Live data from Hacker News

How to Escape a Sinking Ship

wired.com

141–150 of 189 posts

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#141

The Atlantic'a piece about the sinking of the ferry Estonia contains some interesting pieces of information for anybody who might like to survive a sinking in the future. It might also put you off getting on ships. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-s...

This is an amazing read, highly recommend it if you are scrolling past

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#142
Drowning is not a pleasant way to die. I drowned as a child and lived to tell the tale, but it's not an experience I would not recommend. At all. If you've determined that you won't survive your shipwreck, you might want to consider a faster way to die.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#143
Should have been titled "How to escape the Titanic using your seer git to know everything that's going to happen down to the minute (in which case you probably wouldn't have boarded the ship at all)". But interesting anyway.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#144
post #95
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love vivid, harrowing writing like this. Despite seeing James Cameron's Titanic, I never pictured the ships themselves as being such an obstacle to survival. This makes it feel so real. It's haunting. Do you have anything more like this?

If you can accept Planes instead of Ships, Mayday is a good show that guides on through the accident investigations of plane crashes (from a short video of the crash with details removed, through the investigation process and then finally a short section on the recommendations issued)

Some people find it scary, but I find it reassuring. The investigations always show an insane number of things that had to go wrong in a very specific way for the crash to happen. No engineering is perfect and things are going to fail, but watching those things shows how effective the swish cheese safety method is for 99.999whatever% of flights that never crash.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#145
post #142

Drowning is not a pleasant way to die. I drowned as a child and lived to tell the tale, but it's not an experience I would not recommend. At all. If you've determined that you won't survive your shipwreck, you might want to consider a faster way to die.

What about burning? is it nice instead?

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in that one specific shipwreck, you were better off being female. Almost every other shipwreck went the other way[1]. [1] https://www.history.com/news/women-and-children-first-on-sin...

Without knowing how representative the 18 shipwrecks they picked are, it’s hard to know whether their conclusions are widely applicable. Also, from their research paper, some of the ships they mentioned had been torpedoed or ran aground, SIX collisions, etc. A first guess would be that men sometimes survive more than women and children simply because they were more physically able to overcome the dangerous environmen…

> If a group of average men and average women are thrown into the ocean and left to their own devices, after a few hours more men will be left just because of physical strength.

Is that true? I believe women survive longer in cold water, because on average they have a higher body fat proportion.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#147

Step 1. Don't be a man Step 2. Don't be poor. 97% of First Class women and 87% of female crew members survived the sinking of the Titanic. https://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm

It reminds me of today's Twitter. Faster way to get relevance is to be a white, rich, western woman. Most people dont like to be reminded of that inconvenient truth so let's leave Bill Burr to say it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVMmiltdp1U . As the famous saying goes: “If you are going to tell people the truth, you better be funny or else they’ll kill you.”

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#148
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same show, but it has different names: Air Crash Investigation Also (according to Wikipedia): Air Emergency (National Geographic Channel, U.S.) Air Disasters (Smithsonian Channel, U.S.) Mayday: Air Disaster (Weather Channel, U.S.)

My TV Organizer names it Mayday, hence I use that name.

Sure, and Mayday is the original name. I was simply trying to be helpful to others who might have trouble finding it.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#149
post #133

Somewhat tongue in cheek, but still some good advice here: -- Know your surroundings, specifically where your exits are. The nearest exit may be behind you. -- Break the rules. Officials may try to deter you from using passages, ladders or stairwells. Ignore them. If you need to kick open a door or pick a lock, do it. -- Be where the well-connected people are, and look/act the part. Try to blend into the tribe, be a…

> They won't be able to do it if you still have your briefcase, or haven't taken off your shoes as requested. I strongly believe the training to get the plane evacuated in 90 seconds includes a bunch of people doing exactly this.

Better to train realistic scenarios, and there will always people who do unhelpful things. Doesn't mean you should feel free to add yourself to that list. :)

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1 don’t be poor. (Most poor died by default.) Step 2 don’t be a man.

According to the resource linked to, third class women had a higher survival rate than first class men. Not that it would necessarily turn out that way now.

> Not that it would necessarily turn out that way now.

I doubt it would, and that is a good thing. The whole “women and children” thing was part of the whole “women are weak creatures that need to be looked after and protected like children” mentality.

Post reply on HN