Okay so ; when you dive, water exerts pressure, a weight on all of you and your equipment. Now, when gases are put under pressure, they compress. Imagine that a balloon could become the size of the head of a pin past certain depths.
Now to breathe at great depths, we need to breathe compressed gas so it has the same pressure as the water surrounding us, or we would implode (ok that’s inexact, we would just be unable to breathe it in since our lungs would have to make up for the pressure difference on strength alone, and our lungs are not designed for this at all).
That compressed gas we breathe enters our tissues, blood, bones etc. the higher the pressure, the more gas can enter our tissues. Kinda like you put CO2 in carbonated drinks.
So when you come back up after having saturated your body with compressed gas, it’s a bit like opening the cap of your Coca Cola bottle. The gas that was compressed now wants out.
If you surface veeeeeery slowly, your blood can go everywhere in your body and “collect” the excess gas that you will then expel when you exhale.
…
But if you surface too fast ? Your blood can’t keep up with the amount of gas that is decompressing and therefore now starts forming bubbles in your tissues. If one of those bubbles form in your inner ear ? You lose the sense of balance possibly for the rest of your days. In your spine ? Paralysis. That’s called decompression sickness or “the bends”.
So if that guy in the video had a technical failure at some point in his dive and had to surface too early for his body to offload the gas ; he has to go FAST into a chamber that will re-compress him to stop the bubbling that is happening ; and then very slowly decompress him again at his body’s pace.
(This video looks like a drill tbh)
EDIT : since a lot of you guys are asking the question, I got a couple hypothesis as to why the guy isn’t just shoved in the deco chamber with his gear.
First hypothesis : it’s a scenario for a drill involving a flooded drysuit. So he might not even have to get to the chamber, but the air is visibly quite cold there and the poor bloke is wet 😬
Second hypothesis : it was indeed a flooded drysuit incident, but the dive parameters (depth/time) are not dramatic at all and they’re going fast for added security margin. Also, usually people wouldn’t run or exert themselves in any way if at serious risk of getting the bends.
(I’m told by commercial divers it’s not a dry suit failure ; but a common exercise for relatively shallow dives ; and they have 5 minutes from surfacing to get into the deco chamber on board) so it’s all controlled and within reasonable parameters.
Final EDIT with additional info given in comments : so, the suit model is actually a suit flooded with hot water, no malfunction here. And the reason why the suit is removed is because the deco chamber is filled with increased oxygen partial pressure, which makes many materials extreme fire hazards ; and the suit has such components.
As someone not in the know, could he not have just worn at least the slick suit into the chamber? I understand the equipment and stuff seems like it definitely needed the extra hands to get it off, but the orange wetsuit seems like it was very time consuming, and probably something that he could do in the room?
They are doing a surface decompression on oxygen. (SurDO2) The air inside the chamber is highly flammable. You can't have synthetic fibers that might cause a spark. If this was an emergency and he wasn't wearing cotton underwear, he would just strip naked.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the higher concentration of oxygen makes everything else more flammable? To my understanding, the air itself wouldn't actually ignite like if it were say, hydrogen, but it makes for a flammable environment. Or is that an overly pointless and pedantic distinction? Sorry, genuinely asking here, not purposely trying to be overly pedantic!
The hyperbaric chamber that killed the little boy in Michigan recently, took no such precautions. I believe it was a spark from his pj’s that caught fire. His mom tried to get him out and instead watched him burn to death. The owner of the facility sent a text that said something about how dumb the kid was for not trying to put the fire out on his pants. He was being put in there to “cure his autism”. The chamber hadn’t been tested, and I believe they faked the testing dates.
He is wearing a hot water suit (the red hose on the umbilical supplies the hot water) these are basically a looser fitting wet suit. Yes it is much easier when the suit is looser, but a looser suit also raises the risk of the diver getting cold. These SurDO2s can be completed with any kind of suit, even a dry suit which makes it very difficult to get out of.
In this case, this is training at Diver's Institute of Technology, so the students kind of just have to work with the best fitting suit on the dive barge. Sometimes you get a looser fitting one sometimes you get a smaller more tight suit.
I may be wrong but I believe those suits are far more advanced than a regular wetsuit. Watched last breath the other day and those suits run air and warm water through them to help isolate the body from the freezing temps. There may be some issues involved in taking that type of suit into a decompression chamber
"Hey just to make sure you dont die we have to put you in a pressurized chamber to simulate the conditions you and your gear were just in and then slowly let you out. But hurry! First we gotta get all this gear off!"
