
Pisces III: A dramatic underwater rescue - groundCode
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23862359
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asciimo
It's amazing that, in the right context, curling up in a fetal position and
remaining very quiet can seem heroic. I'm sure that Hollywood will add some
embellishments in their retelling: [http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/jude-
law-ewan-mcgregor-lin...](http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/jude-law-ewan-
mcgregor-linked-to-cumbrian-man-s-sub-rescue-film-1.1081252)

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cup
This is incredibly terrifying and at the same time a testament to mans desire
to live and ingenuity to survive.

I wonder what OH&S would think about the situatin today.

~~~
marvin
This was in the 1970s, a time when there was a lot of pioneer work in subsea
exploration and technology. Researchers and companies were really pushing the
envelope of what was possible to do under water. OH&S today would give most
companies an F for their safety procedures. A lot of workers died and suffered
permanent injury during these years.

On the other hand, this was all unknown territory. A lot of the knowledge
regarding safety under water hadn't been discovered yet. In contrast to the
space exploration of the 1960s, the private companies exploring the sea bottom
didn't have the budget to put safety first. Research into the biological
effects of unfamiliar breathing gases and decompression was focused
exclusively on survival, not long-term sustainability. Etc. Even governments
were implicitly pushing for quick development, as large parts of this
exploration was a gold rush. The judicial considerations about to whom
resources belonged, were to a large extent determined by the technological
capability to harvest them. An example is the oil pipeline from the North Sea
to West Norway, which was built in terrain which was at the time "impossibly
deep" to work in. For the Norwegian government, building this pipeline was a
key move in getting the ability to sell their oil on the open market.

The modern notion of workplace safety was to a large extent developed during
these years. In Europe, the Norwegian offshore unions and the then-new Law of
Work Environments (Arbeidsmiljøloven) were instrumental in this development.
Even today, these initiatives are among the most strict in the industrialized
world when it comes to questions of workplace safety.

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jere
>I wasn't in the best condition anyway as I had just suffered three or four
days food poisoning from a horrible meat and potato pie.

>"It turned out it was the Queen Elizabeth II, which had altered its course
from America to stand station with us in response to the mayday. But because
it was so formal, we'd assumed it was the Queen. Then the message came 'sorry
boys, wrong lady'."

This is why I love reading/listening to the BBC.

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greenyoda
This article has a pretty good picture of what a Pisces submersible looks
like:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisces_class_DSV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisces_class_DSV)

And this reference from the above article shows a cut-away diagram of the
vehicle, with people inside so you can get a sense of the size of the crew
compartment:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=1X1hL2LFT0AC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA...](http://books.google.com/books?id=1X1hL2LFT0AC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=rescue+of+Pisces+III+submarine&source=bl&ots=HM7zS7E4Eb&sig=Uv5Z3LxSvFt5x-sb9WsPuc48bLk&hl=en&ei=QV_2TM-
sN9K1ngeu6ZijCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rescue%20of%20Pisces%20III%20submarine&f=false)

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mckoss
Do you really need a submersible to lay cable? Could be they have on an
espionage mission to tap someone else's cable?

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aaron695
> the men had only 12 minutes of oxygen left when they were finally rescued

Jesus, you seriously think we'd believe it's been 3 days then it goes down to
12 mins to death.

Life is not hollywood, please stop trying to make it that. It's kinda
interesting as it is.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's a direct quote from one of the survivors:

> _" We had 72 hours of life support when we started the dive so we managed to
> eke out a further 12.5 hours. When we looked in the cylinder, we had 12
> minutes of oxygen left," says Chapman._

~~~
mikeash
Sometimes unusual coincidences like that actually happen. Improbable doesn't
mean impossible.

I'm reminded of the first time I watched Das Boot. I knew very little about
the movie going in, aside from the fact that it was considered a classic. I
enjoyed it a great deal, but thought they overdid it with some of the
obviously artificial drama. Afterwards I was surprised to find that the stuff
I thought was obviously fake had actually happened to the real submarine the
story was based on.

