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And Then You're Dead
A Scientific Exploration of the World's Most Interesting Ways to Die
Paul Doherty
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eBook - ePub
And Then You're Dead
A Scientific Exploration of the World's Most Interesting Ways to Die
Paul Doherty
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About This Book
"Entertaining - if harrowing." - New York Times Book Review What would happen if you took a swim outside a deep-sea submarine wearing only Speedos? How long could you last if you stood on the surface of the sun? How far could you actually get in digging a hole to China? And Then You're Dead offers serious answers to these horribly interesting questions. Paul Doherty and Cody Cassidy explore the real science behind these and other fantastical scenarios, offering insights into physics, astronomy, anatomy and more along the way. Illustrated with straightforward technical art and leavened by small doses of dry humour, And Then You're Dead is both scientifically informative and gruesomely entertaining.
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LIKE MOST PEOPLE who have traveled in a modern airplane, you have probably spent a good bit of time staring out the window at the lovely clouds, sunsets, and beautiful views. And, like most people, you have probably wondered, what happens if this thing pops out?
The answer depends on your altitude. If you were within the first few minutes of flight and still under 20,000 feet, you would probably be okay. You could still breathe for a half hour before you passed out at that altitude, and the pressure difference wouldnât be great enough to suck you out. It would be a little chilly, but as long as youâre wearing a sweatshirt you should be fine.
It would also be noisy. The wind blowing past your open window would turn the plane into the worldâs largest flute, so getting the attention of a flight attendant would be a problem. All in all, though, not bad, and a lot better than if the window popped out at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.
The air inside a planeâs cabin is pressurized to around 7,000 feet because of the whole breathing thing. If youâre at 35,000 feet and the window pops out, the plane rapidly depressurizes, and that leads to some issues.
The first thing you would notice is all the air getting sucked out of every orifice in your body. And because itâs humid air, it would condense and come out as a fog. That would happen to everybody, so the entire plane would be a thick fog of everyoneâs body air. Gross.
Fortunately that would clear up in a few seconds, because the air in the plane is getting sucked out of the open window. Unfortunately, itâs not a neighborâs window, itâs yours, and that makes a big difference.
If you were sitting just two seats away from the missing window, the wind would be rushing out of the plane with hurricane speed, but thatâs still slow enough that if you were wearing a seat belt you would be held fast. Unfortunately, you chose the window seat, where the air would rush out at 300 miles per hourâfast enough to pull you up and out of your seat even if youâre strapped in. (One of the less-mentioned cons of choosing the window over the aisle.)*
Another reason your friend in the aisle seat would be saved is because airplane windows are smaller in diameter than your shoulders. According to research by Harvard University on the human body, the average American has 18-inch-wide shoulders, and the Boeing 747 aircraftâs windows are only 15.3 inches tallâso you would not be sucked all the way out of the plane, just partway.* Thatâs good for everyone in the plane. It would save you from a long fall, for one, and for everyone else your body would serve as a decent plug. It would slow down the airâs escape from the plane and give people more time to put on their oxygen masks.
Your troubles, on the other hand, would only be beginning.
The first thing you might notice about your new environment would be the wind. The 600-miles-per-hour gale blasting you in the face would push you against the aircraft, wrapping you in a J-shaped figure around the side of the plane.â
The second thing you would notice would be the cold. The temperature at 35,000 feet is 65 degrees below zero. In that chill your nose would become frostbitten within a few seconds.
The third issue is not something you would notice but is probably the most life-threatening. In addition to the abrupt drop in temperature, there would be a more serious change in air pressure. At 35,000 feet the air is so thin you wouldnât get enough oxygen molecules per breath to survive, only you would not know you were suffocating. Your body cannot detect when thereâs too little oxygen; the only thing that gives you that running-out-of-breath feeling is too much carbon dioxide in your blood. So you would keep breathing like everything was fine, but it wouldnât be. You would have less than fifteen seconds of consciousness before you passed outâand four minutes before brain death.
That goes for people inside the plane as well. As soon as your window popped out they would have fifteen seconds to put on their masks before they passed outâmaybe a bit more if your upper body formed a good seal on the windowâand really only eight seconds before their brains became so oxygen starved they would be too confused to put on their masks.*
So to recap, you would be halfway out of the airplane, your face would be slamming against the side of the plane, you would have frostbite, and you would be on your way to unconsciousness. But you wouldnât be dead yet and, surprisingly, if the pilot acted quickly and got down below 20,000 feet within four minutes, you might survive the experience. We know this because itâs happened.
