Loss of state-of-the-art vessel in May or June is setback to Chinese push for naval parity with US
China’s efforts to achieve maritime military parity with the US have suffered a serious blow after its newest state-of-the-art nuclear submarine sank in a dock, American officials have confirmed.
The incident happened last May or June at the Wuchang shipyard near Wuhan – the same city where the Covid-19 pandemic is believed to have originated – and came to light, thanks to satellite imagery, despite efforts by the country’s communist authorities to stage a cover-up.
A US defence official told Reuters that the Zhou-class vessel – first of a new kind of Chinese submarines and distinctive for its X-shaped stern that aids manoeuvrability – is believed to have been next to a pier when it sank.
It is not known if there were any casualties – or if the submarine had any nuclear fuel onboard at the time, although experts have deemed that likely, according to the Wall Street Journal, which initially broke the story. The submarine was eventually salvaged but it is believed that it will take many months before it can be put to sea.
The possibility of being stationed in a submarine is one of the many reasons I did not choose to join the Navy; it’s a nightmare scenario. This sort of incident makes me feel sorry for Chinese submarine crews - it’s a bad situation made worse by destroying any shred of confidence in the engineers.
Not sure about other countries, but America’s submarine force is volunteer. You wouldn’t be forced onto a submarine.
I was on a sub and I chose it because being instantaneously crunched sounded better than starving in a life boat.
Read about the Kursk. Instantly crushed doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you get stuck in a compartment for six hours and slowly asphyxiate.
Would the sensation be similar to being at high altitude without oxygen? There is a Smarter Every Day video from several years ago where the host conducts simple cognitive and motor function tests in a pressure chamber which simulates high altitude atmospheric conditions. Within a couple of minutes of being off oxygen, he’s suffering from hypoxia and is unable to either continue the tests, or to mask up, despite being told the he will die if he doesn’t secure oxygen. Admittedly, it’s incredibly chilling to see the guy rendered so helpless, but, from his perspective, it did not seem particularly traumatic. As I understand it, if he had not had his mask applied for him at that point, he would have lost consciousness and then died in his sleep shortly thereafter. All things considered, not the WORST way to go. Beats getting stuck in that compartment with a leak and eventually drowning.
No, you would suffer incredible pain from being unable to evacuate CO2.
You know how painful it gets when you hold your breath to your physical limit? That’s CO2 building up in your body. Just going hypoxic on its own isn’t painful, the pain is the body’s response to having too much CO2.
Yeah, hypercapnia is fucked. I’m actually testing a small CO2 gas generator (literally just citric acid added dropwise to sodium bicarb with an acid trap and a dehumidifying stage) as a means to kill pests on houseplants and did some reading on the symptoms to be safe. It is unpleasant. It’s not the worst death I could imagine, but it’s shit.
As an aside, the way that CO2 kills bugs is interesting. Basically, the excess CO2 (in the range of 10-80,000 ppm) causes their spiracules (i.e. the little holes in their exoskeletons they use to breath) to stay open. This causes them to lose moisture until they die of dehydration (usually in a matter of hours). All this happens long before they asphyxiate or suffer from any sort of acidification from the CO2. It’s a bit fucked up, but all other means of getting rid of the pests on my partner’s houseplants have failed.
I use hydrogen peroxide spray to nuke my house plants. It’s a drastic weapon, but really cleans it out. Just make sure you dilute it or you will kill your plants. It’s pretty much chemo for plants.
It’s not the lack of oxygen that will kill you, it’s the build up of carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide asphyxiation hurts the entire time.
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To be honest, if it needs to sink (uncontrolled), the dock would be my preferred location. Before I board it, best case scenario.
Absolutely. I mean, people drown in shallow water all the time; if it flooded, it wouldn’t matter if it were 20m or 200m; you’d still be dead.
But it was a best case for China, since recovery was about as easy as it could possibly be.
Also, in dock, there’s a better chance that it wasn’t fully manned, or that it didn’t flood and they could get folks out. I’m no submarineologist, but it’s difficult to imagine a case where a submarine sank at dock without flooding, though, so my guess is some people died.
Many countries have navies with subs that don’t sink at the dock, blow up, etc. If by “Navy” you meant russian or chinese (or Indian!) navy then I understand you. Otherwise you are extrapolating issues from countries with deep structural issues to your situation when it may not be the most productive way of thinking. This doesn’t mean I think you should have joined or not - just stating that what you feared may not apply to your country, depending on where you are from.
Whatever point you’re trying to make without saying it out loud is false:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_and_submersible_incidents_since_2000
What I am trying to say out loud is that China, Russia and India are not competent with subs at this point in history. Russia is not competent with any sort of navy.
My yardstick is “how many subs have been irretrievably lost with or without all souls on board in peacetime”.
Russia is the only navy that has submarines that even compete with America’s so not sure what you’re talking about there. Russian submarine hulls are made out of titanium and can dive ~1000 feet deeper than the US’s. In a lot of cases, they have much better submarines than we do.
Part of the reason the cold war was so scary was because of the supremecy of their submarines. Didn’t you ever see The Hunt for Red October???
Also, America has lost 2 nuclear submarines to accidents, the thresher and the scorpion. The thresher was during trials after repair, and (along with the loss of the challenger space shuttle) gave rise to modern day Quality Assurance practices in engineering disciplines.
Oh are those the Germans they poached while we grabbed the rocket scientists?
Chinese subs have been around for decades. They played war games with my ship in the 90s
Welp, it’s amazing how many accidents were caused by either running aground or crashing into another vessel, in an era where sensors are so common.
I guess telling how close stuff is underwater is hard.
I never imagined so many incidents of this type. 😬
I’m saying that I’m claustrophobic, and being in a submarine is a nightmare scenario, regardless of how safe it is.
Also: while I don’t know the selection process for US Navy submarines, my experience with the military is that you can have an opinion about how you want to be posted, but no actual decision-making ability. So I may hope to fly Navy jets, but the Navy can simply say: “fuck you, you’re going to be stationed on a submarine,” and there’s little I could do about it.
Also: accidents happen, subs sink, regardless of the country. It’s pretty high on my list of ways not to die, just below Nutty Putty cave and getting sucked into Bolton Strid.
Also: submarines are weapons of war, so there’s a non-zero chance someone, at some point, will be trying to make you sink.
Also: I was saying that were I a Chinese submarine crew, an incident like this would not fill me with confidence about my posting.
You not wrong in general, though with submarines in particular, longstanding policy in the US Navy is that you don’t put people in them who aren’t willing to give it a try, specifically because of those close quarters and limited options in an emergency. I have heard stories of people having a hard time getting other postings once they’re qualified sub-mariners, but having a crew full of resentful balls of anxiety is not worth it to them.
I guess in return, they get a little more money, better food (at least until it runs out), a vague sense of exclusivity, and a more casual culture arising from the close quarters and the actual risk of death being a constant motivator to do your job well.
Something tells me the People’s Liberation Army Navy might take a bit of a firmer approach to postings, but I don’t know for sure.
I completely believe you. Still, at the time I was making the choice, I didn’t know this; I knew for sure that while I was in, my self-determination would be strictly limited, but I didn’t know details, and there was no. fucking. way. that I was going to risk being stationed on a sub.
I have a recollection about this being a thing: that there’s a certain caché among Navy folks about being sub crew. I once knew a retired nuclear sub captain, and while he was a day drinker, he was pretty proud of his service. He also fell asleep in meetings, but I guess he did his job well enough for this all to be overlooked. I visited his office once (in our office in another city), and one of his bottom desk drawers was full of just bottles of whiskey. I’ve never encountered anything like that, before or since. But I digress.