In April 1912, a steamer hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and its hull ruptured, killing 1,514 people, which is the famous Titanic incident.
111 years later, a submarine named "Titan", carrying 5 big people, went to the sea to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, but suddenly lost contact during the dive, the United States and Canada jointly launched a search and rescue, five days later, they finally found the "Titan" and five passengers.
It's just that the Titan has broken into several pieces, and the big guys have all turned into pulp.
Is this the "curse of the Titanic" in urban legends, or is it a conspiracy orchestrated by someone, or is it an accident? Let's take a look!
Deadly sightseeing
The Titanic, also known as the Titanic, is known as the "unsinkable ship", but it hit an iceberg on its first voyage and then broke in half. It was not until 73 years after the accident that the search team found the location of the wreckage of the Titanic, about 600 kilometers south-southeast of Newfoundland.
The search team wanted to recover the wreckage, but because the wreckage had been soaked in water for too long and was quite fragile, the search team had to give up in order to protect the integrity of the wreckage.
In 2021, the Ocean Gate (Ocean Gate) company in the United States held the "Titanic Survey Expedition", which is not like before, only professionals can go to the sea to survey, no matter who you are, as long as you spend money to buy tickets, you can take a submarine to the sea to visit the wreck of the Titanic, so it attracted many people to sign up.
But the price of a ticket is as high as 250,000 US dollars (equivalent to about 1.8 million yuan), such a high price, many people are turned away, and the participants are all heads and faces.
The Titan accident occurred in June 2023, and it was the fifth dive of the Titan, with a total of three passengers, a pilot and a tour guide inside. Including the CEO of Ocean Gate, as well as the experts of the French Titanic.
On June 18th, the Titan came to about 1,400 kilometers east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts for a dive, according to past experience, it takes about 3 hours to dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, in order to ensure safety, during the diving of the Titan, a sonar signal must be sent every 15 minutes to tell the surface crew that the Titan is safe.
If the sonar signal is not sent in time, the crew on the water will launch a rescue.
After 1 hour and 45 minutes of diving, the Titan never sent a sonar signal again, and after many unsuccessful attempts by the water staff, they reported the situation to their superiors. The U.S. government attached great importance to it and immediately sent people to launch a search, and then neighboring countries also joined the search team.
On the fourth day of the disappearance of the Titan, the people involved in the search felt that the people on the Titan were more than lucky, because the Titan was only a small submarine that could only provide oxygen for 96 hours, and it had not surfaced until now, and the people inside were most likely already in a state of hypoxia and would soon suffocate to death.
But the real situation is worse than the searchers thought. On the fifth day of the Titan's disappearance, searchers found several pieces belonging to the Titan submarine near the wreckage of the Titanic. This is enough to show that the Titan has a high probability of being destroyed.
The sea area where the wreck of the Titan appeared is 3,800 meters above the ground, and the pressure in this area is as high as 40 megapascals, which is nearly 400 times the pressure on the ground, which can easily crush an unprotected person into a pulp, so even if the searchers have not found the remains of the five passengers, the commander of the first district of the US Coast Guard, John Mougg, has publicly stated that the five passengers must have died.
After the accident, everyone is eager to know what caused the accident. Before the investigation began, there were conspiracy theories that it was a man-made disaster, because there was a wealthy British businessman on the Titan, and it was possible that his competitors were the ghosts.
But after the investigators intervened in the investigation, they were surprised to find that all the problems were with the Titan itself.
The fatal flaw of the Titan
Investigators found that after the Titan was developed, Ocean Gate claimed that it could dive into the sea area of 4,000 meters, which was enough to carry out the task of visiting the wreck of the Titanic, but David, the former director of marine operations at Ocean Gate, had reacted to his superiors, saying that according to his experience, the Titan could actually only dive safely into the sea area of 1,300 meters, although it could continue to dive, but it was not safe, and he hoped to find a professional organization to evaluate it.
But his superiors didn't listen to him, and even thought he was talking too much, so they fired him.
Investigators then found reasons for David's judgment. Generally speaking, in order to make a submarine that can dive into the deep sea, it needs to be built with two materials, steel and titanium, which have a strong pressure bearing capacity, but the Titan used the latest technology at that time, using carbon fiber and titanium to build, although this will make the Titan lighter than ordinary submarines and have natural buoyancy, but the carbon fiber is very brittle and the impact resistance is very weak. The pressure in the deep sea is likely to deal a fatal blow to carbon fiber at some point.
