- A clip from an old episode of the TV show “Mythbusters” has resurfaced on Twitter.
- Account @ChudsOfTikTok posted the clip as a comparison of what happened on the Titan submersible.
- But what is shown in the video clip is under extremely different circumstances from the lost sub.
Typical diving suits are pressurized so the diver doesn’t have to worry about decompression sickness when they resurface.
But if something goes wrong with the suit’s pressurization, it could be catastrophic for the diver.
To understand what exactly would happen to a diver in this bleak situation, TV show hosts Jessi Combs, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara conducted a science experiment for season 7, episode 19, of “Mythbusters,” according to Newsweek.
They created a human-shaped mannequin from pig parts. The meat dummy came complete with bones, muscle, fat, skin, and a midsection of guts. Then they put the mannequin in an old diving suit and sunk it 300 feet underwater, where the pressure is about nine times great than at sea level.
The Twitter account ChudsofTikTok recently resurfaced the clip from the episode in an attempt to conceptualize what may have happened to the Titan passengers who were recently reported dead after their submersible likely imploded during its descent to the Titanic wreck site.
However, it’s worth noting that the passengers were not wearing diving suits and they were likely much deeper than 300 feet when the submersible was thought to have imploded — meaning the implosion that the faux meat mannequin experiences in the “Mythbusters” experiment is probably much slower than what the Titan passengers may have experienced. They likely died within milliseconds.
In the clip below, the rapid change in air pressure once the air supply is cut forces most of the suit’s meaty contents into the helmet as the suit itself collapses inward. Warning: seeing the process unfold is a gruesome sight.
—ChudsOfTikTok (@ChudsOfTikTok) June 22, 2023
