Drowning, sinking, biting, stupid heroes

[Kevrumbo]

So here’s a little ditty from last year. It’s not reall meant for critique altho feel free to do so. It’s more about ego and complacency.

. . .
Thanks,
John

Hubris -whether a learned Nuclear Physicist or an accomplished "DIR Practitioner" Diver. . . Hopefully you live & learn from your mistakes.

Tickling the Dragon and the Blue Flash

The first term above is a metaphor that refers to experimenting by careful trial and error how many and what configuration of Tungsten Carbide "tamper" bricks will reflect back enough neutrons to make a bomb core Plutonium-239 fissile sphere just barely go critical as that in a controlled self-sustaining nuclear reactor. The second term above is what happens when you accidentally and grossly overshoot with the core going "prompt critical" --the instantaneous extreme high intensity radiation that is generated actually ionizes the electrons off the Nitrogen molecules in Air surrounding the Plutonium Core and brick pile with the characteristic color of the Blue Flash: if you're standing in close proximity right next to this catastrophic event, you will die an excruciatingly painful slow death by radiation exposure & poisoning within a few weeks.

Back when the final A-bomb assembly was literally a handmade, artisan product, "Tickling the Dragon", by the original Physicists of the WWII Atomic Bomb Manhattan Project, was akin to making an "eight-story House-of-Cards": you had to be focused, alert and stone sober. (Today this is never done manually up close on a workbench, but by remote control some quarter of a mile distance away). Scientist Harry Krikor Daghlian, "by the end of the war had tickled the dragon so many times that he was at that dangerous point where experience and confidence were so extreme, there was no need to be careful . . .as an Experimental Physicist of the Critical Assembly Group, he did not have the ignorance to be terrified of his tasks."

On August 21 1945, just six days after Japan surrendered to end WWII, Daghlian went back to the lab around 930pm knowing it was against regulations to perform a criticality experiment without an assistant and certainly forbidden to do so after hours. Thirty minutes later, after building a five stack house of Tungsten Carbide bricks around the core, while holding and slowly lowering the top brick in his left hand to cap the structure --he was suddenly startled by the increased sound of the neutron radiation counters through the loudspeakers, and jerked the brick away from the pile, but lost his grip. The Security Guard sitting twelve feet away with his back to the assembly heard the increased neutron counters chatter through the loudspeaker then suddenly go quiet (overloaded & off-scale), along with the clunk of the brick landing atop the pile; and saw the Blue Flash light up the wall in front of him. He amazingly survived.

"Daghlian had caused a problem, and every instinct told him to erase the problem. With his right hand, he knocked off the brick on top of the assembly, glowing a pretty blue, and noticed the tingling sensation of direct sensory neuron excitation. . . He stood there, arms limp by his sides, coming to grips with what had just happened. He decided to dismantle the pile of bricks and calmly told the Security Guard what had occurred. . ."

"Daghlian's right hand endured a high dose of x-rays, gamma rays and high speed neutrons, somewhere on the order of 20,000 to 40,000 rem -it essentially turned necrotic and died two days later; his left hand around 5,000 to 15,000 rem as the brick hit the pile. His body absorbed 590 rem: A fatal dose inducing radiation sickness is usually around 1,000 rem. He slipped into a coma and expired 25 days later, the first victim of acute radiation poisoning to die in history's first mini-disaster of nuclear fission out-of-control." [abridged & taken from Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns & Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima, by Jim Mahaffey].
Harry Daghlian - Wikipedia

 

[InTheDrink]

Guess point I was making was this was a CF of a week. I had personal issues going on so my risk tolerance was higher altho I did question seriously the profile of the kit recovery dive and was right. Thankfully no one got hurt. And truth be told like anything where you manage to get out, it was fun in the end.

But I’ve never dived as risky before or since but there you go, perhaps we can all have moments of madness and stupid complacency.

FWIW, and this is terrible, our decisions to dive (briefly) on PPO2s of 2.0+ were somewhat informed by the poor lad that died on the RB80 on the wrong mix and did an hour at 3.0 before he toxed. It made us feel like 2.0 for 10 mins would probably be fine.

