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How to Escape a Sinking Ship

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Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#91

Post by seanmcdirmid »

radlad wrote: post #87
nucleardog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In everyday life, I definitely notice that people do not take say, fire alarm seriously and act quickly enough. Don't be a deer caught in the spotlight, forge your own path and take these things seriously your life may depend on it (even if its 1% chance that that alarm is a real one). Problem with things like fire alarms is they go off _so_ often, yet are almost never a true alarm. In my experience, it's not even…

Is there a better alternative?

The effectiveness of any information source is only as good as its signal to noise ratio. Given a bad S/N, the alarm system is simply not effective. Reduce the noise.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#92

Post by zaarn »

nucleardog wrote: post #84
JimTheMan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember being in Anson, when it was reported a Korean Ferry going to Jeju hit a rock and started taking on water. The captain reported on the radio," everyone stay put." and for the most part they did, even while the captain was escaping the ship. 299 people drowned that day, many of them the local school in Anson. I remember walking past the highschool that very night and seeing the crowd of the bereaved. If more…

> In everyday life, I definitely notice that people do not take say, fire alarm seriously and act quickly enough. Don't be a deer caught in the spotlight, forge your own path and take these things seriously your life may depend on it (even if its 1% chance that that alarm is a real one). Problem with things like fire alarms is they go off _so_ often, yet are almost never a true alarm. In my experience, it's not even…

It's not my experience with fire alarms that they go off without reason at all. Common for apartment buildings is someone smoking under the detector (more often than you think and often they don't realize it they caused the alarm).

I've worked at places that take fire alarms (or chemical hazard alarms) very seriously. If they triggered without proper cause, an investigation was always launched to prevent future false alarms. Because otherwise, hundreds of people can die the one day the alarm goes off for real. They have less than 1 false alert over 5 years.

My father is a licensed fire safety advisor and I've taken a course on fire- and sound-safety during my bachelor thesis. When things go wrong here, people get hurt, hence every alarm should be taken seriously and false alarms need to be prevented at any cost.

I would also point out, if you're sitting in the passenger cabin and water comes up to your ankles, it is likely to late to run. Same for fire coming from under your apartment door. That's why we have alarms.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#93

Post by _Microft »

dheera wrote: post #74
gfxgirl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow your instinct like a child would? Every child I know would just freeze and cry for mom.

More like follow your instinct like a cat would.

You mean ... tensing up and inching closer to the perceived threat? ;)

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#94

Post by aaron695 »

"How to Escape a Sinking Ship and Live"

Jump off your small boat.

Teach your kids previously to swim well and learn to remove their clothing while in the water and all the other techniques of water safety like treading and floating. Have life jackets and EPIRB etc.

For the unlikely chance it's a big ship, it's probably a ferry in a developing country. Again, escape is probably not as important as what to do after jumping off.

For the very unlikely chance you are deep in the bowels of a ship. It's normal escape procedure. Follow instructions

If you want to beat follow instructions, you are training for a very unlikely event but it would go to other case studies, you need to break with pre-trained ideas.

For instance in one fire most people died because they delayed to pay for their meal. But then there's plenty more stories of people doing runners after false alarms. So you might survive that one in 100,000 event, but at what cost.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#95

Post by zaarn »

echelon wrote: post #73
mauvehaus wrote: post #22

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...

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)

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#96

Post by spicyramen »

smogcutter wrote: post #65
secabeen wrote: post #13

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…

>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. I learned this lesson on 9/11, as a high school student in lower Manhattan. We were told to sit in our homerooms and wait, while smoke (and god knows what else) enveloped the building. Eventually we were shuffled out of the building and told to keep going nor…

Having lived in Mexico City in the 80s till 2000s, there is 3 simple rules during earthquakes: don't run, don't yell, don't push. When you feel a strong one, the fourth rule is don't follow the first three and save your life. That saved mine in 1985

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#98

Post by yread »

smogcutter wrote: post #65
secabeen wrote: post #13

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…

>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. I learned this lesson on 9/11, as a high school student in lower Manhattan. We were told to sit in our homerooms and wait, while smoke (and god knows what else) enveloped the building. Eventually we were shuffled out of the building and told to keep going nor…

Related story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla#September_11,_20...

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#99

Post by jabl »

smogcutter wrote: post #76
orev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a situation like that, you only have a choice between really bad options. If everyone ran for the door, people would likely have been hurt or killed due to trampling. If everyone panics, you are guaranteed to have a bad outcome. In your case, staying in place might have allowed the dust to (literally) settle by the time you left the building. Obviously the people in the 2nd tower had a different outcome.

Like I said, I understand why they did what they did. That doesn’t make it the right call. The point is that they didn’t know what to do, so they defaulted to doing nothing. > In your case, staying in place might have allowed the dust to (literally) settle by the time you left the building. It didn’t.

Sure, there are high-profile cases like 9/11 or the (discussed yesterday(?) on HN) Grenfell Towers fire where getting the hell out ASAP is your best option.

But the usual instructions by the authorities for a fire in a high-rise is the correct action in the vast majority of cases. That is, close doors and windows, put some damp clothes under the door, stay put and wait for the fire department. Correctly designed and built high-rises are pretty well compartmentalized, and the probability of you succumbing to the heat and noxious fumes in the stairwell if you try to escape, is a lot higher than the probability that the fire department is not able to quickly bring the fire under control.

Re: How to Escape a Sinking Ship

#100

Post by hef19898 »

smogcutter wrote: post #65
secabeen wrote: post #13

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…

>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. I learned this lesson on 9/11, as a high school student in lower Manhattan. We were told to sit in our homerooms and wait, while smoke (and god knows what else) enveloped the building. Eventually we were shuffled out of the building and told to keep going nor…

That's the tricky part. Official safety rules are there for a reason, that is because by the best knowledge they work. 9/11 was special because nobody expected the towers to go down. The Sewol was man-made disaster. In most other cases, following orders as a passenger and official safety rules will safe your life. It will also maximize the number of lives saved.

And even if authorities don't necessarily know more than you, they do have the necessary training and procedures. Something simple bystanders don't have.

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