NOHOME wrote: While I am a strong believer in stupidity and dodged bullets making the best campfire stories later in life, that mass pile-up on the river was just stupid on some ones part. I fail to see how nobody died that day.
I agree.
NOHOME wrote: While I am a strong believer in stupidity and dodged bullets making the best campfire stories later in life, that mass pile-up on the river was just stupid on some ones part. I fail to see how nobody died that day.
I agree.
One of my other hobbies is freediving. You can hold your breath a lot longer than you think you can, but it takes understanding the physiology and avoiding the panic that naturally settles in. Keeping the heart rate down and slowly working through a situation will give you many seconds, if the surprise or tension can be overcome.
Eventually your lungs will involuntarily convulse, but even working pretty hard you likely have quite a few seconds after that. Depth matters too as the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood is increased as you dive.
The shock of falling into cold water doesn't help, had a similar situation with my dad rafting many years ago. At ~12 I had to lash him to the side and paddle to shore so he could catch his breath.
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