A couple of years ago, I saw a movie (TV show?) where one of the characters committed suicide while diving with a friend. While his friend was distracted he took off straight down a wall. His friend was unable to catch up with him before it was too dangerous to continue.
My question is: How would he have died? Was it:
[ol][li]A dreamy, nitrogen narcosis to unconsciousness death[]A run-out-of-air, sucking steel, panic death[]Crushed from the pressure death[*]Something else altogether[/ol][/li]
God, it’s been soooooo long since I was able to get away on a dive trip!
I’m no expert or anything but I am an avid diver. I think he would die by running out of oxygen first. The nitrogen wouldn’t start hitting him until he went up. I guess it also depends on just how far down he went too.
Did the guy have just one tank?
I would say probably numbers one or two would be most probable. Nitrogen narcosis to, possibly, the extent of blackout; causing the diver to drop the regulator from his mouth and drown.
Or, another possibility would be for him to panic at depth, run low on air, and ascend too quickly while holding his breath; causing air embolism is, possibly, dozens of locations throughout the body. He could have dies from all of those mini-expolsions!
Unlikely. Narcosis is likened to being drunk. It is often described using “Martini’s Law” which states that every 30 feet of depth results in narcosis equivalent to drinking one martini. You don’t feel intoxicated, but the effects are there.
As part of my advanced class our instructor had us work a table problem while kneeling on the bottom of the pool (about 5 feet). He then had us do the same type of problem while at 90 feet. It took me three times as long to work the problem at depth.
My buddy was even worse. He kept looking at his tables for several minutes before shrugging. He said later he couldn’t even figure out what to do with it.
For a real world incident, I was diving the Blue Hole in Belize and was at about 130 feet when I suddenly noticed my buddy swimming out away from the wall into nowhere. I went after her and grabbed her. She kept trying to push me away and try to swim out further before I finally convinced her to swim back to the wall and up.
She later told me that she was trying to “swim far enough out that I could see the entire wall to take a picture of it”. It made sense to her at the time.
Gets my vote. The deeper you are the faster you go through your air. When they run out of air they drown.
No. If you fail to equalize properly you can rupture your eardrums and have some sinus bleeding but you won’t be crushed by the pressure. Air from your tank is always at ambient pressure so your lungs won’t collapse until you have already died from 2.
Also likely. Several choices. If they are breathing standard air then Oxygen Toxcicity kicks in at around 240 feet. At that depth the partial pressure of Oxygen in the mix is such that Oxygen becomes a poison. OTox causes convulsions which usually leads to drowning and death.
Alternatively, a combination of 1 and 2 is possible. Narcosis prevents them from thinking clearly and when they run out of air they panic and shoot for the surface. This can lead to air embolism and death. Even if they somehow make it to the surface a panic ascent could lead to getting bent on the surface which can also lead to drowning if no one is there to pick them up.
I’m sure there are other things that could kill them but this is enough to start. Not how I would choose to go.
I forgot to finish scenario 1. It is possible that due to narcosis they might do something stupid like take their regulator out of their mouth and drown or get into a situation that they can’t think clearly enough to get out of.
The inlaws just bought a bunch of beachfront propery in Belize. By coincidence, MIL just got back from getting diving instructor certification in Bulgaria. She now wants to teach us (Mrs. and Me) how to Scuba when we visit them next year. I can hardly wait! I furthest I’ve been down before is 10 ft in their pool in the backyard. Not many fish down there, but a few dead bugs.
