[imagesource:arthurloibl/instagram]

We’ve all been locked into the news of that submarine carrying five people that has been missing since Sunday and only has a matter of hours left of breathable oxygen.

We’re all imagining what it would be like to be cramped inside a tin can, deep underwater with people you barely know for days on end, not knowing whether you’re ever going to see the light of day again.

The OceanGate submersible began its pricey tourist expedition to see the Titanic wreck in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday and then lost contact with the crew on the Canadian research vessel about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

Since then, basically, nada has been detected or found, besides some banging which nobody is sure about.

There is, however, a cacophony of noise on the surface, with alarming headline after alarming headline revealing how unsafe and tragic this whole disaster actually is.

The most distressing is that the five people on board – including British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, Titanic fanatic and explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, the company behind the mission to the Titanic – will run out of air by 13:08 TODAY. The Daily Mail reported:

Oxygen on the missing Titanic submersible is expected to run out at 12.08pm UK time today, the US Coast Guard has warned – with rescue efforts to find the five people trapped onboard in full force overnight.

Again, that’s 13:08 local time. It paints a bleak picture for those trapped inside the stranded vessel. Despite this race against time, officials have continued to insist that the hunt is “100 percent” still a search and rescue mission.

As people around the world count the seconds on the clock and rescue forces refuse to give up, news is surfacing of previous explorers pulling out of the Titan submarine tour over concerns for their safety.

A friend of missing billionaire Harding, digital marketing tycoon Chris Brown originally planned to join but pulled out as soon as he realised how unsafe it was:

The Daily Beast reports Brown as saying that the now perilous voyage didn’t seem like a “professional diving operation” and said the craft seemed as though it had been slapped together:

“There was industrial casing being used as ballast. They got like an Xbox controller steering it. The parts seemed off the shelf,” he said, adding that the set up seemed more reflective of an attempt to hastily cross a river.

“It didn’t come across as a professional diving operation to me. So I took the decision to withdraw my deposit and to get off the program at that stage,” Brown said of the choice he made in 2018.

…“This one, there seemed to be a lot of risks that were outside of my control and I didn’t like the way that they were being approached by the company,” Brown said, claiming that OceanGate’s submersible “continuously missed”’ its depth targets that were supposed to be met by certain dates.

To back this up, a German adventurer who explored the Titanic wreckage on the same missing submersible has labelled the voyage a “suicide mission”, as per the New York Post:

“I was incredibly lucky back then,” Arthur Loibl, 60, told German outlet Bild of his hair-raising aquatic adventure. “It was a suicide mission back then!” exclaimed the Bavarian entrepreneur, recalling his own journey into the abyss. “The first submarine didn’t work, then a dive at 1,600 meters had to be abandoned.”

Loibl explained that they ended up launching five hours late due to electrical issues — which he suspects is to blame for the Titan crews’ current predicament. Not only that but right before the voyage, the bracket of the stabilization tube — which balances the sub — tore and had to be “reattached with zip ties,” he said.

Arthur also mentioned that the cramped conditions require “strong nerves” and “you mustn’t be claustrophobic and you have to be able to sit cross-legged for ten hours”.

The five missing souls in the depths of the ocean have been sitting cross-legged in the freezing depths for over three days now.

Apparently, billionaire Harding sent an eerie text right before the sub went dark:

 

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A post shared by Capt. Hamish Harding (@actionaviationchairman)

The message was foreboding about the weather conditions, per American Military News:

Col. Terry Virts, a retired NASA astronaut, documented the last text message he received from Harding prior to the submarine vanishing in an interview with Good Morning Britain. Virts said he received a text from Harding, saying, “Hey, we’re headed out tomorrow, it looks good, the weather’s been bad so they’ve been waiting for this.”

You can watch that interview here, wherein Virts told Good Morning Britain that the two “don’t really talk about risks”:

British billionaire Hamish Harding is one of the passengers on board the missing Titanic submarine.

‘What was exciting for him about going in this submersible?’ @susannareid100 speaks to Hamish’s friend, Colonel Terry Virts who said they didn’t ‘speak about the risks.’ pic.twitter.com/ctYNuIHk6C

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) June 20, 2023

Harding holds the Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time spent at the bottom of the ocean, as well as two other Guinness World Records, and must have known what he was getting himself into going almost 4 000 metres (12 500 feet) into the depths of the sea to check out the Titanic wreck.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani tycoon who also vanished in the remote-controlled sub – Shahzada Dawood, along with his 19-year-old son, Suleman – endured a flight so horrific that it had him fearing for his life. Per The Daily Beast, his wife revealed this detail in a harrowing account of the incident five years ago:

In a blog post on a website for her coaching business, Shahzada’s wife Christine recalled surviving a nightmarish flight alongside her husband that left her frozen with “absolute terror,” describing it as the incident that “changed everything” in her life—for good.

…Christine then goes on to describe a hellish account of the plane taking a “deep plunge” that had passengers letting out “…one simultaneous cry, which turned to a whimper and then silence.”

Although the plane landed safely, the experience left Christine feeling “as if a noose was tightly” wrapped around her neck. Little did she know that it would remain around her husband’s neck all that time.

A forensic psychiatrist told the Daily Mail that the passengers are likely in “intense emotional turmoil” as they enter their final hours of oxygen supply:

According to Doctor Sohom Das, a British forensic psychiatrist, those on-board the OceanGate Expeditions vessel are likely clinging to hope that they could still be found, but as the clock ticks down, he says ‘reality is going to seep in’.

Emotions will be going haywire:

‘So at some point they’re going to be quite reflective upon their lives when they’re literally staring into the jaws of death and at other points, they’re likely to feel extremely panicked, extremely anxious,’ he said.

As the oxygen runs out, the passengers will begin to feel immense physical discomfort, says Dr Das, “from hyperventilation to feeling dizzy to chest pains. They’re just going to be overwhelmed emotionally with trying to get to grips with what’s happening to them.”.

It’s a matter of hours now. Let’s hope a miracle happens.

[sources:dailymail&dailybeast&nypost&americanmilitarynews&dailymail]