Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [90]
One of the divers exploring the Princess Anne that day was Scott Stich, thirty-four. Stich was a healthy, experienced diver. He had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Then he had gone to law school and started practicing real-estate law at a firm in West Palm Beach, where he lived with his wife. With the rest of the group, named The Scuba Club, Stich descended into the water to check out the hulking wreck of the Princess Anne.
Each year, about a hundred people die in scuba accidents in North America. That is not a big number, when you consider that there are at least a million divers in all. But the deaths are complicated in interesting ways. Scuba diving is a uniquely claustrophobic experience: the diver’s nose is covered and he or she cannot breathe into it, which can, in some people, feel very similar to suffocation. In one survey of 254 scuba divers, 54 percent said they had experienced panic at least once while diving. Dive sites become a laboratory for human behavior under stress.
At about 9:00 A.M., with no warning, the other divers saw Stich—then about seventy feet underwater—rip his air regulator out of his mouth for no apparent reason. The regulator contains the mouthpiece, air gauges, and tubes that connect with the air tank. It is essential. Another diver frantically tried to push the regulator back into his mouth. But Stich wouldn’t take it. He seemed adamant that he’d made the right decision, even as his face began to turn blue. Then, unable to breathe, he slipped into unconsciousness in the dark water. The dive master raised him to the surface and performed CPR. But he was pronounced dead shortly afterward. The regulator was found to be in fine working condition. At such a shallow depth, it was extremely unlikely that Stich had suffered from nitrogen narcosis—a state of mental impairment also called “rapture of the deep.” The Palm Beach County medical examiner found that Stich died as a result of drowning. There was no evidence of equipment failure or malfunction, nor of any other natural disease, traumatic injury, or alcohol or drug use. Stich had been diving since he was twelve, and his equipment was less than six months old.
Why would any human being willfully abandon his oxygen source at the bottom of the ocean? Deep in the darkness of the sea, an equipment malfunction can, needless to say, rapidly escalate into terror. But sometimes there doesn’t even need to be an equipment malfunction. Every so often, all over the world, divers are found dead with plenty of air in their tanks.
At the exercise-psychology lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, William Morgan spent decades studying diving deaths. About 60 percent were attributed to health, environmental, or equipment problems. But the remaining 40 percent were usually classified as “unexplained.” The more he looked, the more mysteries Morgan found. Sometimes divers didn’t stop at ripping out their own regulator; sometimes they also forcibly grabbed the regulator out of the mouth of the person next to them.
It turns out that similar “freak” accidents occur among firefighters, who are on occasion found dead with their oxygen tanks in good working order. In Kansas City, Missouri, one firefighter crawled into a burning room just as the fire rolled across the ceiling. In the midst of this inferno, the firefighter stood up and ripped off his respirator, searing his lungs. His captain tackled him and dragged him out of the fire. The firefighter suffered severe burns but survived.
Panic is the leading cause of deaths among divers overall. Certain people experience an intense feeling of suffocation when their noses are covered. They respond to that overwhelming sensation by relying on their instinct, which is to rip out whatever is covering their airway. For the vast majority of human experiences, that would work. For scuba divers and firefighters, unfortunately, it is their oxygen source.
So which people tend to rip out their oxygen source? Is there any way to predict this behavior? Morgan invited