What's worse is that investigators found that the carbon fiber used in the Titan was actually bought from Boeing at a low price, and the reason why Boeing sold it at a low price was that the carbon fiber had exceeded the life of the aircraft that could be used on the aircraft, that is, the Ocean Gate Company knew that there was a problem with the material, and still used it to make submarines.
In fact, after David put forward his opinion, the Ocean Gate Company was not completely indifferent, they also knew that the submarine had safety risks, but they were neither willing to pay for the assessment to check the risks of the submarine, nor were they willing to rebuild it, but adopted the method of sonar monitoring, that is, as mentioned earlier, the sonar signal was sent every 15 minutes during the dive.
Its biggest purpose is to detect the inside of the carbon fiber through sonar, and if it detects a break in the carbon fiber, it can feed back the situation to the pilot, and the driver will immediately drive the submarine back.
But this kind of countermeasure, there is still a big risk, who can guarantee that carbon fiber can hold up until the submarine surfaces?
Therefore, the behavior of Ocean Gate Company for the sake of profit and not paying attention to potential safety hazards is the main factor in the occurrence of this tragedy.
What's even funnier is that the operating machine used to drive the Titan submarine is actually a gamepad modification, and the person who developed this operating system also proudly said that his operating system not only saves money, but also makes it very easy to drive, even people with no driving experience can get started quickly.
But diving into the deep sea is a very dangerous behavior, but the people at Ocean Gate show between the lines that they can be competent as drivers without experience, which shows how little attention Ocean Gate attaches to safety!
This attitude shocked investigators, but then they discovered that this was not the limit of Ocean Gate. The degree of contempt they have for human life is staggering.
Two years before the Titan accident, there were some problems with the Titan.
3. The Titan's past
In 2021, a wealthy German man took the Titan submarine and visited the wreck of the Titanic, when the pipe support of the Titan suddenly broke. Fortunately, the driver was strong, and the Titan successfully surfaced, and the German tycoon began to complain after going ashore, saying that the Titan was not only in poor safety conditions, but also in very bad internal conditions, and there were no seats, and the passengers could only sit cross-legged inside.
It is worth mentioning that the interior space of the Titan is actually not small, but due to the design problem of cabin space growth, it can only accommodate up to 5 passengers, which not only makes passengers uncomfortable, but also increases the pressure on the outside of the submarine, which makes the already fragile carbon fiber even worse.
In 2022, a professional came to inspect the Titan, and after entering, he was surprised to find that the Ocean Gate Company actually used rusty construction iron pipes to make the cabin pressure of the submarine, and he reminded the Ocean Gate not to use the Titan again, unless the unreasonable places inside it were modified, but the Ocean Gate Company turned a deaf ear.
It is precisely because of this attitude of Ocean Gate that the disaster of 2023 has occurred. The Titan could not withstand the pressure because of the material problem, and was squeezed by the sea water to produce an implosion, which is different from an explosion, it is the structure of the object that collapses inward, that is, the passengers on the submarine at that time were crushed alive to death.
And the process was very rapid, according to experts' speculation, at that time, the Titan imploded and collapsed at a speed of up to 1,500 kilometers per hour, and the passengers in the cabin were crushed into pulp in less than 0.001 seconds.
Just thinking about this picture makes me feel a little suffocated.
On June 28, the tenth day of the Titan's accident, after spending millions of dollars, searchers finally recovered the remains of the Titan from the sea. American investigators extracted human tissue from the wreckage of the twisted Titan, and so far, the death of the five passengers of the Titan has been conclusive, no miracle has happened, and in the face of nature's wrath, human beings are as weak as an ant.
The U.S. National Security Transportation Council and the Coast Guard will sue the relevant personnel of the Ocean Gate according to the situation, and those who only care about interests and do not respect life will be punished sooner or later.
Ironically, the place where the Titan was destroyed is not far from the Titanic, and the existence of the Titanic itself shows the world the horror of the disaster and the insignificance of human beings, but it seems that many people have not learned to fear nature, and the Titan accident may be a warning issued by nature to human beings, telling mankind: Who is the real master of this world, and those who lack awe will pay a painful price.