‘I have lived underwater’ man recounts living underwater. - Polidicks

[quote]What's it like to live in the Aquarius underwater research laboratory? (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Living underwater is seen by some as a futuristic utopia, but what’s it actually like? Rose Eveleth asks a man who eats, works and sleeps on the sea floor – the latest in her new series about the people who have already experienced the future. The first night Deron Burkepile spent underwater was over 10 years ago, but the memory is still fresh in his mind. He remembers getting suited up — a couple of scuba tanks on his back, extra safety gear hanging from his rig—and stepping to the back of the boat. “You’re used to getting off the boat and coming back in an hour, maybe two at most,” he says. “So you’re thinking, wow, I’m not going to see the sun again for almost two weeks.” After their dive, rather than going back to the boat, Burkepile and three fellow marine biologists swam on to the Aquarius underwater lab, 63ft below sea level in the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary. “It’s getting kind of dark,” he remembers, “and the sun is going down, and you’re swimming up to Aquarius which has lights all over the outside. Essentially it’s just silhouetted by these big spotlights. It’s just one of the coolest experiences underwater that I’ve ever had.” The idea of living underwater is often brought up as a possible future for humanity. Some have proposed submerged settlements as a way to preserve civilisation in the event of a global catastrophe, or to avoid overpopulation. Meanwhile, developers are already planning submerged hotels in locations including the Maldives, Dubai, Singapore and Norway. These developments may one day live up to the romantic notions many have of life beneath the waves, but what’s it like to live underwater today? More people have been in space than have lived underwater to do science. In the 1960s Jacques Cousteau’s team built the first underwater habitat called Conshelf I, and two men spent a week inside the drum-shaped enclosure 37ft (11m) below the surface. Their next iteration was Conshelf II, which, in 1963, was installed off the coast of Sudan (see video, below). This time, scientists spent 30 days in the star-fish shaped structure.[/quote] [url]http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140411-i-have-lived-underwater[/url] wow

That sounds pretty cash.

Aquarius is cool. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2_XyAbrQ40[/media] Our good friend Chris Hadfield's been there: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJiUWBiM8HE[/media]

I would rather risk suffocation in space than drowning deep under water.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;44541120]I would rather risk suffocation in space than drowning deep under water.[/QUOTE] Drowning isn't supposed to be that bad compared to other ways to go. Likewise suffocation isn't that bad. Same principle, really. However. Under the ocean at that depth, you would indeed simply drown. Nothing special. In space though, assuming you were sucked out or something along those lines, you'd explode. That...that doesn't seem fun.

^ Same, at least you get a good view of something before you suffocate and everything

[QUOTE=GunFox;44541173]In space though, assuming you were sucked out or something along those lines, you'd explode. That...that doesn't seem fun.[/QUOTE] isn't that just a myth?

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;44541120]I would rather risk suffocation in space than drowning deep under water.[/QUOTE] I'd take deep water death over space death any day. If you're deep enough you would be dead before you had a chance to realize it. Though it depends on how you got deep in the first place. Sinking to the bottom from the surface would not be pleasant. Also depends on what you mean by deep. That is very important.

I thought this thread was gonna be about a guy who claimed he could breathe underwater. This is much better.

[QUOTE=GunFox;44541173]In space though, assuming you were sucked out or something along those lines, you'd explode. That...that doesn't seem fun.[/QUOTE] Isn't the whole "exploding in space without a space suit" thing just a pop culture myth, though? dangit sambooo, beat me to it

[QUOTE=Kahgarak;44541200]Isn't the whole "exploding in space without a space suit" thing just a pop culture myth, though? dangit sambooo, beat me to it[/QUOTE] wouldn't like your eyeballs explode though due to the pressure difference considering space is a near-vacuum

[QUOTE=katbug;44541220]wouldn't like your eyeballs explode though due to the pressure difference considering space is a near-vacuum[/QUOTE] Not sure about your eyeballs, but I know your lungs will if you hold your breath.

You can explode if the change in pressure is great enough. Guys in the Byford Dolphin accident exploded after an explosive decompression from 9 to 1 atmospheres. [quote]Coward, Lucas and Bergersen were exposed to the effects of explosive decompression and died in the positions indicated by the diagram. Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine, were ejected, as were all of his limbs. Simultaneously, his remains were expelled through the narrow trunk opening left by the jammed chamber door, less than 60 centimetres (24 in) in diameter. Fragments of his body were found scattered about the rig. [B]One part was even found lying on the rig's derrick, 10 metres (30 ft) directly above the chambers.[/B] The deaths of all four divers were most likely instantaneous.[/quote][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_dolphin[/url] Since nothing in space is kept even near 9 atmospheres, you'd probably be "fine" if your EVA suit decompressed or whatever. Wouldn't be good for you at all though. In fact it would probably be an even worse way to die because it's slow and excruciating. Byford guys never even knew it happened. Pressure change is a hell of a thing.

