How quickly does it happen? What kind of noise or other vibrations occur? Would occupants know as it was happening? What would be left? And all the other questions….
In: 88
I’m no expert but my understanding is it’s similar to but opposite of popping a balloon. That fast but inwards.
Would likely be instant. I read somewhere it happens at 1,500 mph, everyone suddenly turns to hamburger meat. Sounds awful and painful for a split second.
Very very very quickly. Fractions of a second. The pressure is so high, and the mass of the sub walls so small, that the acceleration once the structure gives way is *extremely* high.
There are audio recordings of subs being crushed; those are typically longer processes because normal submarines operate *far* shallower (less pressure). It will make a very distinctive sound but, depending on the depth, that sound may never get to anything that can hear/record it.
What would be left would depend on how the structure failed. If the pressure hull buckled, you’d basically have a flat pancake of hull as the water pressure smashed it flat, with the contents of the hull filling in any (very small) remaining gaps).
If something like a door or window failed, the hull would be intact but the content would be pulverized by the in-rushing water.
Either of the above would likely happen too fast for the occupants to realize.
If they just sprung a leak (not an implosion), they could have seconds/minutes/hours depending on the scale of the leak. In that case the pressure would come up relatively slowly and the whole thing could be intact, just full of water.
At 4 km depth, real life is not like the movies. There’s no “Das Boot” drama, you go from “working submarine” to “titanium pretzel” in a heartbeat.
If a rupture occurs at significant depth, those onboard would hear a series of pops and start seeing water rushing in to fill the void, or everything could go at once and depressurize causing instant death. The latter being the overwhelmingly preferred choice if at great depths. The occupants would need to be in a hallucinatory state or shock to not know what is going on. What would be left is everything minus the air that escaped. The wreckage left to drift in the currents until buried or found.
I don’t know if many people did this as kids:
When I was a kid, my friends showed me how you could stand on top of a soda can (pop can of you’re canadian), and it would hold your weight. As soon as someone deformed the side of it with a stick or something the whole thing would almost instantly collapse. A submarine at a significant depth would fail in a similar fashion.
The pressure in deep water, especially at the depth of the Titanic, is immense. The water pressure down there is 6000 PSI, equivalent to 35 elephants on your shoulders.
So if that hull were to be compromised, imagine you’re holding an egg and squeeze really hard. Just like that. Nobody would have time to feel anything. They would be crushed in a fraction of a second.
What’s with all the posts about submarines this morning? It’s the 3rd I’ve seen in about 10 minutes.
Most submarines are made out of metal, so they would deform and crush. The ocean gate sub is made out of carbon fiber, which would probably shatter because it can’t bend very much
Instantaneous.. as in: so fast the human brain won’t even be able to process it in real time. One second everything’s fine in your sub-aquatic coffin, then eternal darkness, approximately .85 seconds later the next second begins.
Is there noise? Probably, but they wouldn’t live long enough to hear it.
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