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Comment by Certhas | Hacker News Reader

It is notable how much news-coverage this received (for understandable reasons [1]) relative to the almost simultaneous disaster in the Mediterranean [2], where a shipwreck killed hundreds of people.

[1] What springs to mind: Dramatic search action well suited for live blog coverage; psychological impact of the idea of people stranded in a submarine for days; And of course the average person here is probably a lot closer to taking a holiday trip in a submersible than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Messenia_migrant_boat_dis...

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I think the migrant boat disaster is horrible. But I was more interested in this missing sub because it was a bit mysterious what happened to it initially. Then it all comes out how badly built it is, how it's a death trap, etc. It's just more interesting personally. It doesn't mean it's worse than the migrant boat, it's just more interesting and I'd rather read about it.

Mysterious cases always get more traction on social media too. There was an instance in the UK where a woman went missing near a river. People were speculating for weeks about what had happened. They would travel to the location and try and be detectives. It's was insane. People said it was because she was a white woman, but I don't think it's that. It's just the mystery of not knowing what happened and a body not being found straight away after divers searched the area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nicola_Bulley

Same goes for the sub. It's not because it was full of billionaires. It was because it was from a company infamous for cutting corners and people wanting confirmation that it did in fact implode. It also just boggles the mind why people who are so wealthy would get in something so shoddily put together. They have the money to fund a whole expedition like James Cameron did, but they'd rather increase the risk of death by an order of magnitude.

The contrasting coverage is IMHO largely due to the novelty of the situation, and nothing to do with any moral judgement on the victims. Tragically, migrant boat disasters are common.

It was also the 'ticking clock' factor of the limited oxygen, a countdown of a few days, giving hope for a heroic rescue.

People can't survive for long in cold seas. By the time a migrant boat disaster makes the news, hopes of finding survivors may already have faded.

The Mediterranean Sea isn't particularly cold this time of year, are you confusing the locations of the two incidents?

Do you have any details about why it was a death trap?

I watched one video that complained about off the shelf parts being used, but the two examples was an RV light (not safety related) and the gaming controller (which they had multiple back ups).

They also claimed to have been reviewed by Boeing and University of Washington. There was 7 different mechanisms that could force a return. Some of those were purely mechanical.

Clearly the sub wasn’t safe enough, but I’m not seeing anything that makes it obviously badly built.

This flying lady doctor had lots to say on this

https://twitter.com/LadyDoctorSays/status/167170098942929715...

The whistleblower said they used flammable interior materials. Were the Camper World lights inflammable to the standards of submarines?

Using off the shelf components is probably the best thing they did. You don't want to reinvent the wheel if you can help it. I don't know why the game controller is a sticking point for most of social media. It's funny to think of a vehicle being piloted by one, but they really are designed to be used for thousands of hours. Game controllers have been used in all sorts of military applications.

The issue as far as I have read is that the hull was made of carbon fibre. There hasn't been any submersible that has reached those depths before made of that material. The effect continued pressurization/depressurization had on the carbon fibre wasn't understood. Composite materials are so much more complicated to model and understand. There was no non-destructive testing to see what effect the repeated cycles had on the hull, no way of knowing whether cracks could form beneath the surface. The failure mode at depth is catastrophic, there's no room for error. Someone pointed all this out to them and was fired https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face....

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/21/us/titan-sub-safety-ocean...

In response to them knowing the sub wasn't fit for purpose they opted to install a "real time health monitoring system" which acoustically checked the integrity of the hull. But it's pointless. By the time any acoustic monitoring system picked something up it would be too late, because carbon fibre just shatters into a million pieces. It's not like Steel where it can gradually fatigue, it's crack BOOM dead.

Using carbon fibre for the hull is like rolling your own crypto. Maybe you can get it to work but unless you properly scrutinize it there is most likely fundamental flaws in your implementation and it's just better to use tried and true methods. In the sub world that tried and true method is just thick steel.

The carbon fibre is interesting angle because I have seen in the last 5-10 years a change in fire fighters, under water rescue services and military to go from using steel cylinders for breathing gas (300 bar) to a composite of aluminum and carbon fibre with the same pressure of 300 bar. The benefit being targeted is the reduction in weight. Those tanks do get tested regularly but those tests might just be as pointless as in this case. If they explode they will do so with a shattering boom.

