r/interestingasfuck • u/ThugLeeVoguee • 1d ago

The implosion of the Titan submarine (OceanGate) was so rapid that the pain wasn't even registered by the brain. They didn't feel anything at all. Utterly instantaneous.

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u/DisturbingPragmatic 1d ago

The sound that thing must have been making prior to the implosion would have been terrifying. I only feel sorry for the 19-year-old who shouldn't have been there in the first place.

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u/hoopaholik91 1d ago

From the documentary I watched it seems like the noises were there even when it was "working correctly". So hopefully they didn't feel too worried before it finally failed.

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u/aloysiuslamb 1d ago edited 22h ago

I don't know if we watched the same doc but Stockton Rush was talking out his ass about it working correctly. He acted like that was normal for the submersible and that it meant the increasing pressure was settling everything into its designed/fitted space. But this isn't metal, it's carbon fiber. The popping sound was the carbon fiber delaminating and losing its structural integrity.

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u/attilayavuzer 1d ago

The documentary was wild. I went into it thinking "how'd this tragedy unfold?" and walked away thinking "holy shit I can't believe it took so long to fail". One of the most infuriating, arrogant piece of shit situations.

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u/guto8797 1d ago

More of those utterly infuriating documentaries are the Chemical Safety Board ones on YouTube about industrial accidents, because half of them are "20 different safety mechanisms hadn't been working since 1976. The operator was his 30th day straight of 12 hour shifts. 19 people died. The executives promised they would do better and got bonuses for their commitment to safety. 2 years later 14 died in another incident."

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u/NeedToVentCom 1d ago

And this is why it is fucking bullshit, when CEO's and similar don't go to prison after such accidents. They didn't suddenly happen, they had been coming for a long time, and the only way they couldn't have known, would be by deliberately staying ignorant, which means they were not doing their jobs.

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u/tyedyewar321 20h ago

This has been going on forever. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire owners were reimbursed for the loss of their workers

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u/Gamiac 23h ago

Yeah, but if we actually held CEOs and shareholders accountable for the crimes that their companies commit, they might leave the country and go do business in, uh........Zimbabwe? Yeah, Zimbabwe!

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u/flopisit32 22h ago

The victims are signed up, not as passengers but as technicians working on the project. They signed legal documents saying they understood they were risking death and that the company wouldn't be liable.

Essentially he got the passengers to lie in order to exploit the system.

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u/justsomerabbit 22h ago

I'm okay with Stockton Rush not going to prison.

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u/bradlees 19h ago

In China (which a lot of dumb Americans call a 3rd world country) the CEO would be on trial and almost always go to jail. Same for Japan and Korea….

In America; capitalism rules all and wealthy people never ever go to jail. (see: every single CEO/VP of the banking industry with the global financial market crash AND Brock Turner/ Donald Trump - raping people is legal when you’re rich, they let you do it, you can do anything)

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u/curiousomeone 19h ago

They can still go to jail of they fucked up other wealthy powerful people. Just look at former multi billionaire Bill Hwang who got sentenced to 18 years in prison because he ended up causing massive losses to banks lol.

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u/Syncopated_arpeggio 16h ago

Hey, don’t ruin the narrative here- America bad, China good. Capitalism bad and kills people, communism good and enriches lives.

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u/ProgrammingChicken 10h ago

China is capitalist though? The person you're replying to also isn't making America look good. Did you just want to complain about communism?

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u/StrongExternal8955 10h ago

Who's a good little bootlicker? You are! Surely the nobles will reward you, they are powerful and merciful.

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u/JuDGe3690 1d ago

Behaviors like this have been termed "elite deviance" by some scholars in this topic. The leading textbook on this, "Elite Deviance" by David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen, is now in its 10th edition, 2010 (originally published in 1982). I just finished reading the 2nd edition (1986), which I received a few years ago in a box of books, and it was super insightful.

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u/Synaps4 23h ago

Im doing a study on different disasters. So far every single one has been like that. You really cant blame the people on the ground for almost any of them, as they were trained to do it that way, and it had been working that way for their entire career there, and theyd be fired if they refused to do it.

The management though have no such excuses. There is always a paper trail of near misses and experts saying its a bad idea going back to the start. At the absolute best they are willfully blind.

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u/Paavo_Nurmi 22h ago

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/washington-chemical-tank-was-called-unfit-for-service-before-deadly-failure-investigators-find

That happened in May this year, horrific way to die, 900,000 gallons of 200 F degree PH 14 caustic liquid.

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u/Illustrious_Bird_737 17h ago

Shocked but, unfortunately, not surprised when it said "unfit for months before the deadly disaster" JFC

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u/gordonachaffin 23h ago

Is there a term for this dynamic? Like "Boeing 737 MAX Disease?"

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u/Synaps4 22h ago

Sure. Its called "normalization of deviance"

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u/Nerevarine91 21h ago

Isn’t that the term for what happened at NASA before the Challenger explosion? I swear I’ve heard that before

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u/Synaps4 20h ago edited 17h ago

Yes that was where it originated or at least what brought it into broad awareness. Its where an organization gets comfortable repeatedly using a dangerous process in ways that it wasn't designed to work. They substitute past success for actual engineering proof of safety.

