I believe that having seen the "Titanic" and some of the shipwreck theme movie friends must have noticed a scene, passengers and soldiers in the face of the ship sinking process, if there is no lifeboat situation can only wait on the deck, few people will risk jumping overboard to survive.
For many people this phenomenon is too "stupid", but this is not the case, the following will tell you why it is better to wait for a shipwreck than to jump overboard.
The sea's majestic grandeur and endless fresh excitement have attracted the attention of countless people, both in terms of resource development and tourism, and people scramble to enter the sea by boat. But the real sea is more dangerous than imagined, every year thousands of people in large and small shipwrecks buried at the bottom of the sea.
In the face of risks, boat operators around the world will give tourists a simple instruction on survival at sea, although the content varies, but whenever it comes to shipwreck survival, there will be a key tip of "do not abandon the boat easily unless absolutely necessary". This tip is a summary of the lessons learned from blood, including crises such as surface impact, loss of temperature, search and rescue difficulties, and marine life.
Jumping into the water is not that simple
The Chinese diving team has won many international competitions, and this has led to more and more people coming into the swimming pool to learn the sport. I believe that friends who have been in contact with this type of sport will know the hardships of training, to get on the diving platform needs to include water sense, balance, water skills and other pre-training. These trainings are to protect the lives of diving personnel. If the diving height is more than 5 meters, without systematic training, it will cause damage to the cornea, cervical vertebrae, spleen, and even the loss of life.
Marine vessels have different draught lines because of different load weights, but most of them have a drop of more than 5 meters between the deck and the sea. Scientists have calculated through various models that the acceleration of people in the water is proportional to the area of the body and the height of the water, and if you want to reduce the impact force you must reduce the area of the water.
Assuming that the athlete weighs 60kg, jumping into the water from a height of 10 meters, the impact energy can instantly reach 6000 joules! We may not have a concept of this number, we make an analogy, the normal weight of the adult punch energy is about 1.875 joules, converted to the body into the water when the body seems to be hit by 3000 fists!
Therefore, when the shipwreck diving this move is very dangerous, professional athletes can not easily try, diving queen Guo Jingjing training at the age of 10 years old because of a fracture of the leg into the water error, nearly said goodbye to the diving project, think about the loss of a diving genius because of this accident, really let people afraid!
Insomnia is even scarier
The water temperature of the sea varies between 2°C and 30°C with latitude and depth, where the sea surface temperature is sometimes slightly above 30°C during the day, for a negligible duration. At night, the seawater temperature will drop rapidly to below 10℃, and hypothermia will be inevitable.
Let's go back to the science of what is dysthermia. The body's temperature changes due to the external environment and its own circulatory system, most commonly when it is cold intolerant in a starving state or freezing in winter due to poor warmth. Scientific experiments have shown that when the body's core temperature falls below 35°C, dysthermia begins to appear.
When the body's core temperature drops by 1-2°C, numbness in the hands and shivering in the body will occur. This phenomenon is the initial stage of dysthermia and can be relieved by slightly increasing warmth or by consuming food with a temperature higher than the body temperature. When the body temperature drops to 32℃, cell metabolism stops, accompanied by the organs stop working and die after a period of time.
This phenomenon is the main cause of death in case of shipwreck, even more terrible than asphyxiation. The buoyancy of the sea will hold a person out of the water, and direct suffocation is not often the case; it is often the hypothermia before nightfall that leads to death.
Just in October 2021, a fishing boat sank in the East China Sea, and the East China Sea Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Transport was the first to rescue it, successfully finding the two crew members in less than 10 hours. The 2 crew members then became unconscious due to hypothermia and quickly regained consciousness after drinking hot water.
Search and rescue when the human target is too small
When the human body floats on the surface, the exposed part is not much, even with a life jacket, only one-fifth of the body above the water. We use the sea surface search and rescue "small target king" helicopter as an example, according to the "helicopter search and rescue plan scientific development analysis" of the data, the daytime flight height standard is 100 meters. That is to say, the need to find a basketball-sized target in the seawater 100 meters away, not to mention the impact of waves and weather.
In 2014, the South Korean cruise ship "Shiyue" sank, search and rescue helicopters did not rescue many passengers who fell into the water, the final result is sadly regrettable.
Sharks and killer whales
Often shipwrecks occur far from the mainland, where a large number of carnivorous animals live and will come to hunt once they find a bloody smell. Sharks, for example, can smell blood a kilometer away, and if the body of the person who fell into the water for help has a wound, then the consequences are unthinkable.
A case occurred in the most tragic naval battle of World War II in the Pacific. The American cruiser USS Indianapolis was on her way to deliver nuclear bomb parts to Tannen Island when she was attacked by the Japanese Navy. The Indianapolis was soon torpedoed in two and 1,200 American sailors were killed or put overboard. The blood quickly attracted hundreds of sharks and within four days nearly 100 men were killed by sharks in what became a sad song in U.S. naval history.
Review of the Titanic tragedy
On April 2, 1912, Britain's largest and most luxurious passenger ship "Titanic" launched, the world's attention at that time, this huge ship full of 2224 crew and passengers cruise ship destination is the United States New York, because of the huge displacement and leading technology, no one would think that this is a journey without return.
On the night of April 14, the Titanic struck an iceberg, triggering a break in the ship's hull, after which the ship sank to the bottom and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in less than three hours. The disaster resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people.
The accident led directly to the development of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) by the International Maritime Organization. The convention requires the height of the cruise ship deck guardrails to be raised, which is 1.3-1.4 meters as you can see now, and it is believed that many people will have difficulty in overturning under the swaying waves of the sea. In addition, the distress system also made a request, divided into automatic and semi-automatic distress system, replacing the previous manual distress way. The main thing is the hard requirement of lifeboats, the Titanic only 20 lifeboats, is the most important reason for the death of passengers, the requirements of modern ships is 1.25 life-saving positions per capita!
In today's world of maritime safety and advances in the boat building industry, there are still countless maritime disasters, each of which can represent the loss of life and the breakup of families. Not jumping overboard in case of a shipwreck is only one part of the safety knowledge, there are more things we need to know to protect ourselves and our families in the future.
Author: Old Time Dreaming Primary Reviewer: Ding Child Proofreader: W