I wonder if this event will cause some changes, or if it is an expensive step in figuring out how to properly test this material.

I think the behavior of the material is probably more understood when it's internal pressure vessel. I think in general that's a much more understood problem and carbon fibre probably is perfectly fine for that sort of vessel. Similar to how a thin aluminum can of beer can be pressurized quite high, but it'll quickly buckle when poked on the outside.

> Using off the shelf components is probably the best thing they did

No. Not really. It's a horrible idea. It's irresponsible. It's negligent.

Consumer grade components are not designed for the kind of reliability and failure tolerance requirements these kinds of applications have to face every mission. A simple example of this would be no conformal coating anywhere to prevent failures due to condensation on the circuit board. Also, tin whiskers due to RoHS solder. No redundancy or failure tolerance in any portion of the design. It isn't enough to say "we have extra game controllers". That's not how you build reliable failure-tolerant systems where people's lives depend on things working perfectly 99.9999% of the time.

Also, it is a fallacy to say that millions of people use these controllers. The most obvious problem with this statement is that we have zero data on failure rates and failure modes. And, of course, nobody dies. As a parallel example, you would be hard-pressed to find toy controllers on medical equipment, even in situations where there might be time to deal with failures.

> the hull was made of carbon fibre <snip> In the sub world that tried and true method is just thick steel.

Yup. Fundamental principle: Carbon fiber is best used under tension, not compression. Not a good choice for a life-support compartment under incredible external pressure. One way I think of it is: In compression you are mostly relying on the epoxy to keep things together. Without epoxy carbon fiber will support as much compression as a common string. Zero.

I agree the electronics could be better, but from what I am understanding, even if the electronics completely failed, they could mechanically safely return to the surface.

The carbon fiber seems to be the critical nail in the coffin.

> they could mechanically safely return to the surface

That's what it sounds like.

> The carbon fiber seems to be the critical nail in the coffin.

If the CF vessel failed it would have instantaneous and violent beyond comprehension. What little reliable info is out there seems to indicate that's what happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD7CfnQC5HQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxhkFyU8NXo&t=236s

> Clearly the sub wasn’t safe enough, but I’m not seeing anything that makes it obviously badly built.

A lot of this is bewilderment at the choice of carbon fibre for the pressure vessel, which is sensitive to impact damage and wear from repeated load cycles, damage is hard to diagnose, and as it's very brittle, prone to catastrophic failure. It's not commonly used for this sort of application, and there may not be good data on (1) when it would eventually fail and (2) whether you'd be able to tell before use.

As I understand, the choice was motivated by wanting the sub to have the large interior space necessary to bring along that many passengers. Deepsea subs usually don't attempt that either.

What I learned so far: porthole not rated for the depth of the Titanic, apparently no testing done on the balast release mechanisms, screens screwed directly into the carbon fibre hull, flammable interior materials, mixing three materials in pressure vessel (carbon fibre tube, titanium end bulk jeads, transparent port hole).

All more or less untested and uncertified. Throw in the reported comms issues that were common during past operations, a highly inexperienced engineering team, a culture promoting unsafe practices and you get a death trap of a vessel.

And everyone onboard was rich enough to get an independent to do some due diligence

James Cameron had some insightful commentary on why the sub was intrinsically dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThZLhNF_xg

Thanks for that link, I love the way James Cameron talks about it. He knows what he's talking about. The fact people were warned just points to complete gross negligence. Everyone knew it was a death trap. It's sad.

+1 thank you for the link. this was exactly what I was looking for.

There were a lot of issues with the design, which I found helpfully explained in this video. [1] A major concern was intentionally hiring fresh college graduate engineers without keeping older submarine veterans on staff as well. There were some good questions raised about their breathing system. Were they just continually releasing oxygen in to the cabin to compensate for CO2, thus leading to a potentially high oxygen environment where a fire would be a major issue? Did they have isolated breathing equipment in case of a fire? After a previous dive it was noted that the vehicle was hard to visually locate even after surfacing, but it did not have a position beacon onboard, nor was it painted orange to make it easier to see. Why did they fail to include these suggested measures?

I think there was a fair bit of other concerns. I thought this video was informative and the kind of thing the HN crowd would appreciate, so take a look.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac

Boeing denies any involvement while the University of Washington says they briefly worked together on a completely different unmanned vehicle

In addition to all of the specific examples already shared, the CEO boasted numerous times about flouting standard safety protocols and expert opinions.