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u/WarEagle107 1d ago

But i bet the execs offered some thoughts and prayers to the families impacted (more to help themselves sleep better at night than to console the families)

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u/theDefaultbunny 23h ago

right?! Screams in Bhopal

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u/Other_Mike 19h ago

The tank collapse in Longview a few weeks ago came after reports and inspections found the tank walls were too thin, which recommended it be removed from service, drained, and inspected from the inside.

It wasn't taken out of service.

It wasn't drained.

It wasn't inspected internally.

Instead, on the day of the collapse, the process that used the chemical stored in the tank was interrupted, but the process that refilled it continued as usual.

So nearly a million gallons of hot, caustic liquid gushed out when it burst.

Next to a break room.

At shift change.

Eleven people died.

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u/Other-Credit1849 23h ago

Reminds me of the Bhopal disaster.

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u/Merbleuxx 21h ago edited 21h ago

I work in safety protocols at my company in an operational job and it happens a lot actually.

Little things that should alert you start becoming more and more common so you stop paying attention to them and treat them as unimportant.

I have an example in one of the places I work at, we have some alerts that ring out fugitively. It shouldn’t be normal but given that the control returns a second after, many dismiss it.

Until one day that safety installation can’t help you and you’re indeed tired because you’ve been brought back to work on a rest day because a colleague of yours called in sick and there’s no one else to do it.

From the outside it looks terribly stupid but when you’re inside, you don’t realize anymore that broken things aren’t normal.

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u/old-needs-login 10h ago

A lot of those accident safety videos are like that. 10 workers died in completely preventable accident in company with terrible safety record

The multi million dollar company was fined 20k and made to promise it wouldnt do it again, again!

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u/SuperAlloy 20h ago

Ya they pressure tested a full scale model as detailed as they could make it and it failed. Twice. After that every serious engineer had nothing to do with it.

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u/Ornery-Customer8521 1d ago

What was the name of the doc?

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u/attilayavuzer 1d ago

Titan:The OceanGate Submersible Disaster

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u/Ornery-Customer8521 1d ago

Thanks man

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u/attilayavuzer 1d ago

Don't thank me yet, I guarantee you'll be in a worse mood after you watch it.

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u/Ntroepy 1d ago

It’s on Netflix

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u/LawyerJC 1d ago

It’s called “hubris.” Stockton Rush was a total cosmic sized asshole.

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u/attilayavuzer 1d ago

By the end of the doc he struck me as more of a molecular asshole.

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u/Immediate-Goose-8106 22h ago

RIP to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris but i'm different. and better. maybe even better than the gods.

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u/opensandshuts 23h ago

It was literally a roll of the dice after watching that doc.

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u/Kanaletto 1d ago

Which documentary is?

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u/HealthyMaximum 22h ago

"... the increasing pressure was settling everything into its designed/fitted space. ..."

The fact that sounds so plausible ... if you don't think too hard ...

What a glib asshole he must have been.

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u/Boeing367-80 1d ago

Stockton Rush's grandfather was Ralph K. Davies, one of those people who helped win WWII behind the scenes (by mobilizing the oil industry - the US produced about 85% of the oil used by the Allies in WWII, one of those mind boggling statistics about the overwhelming industrial strength of the US at the time).

People who worked with Davies essentially universally talk about how in awe they were of him (he didn't go to college, started working at age 15 as an office boy from very modest circumstances). During WWII he essentially directed the whole US oil industry - and the other oil men - they were all men - took his direction. So, someone pretty extraordinary.

Stockton seems to be regression to the mean or maybe below.

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u/CV90_120 1d ago

There's no guarantee smart people will make smart people, or that beautiful people will make beautiful people. The odds are somewhat weighted in favor, but that's about the best you can say.

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u/Fred-the-stray 1d ago

Watching the documentary was absolutely infuriating!

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u/Nerevarine91 21h ago

I think I saw an interview with James Cameron where he said the same thing. Like, there’s a reason most submersibles aren’t built like this, and it’s a good one

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u/Extension_Swordfish1 1d ago

He installed sonic sensors to it, it says something about this maniac.

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u/GrayFox6688 21h ago

According to him that sound was the ship being "seasoned"

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u/sadbridethrowaway27 10h ago

He referred to it as "seasoning the hull", like it was an iron skillet or something.

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u/NoLobster7957 11h ago

Lot of dumb shit happening here but I really cannot understand why they chose carbon fiber of all things. Part of me wonders if they didnt just think it sounded cool.

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u/SteveD88 10h ago

As a composite guy I was really interested to hear they were using sensors, as there has been a lot of research into 'structural health monitoring' systems in aviation, but I wasn't aware at the time of any successful implementations. It turns out the system was just a marketing gimmick- they didn't understand it, and didn't pay attention to any of its warnings.

Composite fatigue testing is very difficult to do in compression, but you'd expect for something like this they'd have built a second sub, ideally a few, and repeatedly taken them down to the required depth, hundreds of times maybe, and collected the data needed to understand how the structure was going to decay over time, and what signs to look for in service.

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u/Express-Shoulder6174 9h ago

Yeah he called it like seasoning or something 

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u/Next-Swordfish5282 5h ago

His name definitely spoke for itself...

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u/ParaClaw 5h ago

Yeah the time he was testing it and suppose to go way deeper and you hear the carbon snapping like rubber bands so he rushes back up. Then lies to everyone to say he stopped at that distance as a symbolic gesture because of the numbers that meant something.

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u/ThrustTrust 1d ago

Yes indeed.