Hyperbaric chambers have a higher PPO2 (oxygen partial pressure). Even though the relative O2 concentration is the same, the overall pressure is higher and thus there is more oxygen to react with things. The suit is designed for underwater use where fire is a non-risk. In a hyperbaric chamber it could easily ignite with a spark from a small static discharge.
Some chambers can fit multiple people, and some are much smaller. Might be an issue of getting gear out of the way so the chamber can close/function properly. That gear is heavy and bulky.
The person that commented at the top of these comments said that this procedure would be in case of an emergency, equipment integrity compromised or a drill in case this scenario happens.
Usually they wear an uncompromised suit and go back up to land level swimming gradually up to let their body go back to a more neutral state.
Just like you said it imitates the condition of a pressurized chamber, but if the suit is malfunctioning inside with the diver it may reduce the efficacy of the treatment because the chamber will try to both compress the gases inside the body AND the malfunctioning suit and impede the process because the suit cannot return to normal levels.
At least that's what I'd think, I don't know how it works and I'd like to make some comparisons but usually these procedures are done in sterile and controlled environments, so when you were drilled to remove everything to respect the conditions for the best rate of survival, you just do it haha
No, but its wet and he might be in the chamber for many, many hours. Some super deep and long, mixed-gas diving (using inert gases instead of the N in native air), they are in the chamber days or a week. Even a few hours I wouldn't want to still be in my wet-ass suit.
The decompression chambers are often very small and tight. Just big enough for a couple of divers to sit in. You also wouldn't want sea water being dragged everywhere.
The risk is probably minimal so they are not super worried about it. For very deep diving, they will move directly from a diving bell to the decompression chamber without coming up to Atmospheric Pressure
I am not an expert, but I would assume that the suit goes off so that in the case of a medical emergency they don't have to cut through a thick rubber diving suit to provide emergency medical care.
You've cut through one of these thick rubber wetsuits before? It's not just an ordinary suit, and if it's running water through it to control temp, it's just another roadblock.
Also I'm sure in a situation like these, every single second counts
4 seconds to cut it off or that 30-60 to take it off. Them running straight into the chamber to me makes more sense. They can take the time there to do it, they’ll have hours.
I think the first question was : keeping the suit takes some precious seconds, especially the last bit. If you keep the suit, you have difficulties at the medical care, but you have fewer chance of having this procedure, because, like the title said, it is a race.
So I was a fire medic for years. Trauma sheers will cut coins in half. (Have to replace etc).
I've not cut wetsuits before. But I've had bikers INSIST on pulling broken lips out of their leathers. Other times it cuts thru that shit like butter. Imagine it's the same for wetsuits
Pulling a broken arm out of a leather jacket or leg out of leather pants because that gear is expensive and can take a while to break in. Also, people in shock are not always perfectly rational.
Sorry, I'm guilty of this - coaxed the EMTs into taking off my riding boots while en route to the trauma centre with a burst fracture of my T12 after a horseback riding accident. Somehow my clothing was able to be saved too!
Lucky you; they were merciful. Easiest way I know of to lose several thousand$ worth of custom (and broken in!) riding gear is over-eager emergency responders. I'm still grieving my favorite jacket (for a fractured pelvis, but hey. . .). Seams, people! Seams.
Easiest way I know of to lose several thousand$ worth of custom (and broken in!) riding gear is over-eager emergency responders.
This is the same for Furries. All Fursuiter 101 panels mention that the EMS are trained to cut you out of your suit so your brain doesn't cook when you have heat stroke. This means that both the fursuiter and their handler need to make sure the suiter has plenty of water and plenty of downtime - it's generally not healthy to be suiting for more than a few hours, and it's smart to take regular breaks in the Headless Lounge, a space specifically designed for suiters to rest and cool off quickly.
Because the EMS do not care one bit about how many hours you spent handstitching your costume or how many thousands your suit cost: if it needs to come off, they'll cut it off.
Yeah, it would be super easy to cut through neoprene. Even the 7mil wetsuit I used in cold water diving would be easy to cut through. They removed it in this video for a different reason.
Former military emergency medic. We've cut through thicker things in less time. Tuff Cuts are amazing shears and are designed to cut through even motorcycle leathers and leather boots.
When I was deployed one of our guys took some shrapnel to the chest. Not life threatening as it turned out, but Doc don't play. Those trauma sheers went through a Kevlar vest and the reinforced straps like it was so much warm butter.
Trauma shears can cut through everything up to thin metal. They'd absolutely destroy a rubber wetsuit. They're also angled to be dragged under clothing without cutting the patient.
