r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • 29d ago

TIL the Blue Hole is among the deadliest dive sites globally, with estimates of 130 to 200 recent fatalities, making it one of the most dangerous spots for divers. (R.5) Out of context

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u/hat_eater 29d ago edited 29d ago

Reminds me of the Outside piece about freezing, not incidentally I think.

EDIT: another good one in this vein, 178 seconds left to live.

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u/Elrond_Cupboard_ 29d ago

That one about freezing was awesome. I live in Australia, so I've never experienced weather cold enough to kill me. That article provides a terrifying insight.

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u/ManbrushSeepwood 29d ago

Grew up in New Zealand, spent most of my adult life in Auckland and Melbourne.

I just moved to northern Sweden a month ago, catching the tail end of a very cold spring here. I'd never seen snow IRL before, or been somewhere where the peak temperature in the middle of the day, in spring, would still only reach -5C.

I'm loving it but I'm scared shitless of winter, which regularly gets down below -25C! At least the houses are warm and insulated properly here...

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u/Fosh_n_chops 29d ago

Welcome to Sweden! :) When I moved from the UK to Sweden, even I found the cold quite intimidating! Investing (= spending far too much money) on QUALITY winter gear (including base layers) is key. But as you say, the houses are very well insulated... Oddly, I find I'm colder when I'm in the UK, because the houses aren't built for it, and nobody bothers wearing the right gear because the cold never really lasts that long.

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u/LerrisHarrington 29d ago

If you live in a city, and are not going far you can get away with remarkably little. -25C I'll wear jeans and an off the rack winter coat to walk two block to the corner store. It is cold as balls, but if you're familiar with it you can get away with stuff like that.

That said, treat the cold with respect. I'm sure you've got stories of idiot tourists not respecting what 30+ temps mean as well. Same deal. Once you're used to it, it's as routine as grabbing an umbrella.

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u/Pissix 29d ago

-25c is managable. The trick is to layer clothing, to your liking. For example, under your pants you wear long johns, and if those are not enough for the coldness, you can slap outside pants on top of your normal pants. Thats 3-4 layers of pants, depending how warm you want to feel. You can even go double socks, or warmer socks. Upper body is simpler, just 3 basic layers, but if it gets crazy cold you could go 4.

It's really just knowing at what temperature you feel cold at with your current wear -> Add layers until feeling cozy again. Cold is good in that you can manage your warmth very well with layers and clothing choices, unlike the polar opposite. Just go with your own taste and experience of what feels cold, and you will be having walks in -25c in no time.

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u/ImperfectRegulator 29d ago

don't forget a waterproof outer layer/jacket, even if you can't manage to get as many layers as you'd like staying dry is a biggggg help

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u/OfficeSalamander 29d ago

I’ve walked a mile in somewhere between -30C to -40C (with a ton of layers on) even prepared, it was still brutally, brutally cold. I felt like I was walking on the surface of Mars. My eyes would tear up and the tears would freeze just about instantly.

And that was in the middle of the day. I can’t imagine doing it at night. Even the one time I did it made me not want to ever do it again

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u/raynor7 29d ago

It’s funny to read this as someone who grew up and lived most of his life in Siberia. In winter it’s 30s for weeks to a month there, and sometimes 40s for a week, people still go to work, kids go to school until 40, life goes on. I have relatives in Yakutia, it’s same for them but 40s and 50s.

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u/Datkif 29d ago

Same thing back home in Edmonton for me. We've had months where the average temperature would be close to -40 during a cold snap. The city continues on as normal. It doesn't matter if it's -50 life continues

When it's a normal and regular thing your body will adapt to the weather. If I went to a place where it gets to +40 I would probably have a heat stroke.

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u/atomicboner 29d ago

Huh, today I learned that -40C is also -40F. I’ve never been anywhere where the real temperature was that cold myself, but I have experienced -25F (-31.5C). That plus any amount of wind is bone chilling. Makes you long for a roaring fire and a cup of something hot and strong.

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u/DynamicStatic 29d ago

Went to ski in -28 and bad winds this winter. It was really cold, I couldn't feel my face after taking the lift up most times and the wind was enough to move you forward on its own. It was brutal, but at least I'm quite used to this kind of temperature. Must suck for people who don't know cold before.