These design flaws weren't an unfortunate mistake, they were part of a very deliberate pattern that went predictably wrong.

The Wikipedia article is extremely detailed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanGate

Some highlights include:

* Design inspired by the "DeepFlight Challenger" - but DeepFlight said their craft was only rated for one dive, and weakens with each cycle, and could not be used for five dives.

* Hull designed by subcontract manufacturer in 6 weeks - scarcely enough time to do much testing.

* In an early dive the CEO performed solo, lost contact with the surface ship for approximately one hour

* While diving with a journalist, lost contact with the support vessel for 5 hours.

* It was impossible to open the sub from inside (admittedly, this is only relevant if you first manage to ascend to the surface)

* Hull started showing showing signs of cyclic fatigue in January 2020 (they got it repaired)

* Assembly and testing procedures so sloppy they managed to attempt a dive with a thruster installed the wrong way around.

* Employee called for a stronger front window, and nondestructive testing of the hull. Company fired him and sued him.

* CEO on record as saying ship safety laws "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation" and that "At some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed."

* Couldn't get certified by a ship classification society, claimed that was OK because most marine accidents are operator error not mechanical failure; and the standards didn't give them adequate credit for their corporate culture of safety.

The other thing that indicates it was a deathtrap is the deaths.

With that said, personally I support the right of people to expose themselves to the risk of death in search of adventure. Normal folks can buy motorbikes and quadbikes, millionaires can buy cessnas, why shouldn't billionaires have deadly entertainment options befitting their wealth?

I think the idea of being trapped in a confined space kilometers under the sea has a visceral effect on the imagination that a boat voyage on the surface doesn't, regardless of how tragic the outcome is in both events. It pokes and prods many of our deep phobias.

Similar stories like the Thai boys trapped in the cave, or the Chilean miners, had a similar effect.

A bit like "Snakes on a plane". Again, trapped with your phobias.

Yes, it's good entertainment, for many.

I think being trapped on an overcrowded ship, bodies pressed into you, as the ship capsizes, is also viscerally terrifying. You don't know where you are. You don't know who is around you. You have nothing except what you could've carried. You are trying to leave a downed ship with hundreds of pressing bodies. The waters are rising. There's too much froth to see where you're going.

Everyone is screaming, death is all around you. People are drowning, and in their drowning flailing limbs they are pulling others to their deaths.

[Edited to add: The migrants would've had time to process what was happening to them. There would be many long minutes of terror, suffocation, as they died. Hundreds. Women, children.]

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o

A friend of mine was involved with computer forensics on recovered cellphones on this one. Just awful.

I agree with you but I also realise it’s very hard to imagine what a proper tempest on the sea feels like if you are never experienced it on a ship. It’s an experience which is so far removed from a modern person traditional experience - a sunny summer day at the beach - that they just can’t grasp it.

I would not read too much into it. Media coverage in this context is mostly about how sensentional and novel the news is. People get lost at sea all the time, in particularly in fishing and shipping industry. The average person is very similar to those people and yet such events dont generally create international news.

It is less about the media but more about the response of officials. How many boats were send to look for a single submarine? All the way from the France? When they could have been sent to Mediterranean sea as well.

Why would you send specialized submarine search and recovery ships to Mediterranean? If makes zero sense, they serve very different purpose.

Exactly. You use a lot of resources to send help on the other side of the world for people who volunteeringly went to bottom of the ocean knowing risks and just for fun.

But you don't use resources to help people who are forced to leave their country and now are drowning in the sea.

How many boats are sent international if a fishing boat outside Thailand or Norway don't return home? What if a old transport ship goes missing in a storm?

Occasionally we can see here on HN stories about lost sailors being rescued after weeks lost in the water, or shipwrecked on some remote rock. The common theme for those stories is that there wasn't a bunch of ships that went looking for them for weeks. For every person who survived such event, many more died.

When there is a lot of media coverage you also tend to get more reaction by officials, which then generate even more media coverage. It is the same concept why a individual can create a story on HN and reach people at google/facebook/apple, while thousands of users can have an identical situation and never reach a single person from support. It not a fair system but its a very well understood phenomenon.

I am not sure if it is the case this time.

