Sub Plot

The implosion of the Titan submersible, and the explosion of media coverage, was one of those stories that grabbed the attention of people around the world because we could relate to passengers waiting and the rescuers racing to save them, reminiscent of the Thai cave rescue. In the case of the sub, the story, while very sad, wouldn’t have received nearly the coverage it did had we known the truth—which as it turns out, was the assumed outcome by most of those in the know. NPR: The US Navy heard the likely implosion of the missing Titan sub on Sunday. And from The Guardian: Titan submersible: why was its implosion not announced sooner?

+ James Cameron: “Their comms were lost, and navigation was lost – and I said instantly, you can’t lose comms and navigation together without an extreme catastrophic event or high, highly energetic catastrophic event. And the first thing that popped to mind was an implosion.”

+ “Throughout it all, OceanGate and its CEO, Stockton Rush—who was among the Titan’s lost passengers—declared that innovation was more important than critics’ concerns. In a 2019 blog post, the company said it didn’t want to get the Titan certified for safety standards in part because ‘bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.'” The Atlantic (Gift Article): How Could This Have Happened?