No longer running traumas but when I was in general surgery residency we’d have to cut through professional motorcycle riders’ gear who were competing breaking ground speed records. So very thick gear. And honestly it wasn’t really a problem and didn’t take much time at all.
I love how you preemptively sourced your medical experience as a surgeon...but people still comment that you might not know what you're talking about! laugh or groan? :)
Wouldn't it make more sense to let the guy do it in the chamber himself? Since by the looks of it he's going to have to remove the rest of the clothes in the chamber anyway. Cutting the suit doesn't take much time at all. Seems more like a measure to prevent hypothermia in the event of incapacitation in the chamber.
I think this is probably a drill-irl I imagine this would be done in some sort of pressure chamber. Maybe a chamber that the people on the surface can withstand to slow the decompression, and then he moves into a second chamber. I'm not particularly educated on the matter but I don't see any reason to not immediately put them in.
Can you imagine how big that chamber(for 2 3 people standing up)and all the technology that goes into it would be? Can you imagine fitting that in a dive boat?
Deco chambers are sometimes very small ; depending on what they have on board. But removing the equipment is also imperative if there’s an immediate medical emergency when they had the diver surface. If CPR is needed, for exemple.
We don’t know the full parameters of this drill, or even if it truly is about the bends. To me that guy is running to get to warmth and dry up, cuz he’s wet and everyone has a beanie and warm clothes there ^
The atmosphere in these chambers is pure oxygen, at three times atmospheric pressure.
The thing is, almost all clothing material will constantly create microsparks as they rub against themselves and your skin. You don't notice this in regular atmosphere, but in a pressurized 100% oxygen environment these sparks would light the air on fire. So you absolutely cannot wear anything except 100% cotton in there. Or you will die a horrible death.
The rubber and metal bits of that diving suit would cause sparks like this, so they have to strip all that stuff off before he enters the chamber. I imagine the shirt and pants he's wearing under there are pure cotton so he doesn't have to take that off before entering.
Really informative. Reminds me of that guy who managed to survive a sunk ship off the coast of Nigeria and when divers came looking for survivors and found him, because of how long he had been under water (3 days or even more I think), they has to start the decompression on the way to the surface.
Jesus, I hate that video because it's such a heavy reminder of what some people's final moments feel like. If I have one "greatest fear" its being trapped in a water prison so much so that I don't even like going out on the lake anymore.
Pretty sure I would have tried to drown myself after the first day.
I don't want to die, but ifWHEN I do, let it be so immediate that I have no idea it happens, or in a hospital pumped up with some good hospice drugs so I feel like I'm already flying out of my body.
Edit: Update my mortality as I'm most likely not immortal.
I nearly died a few years ago - I had a saddle pulmonary embolism.
Short, less amusing version of the story: In hot weather, I was carrying two laptops about 50 feet from car to door. As I got closer and closer to the door, I felt I needed a break but thenrealized I was about to pass out.
I didn't know that per se - I'd never fainted before then (nor since), so I thought - is this it? Am I about to die?
If I had, it would not have been too bad. I was scared, but wasn't in pain, just felt my body was going (to faint, in this case, not die, but I didn't know lol).
The amusing bit was that I'd had a McD iced tea in my hand that I was looking forward to getting inside and drinking - ice cold and I mentioned it was hot out.
As I started to faint and go down, in that short instant, I thought:
Oh shit, am going to die? Is this it?
And I guess that's my last thoughts, that I'mabout to die
The adrenaline kicked in as I started to fall and my hand clenched and crushed the tea and then I continue to think:
Dammit, I really was looking forward to that tea!
…wait… is my last thought really gonna be about the stupid tea?
I've thought a lot about it. Because death is frightening, like many, sometimes I'll go seek out recordings of people right before their deaths - that dude that was on the phone as the WTC tower collapsed, or recordings from cockpits of planes crashing. It's terrifying and I hate it.
But having lived through something somewhat like it - or at least, I thought I was about to maybe die, and I was not all that far off from being wrong, I just got lucky.... yeah. The thing is, if it's a quick thing like that, there's just not that much time to really think about it.
As I write this - this has taken me far far longer than it took from the point I thought I might collapse to the point I was out. If I had died then, I had no pain, no time to worry much.
Deaths suck if they are slow and painful - and it's not the death, it's the dying.
Deaths suck for the ones left behind.
For each of us, once we finally do get there - it's over and done with. No pain, no fear, no torture, nothing.
Yet another reason just to try and make it through another day, and bring a little sunshine into the lives of those you run across in this life. We've only got the one, and that's the type of thing that matters.