The response on sending rescue teams was high even before it got popular on the news. I remember reading some statements that "we sent everything we can" in the very first news.

> How many boats are sent international if a fishing boat outside Thailand or Norway don't return home? What if a old transport ship goes missing in a storm?

The problem is that there's no immediate feedback when they go missing so the search areas are too pointlessly large to even attempt SAR operations. Areas where there's lots of immigration traffic are always monitored, like the Greeks were monitoring the boat before it capsized (enough to get that aerial photo of the overcrowded decks).

The vast majority of Coast Guards aren't stretched to their limits, they're sitting there ready to launch SAR operations if anyone calls, all largely operating for free as a cheap way of supporting maritime trade. The USCG alone responds to tens of thousands of cases a year, rescuing thousands of people. Some corrupt nations skimp on their CGs but that wasn't really the case here.

There is a difference between litterally sending multiple Navies (A), sending whatever SAR assets there are (B) and actively preventing and even prosecuting private SAR assets trying to stage their own rescue ops (C).

The Titan was A, your average fishing boat or other vessel is B. And all those migrants are, and that pisses me off to an incredible degree, C.

There wasn't really a discrepancy in response though, and if you are lost at sea and have nothing to hang onto...you aren't going to last long. I saw someone ask why the US didn't send ships to look for migrants, well...that's a 10-day ride across the Atlantic & Mediterranean. Even surrounding countries were sometimes hours away.

The average human can't tread that long without a life jacket, the average is ~2-3 hours and that's in still water (to be a lifeguard you have to last 30 minutes), not a choppy ocean/sea. By the time any country other than Italy or Greece came to the location, they'd already be dead. It's tragic, but there is no discrepancy. If there were a chance of actual survival for days, there would have been a much larger response.

Also, apparently the Greeks offered aid before the boat even sank and the boat declined because they didn't want to go to Greece, they wanted to go to Italy. There are mixed reports on that though as now some are blaming the Greek coast guard for tipping the boat over by accident.

If you want something to be upset about, be upset about practically every country on Earth's broken immigration systems that cause these tragic events.

There are multiple reports, and investigations, into illegal push backs of migrant vessels by FRONTEX and, yes, the Greek Coast Guard and Navy. Enough for me to not cut them any slack anymore.

Regarding the US Navy, well, they do have a Fleet in the Mediterranean, it's not like they had to sail all the way from Pearl Harbour.

The US Navy isn't capable of rescue missions like that, the US Coast Guard is. The nearest US Navy vessel were still probably hours away, even if they were equipped. So much reaching here to find an impossible task when you have 2-3 hours to operate the rescue. By the time a US ship arrived everyone would be dead. Not to mention that requires Greece and Italy to ask for help.

One has to love how over the last decade or so, we were all convinced that all sea going vessels do not have the obligation to help others in distress. Because they absolutely do.

Also, what people also forget, the Mediterranean is under almost comlkete surveillance. So no big surprise if a vessel goes down, most of the time authorities knew of said vessel before.

You have an obligation, that doesn't mean you can reach it in time or that you're equipped as US battleship for such a rescue. Big difference.

The US has quite a few shops scattered around the world at all times. The 22nd, 24th, and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units patrol the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

And yet, still all probably hours away from the incident, which renders them going there pretty pointless. Especially when they aren't equipped for these sort of rescue operations like the Coast Guard to begin with.

All you need is the rope to pick people from the water. Not even that.

And some lights to try if it gets dark.

It's not that simple, how can you with a straight face think it's that simple when hundreds of people are in the water?

> the average person here is probably a lot closer to taking a holiday trip in a submersible than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean

There is no way in hell I would pay $250k to board a janky-ass sub going deep into the ocean.

For $250k, I could buy a nice house for me, my girlfriend and our future family.

And even that is not possible yet. Because I don’t have that kind of money.

Reminder too that literally everyone is one country-ending catastrophic event away from being on a refugee boat

Only those near a coast, actually

Many people are walking for months to reach the coast to escape on these refugee boats.

So that's at least two things between them and the boat, then

It depends how you frame it. I'd consider the walk to the boat part of the journey.

What kind of single events could destroy most countries without taking out half the world or all of the world?

A coup that splits the nation into warring factions.

Really, anything where the government response makes things worse and spirals out of control.

A lot of the Central American refugees are fleeing very sharp increases in gang violence.