Captain Tim Lancaster was climbing past 20,000 feet in his British Airways flight in 1990 when the front windscreen popped off. He was immediately sucked out of his seat belt and out the window. Everything loose in the cockpit flew out and the flight door jammed into the controls, sending the plane into a steep dive. Nigel Ogden, a flight attendant who happened to be in the cockpit, managed to grab the pilot on his way out and reported the following to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Everything was being sucked out of the aircraft: even an oxygen bottle that had been bolted down went flying and nearly knocked my head off. I was holding on for grim death but I could feel myself being sucked out, too. John rushed in behind me and saw me disappearing, so he grabbed my trouser belt to stop me slipping further, then wrapped the captainâs shoulder strap around me . . .
I thought I was going to lose him, but he ended up bent in a U-shape around the windows. His face was banging against the window with blood coming out of his nose . . . and his arms were flailing.
Eighteen minutes after losing the windscreen the copilot managed to land the aircraft, with his pilot staring at him from the other side of the window the entire time.
Somehow, after firefighters managed to extract the pilot from his awkward position, he survived with only frostbite and a few broken ribs.
Because of the smaller window, you may not need to rely on heroics from your fellow passengersâwith just quick action from your pilot, you could enjoy an uncomfortable but scenic trip down.
___________________
*Why do a few feet make such a difference? Picture it this way: When you plug up your bathtub, the power of the water sucking the plug into place gets exponentially greater the closer it gets. Same thing when it comes to airplane windows, and youâre the plug.
*This is where real life differs from the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Goldfinger would not have been sucked out of the window; he just would have been stuffed into it.
â Instead of being pressed into the plane, you would bang against it because of something called reverberation dynamics, which is the same principle that explains a flag flapping in the wind instead of being held in one position. Even if it seems like the wind is constant, it isnât, and the flag is in a perpetual state of change and adjustment. Your changes and adjustments would be your face slamming against the aircraft repeatedly.
*This happened on professional golfer Payne Stewartâs private jet in 1999. His plane decompressed at 30,000 feet and the pilots werenât able to put their masks on in time. Because the plane was on autopilot when it depressurized, it continued flying for 1,500 miles before it ran out of fuel and crashed in South Dakota.
LIKE ALL PREDATORS, sharks are not interested in fair fights. Even for the winners, fair fights lead to injuries, and injuries mean a slow and hungry animal. So predators prefer devastating blowouts with as little risk as possible, which makes you the perfect opponent: Youâre slow, weak, and completely oblivious in the water. Fortunately, you donât taste very good. Youâre the squirrel of the ocean, too much bone and not enough fat. Still, sharks are curious creatures and attacks happenâusually from the smaller species that arenât as dangerous.
But not always. Big sharks can attack. The great white can grow to twenty feet, and even its exploratory nibbles are devastating. Why might the shark go for a bite?
It probably would not be for food. Researchers have stitched shark victims back together and discovered not a single morsel missing. When great white sharks bite a human, they are like children scrambling peas on their plate. Careful reconstruction reveals nary a pea eaten. We must taste so terrible to sharks that, frankly, we should be a little insulted.
So if we taste so horrible, why bite us at all? One popular explanation is that itâs a case of mistaken identity. The theory goes that sharks mistake human swimmers for normal seal prey and take a bite, only then realizing their error and spitting the person out like a diner mistaking the salt for the sugar. It is plausible, but there is little science to back up this theory. There are visual similarities between a surfer and a seal from a sharkâs point of view, but that does not explain important differences in the way a shark attacks a swimmer versus the way it strikes a seal.
Researchers placed dummies in chummed water to observe the way sharks approached them. Unlike seal attacks, in which the shark comes from below and hits the animal with one devastating surprise attack, the sharks swam in circles around the dummiesâchecking them out with multiple passes before striking. The nature of the bite was also a more exploratory, open-bite slash as opposed to the full-gusto chomping bite a shark uses with a sealâlike the difference in how you approach a carton of fresh milk as opposed to one close to its expiration date.
So far the evidence suggests that it is not confusion at work when a great white shark attacks, but mere curiosity. Sharks can sense movement by detecting small changes in water pressure, and swimmers are moving, particularly if they have just spotted a fin. This motion can pique a great whiteâs interest, and sharks seem to operate under a âwhen in doubt, bite itâ policy.*
Incidentally, this is common behavior for many predatorsâif you have a cat you may have seen this explore-the-world-via-biting behavior. But exploratory biting by sharks sig...