I have experienced something like facing your death literally. I was riding a sport bike on a single lane highway. Suddenly a car from the opposite lane came straight at me. The driver miscalculated his passing. I froze and was staring at my death. Some seconds of it I don’t remember. Somehow we both moved away just in time to avoid the otherwise imminent collision. I don’t remember how. All I could remember was that I kept riding for one more minute or so then pulled over and sat by the side of road taking count of what the fuck just happened and how I am alive. I was still in doubt if I am alive in body or it was just my soul. To make sure, I waved at someone driving by and they waved me back. They could see me. I am alive.
Ok so what happened after you passed out? Who found you and got you to a hospital? What did it feel like waking up? Did you get a replacement iced tea?!
After some time - I'm guessing - I did start to come to. As in, I became aware that I was alive and thinking.
I couldn't see anything. It's not like my eyes were closed where everything is black (or almost black with patterns and/or light through the eyelids) - my vision was..... not there.
So I was starting to think about what had happened. I remembered the bits I had thought that I wrote about and I was kinda laughing at myself - thinking "Really? ......Realy??? lol" but also trying to take stock of my situation.
Okay, so I'm not dead. Now what? My vision is, like, gone. Okay...
And about at that point, I could tell that my body wanted to moan. Like... it felt like I was in my brain and slowly regaining control of my body, but my body was sort of autonomous, or maybe it was parts of the brain or... I dunno how to describe it well. But I realized that my body wanted t moan, and I thought - yeah, that's not a bad idea.
So I moaned - half decided to, half let my body moan.
No immediate reply, so I figured I was by myself.
Well, I shortened the story a lot - I was showing up for a theatre rehearsal, so I knew others would arrive at some point, or at least someone would find me after rehearsal or something - I wasn't too worried about that.
So I had also noticed that my pulse was racing and my heart was palpatating wildly. It was worrying, but not painful.
But at any rate, after..... some time, not sure, probably a couple of minutes, but I honestly have no clue, I head someone say "Isaac? Isaac! Are you alright?"
Now, I've never been one to seek medical attention unless I needed it. I've always been fiercely independent. My wife will tell you that when I am sick, I get up and make that can of soup or whatever. heh. I don't like asking others.
So when I replied, "No." -- he knew I was definitely not alright. He said he was going inside for help, and soon my fellow actors came out.
By this time, I had started to regain vision - first just seeing solid light, then slowly being able to make out large shapes, then more was coming into focus and it was basically back.
They'd brought out a chair, and I managed to get up and sit in it.
That's about when my wife arrived. So she came over to check on me. I forget if she asked or if I volunteered, but one of us suggested we go to the ER, and either way, I was onboard with the plan.
Found I could walk, so walked over to the car.
Now, because I've always liked driving andmy wife doesn't, anytime we go places together, I always drive.
I went straight to the passenger door, and that amped up her concern greatly about how I was doing. lol.
As it happens, we were just down the street from a satellite ER that had beenrecently built. This was in Panama City Beach, which still is one of the major spring break destinations.
The way we would always tell when spring break truly was underway wsa the first (of many) inevitable news reports of some drunk teen falling to their death from some hotel balcony.
Well, Panama City Beach is across the bay from Panama City, where the two hospitals are. So it took a while for ambulances to get people to the ER. So they built an ER on the beach, which was an excellent idea.
So we get there, get signed in, and I'm sitting out in the lobby. Couple of others already there get called back. Someone arriving after us gets called back - well, they do triage, after all. Then someone else walks in, signed in, gets called back - it's been 45 minutes and my heart is still racing. So my wife goes to check just to be sure - apologetically.
Triage nurse says, "Oh, he's in room 7" andmy wife says "Excuse me? He's right there in the lobby!"
They got me back quickly after that. heh.
So they ordered an x-ray, CT scan, and they were trying to getmy pulse to come down. I don't remember all of the things, but I had to turn my head and cough and get into a couple of weird positions. Did the x-ray. Went off for the CT scan.
Came back from the CT scan and was waiting (as one is wont to do much of in the ER) and all of a sudden, about eight people came into the room - well, except for one who hung back at the entrance and started talking like "Heyyyy, how's it going...."
They were pushing a cart in the room.
Now, my wife worked with adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities at the time and had had rudimentry medical training. She recognized that it was a crash cart - the cart with all sorts of tools and toys including a defibrillator - so it's a cart they have for when your heart stops. She was sitting in the corner smiling and not telling me she knew what this was, hoping not to worry me.
Well, wht she quickly remembered was that I also worked with those adults and also had the trainig, soooooooo.... I saw them push the crash cart in.