Not all countries at the same time. But one country at random which would affect that random person. The rest of the world would watch and think that it never could have happened to them, just as that random person may have thought not long before.

Just listening to ‘Fukushima’ on BBC World Service podcasts and ‘major nuclear incident’ is definitely one that springs to mind.

Wat?

Fukushima a) happened and b) Japan and the world are still there

This is something of a false equivalence - yes, "everyone" is at risk from a country ending event, but not all countries are equally at risk.

You must live on the coast. There's plenty of us in the midwestern US that could never make it to a coast before the boats were all gone.

Go down the Mississippi :-)

Not that it involved a catastrophe but most of those people had been traveling dangerously for months to make it to Libya (or Egypt?)

Also going on a boat to leave the US would be very stupid.

There's a reason migrants take the Mediterranean route, instead of the Atlantic route.

> Also going on a boat to leave the US would be very stupid.

Why? As a Minnesotan, the first thing I'm doing is hopping on my boat and heading north to Canada.

I think they meant trying to cross the ocean as opposed to one of the great lakes. crossing either ocean in a shoddy boat is much more dangerous than going across the Mediterranean.

Nicely played I didn't think of those!

The difference is when Libya collapses into civil war (or 3 governments or whatever) Libyan refugees migrate to other countries that are stable.

When China, Western Europe, or the US collapses into civil war refugees from those countries do indeed migrate. The problem is other countries start collapsing as well because they were dependent on some form of trade with those regions. As a result its unlikely there will ever be a large scale exodus of people from the US. We'll all just be survivors in the wasteland at that point.

maybe so but a lot of contributors here are pretty loaded and could def drop $250k on something on a whim

> For $250k, I could buy a nice house for me, my girlfriend and our future family.

That's not even enough of down payment for a tear down where I live!

Relocate :D In the city I was born I don’t think there is room for a couple with kids anywhere near $250k. Probably I’d need $400k or more there for any kind of suitable housing. In the city where I rent currently, maybe just barely. But my hope is to scrape together enough savings and then buy a house or flat for us somewhere in the world where $250k or thereabouts would be sufficient.

> And of course the average person here is probably a lot closer to taking a holiday trip in a submersible than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean.

My opinion is the complete opposite, I think it has more coverage because it's a feel good event for 90% of the world who absolutely despise rich fucks in that specific part of the dumb X rich venn diagram

I haven't seen a single post about how sad the sub story is... it's all memes and people amazed at how stupid humans can be

It's not so much stupidity as knowingly embarking on a dangerous adventure for the purpose of fun, basically.

Someone who took the trip before said they had to sign a waver which mentioned death multiple times. It's like climbing Everest, walking to the north pole, commercial space flights, base jumping etc.

The med disaster was people embarking on a dangerous "adventure" out of what they perceived as being a necessity.

Of course all lives should be regarded as being equal.

This all feels like a parody to be honest, at least previous explorers were.... exploring

Now people _pay_ to be carried on the Everest, pay for a ticket to space, pay for a ticket to the titanic, &c. There is nothing left so they fight for the crumbs, looking for the next dumbest idea on the list

Yeah couldn't agree more. "Into thin air" about a disaster on Everest describes very well how some, if not most, of the people in the group had never been anywhere near a mountain half as challenging as Everest.

Some even had brand new boots, which anyone with half a brain knows is a bad idea. A few did turn out to be tough bastards though, spending several days up there alone in a state of delirium and eventually making it back down on their own accord.

Guardian also mentioned a Mexican Youtuber having taken the trip down to the Titanic in that titanium coffin, just for clicks & views.

> It's like climbing Everest,

They died close to the shipwreck. Maybe the Titanic site will slowly fill up with corpses, just like Everest is doing.

> Of course all lives should be regarded as being equal.

Lives sure. But not deaths. Bringing yourself in a confirmed dangerous situation just for the thrill of it, even being so desperate for it as to pay what post people would dream of earning over multiple years, and then dying during this adventure ... in contrast to desperate refugees trying to escape into a better life and then dying because traffickers don't care about their survival.. Idk man, doesn't sound equal to me.

I’ve signed “you could die” waivers several times in my life. That might be more a commentary on the state of our legal system than on my level of risk-seeking.

I read that more people have been to outer space than have been to the wreck of the Titanic. Anybody who didn't think this was an extremely dangerous thing to do was lying to themselves.

