Wake up call from a past story

[Doubler]

Life is a risk from the time you came out of the womb. Someone on this thread stated that Scuba Diving is the most dangerous sport in the world. I strongly disagree. Try Base jumping, free climbing, bull riding and sky diving for starters. I'm in my 60's and have been diving for 40 years, done some real stupid stuff in my youth that I look back on with the "what were we thinking" point of view now. If you live your life fearing everything you are not living. Nothing wrong with a good dose of common sense, you won't catch me diving with Oceanic Whitetips, but I won't stop diving because of fear of the unknown. That would be robbing myself of the beauty I see every time I dive.

 

[ScubaSteve]

If you live your life fearing everything you are not living.

A wise man once said:

"If you are not living life on the edge you are taking up too much space."

Well not so much a wise man as it was me . It applies in many aspects of life. Some people understand it to imply recklessness is required to enjoy life. This is not the case at all. I am a rather cautious individual but do not live my life in fear of what might happen. I enjoy life but watch for and try to understand the risks I am faced with.

 

[elan]

Scuba diving is very dangerous. You're in an environment where the laws of physics and your whole perception of the world is turned vasty on it's head. It's something completely alien to what you will ever experience aside from a space w

Nope the laws are not turned on its head they are the same and the perception is the same. The only difference is that the density of the surrounding media is way higher and you cannot breath the surrounding media to satisfy your needs for oxygen and co2 venting.

On the surface you essentially behave like a super overweight object. Its easier to move as your muscles are only developed to overcome atmospheric media density. Winds are currents. Etc etc.

 

[g1138]

Nope the laws are not turned on its head they are the same and the perception is the same. The only difference is that the density of the surrounding media is way higher and you cannot breath the surrounding media to satisfy your needs for oxygen and co2 venting.

On the surface you essentially behave like a super overweight object. Its easier to move as your muscles are only developed to overcome atmospheric media density. Winds are currents. Etc etc.

Well being completely politically correct, yes the laws of physics don't actually change. Let me rephrase myself. The physics of the world as you normally perceive it are greatly shifted. Better?
I still stand by my perception of the world phrase. No where on land can you have full mobility in all directions.

 

[elan]

Well being completely politically correct, yes the laws of physics don't actually change. Let me rephrase myself. The physics of the world as you normally perceive it are greatly shifted. Better?
I still stand by my perception of the world phrase. No where on land can you have full mobility in all directions.

Well you can, you just need to use a buoyancy compensator aka balloon with enough lightweight gas (hydrogen, hot air etc) to compensate your being overweight in the media (aka air) , Its absolutely the same principle. It works the same way underwater if you put huge amount of lead and then use your BC for compensating. On OC you have an advantage of changing the buoyancy with your lungs that's probably the only difference. However the re-breather folks with closed loop will have to use their "BC baloons" to manage the buoyancy just like underwater Montgolfier brothers

 

[Jan Kruger]

I agree with all the above comments such as

What you CAN do is manage risk. The statistics show that diving is actually rather remarkably safe, if just a few simple things are true. YOU have control over your body weight and fitness level. YOU have control over your gas supply, the planning and monitoring thereof. YOU have the ability to do a risk assessment for a given dive, and make sure it fits YOUR level of training and experience. And YOU can make sure your diving skills are solid, and that your emergency procedures are practiced regularly.

and

Train and Practice your learned skills, repeatedly for your entire diving career.

etc.

I also am in the age group of the early 50 's but let me tell you - without being able to be a regular diver, my otherwise wonderful life would definitaly be very bleak
and normal . The diving part of my life gives me the abiliy to be in the clouds while i am diving - i treasure it and i dive regularly as do all the divers that enjoy it and take it seriously... Investing in diving , quality gear & training is one of the best decisions i have ever made !

I should have started scuba diving at an early age. Enjoy it !

 

[fjpatrum]

I had a customer come into my business today who is The Reverend at a local church. We some how got on the topic of scuba diving when she brought up a man that helps out at their church that is disabled. She said some 15 years ago he had got the bends from diving and now has severe issues with walking, needing a walker to walk, and even some issues being able to function daily. Then she proceeded to tell me that another man who goes to their church in his early 50s who had a career in diving and underwater inventions had passed underwater due to a heart attack and left 2 young kids behind.

WOw. what a wake up call! I had just got done diving last weekend and the week before that. I am a new diver with 20 dives under my belt who wants to proceed with advanced training and maybe go on after that. This really puts a new perspective on things for me. It seems that this sport really has some risks involved and should be taken very seriously. It just makes me nervous to jump all in hearing these stories. What is your perspective on this...

If you weren't aware of the risks before you started then you should definitely read more and decide if diving is still for you. Other than that, it's all a matter of personal risk tolerance and safety management.

 

[davidbaraff]

Want to cut your risk in half? Here's a simple one: don't run out of air. There was a great thread that showed that nearly half of all incidents had, as their triggering incident, running out of air.

I don't have a lot of dives under my belt compared to some (I should hit my 100th in August, after 3 years of diving), but for the life of me (pun intended) I really don't get how people get in a situation where they don't know how much air they have. I can tell you continuously throughout my dive how much air I have (in terms of PSI) and how long its going to last given my current situation (thanks to my air-integrated computer). The idea of getting low on air, other than through a total equipment malfunction, is on the low, low end of the list of things that might go wrong (for me).

So there, my risk of having something bad happen to me is now half of what it is for the general population.

So if you're someone who dives so that running out of air is a very low probability event, you've cut your risk in half too. And then you can keep going: dive smart in other respects, and you'll reduce the risk even further.

As everyone points out, you can't reduce the risk to zero, but everything in life is risky. If you read enough incident reports, they seem to fall into a pattern:
(1) Purely medical things. Not much you can do about them, other than stay fit. Yes, having a heart attack on dry land you probably have a better chance at survival than having one in the water, but I'm not wasting my time worrying about that one.
(2) Purely stupid things. ["Jon Doe was on his first night dive. It was also his first cold water dive. And the first time he was using a dry suit." I'm not making this one up: I saw it in a DAN publication. Are you that dumb? Of course not: see, here's a bunch of risks that you've reduced 'cause you're not an idiot.]
(3) The outliers --- things you just can't do anything about.

No sense in worrying about (3). That's life, no matter what you do. Focus on (2), and make sure you stay nicely active so in a pinch, you've got the extra physical capacity you need should something extraordinary happen. There -- now you're part of the low risk category too.

 

[DandyDon]

I see that many cars are now being sold with spare tires as add-on options, not included - some not available.

No, no one should run out of air. I wouldn't carry a camera for my first hundred dives as I wanted my left hand dedicated to holding my console to help remind me to look at my spg often. I am still not a fan of newbies with cameras.

Anyway, if you and your buddy never screw up, then you probly will never need to use a pony. With life being real and buddies varying, I wouldn't leave home without it.

 

[AfterDark]

Nobody gets out alive. What counts is how you live. You'll be just as dead after a boring life as you will after an exciting and adventurous life.