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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

The Atlantic'a piece about the sinking of the ferry Estonia contains some interesting pieces of information for anybody who might like to survive a sinking in the future. It might also put you off getting on ships.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-s...

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https://onse.fi/estonia/ here's the text of the final report of the accident. It's a thoroughly written document, recommended reading for anyone interested in the details.

I love vivid, harrowing writing like this.

Despite seeing James Cameron's Titanic, I never pictured the ships themselves as being such an obstacle to survival.

This makes it feel so real. It's haunting.

Do you have anything more like this?

If you can accept Planes instead of Ships, Mayday is a good show that guides on through the accident investigations of plane crashes (from a short video of the crash with details removed, through the investigation process and then finally a short section on the recommendations issued)

It is the same show, but it has different names: Air Crash Investigation

Also (according to Wikipedia): Air Emergency (National Geographic Channel, U.S.) Air Disasters (Smithsonian Channel, U.S.) Mayday: Air Disaster (Weather Channel, U.S.)

My TV Organizer names it Mayday, hence I use that name.

Sure, and Mayday is the original name. I was simply trying to be helpful to others who might have trouble finding it.

Some people find it scary, but I find it reassuring. The investigations always show an insane number of things that had to go wrong in a very specific way for the crash to happen. No engineering is perfect and things are going to fail, but watching those things shows how effective the swish cheese safety method is for 99.999whatever% of flights that never crash.

The author of that article, William Langewiesche, has written several others in that vein:

- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-...

- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w...

- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/the-mecca-stampede-t...

- https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/06/us-airways-200906

- https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/01/air_crash200901

Wow. Incredible story and far better than the WIRED clickbait drivel that this HN post links to. Thanks for sharing this.

Chilling quote:

> Thiger heard a clear comment from only one passenger, a man nearby, who joked, "Ha! Now we have sailed against an iceberg!" and took another gulp of beer. The singing continued unabated.

Surely, this couldn't be happening to us!

I continued reading, what a rabbit hole. Apparently the cause of MS Estonia's sinking, as documented in that Atlantic article, is bogus.

New evidence points to a submarine collision and tampering of evidence in the initial 1994 investigation:

* https://news.err.ee/1140442/head-of-ms-estonia-investigation...

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/04/maybe-now-well...

The whole shebang, with "crazy conspiracy theories", ridiculed for decades for claiming a hole in the hull and weapons transported onboard, now vindicated. What a mess.

This is an amazing read, highly recommend it if you are scrolling past

This was an incredible piece of writing. Thanks for posting the link!

Good, but the numerous references to the ocean, 14 of them, indicate sloppy writing. Baltic is a relatively small, shallow and closed sea. It can be fierce, but ocean it is not.

That's misguided pedantry, I think. Most seas are a subset of the ocean, and the Baltic is an arm of the Atlantic.

And in addition, the article was published in The Atlantic.

Pedantry? Perhaps. Baltic Ocean, no way! No Atlantic Sea, either.

Not to be too pedantic, but there is no connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea. The North Sea separates them.

Seas tend to be worse than oceans from what I can tell. In the deep ocean there is plenty of water, and little to hit. Thus even when things go wrong there is plenty of forgiveness for error. Shallow seas not so much, off course by a few meters can be fatal. Of course there are exceptions - as an expert in sailing not me for details.

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