> Someone who took the trip before said they had to sign a waver which mentioned death multiple times.

Just nitpicking here but this is quite normal. Any somewhat physically involved commercially offered activity has waivers to sign that mention potential death and that absolve the business from responsibility. Gyms for example do this.

Exactly. Most people are bothered to see how rich folks like this waste money when most people struggle to survive. Being paid ok in tech does not make me feel any closer to the sort that spends 250k on a fun trip.

In European news both events received significant coverage.

Local news trumps global.

I am sure in Greece the Messenia migrant boat disaster got more coverage than Titan.

That said, the big factor is how sadly common migrant boat disasters are (just like liquid gas exploding in a restaurant in China and killing 10+ people, happened yesterday).

Carbon fiber submersible on the way to Titanic containing cocky inventor, plus billionaire, plus kid hits so many spots for news cycle.

I reflected on this too. I think the key differentiator is the context of the submarine situation unfolding in realtime, with action which could still be taken, and an unknown future outcome, as opposed to an event which was reported on retrospectively, after the disaster had happened.

But the contrast is still striking between both the situations and media reporting of 5 rich men vs 700 of some of the world’s poorest and most desperate people.

Both are unbelievably tragic.

The reporting on the Mediterranean disaster seems to have gone a lot quieter than I would have expected given what we now know about how the Greek authorities story simply does not match up with what actually seems to have happened. (It seems like there may have been an opportunity to prevent that disaster).

Yes, it's more similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tham_Luang_cave_rescue than to other disasters, which should illustrate that it's not about the kind of people so much as the story itself.

I lived in South Asia for a while and the thing that would strike me is the everyday catastrophes. For instance, there was a recent Indian derailment that you barely heard about here in the US https://apnews.com/article/india-passenger-train-derail-dead...

275 deaths.

For instance, there was a recent Indian derailment that you barely heard about here in the US

It was only covered in the NYT, LAT, WaPo, Chicago Tribune, WSJ, USAT, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News....just to name a few.

Fair enough. Same places as the Greek migrants, so I suppose we were operating with a false premise. Most things are quite well covered irrespective of whom the victims were.

It's just that experimental submarines vanishing on their way to the Titanic are much more unusual and intriguing than boating accidents. There was also an element of suspense since the fate of the sub was unknown (similar to flight MH370).

First time I read the comparison with the Med disaster and couldn't agree more.

I'm never the first one to start whining about refugee related disasters but hundreds of women & children drowning on a boat after having been in a miserable state for days on end is just the worst. Other boats had been circling it for days and apart from providing some food & water nothing was done. Maybe an attempt to tow it, which could well have led to the capsizing.

How could such a ship have been rescued? Any attempt at evacuation would have probably led to a capsizing anyway due to people moving around in a panic, unless ... the boat was wedged between two strong boats?

No one anywhere has mentioned that but it’s true. The amount of people meant any sort of rescue might have been doomed to failure.

A better comparison is to the round-the-clock coverage of the Chilean miners who were stuck underground, and the boys who were eventually rescued from the cave in Thailand. Your comparison is apples to oranges.

The Messenia disaster was over by the time it hit the news (and it was covered extensively in the UK press), whereas the Titan situation was ongoing. Watch how quickly it disappears from the news cycle now it's been resolved.

I agree with your observation but Mediterranean disaster had coverage since last week at least in European news I am following. This accident will also soon disappear from the news since we now know the fate.

How many rescue ships were deployed to the med incident? How many to the titanic? The victims/ships ratio demonstrates that one garnered exponentially more government attention.

different countries of very different sizes and capabilities were near the incidents.

the US and Canadian coast guards don't operate in the Mediterranean, and (presumably) couldn't have gotten ships there fast enough to do anything about it, anyways.

Splitting hairs here but the US Navy has several bases in the Mediterranean. Though I don’t know where vessels were related to the refugee boat or how quickly that tragedy began and ended.

> How many rescue ships were deployed to the med incident? How many to the titanic?

I don't know. Do you ?

From wikipedia: "Immediately following the sinking, the Greek Coast Guard and the military initiated a massive search and rescue operation."

> one garnered exponentially more government attention

It wouldn't be surprising that some of those rescue ships were funded by the families of the victims, considering the size of their bank accounts.

> than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean.

