For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
There is so much misinformation around all of this (which isn’t helped by two of the largest social media networks being compromised) but:
If the “someone is knocking every 30 minutes and is near the surface” is true? Yeah, I think they will be rescued. That can be triangulated and they are near enough to the surface that a rescue is “low risk”. Whether they are in good shape after that rescue is anyone’s guess.
But in the likely event that this is wishful thinking? No. Time is running out (last twelve-ish hours if I can do timezones right?) and the likelihood is that any rescue attempt will be a severe risk to the team doing the rescue. That is not the kind of thing you can do as a last second race against time. We might find the sub but I genuinely do not believe we have the ability to mount a rescue in that amount of time. And the risk of something like “have a military sub lift them up” is not something anyone will sign off on.
I would also say that I don’t think people SHOULD be risking their lives at this point. We’re looking at a case of people who took an informed risk and understood that there was danger associated with the recreational activity they were undertaking. These people either had vast monetary resources and could have consulted the best experts in the world, or had significant prior experience and knowledge. While obviously withholding information interferes with informed consent, and that may or may not have played a role, I don’t think this is morally equivalent to rescuing someone from a burning building. There’s also simple probability - the odds of rescuing them alive and well aren’t good, and to put someone else’s life at risk for the off chance that they succeed would be unethical in my opinion.
Eh. I am very much not going to be losing too much sleep over a few billionaires dying from their own decisions.
But these were almost definitely not informed decisions. Even ignoring the current revelations that the company was even sketchier than one would have imagined: I am not sure how many “extreme” sports things you have done. The “So if you die it is totally your fault and not ours and even if we were criminally negligent, you will defend us” waiver is incredibly common. And without a proper understanding of the material science involved, it would come across as “as dangerous as sky diving”
I do very much blame the guy who apparently had dedicated his life to the Titanic. But the other rich folk are in the same category as someone living in a visibly dangerous/condemned building. If a rescue can be done with comparatively low risk: Go for it. If it is likely to kill the rescuers… maybe erase a few recordings.