vrosas4 hours ago
One of the most interest facts about this disaster is that if the submarine was standing on its tail straight up, its nose would be sticking 150ft OUT of the water it sunk in.
petepete3 hours ago
It was 155m long and the ocean was 108m deep, in case anyone else was wondering.
niwtsol42 minutes ago
I didn't realize how big the submarine actually was
- Ohio class - US' largest: 18,750 tonnes displaced submerged, 170m long, 13m beam
- Typohoon-class - USSR's biggest: 48,000 tonnes displaced, 175m long, 23m beam
- Oscar II-class (Kursk) - 19,400 tonnes submerged, 154m long, 18.2m beam
SoftTalkeran hour ago
I think I read something similar about the Edmund Fitzgerald i.e. it sank in water that was less deep than the length of the ship.
thedanbob3 hours ago
And yet even in that shallow of water the pressure would have been around 10 atm. It's amazing how dangerous something as mundane as water can be.
watwutan hour ago
This is the first time I see someone refer to 100m deep as shallow.
QuantumNomad_20 minutes ago
It only takes a little over a minute to walk 100m. And if I stand at point A and look at point B, 100m away, it doesn’t feel far away either.
That’s why I think even though I am only able to swim what 4 meters or something down, maybe less, 100m under the water sounds really little for a submarine. Also probably because I have no experience with submarines so I was imagining that for the most part they would be many hundred meters under the sea level.
stronglikedanan hour ago
it's all relative!
lencastre3 hours ago
nothing but respect for water
atomicnumber33 hours ago
Definitely a strong contender for favorite 3-atom molecule
jtbakeran hour ago
username checks out
drivebyhootingan hour ago
High Test Peroxide is incredibly dangerous. Even a slight contaminant can catalyze a runaway decomposition. This is the main reason HTP has been abandoned as a storable propellant.
LgWoodenBadger27 minutes ago
I'm surprised 5-7 torpedo warheads detonating didn't do more damage to it. About 2750kg-4000kg of high explosive.
jvuygbbkuurx3 hours ago
That is an absolute unit. The photos at the end with people inside the wreck put it in perspective.
fusslo3 hours ago
The description of the survivors last hours is horrifying.
jeffrallen3 hours ago
Soundtrack for this post: https://youtu.be/3qF95ANVHSg
Kursk, by The Vad Vuc
ge963 hours ago
Damn that's crazy seeing Putin back in 2000
andyjohnson013 minutes ago
He had the same dead look as he does today.
FridayoLeary4 hours ago
The story depresses me a little. One of the greatest engineering marvels in history, destroyed by stereotypical Russian negligence, incompetence and corruption and more then 100 lives lost in the process. The Soviets for all their many sins were at least capable of building incredible things, the protections on the nuclear reactor held up, for example, preventing a massive environmental catastrophe.
giraffe_lady3 hours ago
It's stereotypical now but I remember at the time this was taken as a kind of confirmation that russia had been coasting on and also neglecting a lot of the soviet-era infrastructure. It's hard to reflect back now but in 2000 the soviet collapse was recent memory and the role and effectiveness of its successor was an open question, internationally.
I do remember that in the 90s the "russia understanders" were split into two camps: now that russia is free of the shackles of communism it will step into its destiny as supreme global superpower vs the soviet system was actually quite effective at large scale mundane infrastructure & logistics in a way the russian federation isn't.
By 2000 the weight of evidence was already fairly strong for the second view but this disaster, and especially their response to it, really settled the matter. This is how I remember feeling about it all anyway.
Gagarin19173 hours ago
Russia had roughly half the population as compared to the Soviet Union. There’s just no way they could have ever competed on the global stage the same way.
mitthrowaway22 hours ago
If one took the view that communism was holding back roughly half of their their potential, then it would have been a reasonable prediction.
Gagarin191727 minutes ago
No, it wouldn’t have. Only with cetera peribus would that make any sense. And losing half your population is not “all other things being equal.”
It’s a major difference that has a huge impact on output and relative standing globally.
Klaster_14 hours ago
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Mikhail_Edoshin4 hours ago
Chomsky wrote that Western media publishes only what is "useful" for certain ends, usually political. So you think the article is useful, don't you?
pavel_lishin4 hours ago
Reading a note written by a sailor, in the dark, by feel, estimating his changes to be 10%, certainly felt haunting to me.
brookst4 hours ago
I found the story and photos entirely haunting. Those sailers had no chance.
tokai2 hours ago
The survivors possibly had a change if Russia had accepted the offer for help from the Norwegian rescue divers right away.
gbuk20132 hours ago
From the article
> Analysts concluded that 23 sailors survived the initial blasts and took refuge in the small ninth compartment at the rear of the submarine.
> Evidence suggests they remained alive for more than six hours. When oxygen grew scarce, they attempted to replace a potassium superoxide chemical oxygen cartridge, but it fell into the oily seawater pooling on the floor and exploded on contact.
> The resulting fire killed several crew members and triggered a flash fire that consumed what remained of the oxygen, asphyxiating the last survivors.
That does not suggest a possibility of a foreign rescue vessel making it there in time.
WithinReason2 hours ago
Also:
"No search was launched for more than six hours."
"It ultimately took over 16 hours to locate the stricken vessel, which lay on the seabed at a depth of 108 meters (354 feet)."
infecto4 hours ago
Found it pretty haunting myself. You could pick a different descriptive word but haunting fits.
ahhhhnoooo4 hours ago
I found several photos haunting.
giraffe_lady4 hours ago
Being able to look at a full actual likeness of a person who is dead is incomprehensibly novel to human experience. It has never stopped giving me chills.