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Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

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Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#101

Post by rtkwe »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #69
beastman82 wrote: post #65

Tldr; fetal position

I don't understand how you can stay in the foetal position while floating. Even face-up foetal (without a mask) seems very likely to be stressful.

He had a buoyancy compensation device, pretty much a life jacket with adjustable buoyancy, so he'd wind up in the HELP position like this. Fetal but head held above water by the PFD.

https://www.boatus.org/assets/img/cold-water/help-individual...

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#102

Post by darpa_escapee »

ckdarby wrote: post #5

Why do people attempt suicide after this sort of ordeal? Is there any reasoning or studies that talk about this?

You get to choose how and when to die instead of slowly becoming delerious and dying in tremendous pain from starvation/dehydration.

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#103

Post by jandrese »

jlgaddis wrote: post #94
wellboy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

72 days straight means without sleep?

According to Wikipedia [0]: > ... the holder of the scientifically documented record for the longest a human has intentionally gone without sleep ... stayed awake for 264.4 hours (11 days 25 minutes). So I'm gonna guess "no", it doesn't mean "without sleep". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_(record_holder)

That sounds insanely dangerous. People often get brain damage from staying awake that long.

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#104

Post by oh_sigh »

jeffhuys wrote: post #54
joevandyk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salt water is buoyant. If you know how to float, it doesn’t take much energy.

Some people simply cannot float. Me included. I've had 3 different instructors try to tell and show me that everyone can float. I can't. I have 5 swimming certificates, I'm fit, but I think I just don't have enough body fat? Even in the Red Sea (if it's called that in English) I can't float. Not for more than 5 seconds.

My friend claimed he couldn't float . And it appeared he couldnt when he tried. But I put my full mask scuba mask on him and magically he could float. My theory is that he was craning his beck when his face got closeish to water, messing with his form

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#105

Post by sehugg »

aslushnikov wrote: post #8

This reminds me about Stanislav Kurilov [1], who successfully escaped USSR by jumping off the cruise ship with a snorkeling mask and swimming for the following 2.5 days towards Philippines. He wrote an interesting book called "Alone In The Ocean" [2] where he described his endeavor. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HYLLOZ2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Also reminds me of the ex-football player in South Florida that was knocked off his boat by a wave and swam 16 hours to shore: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-dolphins-player-robert-k...

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#106

Post by tomc1985 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #45
tomc1985 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also float in seawater in the fetal position. Your head will be below water but it is easy to come up for air periodically.

> You can also float in seawater in the fetal position. Your head will be below water but it is easy to come up for air periodically. Easy to periodically come up, like, every 30 seconds? 3240 times in a row?

Well if you stay calm its more like once a minute or two. When I learned the technique they forced us to stay in the water like this for half an hour, it does kind of suck after a while.

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#107

Post by tomc1985 »

honest_george wrote: post #47
tomc1985 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also float in seawater in the fetal position. Your head will be below water but it is easy to come up for air periodically.

How much heat would you lose by submerging your head and neck, versus how much would you gain by keeping the fetal position? I'm not sure if that's a positive tradeoff.

Keep in mind fetal position requires almost no effort to maintain.

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#108

Post by 8_hours_ago »

ptaipale wrote: post #56
thorin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in this topic, watch this film based on a true story about an Icelander who survived at sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_(2012_film)

That man must be an interesting sample for the research of human physiology.

And they did study him!

Article about it in New Scientist: https://books.google.com/books?id=rYIJJP7audkC&lpg=PA26&dq=g...

Here's the study "Exceptional case of survival in cold water": http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/292/6514/171.2.full.pdf

They immersed him in 5.3C water for 83 minutes, and only stopped the experiment because of discomfort in his feet. His temperature only dropped by about 1C.

Re: Surviving 75 hours alone in the ocean

#110

Post by prawks »

kwindla wrote: post #13

An Australian on a surf trip a few years ago fell off a boat in the Mentawais and survived 27 hours with no flotation help. 75 hours in cold water is crazy, but the diver didn't have to keep himself afloat. I find it almost unbelievable that it's possible to swim and tread water -- even in warm salt water -- for 27 hours. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/alone-lost-overb... https://stabmag.com/news/missing…

Marathon swimmers swim 20+ hours depending on the swim.
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