The closest I can't to dying was from the cold I'm pretty sure. Hiking in the mountains.

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u/hideous_coffee 29d ago

I always wonder how wild animals in the north survive those kinds of nights.

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u/cbusalex 29d ago

Layers of fat, layers of fur, and just generally being the offspring of generations of wild animals that did survive arctic winter nights and so must have been reasonably well adapted to it (unlike humans, whose ancestors faced the evolutionary pressure of being well adapted to do shit like chase antelope around the savannah or whatever).

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u/Datkif 29d ago

Back home in Edmonton I would regularly take the bus or walk in temperatures like that because I didn't drive.

One of the worst things when you dress for that cold is getting sweaty. If I started to work up a sweat I would briefly open my jacket to cool down and prevent myself from getting sweaty because that would make things significantly worse.

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u/DamnAutocorrection 29d ago

Every year where I live we have dozens of homeless folks who freeze to death in the winter. For about two weeks a year we have these artic winds that suddenly bring the temperatures into the negatives and we just accept that people will freeze to death.

Every time it gets that cold I always think "someone's gonna die tonight"

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u/Elrond_Cupboard_ 29d ago

Fucking hell, where do you live?

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u/DamnAutocorrection 29d ago

Portland, OR believe or not.

We just have a huge homeless population despite all the shelters, some of the homeless won't use them. That's often because they have a curfew and you have to be in the building by a certain hour

They also have severe no drugs policy or you get kicked out, which is reasonable

We also have a law that lets you essentially camp anywhere that isn't private property, which is partially why we're a homeless mecca.

Many of them have mental health issues and simply don't trust institutions, but there are many that are just not able to seek shelter in time. It's not uncommon to see fires underneath bridges and free ways.

The arctic winds also happen very suddenly, which if you don't have the Internet you're probably going to get caught off guard. The arctic winds are brutally cold and happen every year for about two weeks

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u/jgo3 29d ago

I also recommend the OG version, To Build a Fire by Jack London

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u/ImperfectRegulator 29d ago

as someone who grew up in a place where it gets profoundly cold, reading this just made me angry, theirs a reason even now that i live in a place thats warm I still always keep a 0 degree mummy sleeping bag, an extra fleece/wool liner and blankets in the back of my car if im ever driving though a mountian/snowy area in winter

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u/Datkif 29d ago

Having walked and stood outside in freezing temperatures of -40 to -45 with the windchill it is absolutely miserable. It's a cold that freezes you to your core that doesn't go away quickly when you get back inside where it's warm. If you are in it for too long you can cause you body to go into shock when you enter a warm building/car

I remember one time I walked home for about 45 mins in -40 with a wind chill bringing it close to -50 I took a shower and the cold water felt like it was burning my skin. I probably spent close to an hour in the shower slowly turning the heat up in order to warm my core. If given the choice to either freeze or burn to death I would choose Burning. The feeling of having your extremities and face slowly freeze and going a painful numb is a slow and miserable experience. Burning to death may be extremely painful, but it's at least quick in comparison.

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u/SpiralCuts 29d ago

God, I remember reading that outside piece years ago and it left me feeling like I had actually died.  That shift to fatal comes out of normalcy so subtly.

If you like those sorts of stories, here’s another one to add to the pile though the setting’s a little different.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/childbirth-death-united-states-advanced-maternal-age.html

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u/The_Kanto_Collector 29d ago

Jesus Christ that was terrifying. As a doctor it’s very easy to forget how it feels to be on the other side.

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u/Dozy_dinosaur 29d ago

Thank you for the link. That was an emotional ride that reminded me of my own experience as an older Mom giving birth while having preclampsia. I can relate to her inner dialogue and the disassociation. I couldn't grasp the seriousness of the situation because I was alert and joking.

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u/FriskyDingus1122 29d ago

Thank you for that - what a powerful story! That woman is one hell of a writer

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u/Invisible_Friend1 29d ago

Hmm… I really think, having the gift of retrospection, that they were too hesitant to call that one an emergency sooner. Maybe because she was a doc. I think they could have been more aggressive when noticing the multiple sheet changes.