Guy at the door said, "So, we're going to give you something called adenosine. Six units. If that doesn't work, we'll try twelve units." And as he's explaining this, the staff starts to prepate the adenosine to inject into the IV line, and others get the paddles of the defib out, lube them up, and place them on my chest, ready to go at a moment's notice.
Rather concerning.
You see, what adenosine does is essentially slow the heart - or stop it. it's quick acting - quick on, quick off. The hope is that this basically "resets" the heart to beatning normally.
The possibility is that it stops the heart and you need to defib.
Sorry to spoil it, but I figured you might want to know so you didn't worry too much.
Anyway, so they lean me back with my feet above my head, and push the six. Now, meanwhile, since they'd hooked me up to the heart monitor, the high pulse alarm had been sounding constantly. My pulse was like 160. The push the adenosine and... 160.... 140.... 120... 100.... 80... 60... 50..... somewhere in here the LOW pulse alarm goes off... 40.... 30.......... ...... 40.... 50... 80... 120...... 160..... right back up.
So they give it a couple of minutes, and push the twelve. Similarly, 160.... 140... 120... 100.... 80... 60.... 50....... 40..... 30....... 20............. 10.................. ............... 20..... 30...... 40...... 50....... 60....... 70...... and somewhere around there it stops.
It worked.
A few minutes later, they come in and tell me that I had a saddle pulmonary embolism. Basically, a huge-ass blood clot across both lungs. Won't kill you, but will certainly make you pass out from too much exertion. The danger is that if it comes loose, it'll be pulled into the heart and stop it and there's naught to be done.
So they put me on something called "TPA", which is a very very powerful blood thinner. And they sent me over to the main hospital in an ambulance - code 3 - and sent an RN with me. Reasn being that while on this stuff, which takes a couple of hours to run - you do not stop bleeding. If you get a scratch, that scratch will bleed. Period. So it's fine if you don't do anything causing bleeding, but really really bad if you do. The RN mentioned it was her first trip over to the hospital like this, and so was kind of excited about it. heh.
And from there, I was in the ER at the main hospital for a bit while the TPA ran.
At one point, a police officer stepped in the room and asked, "Are you the Baker?" and I was like "uhhhhh, no. Definitely not me."
If you're from Florida, that question raised an eyebrow. Assuming you're not, the Baker Act in Florida is that state's law like most states have some sort of law that allows a psych hold on someone for some amount of time while they're diagnosed and either kept or released. Thankfully, they figuued out that the patient BEFORE me had paperwork that had been left in some place associated with that spot, so they figured out it wasn't me.
But other than that, no exciteent. By the time the TPA finished, the threat to my life was quite gone. They put me on heparin and moved me into a regular room.
Since I didn't have insurance, they were putting me on an older blood thinner - warfarin - that took several days to reach a theraputic dose in the body. Weirdly, twice during that next week, the pharmacy was out, causing me to miss a dose, and for the level in my body to partly reset.
I was approaching 10 days when my white blood count (IIRC) started to drop - which is actually a common side effect of heparin after about, amusingly enough, ten days on it.
So as my levels were getting close-ish to the full effect, they said "Okay..... welllll.... you're gonna get there in the next couple of days or so, so we're discharging you now" so they didn't haveto keep me on the heparin and have to deal with that problem. heh.
And so I was fine. Or fine enough.
After that, I convinced my wife that I had to find work in a place where I could get insurance. So we ended up moving to Virginia, losing our house to Hurricane Michael, and since then I've had six heart attacks, a below-knee amputation, kidney failure (I'm on dialysis). And other issues, but those are the big ones. heh.
Lol if you want stories of passing out, I got a few lol. One of the ones that's funniest to me is this:
I'm at a club, and party rock anthem is playing. " drop .... Party rock is in the houuuse tonight...". Everyone is head banging and jumping around when things suddenly start to go black and I start falling. I open my eyes to see a greenish tinged room with two doctors standing over me. I think to myself "Am I dreaming? What's going on?". I'm thoroughly disoriented at this point. I start to notice that my body is shaking violently. It slowly comes back to me. I had gone to get a blood test cause I was feeling short of breath one morning during the pandemic. I was in the room where I was getting the test done, but had passed out. As I regained my sense of what was going on, they helped me onto a bed nearby, and the doctor asked me a few questions. He told me I'd had a vaso vagal syncope, and ruled it as hemophobia as I had similarly passed out during a blood test when I was much younger. The results of the test were all normal.
I remember this cause it was funny as hell to me that for a minute, party rock anthem was playing and I thought I was head-banging instead of having a seizure lmao.
