Watched a History Channel show on the Kursk last night. They mentioned that because the bow was so badly damaged, the salvage company cut it off and left it on the sea floor.
They also mentioned that they recovered all 118 of the crew from the rest of the hulk when it was in dry dock.
That suggests that the bow area didn’t have any living or working quarters, since no-one was left behind in the bow.
So what was in the bow portion? Was it just torpedo tubes and mechanical areas?
Maybe those, plus damaged reactors?
No, the reactors were mid-ships. The heavy shielding of the reactors diffused the blast and allowed the (temporary) survival of the crew in the three aft chambers. One of the goals of the salvage was to retrieve the reactors so they wouldn’t melt-down.
Wiki has a picture of the hull in dry dock, sans bow:
Okay, maybe it’s something that would make a good James Bond or undersea-horror movie. 
From the wookie: “The salvage divers first detached the bow from the rest of the vessel because it may have contained unexploded torpedo warheads and because it could break off and destabilize the lifting.”
The theory was that the Kursk was taken out due to a poorly maintained peroxide torpodo. Cutting of the bow let them stay well away from any other questionable explosives.
I know it’s nit-picky, but they recovered 115 of the 118 bodies. Still a pretty amazing story though, both the initial sinking and then the salvage efforts.