Streaming Recommendations (Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc.)

“Last Breath” - A combination of re-creation and actual footage, combined with a well written story, make this docudrama about deep sea divers facing a tragic series of events very entertaining and educational.

An acquaintance from high school was a diver, but I don’t know if he worked in these same conditions, where divers live for a month at a time in a pressurized series of big tanks with the atmosphere, a mix of helium and oxygen, set to the pressure they will be working under on the sea floor. This technique is called living in “saturation”, and it apparently saves time by not having to re-acclimate the divers to normal air pressure after every shift. Instead, from the boat to the sea floor and back, they get in a dive bell that remains at pressure and connects directly to the pressurized living quarters on the boat.

The story recounts a series of equipment failures and circumstances that left a diver with only five minutes of emergency oxygen stranded on the bottom of the ocean as the dive boat drifts away in bad weather. An amazing human drama told by most of the actual people involved. I highly recommend it.

Ugh. Ignore me. I didn't realize this series was still in progress. I hate that.

Quote: petroglyph

Compare how the Russians handled Chernobyl to how the Japanese have not dealt with Fukushima. The Japanese are handling that disaster like Hillary handled losing the election. lol I don't believe they have even located the core of three reactors.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/07/national/eight-years-triple-meltdown-fukushima-no-1s-water-woes-slow-recede/#.XNzd3I5KjIU

Lol, I should probably look into that. I remember with some clarity last hearing that, hey, there's still s#$% pouring out of it. Like, radiated water and whatnot, and it was being picked up on the CA coast. And I looked around and everyone was losing their collective s#$% over something so incredibly... I have no other word, it was just retarded. It was like gay baker or Hobby Lobby or blue dress/black dress bulls#$%.

Like, Yo! Gojirra is really comin', ya wanna do something about it? What? Oh yeah, but first, I gotta make sure this Yanni s#$% is settle once and for all.

I really miss George Carlin.

Quote:

I really miss George Carlin.

A visionary


The last idea I saw about it was they were thinking about building an ice wall around the reactor site and keep it frozen so all the radiated rainwater wouldn't escape and run out to sea. An ice wall. hehe.

The best solution mentioned was building a sarcophagus over it like Chernobyl.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tomodachi

Quote: Ayecarumba

An acquaintance from high school was a diver, but I don’t know if he worked in these same conditions, where divers live for a month at a time in a pressurized series of big tanks with the atmosphere, a mix of helium and oxygen, set to the pressure they will be working under on the sea floor. This technique is called living in “saturation”, and it apparently saves time by not having to re-acclimate the divers to normal air pressure after every shift. Instead, from the boat to the sea floor and back, they get in a dive bell that remains at pressure and connects directly to the pressurized living quarters on the boat.

Resort diving can be done with minimal training if the instructor stays with the students. You are not permitted to dive deeper than 60' and you can stay down for an hour. Normally the dive boat will move to another location where the sea bed is less than 25 feet deep, and you can take a second dive for another hour. But a critical portion of the operation is the time spent moving the boat. It allows the resort divers a little time to return to breathing at surface pressure.

An increasingly popular variant of the resort dive uses SNUBA equipment which float the compressor on the surface and uses air from the atomosphere. This saves the diver from having to put on a tank.


Recreational diving is a step above resort diving and can involve gases other than just compressed air. It allows you to rent equipment and dive on your own to depths of 100' on compressed air and dive without a guide. You are responsible for your own safety and a certification course is required.

Commercial diving at depths below 175' ( it may be 150' today) is very expensive because you need a hyperbaric chamber on board the ship.

"Saturation diving" is by far the most expensive type of commercial operation and has no "recreational" version. It exclusively involves mixed gases, you need not only a hyperbaric chamber, but you also need a diving bell which can handle eating, sleeping and defecasting divers. A friend of mind did a saturation dive and they had to decompress the entire team because one diver got a cold. Decompression can take one day plus one day for every 100'. So if they were at 300' depth it took four days to recover them, and then they had to replace the man with the cold and compress the men again.

Even "saturation diving" is limited to 500'- 1000' because of High-pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS). Symptoms of HPNS include tremors, myoclonic jerking, somnolence, EEG changes, visual disturbance, nausea, dizziness, and decreased mental performance.

Because of the danger and expense, most deep sea operations today are done with remotely operated vehicles ather than divers.

Great info Paco. Thanks. The RPV plays a role in “Last Breath”, but not what I expected. I think you might enjoy the film because of the real footage, some of it disturbing to watch, and the people’s reactions to their circumstances.

Divers like to tell scary stories. I had a friend who went for a dive in the Florida Keys and there was oil in his tank. He started hallucinating before someone got him out of the water. I had another friend who went diving on the Pacific side of Panama and a giant barracuda was attracted to a sparkly thing on her dive gear and tore her arm off. Another friend went diving in the days before they had gages. What you would do is when you felt yourself running out of air you would open your reserve tank and use your reserve air to surface. He went to open his reserve tank and found it already open. So he had to surface without any air. Another guy went to the bottom of Lake Travis in Texas at 200' and figured he had a simple task of hooking a screw into an eye bolt. He knew he was going too deep, but he figured he would complete his task and surface. He got so narced up on nitrogen that he couldn't remember what he was trying to do. Another guy I know didn't want to admit to his friend that he didn't understand what to do on a first dive and almost tore his ear-drums.

And these are just people I know. Cockiness is a scary quality for a diver to have.

I have never tried SNUBA but it seems relatively safe. You don't have a lot of gear besides your mouthpiece, goggles and your snorkel. It's always a clear shot to the surface so you don't get disoriented. You can't go into caves or wrecks where you can get trapped. The biggest danger to a kid is if the air gets cut off and they hold their breathe while surfacing. At 60' your air in you lungs will expand between 3 and 4 times until you get to the surface. If you hold your breath your lungs can easily tear. You have to let air out which is difficult to do if you've just lost your air.

Quote: Pacomartin

Divers like to tell scary stories. .

When I had the bar, my biggest spending
customers was a team of sea urchin divers.
They had nothing but scary stories. They
were also drunks and did every drug they
could find because of what they did for
a living.

I've no delusion that anyone here would enjoy this, but I had to mention it if for no other reason than it might expose it to EB and then I'd get to hear and see his reaction.

So, "Letterkenny" (HULU). I'm only 2ep in, but only because I sweated out my shirt and damn near sprung a rib from laughing so gd hard.

If forced to give a review, "If Kevin Smith grew up in Canada".

Quote: Face

So, "Letterkenny" (HULU).

I tried Hulu twice and found it
to be a complete waste of
time and money. Nflix and
Prime are what I use, it's where
all the best stuff is. And I also
get free 2 day delivery on all
packages, some times it's next
day.

Quote: Evenbob

I tried Hulu twice and found it to be a complete waste of time and money.

Now that Disney owns 100% it may change to be a little inventive.