This whole missing submarine has got me confused regarding the limited oxygen. How is it limited and what makes it deadly? How does the oxygen “run out?”
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When you burn a piece of wood you’re taking oxygen from the air and combining it with the carbon in the wood to create heat (more specifically, turn the energy stored in the wood from “chemical bonds” to “heat”) and carbon dioxide (among other things).
The exact same thing happens inside your body, though much more slowly. When you breath in your body takes oxygen from the air and combines it with carbohydrates in your body to make energy and carbon dioxide.
So unless the air is being replenished in some way, merely breathing turns a greater and greater percentage of the oxygen in the air into carbon dioxide. Once the oxygen percentage of the air drops low enough your lungs can no longer pull in enough oxygen and you start suffocating. You body stops being able to use it’s stored fuel to power itself fully and, like a candle flame under a glass, you just grow weaker and weaker until *poof.* Gone.
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