[X-post from /r/CatastrophicFailure by /u/shapu] Description of the USS Thresher, nuclear submarine, sinking slowly beneath the waves.

You should read about the loss of the USS Thresher. The water ram, when the sub finally collapsed, turned the men on board into hamburger in less than a 10th of a second.I guess that's better than being fucked at the bottom of the ocean waiting to run out of air.Possibly. But there must have been something nearly as horrendous on the thresher when the captain said "Blow emergency ballast" and the air tanks started to empty into the ballast tanks and then....silence as the valves iced over. Again and again they would have thrown the handle (manually, perhaps, as the reactor had shut down due to an electrical fault, and certainly more and more frantically) and time and again silence. And from somewhere abaft you hear the reactor crew hollering at each other wondering why the damn reactor isn't back on yet, and how much longer do they have, and you know they're looking at that little depth gauge even though they swear they're not, watching it go past 1200....1400...1600...and the hull creaks and whines and the navigator and captain both know that the soft sand at the bottom is too far away and won't save anyone but they're trying to stay stoic as the nose pitches up and the tail swings down under the weight of the propellers and that damned worthless nuclear furnace. And you grab onto the nearest thing as the deck tips out from under you and the gauge goes to 2000....2200...2