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I’ve attached an image here, to further illustrate the scenario. Imagine that the wreck is at the bottom of the Marianas trench, 10km underwater.
Would jumping into the water kill you from the pressure? Or would it only kill you if you swam to where there is no cover on the right side of the wreckage?
In: Physics
It depends on the depth. If this happened in shallow water, no. There’s actually a few recorded incidents of people surviving for days in those air pockets before being rescued. However, this really only works in shallow waters, down to 300 meters (equivalent to 30 atmospheres), and even that is likely to fuck you up. See, if there is an air pocket, that means that the air in that pocket is under pressure. The water is pushing against the pocket, and so the pressure must increase to match the pressure of the water. Now, while we’re designed to survive in one atmosphere, we can sustain considerably more if the situation demands it, so long as the pressure is equal inside and outside our bodies. However, at 10 kilometers depth, you are dead. See, water pressure increases by one atmosphere every 10 meters. That means at a depth of 10 kilometers, you’d be experiencing 1000 atmospheres of pressure. That’d kill you outright, no way for you to survive that.
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