# The 5 Titanic Sub Victims: what would they look like now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 23, 2023, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993 "2023-06-23T12:35:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/21 "2023-06-23T15:24:40Z")
Perhaps some of the clothing would survive? ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/22 "2023-06-23T15:27:05Z")
The NASA math would imply a Jetta going 120 mph road kill result. Not a lot of Jettas going that speed but semi’s going 70 sure are all over. There is plenty to identify after a road kill, messy or not. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/23 "2023-06-23T15:33:32Z")
Well, just for visual demonstration, this is what a compact car hitting a wall at 120 mph looks like: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/R7dG9UlzeFM/maxresdefault.jpg "120mph Mega Crash! - Fifth Gear") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dG9UlzeFM) ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/24 "2023-06-23T15:36:56Z")
Another visual demonstration. Not exactly on point but gets the idea across: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/LEY3fN4N3D8/hqdefault.jpg "Mythbusters - Compresed Diver \*Gory\*") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEY3fN4N3D8) ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/25 "2023-06-23T15:55:09Z")
Right, but you know it was a deer or possum that got hit by the semi. You’d know what breed as well as the gender if you walked over and shuffled though the bits. A blender going at me at 10 mph wouldn’t leave anything. So it’s force we are discussing, but not necessarily the result it has on a bag of meat. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/26 "2023-06-23T15:58:13Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > So it’s force we are discussing, but **not necessarily the result it has on a bag of meat**. Um, that’s _exactly_ what you asked about in the OP. You’ve mentioned absolutely nothing about “forces” until just now. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/27 "2023-06-23T16:04:42Z")
DCnDC posted some math his NASA friend did. I said I am not sure how that force (120 mph Jetta) could make Fish Food Flakes which is what everyone agrees happened to those 5. So NASA friend is wrong, we are all wrong, or there is something missing. I haven’t changed my question, just talking to different people about different things which happen to be in the same thread. Understanding that takes some time and some reading. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/28 "2023-06-23T16:22:47Z")
I’m not sure if the Jetta accounts for time and forces coming at you from all directions (it’s not one Jetta hitting you…it’s 1000 from all directions…I made that number up for illustration only). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/29 "2023-06-23T16:35:20Z")
The NASA guy’s calcs appears to be what would happen if you just considered the water pressure launching the hatch at you like a catapulted rock or a speeding car. Not what the rest of the water column behind the hatch would do. Mr. NASA also did not model the 360 degree spherical nature of the force. He just had you stand there and take a hatch in the face from one direction. As in akin to modeling a car hitting a pedestrian. So I think he probably started from the idea that a car hitting a pedestrian is a good model then worked backwards to wondering about how big a car going how fast would be equivalent. Without really analyzing whether it’s a _good_ model. Hint: It is not. He may have been inspired by this bit of aerospace lore: > A brief story: > > The official record for fastest manmade object is the Helios 2 probe, which reached about 70 km/s in a close swing around the Sun. But it’s possible the actual holder of that title is a two-ton metal manhole cover. > > The cover sat atop a shaft at an underground nuclear test site operated by Los Alamos as part of Operation Plumbbob. When the one-kiloton nuke went off below, the facility effectively became a [nuclear potato cannon](http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/01/nuclear-potato-cannon-part-2.html), giving the cap a gigantic kick. A high-speed camera trained on the lid caught only one frame of it moving upward before it vanished—which means it was moving at a minimum of 66 km/s. The cap was never found. > > 66 km/s is about six times escape velocity, but contrary to the linked blog’s speculation, it’s unlikely the cap ever reached space. [Newton’s impact depth approximation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) suggests that it was either destroyed completely by impact with the air or slowed and fell back to Earth. The above quote is taken from this ever-fun digression into high energy events: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/35/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/35/) ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/30 "2023-06-23T16:44:39Z")
He made that a few days ago when the prevailing assumption was the port window failed, so that’s probably why he calculated it that way. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/31 "2023-06-23T17:04:34Z")
