There’s gallows humor and there’s a level of callousness/schadenfreude towards the misfortunes of the wealthy that IMO is pretty common in the SDMB. If this was a pure research dive and all the passengers were scientists from Wood’s Hole, I doubt there would be nearly as many jokes being cracked in this thread.
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
Yup, there’s a strong current of “Those rich/reckless folks getting what they deserved.” And not just here on the Dope, it’s even worse on Reddit right now.
I haven’t made any jokes, but surely this is hardly surprising?
I would assume that they started the search there - their last known destination.
I haven’t really been following the news coverage - there’s been a lot of talk about how much air was on board. What about electricity? I assume they dress warmly enough to survive at near freezing temperatures and don’t depend on a heater in the sub?
Yeah, it’s tempting to feel that way, but “ordinary” people die doing dumb shit all the time and no one hesitates to make fun. Rich people can just afford flashier dumb shit and it makes the news faster.
I used to fly light aircraft, and once crossed the alps with a friend who is 6’5" and outweighs me by 50lb. I said to him that if we crashed on a remote mountain but survived and got into an “Alive” scenario, logically I should eat him, rather than him eat me - because either approach would save one life, but I could survive for longer by eating his greater body weight.
“We’ll see” was his response.
Indeed, people who die in the search for knowledge get fewer jokes cracked than people who die on a quarter million dollar thrill ride.
People are weird that way.
Not to mention food and water. You won’t die of starvation in 4 days, but no water is really pushing it after about 3 days and I doubt they carried enough for 5 passengers for that long.
Water? Billionaires are vampires, I am sorry for the odd one out (the researcher, I mean, in case of doubt).
If however, you were given the opportunity to inspect the lot, and then, after having it vetted by your legal team, signed a document agreeing that parking there was indeed very risky but you absolved the owners, designers and the maintenance crew from any and all liabilities if any harm befalls you or your vehicle. You (or your heirs) might well be unsuccessful in a claim for negligence if a large block of concrete fell from the adjacent building and squished you and your car.
I would like to think the rich passengers would emulate John Jacob Astor on the Titanic and die like gentlemen.
You can bet there was plenty of pointing and “Ha ha!” back in 1912 by the Great Unwashed at the sinking of the Titanic, the proximate cause of the current debacle. Some of those guys fortunes back then (not necessarily victims on the Titanic) were absolutely huge, in comparison as a percentage of the US GNP, they made guys like Bill Gates look like relative pikers.
Anyway to my eyes some of these posts don’t appear to be so much a dig against modern day billionaires and their hobbies as it is well placed and deserving criticism against hubris and “hipsterism” perhaps for lack of a better term. Mr. Rush said quite a few things that would raise concerns to people concerned with safety. Engineers tend to be a skeptical lot, and tried to raise their concerns. I think that is what is being criticized here, and maybe those of us with less endowed bank balances though higher reasoning skills are gazing on this with a bit of “Well what did you expect”?
Modified or not, by the time the fact they are using a gameboy controller (or whatever it is) gets filtered down to the hoi polloi and digested on the internet, it is going to be made fun of endlessly. Sound-byte humor is the coin of the realm these days.
The Coast Guard stated the vessel had “limited rations” of food and water. It wouldn’t take much to last longer than the air.
Some of the posts are making me think that there are parallels to The Martian.
I need water. How do I extract it from four other people?
Can I convert people to oxygen? Can I make a carbon dioxide scrubber?
Can I use a game controller to achieve negative buoyancy?
How does one make a person into an efficient sonar reflector?
Is there a need to grow potatoes?
(NB I sincerely do hope that there is a positive outcome to this situation.)
I heard the first news report about the Challenger disaster after I heard the first (of many) jokes about it.
Still, I remember when “NASA stands for Need Another Seven Astronauts” after the Challenger explosion.
Morbid humor is always apropos for those of us who are merely observing the horrible spectacle.
This.
I heard a 9/11 joke several hours after the events although it was a repurposing of an older joke.
The best one I heard was a few months later spoken by a fat nerdy dude.
“I haven’t had sex since September 11th…September 11th, 1996”. Maybe you had to be there.
In addition to the information now emerging about the apparently lax attitude toward safety in the design of this vessel, this article calls it out in stark terms. This quote in particular stands out:
“There are only 10 submarines in the world that can go 4,000m or deeper and all of them are certified except the OceanGate,” he told CBC News. “Out of the entire population of submersibles, 90 to 95 per cent are certified. There’s a five to 10 per cent fringe, so in that aspect they are an outlier, but sure, in the deep submersibles they really stand out.”
The letter outlined the concerns of more than three-dozen scientists, explorers and industry leaders.
“Our apprehension is that the current ‘experimental’ approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” it reads.
It goes on to say the company’s marketing material was “at minimum, misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct.”
Or alternately, the Ic.