Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

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I climbed gingerly into the escape hatch, head to toe in a self-contained submarine escape suit; I knew I needed to plug myself into an air pipe that would inflate it as the water came in, making it fully pressurised. Suddenly it was time, and the water started to shoot in, my stress levels becoming almost unbearable as I was squashed into this tower, the suit inflating around me. As the water pushed against me, I tried to clear the pressure from my ears with the help of a nose plug, all the while trying to remember what I’d been told. I recalled all the stories of what could go wrong; at the very least I was expecting my eardrums to burst.

The pressure on my suit was immense now, around 50 pounds per square inch, and bubbles blurred my vision as water rapidly filled the tank. I was terrified beyond comprehension, but within 30 seconds the hatch suddenly opened. After floating out I said my name and RN ID number to the instructor, who had gone to the bottom of the tower to meet me in a diving bell. I was then attached to a pole and shot up the 100 feet of water in around ten seconds. As I was now in a fully inflatable suit I remembered to breathe normally, in, out, in, out, reminding myself constantly that my ascent needed to be smooth, and that I should breathe all the way to the top. I suddenly popped to the surface, almost fully breaching out of the water, then floated onto my back doing a fair impression of the Michelin man, before I was finally led to the side of the pool and handed over to the medical staff for a once-over.