He completely ignored the mass of the water, which dwarfs the mass of the port window by orders of magnitude. Look at it this way: 6000 lbs/in^2 \* 144 in^2/ft^2 / 490 lbs/ft^3 = 1763 ft. Picture a block of steel 1763 ft tall suspended above your head. Think One World Trade Center, but made of solid steel. Now drop it. That’s gonna leave a much bigger mark than a Jetta going 120. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/32 "2023-06-23T19:01:24Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The good news, such that it is, is that it would have all happened in a tiny fraction of a second, short enough that there wasn’t even enough time for any nerve signals to make it from the outside of their bodies to their brains before it was all squished. It’s an unusual way to die but not particularly horrifying. Especially if they didn’t see it coming. It’s sad for their families, of course, but I would take some comfort in knowing they didn’t suffer. ---
**Author:** ![Saffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saffer/32/6440_2.png) [@Saffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saffer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/33 "2023-06-23T20:17:41Z")
Would there (likely\*) have been any indication something was about to happen or would it have just happened without warning? - I realise we may never know for sure so average over all the possible causes of this kind of failure. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/34 "2023-06-23T20:45:00Z")
IMO … It depends almost entirely on how sophisticated their vaunted structural monitoring was or was not. There might have been minutes or just a second’s warning of increasing weakness. Or not and it was just Bang like a gunshot to the head from 3" away. We just don’t have the data. Does OceansGate know? If there was telemetry coming upwards successfully immediately before the implosion maybe they will be able to determine from that data stream whether there was warning. If there are ways to determine from the debris that ballast had been jettisoned before the implosion that would suggest they’d made an abort decision before they were killed. Even if we can’t know exactly why they aborted. OTOH, if the various ballast systems all look like they were in “descend” mode at the moment of breakup, that suggests any warning was absent or too brief to do anything with. Most likely the physical evidence will be kinda ambiguous. One of the outside submersible experts who looked at ROV footage of the debris field made a comment along the lines of “It looks like they’d jettisoned ballast” with no details on how he came to that tentative conclusion. Suggestive, but not conclusive that they had some warning of a problem. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2023, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/35 "2023-06-24T02:46:24Z")
So the pressure vessel had a volume of approximately 3.5 cubic meters at 1 atmosphere pressure. At 3000m under water, the pressure is approximately 300 atmospheres. So the 3.5 cubic meters of air in the pressure vessel was instantly compressed to 3.5/300 cubic meters, or 11 liters of volume. Five people in a paint bucket. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2023, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/36 "2023-06-24T03:21:28Z")
The amount of energy involved is exactly equivalent to the mass of displaced water dropped from a height of whatever their depth was (in a vacuum). Several tons of water (given that the volume was several cubic meters) dropped from a couple of kilometers up. At a certain energy scale, it really doesn’t matter what the materials are. The end result is just a roughly homogeneous mass of the component molecules. ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2023, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/37 "2023-06-24T10:37:13Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > The end result is just a roughly homogeneous mass of the component molecules. That sounds a little bit to me like maybe closed casket would be best. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2023, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/38 "2023-06-25T01:20:40Z")
I meant to post this sooner but I was traveling. I think it is worth a look anyway. This train car imploding gives some notion of what happened…it is fast. If the sub imploded it’d be even more violent and quick than this is: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Zz95_VvTxZM/hqdefault.jpg "Railroad tank car vacuum implosion") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2023, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/39 "2023-06-25T01:40:12Z")
I posted this in another thread, IMHO how the standing carbon fiver cylinder looks like after the Hydraulic press goes down and then up is how the crew of the Titan looked for a few micro seconds, before the ocean currents dispersed the lot. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/DM6J-yw8yjA/hqdefault.jpg "Crushing carbon fiber with hydraulic press") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM6J-yw8yjA) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2023, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993/40 "2023-06-25T13:58:07Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > So the pressure vessel had a volume of approximately 3.5 cubic meters at 1 atmosphere pressure. > > At 3000m under water, the pressure is approximately 300 atmospheres. So the 3.5 cubic meters of air in the pressure vessel was instantly compressed to 3.5/300 cubic meters, or 11 liters of volume. > > Five people in a paint bucket. If we assume adiabatic compression, the back of my envelope says 60 L at a balmy 1500 K (2300 °F). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-5-titanic-sub-victims-what-would-they-look-like-now/985993.md?page=3)