Ohh Jesus holy freaking Christ on the cross. Oh Jebus. Wow. Ok. Remember my post on black water, on why I’m afraid of oceans, and the deep? (If you don’t, you can read it here before we start.) Well, if that struck any kind of chord, you might choose to look at the picture I’m about to link to. If you’d like to be like me, that is, which involves soiling yourself slightly, and feeling your skin crawl off you in a giant lumpy doona of gooseflesh.
Some of the data in the sidebar is a bit out – 350 feet might be an average dive for a blue whale, but big whales can dive 2 kilometres or more. But the general point of the thing is still well conveyed. Just think about the black speck at the top for a good long moment.
Click here. Go on.
Heathen Scripture 
Oh. Oh, I… I don’t think we’ve ever spoken about our obviously mutual terror of bodies of water, but that actually made me feel physically ill and want to cry at the same time. I’m not sure that’s even owing to my pre-existing fears though- it’s just the sheer enormity of it, hey. It’s that point where you scroll past a mile and the black just keeps right on coming…
Hey, thanks for that link to the Mariana trench picture (two men actually went down that far – oceanographer Cousteau and a colleague. I must admit I’d be afraid of these thousands of tons of water. I will put this drastic picture in my resource list for visualisations (http://crisismaven.wordpress.com/references/references-subjects-covered/data-structuring/data-visualisation-references/) – blue whales and black swans 🙂
I’m not sure I understand what your fear actually is. The picture is not scary merely informative. Are you afraid of sinking and losing the ability to swim back towards the surface?
Here’s what freaks me out. The idea of getting so far beneath the water that light can no longer penetrate it. The idea of such a vast amount of open space that is also completely dark. (Night-time is rarely actually dark because of ambient light from the sky. It’s hard to encounter large open spaces with no light entering them.)
I look at the black speck at the top. That represents a large person. Then I imagine myself being the speck, treading water after falling off a ship or somesuch. Then I consider the sheer amount of space underneath me. Then I consider eventually sinking into it.
There is no prospect of swimming back towards the surface. Even with breathing apparatus, by the time you reach about where the whale is, you’d be crushed by the pressure. You would sink for hours perhaps before you reached the bottom. And once you did, the pressure is nearly 17 tons per square inch. And then what’s left of you would be eaten by giant crustaceans like these: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/tag/abyssal-gigantism
The picture is scary because you look at the black dot (you), then you scroll and scroll and scroll through black space. This is several kilometres of water above you. Submarine or no, this is a fucking terrifying idea.
Kovenant recorded their new album in a studio in The Challenger Deep. Fuuuccckkk yyyeeeaaahhh.
The thought of all the unexplored and alien space, on earth, excites me.
I believe the new Kovenant record is called “we come here for fun…bitches”
Doesn’t your body usually float to the top because of gas and air (not the kind that saves you)? Sorry to, like, spoil the party.
Eventually, but they sink first as soon as the lungs fill with water. Then it takes up to a few weeks for those gases to build up. I’m willing to bet you would be giant-bug food long beforehand.