A migrants boat. Most of the people crossing the Med into Europe are economic migrants but in the past decade it has become known that claiming asylum on arrival (or at least if caught) is a good strategy so many do.

Interesting point, I wasn't aware of the distinction between economic migrant and refugee

> Refugee immigrants are unable or unwilling to return home for fear or threat of prosecution, and thus, must make a life in the country that gives them refuge. Economic immigrants, on the other hand, are free from this constraint and can return home whenever they so desire.[1]

But then further clarification of the term 'economic migrant' is also interesting:

> The term ‘economic migrant’ has no legal definition. It is not mentioned in any international instruments of migration law.

and

> The inaccurate dichotomy between ‘economic migrants’ and refugees creates two fixed categories and gives the misleading impression that only refugees have and deserve legal protection and rights at the international level.

> Yet, the reality is different and far more complex. Migratory movements are composed of various types of migrants who may have specific protection needs, even if they are not fleeing persecution or a conflict. These include accompanied or unaccompanied migrant children; victims of human trafficking; migrants attempting to reunite with their families; and migrants affected by natural disasters or environmental degradation, including as a consequence of climate change. [2]

[1] https://docs.iza.org/dp1063.pdf [2] https://weblog.iom.int/false-dichotomy-between-economic-migr...

Since the only country at war that borders EU is Ukraine I don't think that people from any other countries could be considered refugees.

I am a bit puzzled by your comment.

A 'refugee' has a legal definition because this is a status that is created and governed by international treaties, which is what makes it interesting for migrants because in 'nice' countries like in Europe this means that they are protected from deportation while their claim to refugee status is processed, which can take a very long time. They are provided accomodation during that time.

All other migrants are simply people who migrate for whatever reason people move to other countries, which are mainly family and economic reasons. When people from poor countries want to move to rich countries the main reason is very obviously economic. All those migrants fall into normal national laws of the countries they move to, in general this means that if they enter without visas they face a form of arrest and deportation.

That's it. There is indeed in a clear dichotomy. The rest is purely a political/ideological point of view as to whether people have effectively a right to migrate vs. whether countries have a right to decide who to let in.

Also the coastguards were tripping over each other to save these 5 men, while for the refugees the speculation is if the coastguard contributed to the wrecking.

Whose speculation?

The Greek coast guard gave conflicting statements about having tied a rope to the boat to try and tow it to the shore. First they did, then they didn't.

Me it seems.

I thought to have read the boat capsized while being towed, as claimed by one of the survivors. Being towed could be an involuntary act, while throwing a line seems solely meant to help.

> The 104 survivors of the tragedy have very limited mobility and access to communications. Some of them said Greek Coast Guard vessels threw them a line shortly before their vessel capsized [1]

On a personal note. I myself got once rescued by the navy with their Zodiac. That was a mutually fantastic experience. I believe that coastguards anywhere would prefer to rescue above anything else, that is what they signed up for. I hope this dual tragedy will help the leadership to remove anything that creeps between that objective.

[1] https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-06-20/greece-i...

What compare the U.S Coast Guard’s actions with that of the Greek Coast Guard? They are two distinct and unrelated organizations.

And from what I’ve read about, the U.S Coast Guard are awesome folks that’ll trip over each other to save anyone if they can..

Refugee boats go down in the Mediterranean all the time. At this point it’s hardly news.

That’s not in any way to detract from the tragedy, just pointing out one reason why it’s barely covered.

Once something becomes common, it’s not news anymore.

The war in Ukraine showed the average person is more likely to become a refugee than paying a quarter million dollars for a trip to the Titanic.

Its because theres not much to do in case of the mediterranean disasaster. The thing sanked, you rescue the the survivors, then departed them back to the country of origin. Also, this happened before.

In the case of the sub, there where a chance to find them alive. This makes the story more compelling.

Is it?

We (I say this not from my point of view) don't want to see poor people.

We don't relate to them and we think they should just be successful in their countries.

In contrast there is someone who is part of us, not poor, has achieved something and entertained us in an interesting way.

Of course we will try to help them and not those refugees.

The mental issue of us living great while 3th world countries exist is nothing new for a long time.

It's now even so old that there is research done on how to help people because the obvious things didn't work.

I understand that it is difficult to speculate on why the news covers one subject or another, and certainly the other comments have a point about being trapped being scary, or people laughing at the misfortune of the powerful being good for clickbait.