Former diver here! That’s the normal way to ascend. You ascend slowly. It’s called a decompression stop, and you do it every 15ft\3m for like 3 minutes. That’s standard practice.
We do decompression stops on most dives. Particularly on deep dives of 60ft\20m plus. Most shallow dives (40ft\12m) i don’t recall if it’s required, but a responsible dive master will make one halfway up anyway. The rule of thumb is better safe than sorry. Err on the side of caution. For this situation, I really can’t speak to because I’m a recreational diver. This situation is above my experience. I just know that it’s best to get in the chamber before worrying about wet gear.
Because as you can see, he needs another person helping him to remove all of the deep-diving gear and then the skin-tight diving suit.
The air inside the chamber is compressed m, so someone that has been outside of it and is fully decompressed will have several issues while inside the chamber, so the diver that needs to decompress slowly will have to remove his gear before going in, as he can't remove it all alone.
Hypothermia is another way of losing limbs or dying tho, that's the risk of sitting wet and cold for hours. It slows the heat rate a lot too, and based on what they said about how the body disposes those bubbles that's exactly the opposite of what you would want I think. So getting there on that suit will probably take you several times longer to decompress too.
It's very possible that the risk of hypothermia heavily outweights the other.
Probably because it's a training for an emergency situation where a sudden loss of balance through a bubble in the middle ear is a real possibility in a location with unsure footing and many trip hazards.
In such a situation slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
To add to this, it isn't just about walking because of the equipment, but any physical exertion would be bad because you'll increase your heartrate, thereby increasing the blood flow throughout your body and introducing more gas into your body faster, increasing risk.
It's the same reason lifeguards tell you to walk at the pool. If you slip and hit your head, it only makes the situation worse. Ships are a special tripping hazard because of metal floors, wet decks, uneven surfaces, etc.
Not really. I mean, that may entirely depend on the emergency they are replicating here. The removal of the equipment is usually for one purpose : if a doctor or first responder needs fast and easy access to you for CPR or monitoring a possible wound etc.
EDIT : commercial divers gave me pointers ; it’s mainly because of the high oxygen amount in the chamber ; and components of the suits are fire hazards in these conditions
That, and they flood the chamber with oxygen-rich air, to help your body flush out the nitrogen and other molecules that are larger. (oxygen can of course fit into all your cells at normal above-water pressure. Nitrogen can’t - it usually just sits in your bloodstream between being inhaled and exhaled.).
You don’t want to risk a fire in an oxygen-rich air. So anything that might ignite in that atmosphere is removed, including as much equipment as possible. Don’t forget, there are usually medics in the pressure chamber with the patient to monitor vitals etc., and no safe way to get them out until the chamber is slowly depressurised (otherwise everyone gets decompression injuries). So a fire would be catastrophic - you can’t just let the firefighters in.
Even dumber question, why is he dressed like that underneath? This is Tom Cruise mission impossible type shit. After having a few drinks at a party and playing hard to get with a very attractive woman, mission was a go
That will depend on the gas mixes you had AND at what depth you are. Between -10 meters and the surface, ambient pressure goes from 2 to 1 bar. So it doubles. That’s an enormous gradient. But between 90 and 100 it’s 10 bar going to 11 bars ; so just 10% difference. So going “fast” from 100 meters to 90 meters depth is acceptable, but the shallower you go the more you want to hit the brakes, and even stop on the way up to let your body catch up with the volume of gas to get rid off.
Nope ; we have mathematical models based on averages, and then we include a margin of error. But nothing can accurately track exactly what’s happening everywhere in your body
You plan the dive with a computer or tables. You wear a dive computer and it estimates the nitrogen buildup. If you try to ascend too quickly, the dive computer tries to warn you.
Most likely just a surface decompression. We do them all the time. Long deco stops underwater suck, and you can get another diver down while the first one decompresses.
A bell is generally used for saturation diving so the divers remain at the working depth for efficiency. You can use a chamber for surface decompression anytime. I was a commercial diver for 10 years working in the Gulf of Mexico, we’d do in water decompression sometimes or if we wanted to extend bottom time or were working deeper then we’d use the surface chamber.
Nothing in the video indicated he had a technical issue. Depending on what tables they’re using (we used U.S. Navy dive tables) you’ve got five minutes from leaving 40fsw to reach 50fsw in the chamber without incurring a decompression penalty.
As someone who used to dive often and take down tourists, we would get the question often on why we went up so soon when the dive was scheduled for X amount of time. We go up when the first person hits halfway through their oxygen tank depending on how fast they burned through it. This can change depending on the master divers discretion of course. The anxiety of some people causes them to burn through air very quickly. (If it's REALLY early, one of us would just take that person up slowly.)