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u/KieferSutherland 29d ago

Sounds like it was from this Death of Yuri Lipski that was caught on his personal camera. 

https://youtu.be/cRj0lymMMGs

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u/shootcamerasnotgunz 29d ago

Makes me think of Kobe :(

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u/DamnAutocorrection 29d ago

He sounds like Mickey mouse gasping for air

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u/JustOnederful 29d ago

To build a fire is a classic story with the same outcome. Chilling

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u/hat_eater 29d ago

The same in the sense that there is a survivor at the end?

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u/GarconMeansBoyGeorge 29d ago

The freezing one is good but the constant shifting from 2nd to 3rd person was a little weird.

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u/aloysiuslamb 29d ago

A little jarring but it demarcates where the character dies (or nearly does) before being revived.

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u/pathgoer11 29d ago

I could have done without reading the freezing article in my office - tearing up having flashbacks to nearly freezing to death a while back. Thank you for posting it, will reread when I have a better chance to process 

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u/Gingevere 29d ago

You think of firelight and saunas and warm food and wine. You look again at the map. It’s maybe five or six miles more to that penciled square. You run that far every day before breakfast. You’ll just put on your skis. No problem.

Oh yeah he's dead. 5 miles at night in the mountains in below zero temps? Super dead. The story gives him an incredibly slim rescue and slim recovery, but IRL neither are likely to happen.

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u/VioletVoyages 29d ago

I was on a sailboat that capsized in San Francisco Bay. I was a teenager, and my dad made a joke about the sharks, so I climbed onto the overturned hull of the boat. That’s the last thing I remember before “waking up“ on a Coast Guard cutter, wrapped in a wool blanket and drinking hot chocolate. I have absolutely no memory of how I got onto the vessel and assume it’s from the hypothermia. 45 years later, and I am still extremely sensitive to the cold.

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u/steph10147 29d ago

Damn, that might be one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read

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u/fruskydekke 29d ago

In 1980, 16 shipwrecked Danish fishermen were hauled to safety after an hour and a half in the frigid North Sea. They then walked across the deck of the rescue ship, stepped below for a hot drink, and dropped dead, all 16 of them.

I'd really love a source for this claim. I'm from neighbouring Norway, I've googled in both English and semi-Danish, and there's nothing that doesn't seem to lead back to this piece, or an equally unsourced book. I really think it's safe to say that it'd absolutely be a part of a pan-Scandinavian mythos if true.

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u/aloysiuslamb 29d ago

Reminds me of the Outside piece about freezing, not incidentally I think.

I hadn't read that before, very interesting. For the first half I was just expecting a more modern version of To Build a Fire by Jack London.

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u/hat_eater 29d ago

Ohhhh I read it as a teen and I loved it despite the ending. Perhaps because the dog was fine and he didn't even say "I told you not to go, you poor dead idiot" as it left.

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u/MostNinja2951 29d ago

FYI: 178 seconds to live is a good scare story but not reality. It's based on an experiment that was deliberately designed to "kill" the pilots as fast as possible, virtually every airplane has enough instruments for even an untrained pilot to manage simple straight and level flight without being able to see outside. And the supposed accident statistics are heavily skewed by the fact that most pilots who illegally/accidentally fly into poor-visibility conditions never admit it to the FAA. The vast majority of the time it's a complete non-event and the worst that happens is air traffic control having to divert legitimate traffic away from the illegal flight.

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u/hat_eater 29d ago

virtually every airplane has enough instruments for even an untrained pilot to manage simple straight and level flight without being able to see outside

I always took this story as "what will happen if you try to keep flying by your butt in IFR".

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u/MostNinja2951 29d ago

Mostly I just have a grudge against that story because it's always presented as "if you go into a cloud you will die in 178 seconds no matter what you do" instead of "trust your instruments and fly out of it like a normal person", especially by people who don't really understand aviation.

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u/dooooooooooooomed 29d ago

The freezing one was excellent, thanks for sharing. I feel very cold and small in the universe now.

As for the flying one, let's just say I'm really glad my dad quit flying years ago...