I just want to say, another issue is that to be perfectly honest, we don't like to humanize migrants, nor do we want to examine our culpability in their misfortune and demise. We want to mine resources from foreign countries even if that means destabilizing their governments, but we absolutely do not want to deal with the people fleeing those places whether we had nothing to do with their misfortune or we were in some way complicit.

The misfortune of a few rich guys is much easier for us to process than the avoidable death of hundreds, which was reportedly ultimately caused by the European Coast Guard who attempted to tow the vessel and in doing so supposedly caused it to sink. [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/world/europe/greece-migra...

> And of course the average person here is probably a lot closer to taking a holiday trip in a submersible than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean.

The average person here might think they are, but they'd be deluding themselves.

I don’t think people should be too surprised that the news cycle doesn’t exactly reward the biggest tragedies. Not to mention the fact that it only became such a big story largely because so many people were dunking on the company/passengers. Unless you’re suggesting we should be spending more time dunking on dead refugees?

I don't think it has much to do with refugees vs. holiday trip. Other stories of (potentially) trapped people such as the Thai soccer team or the Chilean miners received similar nonstop coverage and media attention.

The one happened once, the other happens every day. That doesn't make it any less sad but that's the reason why the one got disproportionate coverage, it's 'news' by definition, it happened the first time. If it would happen every day it would definitely not be covered to this degree, plus there is the 'race against time' component which allows the news to be stretched over several news cycles.

You completely missed the fact that this is about the Titanic. People are fascinated by what happened to a lot of other rich people back then.

Something about tragedies, and something about statistics...

But there's also the concern of frequency, [2] occurs more frequent than [1], people generally don't care about the people at [2] because they are "unimportant", and not prominent in any way. They are background characters on the other side of the world for many, they are not well dressed, they do not perform functions with significant influence on the broader society.

Or at least so they are perceived by the general public. They are labelled illegal immigrants, or leeches, or whatever else because people in many places can't fathom being born in a third world or very poor country and doing everything in your power to make it out.

Imagine, feeling so low, that you'd give everything, your life even, for a chance, a sliver of chance, at what others are born into.

The comparison between these two stories is being made (elsewhere on the Internet) because humans were literally still being found and fished out of the Mediterranean, alive, while entire nation states mobilized to try to rescue a few wreckless rich guys who were likely already dead.

The point being made is about misallocation of resources, not news coverage. (Novel stories will always grab more attention.)

> while entire nation states mobilized

Who?

The US Navy/Coast Guard sending an ultra deepwater ROV isn't even comparable to the Greeks actively monitoring the boat enough to take a photo of it before it capsized, let alone is anyone mobilizing "entire nation states"

> The point being made is about misallocation of resources, not news coverage.

The families of the missing rich people have the resources to fund the search. The families of the missing people in the Mediterranean obviously do not.

Wouldn't that be an example of what the comment you're replying to calls a misallocation of resources?

> The point being made is about misallocation of resources, not news coverage.

what resources? were US and canada supposed to ship deep sea ROVs over to the Mediterranean to help refugees?

even if you wanted the US/Canada to help, it wouldn't have been the north atlantic coast guards doing it.

> The point being made is about misallocation of resources

Do you have a detailed list of rescue vehicles deployed for each event ?

It’s the novelty of the situation, even absurdity and even the inspired incredulity……. on the other hand the poor trying to get richer and dying trying does not create new pathways in the brain

The funny thing is - they probably are closer to becoming a refugee.

It's a better story. Story of punished hubris of the rich who disregard everybody including experts.

While another refugee boat sunk is just that.

Thanks for this. I had no idea.

I feel the same way, but I guess 5 deaths are a tragedy, 300 is a statistic.

This is unrelated to the article and can also be seen as political flamebait.

Bad things happening to well-off people gets outsized attention not because people care more about the rich, but because it knocks the wheels off one of the foundational beliefs of capitalism: that moving up the wealth ladder will shield you from the miseries that befall the poor. If being rich doesn’t protect you, then nothing can, and that makes capitalism rather meaningless.

Might not be true in this case - the very idea of people locked up in a submarine is attention grabbing - but its certainly true for countless similar laments where people will point out the outsized attention a random investment banker getting attacked would get vis-a-vis the many murders in the inner city on any given day.

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