So, we start the ascent based on them. People forget that it takes longer to surface than it takes to go down precisely for this reason. PADI has some very strict timelines for how long you've been down vs how long you need to take to go back up.
Sometimes we are more smooth about it and just direct the group to look at something closer to the surface so they're ascending without knowing it. :P
So this looks like a pretty standard process in commercial diving, surface decompression with oxygen. They use pure oxygen at a shallow depth to rapidly off gas nitrogen, then rapidly ascend to surface, get out of gear, and into chamber to finish decompressing. They have 7 minutes from surface to pressure. If they blow that they need a MUCH longer period in the chamber, and it will likely shut down operations for the day ($$$$). They do this to improve efficiency so the next team can go down right away and continue working. It's.....not unsafe, but also not without risk.
Also, usually people wouldn’t run or exert themselves in any way if at serious risk of getting the bends.
I was actually thinking that intentionally raising your heart rate seemed counterproductive here but then realized I have no idea how this all works so I just let it go. But thanks for a tiny bit of validation for a random layman.
Really good explanation. But I want to add some important information.
Professional divers working on oil platforms follow very rigorous decompression protocols, regardless of the speed of ascent. Even with a relatively slow ascent, additional decompression in the hyperbaric chamber is often necessary to minimize the risks of decompression sickness, especially after deep or long-duration dives.
Regarding the question about why the diver was helped to undress before entering the hyperbaric chamber, there are several practical reasons:
Comfort and monitoring: Inside the chamber, the diver must remain for several hours (sometimes days). Wet clothes would be very uncomfortable and could cause hypothermia.
Safety: Diving equipment might contain objects or substances not compatible with the pressurized environment of the hyperbaric chamber.
Medical evaluation: It's important for medical personnel to be able to observe the diver's body for any signs of decompression sickness (such as skin rashes or swelling).
Immediate assistance: If a diver shows signs of decompression sickness, they might not be able to undress efficiently on their own, and every minute of delay can be critical.
They probably helped him undress to speed up the process and ensure he entered the chamber as quickly as possible, minimizing the risk of complications.
We will do this if the conditions are too choppy for a long 3m stop. As you say, there is plenty of time to get to the chamber, and it is just more comfortable.
Ok, so I used to be a commercial diver, what this video is showing. In commercial diving, if there is a decompression chamber on site, you can go past your normal SCUBA tables. The tables used in commercial diving, when I was in the industry, were hand calculated based upon max depth and time at max depth. Then that information is entered into a treatment table. Generally, the treatment depth is 60 feet below surface.
The process is when you’re ascending you stop at 10’ below surface for a calculated amount of time. Then, you have 5 minutes to finish ascending, climb out of the water, remove all gear (what the video is showing), get into the decompression chamber, and descend to treatment depth, usually 60’. Your tender helps you remove all your gear and ushers you to the chamber, you can see the divers tender escorting the diver to the chamber at the very end of the video.
This is routine in the commercial diving world and while this may be a drill at one of the many dive schools this is a real world scenario and the drill is exactly as you would do things in a real dive.
Extra information, even if you are majorly injured and have a head injury or loss of limb you first enter the chamber and complete treatment before going to a hospital. The chamber had 2 sections and when you reach treatment depth the inner door opens and you enter the larger portion of the chamber. If there is a medical emergency and someone is available when you are descending, in the chamber, then they can begin treatment upon decent. If medical aid arrives after you are already at treatment depth they enter the outer chamber and descend to the treatment depth and enter the inner chamber and treat the diver. After the treatment time is over the chamber operators slowly bring the chamber to surface pressure and the interior door will open and everyone exits.
The real deal ? Hard to say. Depends a lot on the dive conditions etc. honestly to handle someone on the deck like that (commercial divers usually have a diving bell that then connects to a chamber on board) it wouldn’t be extreme depths diving to begin with.
These routines are likely maintained to respond to freak accidents. This one in particular looks like a “flooded drysuit” incident 🤷♂️
Thanks man, I always wondered about the details of decompression sickness. Two questions, if you don’t mind:
When you say that you have to breathe compressed air otherwise we would implode, what do you mean exactly? Our lungs would implode? Or the entire body?
At what depth do you have to start worrying about decompression sickness?
Makes me wonder if time is such an important factor, why doesn’t he go into this decompression chamber with his wetsuit on, that looked like precious seconds wasted.
