Warning: This article contains sensitive subject matter including implosion depictions that some readers may find upsetting. Please proceed with caution.
In the thick of the Titan submersible disaster, a great deal of thought was put into what it would be like to be stuck in a minivan-sized tube with four other people and air running out. It’s been a heart-wrenching and macabre notion that has captured the world’s attention, and now that we know the sub ultimately imploded, there’s at least the knowledge that its passengers potentially didn’t suffer.
But what did said implosion look like? Some intrepid TikTokers are recreating the circumstances in their videos to give viewers an idea. Let’s start with a video that shows a submarine crudely crumple in on itself and then explode into a yellow ball like the sun (more on that in a second). “This is what happens when a submarine implodes underwater,” the narrator says. Take a look:
This next video is a little more realistic. It shows a Titan mock-up slowly descending and a description explaining that the collapse of the hull “would immediately heat the air in the sub to around the surface of the sun’s temperature.”
This video alone has more than 54 million views on TikTok and millions more on other sites like Twitter. The thing that stands out the most is the claim of the sun-temp, but could that possibly be true?
It is not. Newsweek spoke with Jasper Graham-Jones, an associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at Plymouth University, who said, “For a start, the water temperature around the Titanic is around 4 degrees Celsius [around 39 degrees Fahrenheit], which acts as a cooling effect. The collapse of the composite or metal structure would just produce theoretical heat energy due to friction, but this is very low and would not be visible or measurable with the mass of cold water around it.”
Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s a video that shows some examples of an implosion above ground, which isn’t quite as sensational as the incorrect surface of the sun claim, but still looks pretty terrifying.
Here’s an outdoor 55-gallon drum demonstration of an implosion. Notice how fast it happens.
There’s no other way to put it: implosions are scary, and we can only imagine what the five passengers on board the Titan experienced several hours into what was meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime dive.
There’s been a lot of talk about safety concerns following the implosion, and a lot of speculation, and while all of these things are worth talking about, it’s important to remember that five people lost their lives in what sounds like a totally preventable tragedy. In fact, many of the safety issues associated with the sub were known for years. These and many other TikTok videos illustrate what the passengers may have experienced, and honestly, it’s horrific beyond words.
While there will always be unintentional consequences made with a tragedy of this magnitude ⏤ one of them being the questionable revival of the movie Titanic in the wake of this awful week ⏤ I think we can all agree that this is a tragedy we hope will never happen again.
