![]() In August, Russia officially marked the start of construction on two new Borei-A-class submarines. We created our own.Borei-A-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile sub Knyaz Vladimir at the Russian Northern Fleet's Gadzhiyevo naval base, July 3, 2020. We don’t need myths of leviathans of the deep to terrify our imaginations. So I’ve been reading about submarines again, reading technical specs and records of lost boats, wondering at the audacity of mankind to ride in the bellies of our own sea monsters. It occurred to me that the most ironic death I can think of would have to be drowning in that pool.ĭrowning in a puddle in a bubble in the deep blue sea. It’s like a matryoshka doll of alternating life and death. The recursive sequence of water-air-water (and air again if they held their breath and dove) fascinates me. I think about those men, floating in a bath of water, floating inside of a pressurized bubble, floating in the vastness of the ocean. But the crew enjoyed the opportunity to swim when time permitted. It was a tiny pool, barely large enough to stretch out, certainly not enough to do laps. It features prominently in the film linked above as well. The link at the top of this post shows a series of photos taken inside of a decommissioned Typhoon, including a photo of the grim little tub of brown water that served as the crew’s recreational pool. The feature that captured my attention the most, and that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, is the swimming pool. ![]() The recreational areas alone were a measure beyond any in competing submarine classes. The last remaining Typhoon was decommissioned in 2012, which means I no longer need to lie in bed in a cold sweat, imagining a bubble the size of a football field sailing silently through the cold, dark waters of open ocean.ĭuring its heyday the Typhoon class was featured in Soviet propaganda as a symbol of naval dominance, a war machine to end all war machines that included never before seen comforts in its relatively expansive quarters. Careful, Ryan, some things in here don’t react well to bullets. It’s the class that inspired the movie “The Hunt for Red October,” which incidentally is one of my favorite films. Typhoons were largest subs ever built at 570 feet in length and 48,000 tons submerged. Most recently I’ve been reading about the Soviet Typhoon-class vessels that operated through the Cold War. Even bubbles with pressure hulls can eventually pop. Maybe that’s why the very idea of submarines unnerves me. The universal truth about bubbles is that they all eventually pop. I find myself returning to the subject of the Kursk and thinking about that bubble at the bottom of the ocean. ![]() By the time they started looking, the crew was already gone. Unfortunately, due to a disabled rescue beacon the Russian navy didn’t start rescue operations until it was too late. Six hours of huddling in a tiny bubble of air at the bottom of the sea. According to the investigation it is likely that they survived for six hours before a flash fire consumed the remaining oxygen in the compartment and killed them all. Twenty-three crew members in compartments six through nine survived the initial blast and took refuge in the ninth compartment to wait for rescue. In August of 2000, Russian Oscar-class submarine the Kursk suffered an immense internal explosion that sank the boat and killed everyone in compartments one through five, where the nuclear reactor was housed. While catastrophic failure during combat is probably the more likely grim ending, the scenario that grips my imagination is the slow death of a foundering vessel in deep water, beyond rescue, with drowning or suffocating as the only options. Which means it could sink without anyone on the surface witnessing the event. It thrives in the water, and can go for weeks at a time without surfacing. Side note to would-be tour guides: never tell a 7-year-old that the body of water you’re currently sailing upon “never gives up her dead.” Nightmares for years.Ī submarine, however, is meant to be submerged. I’ve long had an irrational fear of the entirety of Lake Superior because I once sailed over the location where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. The fear of shipwrecks makes sense on some level, because a ship doesn’t go down unless something terrible happened. Hell, I once sucked in a lungful of water while snorkeling when I panicked at the sight of a sunken rowboat in less than 7 feet of water. That is, an irrational fear of submerged man-made objects. They also trigger my favorite worst type of fear: submechanophobia. They trigger a sense of claustrophobia and a loss of free will, and the thought of touring the ocean inside of one fills my chest with a fluttery panic. Soviet Typhoon class submarine in dry dock.Īs is typical when I fixate on a topic, the interest is born out of a primal fear.
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