Greentext

Ahhh yeah that's where I've heard it before, WTYP had an episode on that!

210 lbs will certainly keep you stuck there though

Just for what it’s worth, it looks like it was actually an equipment malfunction, not someone fucking up, that caused the accident. The company claimed the person fucked it in an attempt to cover their asses, and they were eventually found to be hiding the truth in a court of law.

No one fucked up, they finally settled on it being a mechanical failure.

Edit: the company and government fucked up, I meant to imply none of the divers fucked up.

Ouch!

And just to think, we're all gradually evolving into crabs..

They also alleged the accident was due to a lack of proper equipment, including clamping mechanisms equipped with interlocking mechanisms (which would be impossible to open while the chamber system was still under pressure), outboard pressure gauges, and a safe communication system, all of which had been held back because of dispensations by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

Fatigue may also have taken its toll on the crew, who had been working for longer than 12 hours

Builder of the rig Aker ASA's Gross Profit was 7.16B

Norway's oil and gas tax revenue soars to record $89 bln

Imagine forcing your workers into more than 12h shifts, running on 30 year old equipment, the government straight up refusing to upgrade said equipment, while making billions in profits - they don't call it gross profit for no reason....

Fuck all of this

Normally when people say this it is at least a bit of an exageration, but not in this case. That is some straight up nightmare fuel.

Heres a taster for those of you who don't want to read the whole thing.

...bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen...

Let's convert to metric so we can tell.

15 ft is about 5 m.

Water pressure increases by 10,000 pa per meter (rhogh, rho=1000 kg/m^3, g~10m/s^2), so total pressure is 50 kpa, or 1/2 earth atmospheric pressure.

One side of that hole has ambient pressure of 1 atm. The other side has that plus water pressure totalling 1.5 atm.

A pressure is just an energy density. Multiply by the cross-sectional area of the interface to get the energy gradient across the interface. An energy gradient is a force. We don't have a measure of the cross-sectional area of the hole, but if we expect a person to fit through let's call it 1m^2.

50 kpa = 50 kJ/m^3, so total force felt across this opening is 50kN which is the equivalent weight of five metric tons.

Size of the hole absolutely matters. If it's only the size of a fist (10cm x 10cm) then instead of 5 metric tons it's only 50 kg of equivalent weight, or about the weight of a person and easily survivable.

from the wiki

Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door. With the escaping air and pressure, gross dismemberment ensued; it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance from the bell, with one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.

Soup indeed.

It depends on the size of the opening. If it's small that's no problem. You could block a 1 inch pipe at 10psi with your bare hand and be largely fine. It's a little less than 10 pounds of force assuming a round opening.

The problem is that the total force scales geometrically with the size of the opening. Make it two feet wide at the same 10psi and now you've got about 4500 pounds of force trying to push you though that opening should you find yourself in the unfortunate situation that it's been completely blocked by your body.