[QUOTE=katbug;44541220]wouldn't like your eyeballs explode though due to the pressure difference considering space is a near-vacuum[/QUOTE] Your flesh would expand and you'd lose consciousness in a matter of seconds, so in terms of death horribleness, it's on par with getting decapitated, really nasty, but you're not around long enough to feel it. People have died from exposure to space before, in the only case it ever happened, the occupants of that Soyuz lander were still warm when they landed, and they were bleeding from their ears and noses, no explosion. Getting caught in an explosive decompression might do it though, as in you're in the airlock without a suit and the door flies completely off.

[quote]All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine, were ejected, as were all of his limbs[/quote] [quote]All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine[/quote] [quote]and even his thoracic spine[/quote] No no no no NO FUCK that's horrifying, what the actual fucking hell, that's not even... that's like a needlessly senseless death you'd find in a horror movie, that feels like it shouldn't even be real, but fuck! His [I]spine![/I] This isn't funny, guys!

[QUOTE=OvB;44541243]You can explode if the change in pressure is great enough. Guys in the Byford Dolphin accident exploded after an explosive decompression from 9 to 1 atmospheres. [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_dolphin[/URL] Since nothing in space is kept even near 9 atmospheres, you'd probably be "fine" if your EVA suit decompressed or whatever. Wouldn't be good for you at all though. In fact it would probably be an even worse way to die because it's slow and excruciating. Byford guys never even knew it happened. Pressure change is a hell of a thing.[/QUOTE] Well yeah that's the difference. When going from 9 atmospheres to 1, you explode, when going from 1 atmosphere to 0 (do they even keep one whole atmosphere in pressurized space habitats?), you pass out and "just" suffocate. Compression decompression aside, tho, presuming it wouldn't be fast enough in either case to kill you, I can't say I have an experience obviously but I have the feeling that trying to breathe in and getting nothing, no friction or anything, is not as horrible feeling as trying to breathe in and having your lungs fill up with a fluid. Furthermore, water is boggling, binding, it makes you feel constrained. In vacuum, you would just wiggle about and count the seconds. Still, I think I remember some articles about how vacuum is surprisingly survivable if you have the training, let me look about. [editline]14th April 2014[/editline] Right, that wasn't hard, here's an article by NASA themselves [quote] Ask an Astrophysicist The Question (Submitted June 03, 1997) How would the unprotected human body react to the vacuum of outer space? Would it inflate to bursting? or would it not? or would just the interior gases hyperinflate? We are also relating this to short-term exposure only. This question primarily relates to the pressure differential problems. Temperature or radiation considerations would be interesting as well. The question arose out of a discussion of the movie 2001. When Dave "blew" himself into the airlock from the pod without a helmet, should he have "blown up" or is there "no difference" as shown in the movie correct? The Answer From the now extinct page [URL]http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:[/URL] How long can a human live unprotected in space? [B]If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.[/B] Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known. You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn. At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil. Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by Leonard Gordon which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote: "The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal." [/quote] So, yeah, you likely have up to an entire minute of consciousness and you just slowly lose it. There's no shocking effects, no immediate pain if you don't try to hold your breath. I dunno, maybe I don't have good experiences with water but that just sounds better than drowning to me, even if you pass out a bit faster since you can't afford to hold your breath.

Suffocation isn't that bad a way to go simply because of how your brain reacts to the lack of oxygen. It's actually quite a pleasant way to die because it's somewhat euphoric. My brother is in the Coast Guard and he once nearly blacked-out from oxygen deprivation and he said he was quite giddy and was laughing at his superior at the time :v: Don't know about pressure-related deaths though. Sounds fucking painful.

I wouldn't be able to live underwater without thinking about Bioshock over and over again.

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;44541258]No no no no NO FUCK that's horrifying, what the actual fucking hell, that's not even... that's like a needlessly senseless death you'd find in a horror movie, that feels like it shouldn't even be real, but fuck! His [I]spine![/I][/QUOTE] "Ejected" I'm getting a really odd picture in my mind of some dude randomly having his spine launch out of his back :v:

[QUOTE=sambooo;44541186]isn't that just a myth?[/QUOTE] If you got sucked out into space with no space suit, you'd instantly start boiling and freezing at the same time. The radiation from the sun would be cooking the side of you that was exposed to it and the cold vacuum of space would freeze all parts of you that weren't. You'd also get just about the worst case of "the bends" from the loss of pressure. Going from 29.92 to 0 instantly is just as bad as the other way around. Just think of what happens when you open a new bottle of coke, that's basically going to be happening to your blood and all of your other organs.

Tbh I would rather die in space than die underwater. Something about it just creeps me out.

