which is all I have access to, stops just short. It’s possible to die instantly and not look like you were gone over and abandoned by scavengers, after all.
That said, it sounds like it either is the actual source of the image, or a true story someone kinda tangentially associated with the image.
The Byford Dolphin divers didn’t just experience rapid, catastrophic decompression. The diver closest to the partially open hatch was also ejected from the decompression chamber through that hatch. Surely much of the damage that you see in the pictures is due to travel through a small opening and subsequent impact with the water outside the chamber.
Regarding the Byford Dolphin incident, it’s worth noting that the three other divers in the decompression chamber did not explode, despite experiencing similarly rapid and extreme decompression. Their bodies had other issues - pockets of gas in many tissues, blood blisters, fat precipitating in the blood vessels - but they were intact.
Yes, you`ll probably need a sponge to clean up the mess. The biggest issue, IIRC my diving instruction, would be bends, bubbles of nitrogen in the blood, assuming this was a normal atmosphere. That would risk nitrogen narcosis etc. (the reason why diving below 200 feet is not recommended without special air supply. Bends of course range from pain to embolisms blocking vital blood flow causing death.
If they used Helium or something to mitigate the risk of bends, maybe the problems would be a lot less close to fatal. However, there are air pockets (Eustachian tubes, etc.) that would “pop” so imagine gushing blood would be a symptom; if you’d eaten beans or something, there’s other possible rupture locales. Whether the lungs would burst or simply exhale probably depends on decompression speed and is left as an exercise for the reader… That’s where a sponge and bucket comes in handy, clean up the blood flow.
The important distinction between liquid and solid is liquid is not practically compressible, so most of the human body does not care about pressure - except the parts containing gas or dissolving gas. I recall one out-there suggestion that humans can actually breathe oxygen dissolved in liquid Freon while immersed in the stuff, which would allow them to experience much higher pressures and acceleration (i.e. space stuff) without serious consequences. Half the fun I imagine would be immersing yourself in Freon then filling sinuses, etc. with it.
IIRC, one of the Tom Clancy novels (Without Remorse ?) details the “good guy” murdering a particularly vile bad guy with a compression chamber.
There is a movie about a man who kidnaps a woman he hates. He locks her in a compression chamber and keeps her there for five years. He gradually raises the pressure in the chamber so that even if someone finds out that he was the kidnapper, breaks into the remote building where he keeps her, and stops him from opening the chamber in order to kill her immediately, it will be necessary to take a long time gradually reducing the pressure in the chamber to allow her to recover:
I gathered that from the abstract of the journal article I found. Had they been ripped to shreds by the change in pressure, that would have merited a mention in the TL;DR.
However, you are going to reach a point where the body is as saturated with gas at that pressure as its going to get. My WAG is they could decompress her in a week to two.
Or in other words it doesn’t matter much if you been at depth for the better part of a day or 5 years really.
The pathology journal has pictures of two of the other divers. Their bodies are bloated, presumably from the expansion of any free air in the lungs, etc., and from dissolved gas coming out of solution in the tissues. They are intact, though - no exploded corpses.