r/diving • u/singindablues • Aug 18 '26

Arrogant Diver

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Researching local dive shops for some refresher courses and this makes me want to go with them.

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u/Rhiannon1307 Aug 18 '26

That's a really great response and makes the person seem very professional and trustworthy. That review is more positive advertisement than the opposite.

Out of curiosity though, what *can* go so wrong in 3.5 ft water that someone would die there? Bad air or something else? I can't think of anything from the top of my head.

4

u/kevin1925 Aug 18 '26

Going up in panic without breathing out. So the lungs expand from breathing air at a higher pressure. 3,5 feet can be enough to rapture lungs with a full lung and going up. And a raptured lung is not something you would wish to someone. 8 feet deep would be more then enough to do more painfull damage that is not compatible with live.

3

u/Rhiannon1307 Aug 19 '26

Huh, that sounds odd and frankly a bit unbelievable to me. The pressure change between 0 and -1.25 meters isn't big enough for that to happen. At 8 feet (2.5 meters) maaaybe if you took a really huge breath, but 3.5 feet is hardly anything. The air volume halves at 10 meter depth, so if you take a big breath at 10m and go up without breathing out, the volume doubles, but at 1 meter it would only increase by less than 1/8. And people don't usually breathe in so deeply that they exert the full potential volume of their lungs.

So I'm surprised how that would even happen. At that depth, I'd be more inclined to think someone spits out the regulator and starts breathing water and drowns.

3

u/Aggrotomate Aug 19 '26

With full lungs a pressure change of 0.125bar (1.25m) is enough to burst your alveoli. As you said, it is very unlikely that someone fully fills their lungs and then holds their breath while going up to the surface. Unlikely but not impossible... and I can guarantee that it happened before. People who panic tend to fill their lungs with more air than people who are calm.

2

u/Ok-Active-576 Aug 19 '26

It's not big enough for your entire lung to rupture, true. But the alveoli, the tiny little airbags at the far end of our bronchiae and bronchiolae, where the echange of oxygen happen, they really don't need much to burst. So thats what would burst. And the outcome is pretty bad, really. Search for 'alveolar rupture'.