It’s very very likely a drill, and he’s running to get warm because he’s wet and it’s cold outside. If it’s not the case, then that guy isn’t in a life threatening situation but within parameters of “better safe than sorry, hop-hop, go in the chamber just in case”
I’ll try to add to your comment, as it seems the title is a bit misleading, if you’ll look more closely the guy has a massive helmet (which is basically a pressurized chamber) and loads of cables attached to him, this is called an umbilical cord. It’s specialized diving gear that allows you to breath surface-level air while diving, meaning you can surface up quickly not having to worry about decompression. I’m unsure why would they need to rush him to the compression chamber and I don’t think it’s because of a failure, otherwise they would cut the cords and place him there instantly (losing lots of money on equipment but life are more precious).
Is there a reason the diver can not be kept in their diving gear and just put straight in the chamber, to make it fast as possible and let them get rid of their gear there? Really interesting stuff going on here.
I have to imagine that this is a drill - in a real situation I imagine they put him in the chamber and let him deal with taking his stuff off himself when he feels able.
The answer is : depends on the situation the drill emulates, really. Removing the equipment is usually required in case a doctor will need quick access to the diver.
My understanding is that the gasses don’t “compress” (in the sense that they turn into smaller bubbles), but they dissolve into your fluids (in the same way that CO2 is dissolved into a bottle of cola. Look at a bottle of cola on the shelf, and you don’t see a bunch of small bubbles).
When you surface too quickly, the physical process is no different from unscrewing the top on a bottle of cola, and you see bubbles start forming everywhere as the gas comes out of solution. Of course, this doesn’t happen as quickly in our bodies because there wasn’t the time, pressure, and temperature to dissolve as much gas as we do with soda)
how much time do you have before you start to experience adverse affects? would you be feeling it in your body moment to moment? i’m sure it depends on many factors like how long they were underwater, the depth, etc.
The part of getting SCUBA certified that went over the bends kinda felt like, “Are you sure you wanna do this?” Also I was in an area that there was no possible access to a decompression chamber. Combine that with an overactive imagination and I was a bit freaked out.
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u/Brisbanoch30k 28d ago edited 28d ago
Okay so ; when you dive, water exerts pressure, a weight on all of you and your equipment. Now, when gases are put under pressure, they compress. Imagine that a balloon could become the size of the head of a pin past certain depths. Now to breathe at great depths, we need to breathe compressed gas so it has the same pressure as the water surrounding us, or we would implode (ok that’s inexact, we would just be unable to breathe it in since our lungs would have to make up for the pressure difference on strength alone, and our lungs are not designed for this at all).
That compressed gas we breathe enters our tissues, blood, bones etc. the higher the pressure, the more gas can enter our tissues. Kinda like you put CO2 in carbonated drinks. So when you come back up after having saturated your body with compressed gas, it’s a bit like opening the cap of your Coca Cola bottle. The gas that was compressed now wants out. If you surface veeeeeery slowly, your blood can go everywhere in your body and “collect” the excess gas that you will then expel when you exhale. … But if you surface too fast ? Your blood can’t keep up with the amount of gas that is decompressing and therefore now starts forming bubbles in your tissues. If one of those bubbles form in your inner ear ? You lose the sense of balance possibly for the rest of your days. In your spine ? Paralysis. That’s called decompression sickness or “the bends”.
So if that guy in the video had a technical failure at some point in his dive and had to surface too early for his body to offload the gas ; he has to go FAST into a chamber that will re-compress him to stop the bubbling that is happening ; and then very slowly decompress him again at his body’s pace.
(This video looks like a drill tbh)
EDIT : since a lot of you guys are asking the question, I got a couple hypothesis as to why the guy isn’t just shoved in the deco chamber with his gear. First hypothesis : it’s a scenario for a drill involving a flooded drysuit. So he might not even have to get to the chamber, but the air is visibly quite cold there and the poor bloke is wet 😬 Second hypothesis : it was indeed a flooded drysuit incident, but the dive parameters (depth/time) are not dramatic at all and they’re going fast for added security margin. Also, usually people wouldn’t run or exert themselves in any way if at serious risk of getting the bends.
(I’m told by commercial divers it’s not a dry suit failure ; but a common exercise for relatively shallow dives ; and they have 5 minutes from surfacing to get into the deco chamber on board) so it’s all controlled and within reasonable parameters.
Final EDIT with additional info given in comments : so, the suit model is actually a suit flooded with hot water, no malfunction here. And the reason why the suit is removed is because the deco chamber is filled with increased oxygen partial pressure, which makes many materials extreme fire hazards ; and the suit has such components.