questions from the movie "abyss"

[mongoose]

There are a bunch of threads of this.. basically, AFAIK, it's never been used that way on humans. The two problems I keep hearing are getting rid of CO2 fast enough and it's an incredible amount of work to breathe.

They *do* use the partially-flooded lung trick to treat certain respiratory diseases though.. but it's only for a short time and I don't think they fully flood the lungs with the liquid.

The idea is true and exists.. the movie just took the current technology and "enhanced" it a bit.. but to their credit, they (as they did with a lot of other things in the movie) didn't completely replace it with what they thought it *could* be. They made it obvious that it was difficult to breathe and couldn't do a lot of work with it.

What was great was when they locked the helmet down on Ed Harris and they held on to him for the "panic phase". IIRC, he only spazzed for a moment. I would imagine that the reaction would be substantially more violent...

Or would it? If you were getting oxygen, or more accurately, if you were offloading CO2, your body wouldn't think it was starving... but you would still have to overcome the primal fear of having your lungs fill with fluid.

As far as breathing effort, I wonder if some sort of pump could be set up, perhaps a two-way demand reg, but with fluid. As you breathe in, a pump gently flows fluid in.. as you breathe out, it gently pulls it out.

All sci-fi, of course, just ruminating.

--'Goose

 

[mike_s]

A liquid you are asking about, another one is called Florinert (sp?). It's a non coductive liquid that made by 3m that will hold oxygen originally intended as a
replacement synthetic blood. I think it was the liquid used in the abyss that
they put the rat into.

We used to use it at work to imerse our electronics boards into to keep the
cool and from overheating. (yes they got that hot).

-mike

 

[Daryl Morse]

A big problem is you can't inhale by yourself. Try it sometime. Get a drink with a straw in it, and pull it into your mouth by inhaling. You can barely do it with most stuff. (Of course, keep your tounge up like you do when snorkeling...)

To be fair, even breathing air through a straw isn't very easy. In an actual situation, you would be breathing through your mouth which is a much larger opening than a straw, albeit, fluid doesn't flow as easily as air.

Another issue, also pointed out in other threads, is that there would be difficulties with the middle ear.

 

[Daryl Morse]

What was great was when they locked the helmet down on Ed Harris and they held on to him for the "panic phase". IIRC, he only spazzed for a moment. I would imagine that the reaction would be substantially more violent...

Or would it? If you were getting oxygen, or more accurately, if you were offloading CO2, your body wouldn't think it was starving... but you would still have to overcome the primal fear of having your lungs fill with fluid.

Perhaps since you know you're not going to drown, you wouldn't panic as much in the first place. I'm sure it would be very uncomfortable filling your lungs with fluid, but if you exhaled and inhaled a full breath, your body reflexes would take over and maybe you'd get through the initial phase more quickly. It really doesn't sound like much fun, does it?

 

[lord1234]

regardless of knowing...have you never seen a student in the pool freak out? even in my first pool session with the instructor(who also happened to be training his fiance as part of our 3 person group) sitting right in front of his fiance, when he asked her to do a reg removal/retrieval she FREAKED out and bolted to the surface....he was very upset...even though both he and I were both right next to her with 2ndary's at the ready.

 

[liberato]

Apparently, the largest hurdle which needs to be overcome is a tendancy towards lung infections when the liquid respiration is withdrawn.

Yep, that is the rub. All the mice who survived total immersion later died of pneumonia. Worth the risk, I guess, with a "partial flood" product like the mentioned LiquiVent on a premie or adult with acute lung injury who will die without intervention.