Imagine this, you are more than three thousand meters under the sea, surrounded by all-encompassing darkness as not even sunlight can penetrate that deep. The only thing between you and getting turned into Jell-O is a thin carbon fiber hull, controlled by a Playstation 2 controller. Now imagine the submersible that you are traveling in starts creaking and you know you’re seconds away from certain (albeit immediate and painless) death. What would you feel? How would you react? Joe Rogan and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson discussed exactly this while talking about the victims of the recent OceanGate Titan submersible incident.

Joe Rogan and ‘Rampage’ animatedly discuss submersible victims’ last moments

On episode #159 of the JRE MMA Show, former UFC light heavyweight champ and fan-favorite ‘Rampage’ Jackson asked Rogan: “How do you think those dudes felt when they tried to go see the Titanic, bro? What was they thinking?”

The submersible, christened ‘Titan’, lost contact with the surface at around 3,500 meters under the sea, shortly after which it imploded. We will discuss this in much detail later, but Rogan, ever the pragmatist, was flabbergasted at the victims choosing an activity as dangerous as visiting the Titanic at the bottom of the sea as an adventure. The UFC commentator felt that the worst thing about the tragedy for its victims must have been the excruciating few seconds before certain death.

“Bro they’re just rich people that for whatever stupid reason wanted to go on an adventure. But, not only that, they’re looking through a screen, they just wanted to be there bro. The moment before that thing imploded apparently it was free-falling. Before it imploded so they knew it was over. They knew it was over for a few seconds before,” a wide-eyed Joe Rogan told ‘Rampage.’

To which Rampage, the man who struck such fear in Jon Jones that the latter couldn’t sleep before their fight, admitted sheepishly, “I would have had a heart attack.” That’s exactly what Rogan felt probably happened to at least some of the victims, between the first signs of trouble and the submersible collapsing in on itself. “I bet a lot of them did. They probably hyperventilated into a shock,” the host agreed. But what happened to Titan?

How did the Titan victims die?

Four people joined Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, on a submersible trip to the wreck of the Titanic, which continues to fascinate many, even a century after its sinking. The group set out in a submersible (a craft capable of diving to great depth) designed and operated by Rush, who was using a PS2 controller to navigate.

All was going well for them until they reached a depth of 3,500 feet (where the pressure was 380 times the atmospheric pressure on the surface). What most likely happened, according to experts, was that the passengers would have heard a sound, a sure sign that the hull had been compromised, and the craft would collapse in on itself. Within seconds, all five people were dead as the submersible imploded, almost liquefying them.

Experts who looked deeply into the reasons for this implosion have opined that the most probable reason might have been the structural failure of the carbon fiber hull, possibly due to an undetected defect in the material, or carbon fiber not being suitable for the high-pressure environment it was taken into.

What are your thoughts on the tragedy that Joe Rogan and ‘Rampage’ Jackson discussed on JRE?