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Comment by bhtru | Hacker News Reader

What would be worse a catastrophic collapse deep down in the sea or a sudden depressurization high above in the sky around the Armstrong limit?

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The latter clearly as you’d definitely have a longer time of being conscious.

One would survive at the Armstrong limit for much longer indeed:

> Exposure to pressure below this limit results in a rapid loss of consciousness, followed by a series of changes to cardiovascular and neurological functions, and eventually death, unless pressure is restored within 60–90 seconds. [0]

[0] http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

The pressure difference between complete vacuum and sea level is one atm. At the depth of the titanic, the difference is about 375 times that.

Implosion at 400 atm probably takes a fraction of a second, with catastrophic decompression of 1 atm you’ll be conscious probably for about a minute.

Above the Armstrong limit you're looking at 9-15 seconds of useful consciousness. (The time you are conscious enough to take actions to save yourself.)

When a deep sub implodes you're going to be hit by water moving at the speed of sound in said water (1,500m/s, considerably faster than in air.) That's far above the speed of nerve impulses, there's no way a pain signal could reach the brain before there isn't a brain left to get the signal.

I’ll still take about 1/1000th of a second or so over upto 10 seconds of contemplating my faith.

Especially in the case where I’ve drugged one of my children to come with me.

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