[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;44541331]If you got sucked out into space with no space suit, you'd instantly start boiling and freezing at the same time. The radiation from the sun would be cooking the side of you that was exposed to it and the cold vacuum of space would freeze all parts of you that weren't. You'd also get just about the worst case of "the bends" from the loss of pressure. Going from 29.92 to 0 instantly is just as bad as the other way around. Just think of what happens when you open a new bottle of coke, that's basically going to be happening to your blood and all of your other organs.[/QUOTE] That... That's not how space works...

At least in space you don't have to worry about your sealab blowing up every week.

[QUOTE=RedStar;44541384]At least in space you don't have to worry about your sealab blowing up every week.[/QUOTE] [b]DAMN YOU JUSTICE LEAGUE[/b]

[QUOTE=OvB;44541243]You can explode if the change in pressure is great enough. Guys in the Byford Dolphin accident exploded after an explosive decompression from 9 to 1 atmospheres. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_dolphin[/url] Since nothing in space is kept even near 9 atmospheres, you'd probably be "fine" if your EVA suit decompressed or whatever. Wouldn't be good for you at all though. In fact it would probably be an even worse way to die because it's slow and excruciating. Byford guys never even knew it happened. Pressure change is a hell of a thing.[/QUOTE] I'm glad I'm only just finding out about this. My Dad used to work on oil rigs at sea and he had to do exercises in compression chambers in case his helicopter went down. Now he only works on land in lovely places like Iraq.

Also I like how stuff basically gows ON YOUR HOUSE. On a side note, Hadfield is probably the coolst guy alive.

[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;44541331]If you got sucked out into space with no space suit, you'd instantly start boiling and freezing at the same time. The radiation from the sun would be cooking the side of you that was exposed to it and the cold vacuum of space would freeze all parts of you that weren't. You'd also get just about the worst case of "the bends" from the loss of pressure. Going from 29.92 to 0 instantly is just as bad as the other way around. Just think of what happens when you open a new bottle of coke, that's basically going to be happening to your blood and all of your other organs.[/QUOTE] Read the quote which I have posted. None of what you are saying is true. [editline]14th April 2014[/editline] You won't rapidly freeze in open space because the vacuum happens to be the last thermally conductive environment in the universe. The sunburn would be nasty, yes, but it wouldn't matter in the amount of time you would have before passing out from the lack of oxygen. The decompression damage would be, again, within the suffocation timeframe, only happen if you tried to hold your breath. If you accidentally popped open an airlock, went through full decompression, and closed it quickly within 15-30 seconds (presuming you wouldn't get sucked out), you could possibly end up with literally no long term damage whatsoever, probably just pass out for a little while and wake up later if your airlock filled with air again. [editline]14th April 2014[/editline] Theoretically, and it would be an extreme hazard and largely depend on ability to quickly or automatically open/close the hatches (ideally the second one should be open in advance and capable of closing itself even as you are passing out inside). If you had two incompatible airlocks in space and had to pass from one to the other, you could take an unprotected "spacewalk" from one to the other, opening the receiving airlock wide, remotely, then opening yours, jumping into the receiving end, and closing it, hoping that it will seal properly and pressurize itself as you take a quick nap inside.

[QUOTE=RedStar;44541384]At least in space you don't have to worry about your sealab blowing up every week.[/QUOTE] In space you worry about micrometeorites killing you at any second.

[QUOTE=ViralHatred;44541690]In space you worry about micrometeorites killing you at any second.[/QUOTE] On earth you have to worry about bears killing you any second. NOWHERE IS SAFE [IMG]http://imageshack.com/a/img706/2124/a1ar.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;44541579]Read the quote which I have posted. None of what you are saying is true. [editline]14th April 2014[/editline] You won't rapidly freeze in open space because the vacuum happens to be the last thermally conductive environment in the universe. The sunburn would be nasty, yes, but it wouldn't matter in the amount of time you would have before passing out from the lack of oxygen. The decompression damage would be, again, within the suffocation timeframe, only happen if you tried to hold your breath. If you accidentally popped open an airlock, went through full decompression, and closed it quickly within 15-30 seconds (presuming you wouldn't get sucked out), you could possibly end up with literally no long term damage whatsoever, probably just pass out for a little while and wake up later if your airlock filled with air again. [editline]14th April 2014[/editline] Theoretically, and it would be an extreme hazard and largely depend on ability to quickly or automatically open/close the hatches (ideally the second one should be open in advance and capable of closing itself even as you are passing out inside). [B]If you had two incompatible airlocks in space and had to pass from one to the other, you could take an unprotected "spacewalk" from one to the other, opening the receiving airlock wide, remotely, then opening yours, jumping into the receiving end, and closing it, hoping that it will seal properly and pressurize itself as you take a quick nap inside.[/B][/QUOTE] That reminds me of the movie Sunshine from 2007 (Danny Boyle). Interesting hard sci-fi movie, with some creative freedoms taken.