Not sure what lesson to take from that apart from if every message is too conservative then you stop believing any message.

Anyhow it was a foolish week and I thank god it turned out ok. It could have gone south at various times and it seems like ppl that should have known better just lost the run of themselves. Be aware, most of us are probably susceptible to this at some point or another. I was getting divorced at the time so I think I had a bit of a ‘**** everything’ mindset altho it didn’t feel so at the time.

Feel slightly embarrassed about the post and my actions but that’s the truth for ya.

 

[InTheDrink]

Oh and in case you didn’t guess I’m no longer GUE. Just a normal diver. Same kit similar philosophy in general just a bit more pragmatic and occasionally like on this week a lot more risky.

 

[Blasto]

Reading through the first post, I almost couldn't believe it. This is as far from DIR as you can get - in one post, there's deep air, single tank deep diving, ox-tox risks.

It didn't leave the impression of a skilled team taking calculated risks, rather that of "bought gear and self-taught" diving approach, crossing lines not knowing why they're there, getting bolder in numbers.
Glad to see you realize it was stupid; if you value your life, that's not something to repeat on a regular basis!


To be more specific as to what I'd suggest to approach differently:

1. Nothing wrong with swimming the scooter up, you can still ditch it if a problem occurs. My first thought would be to reel it up on a SMB line, but it pays to have the endurance to swim up over 40 lbs negative too.

However, if you're overweighted without weight, why not get a bigger wing? I'd even consider a dual bladder. Personally, I live by the golden rule to have at least two answers for any "how you're going to..." question. For buoyancy, that can be wing+weight ditch, wing+drysuit, wing*2.

3. 55m is diveable on air, if you're narcosis resistant, but even then it's too deep for independent diving. Especially with the limited gear you had, a team becomes more important than ever.

4. 69m on single tanks is plain insane. Any hitch and you have a casualty. I wouldn't try talking a local out of it (their attitude towards life is different), but anyone else, definitely. My buddy and myself especially.

5. I can see intentionally getting to PPO 2.0 or doing 60m on a single+pony to save a life, but a jacket? A lost piece of kit isn't an emergency. Plan a safe dive to recover it if you can, no more aggressively than usual. If you can't, weigh the value of lost equipment against the total cost of that vacation and how a chamber trip would screw it up.

 

[InTheDrink]

LIke you say about as anti DIR as possible altho I did complete my fundies. But it’s not for me. Too, err, fundamentalist. Doubtless great idea in caves etc but IMO doesn’t apply to every environment well. I get a lot of **** for having decent trim when guiding. People will doubtless disagree but it’s easier to keep an eye on guests when not horizontal in a big blue sea without a bottom.

With regards to the dives, I agree with you entirely. They were foolhardy and I wouldn’t risk them again. But there was that group think on that boat that I followed. But I’ve been on conservative boats before and asked to take newish divers on 40m penetrations on wrecks I’d never dived. Should have said no of course but sometimes the pressure from your lead guide is difficult to resist. Same with decanting O2. Easy enough but just told to get on with it without training.

I had a tough year emotionally after getting divorced so my risk tolerance was high. I’d not do those things again or would speak up louder.

But I DID those things and **** could have worked out pretty poorly for no real benefit apart from getting the free divers pulse going again. The rest was stupidity and waste.

I’m just not sure how rare this stupidity is, from various locations around the globe. The PPO2 thing would be rare I think. The rest, hmmm.

Mea culpa.

 

[Snoweman]

What is DIR? "Do It Reckless"??

 

[InTheDrink]

Sounds like a fun time, the only thing missing was alcohol.

There were a few drinks that evening

 

[InTheDrink]

What is DIR? "Do It Reckless"??

I’m not DIR or GUE. I did some training with them. GUE would doubtless disown every part of this misadventure. Which is fine.

 

[tiki_bill]

Nice troll.

 

[InTheDrink]

Nice troll.

No troll. Just how things go sometimes. SB is very conservative