From Outside magazine and PRX, this is the science of survival.

If you are stuck underwater in a submersible, what are the different ways to die?

Oh, so many.

A while back this guy named Taylor Zion sent me a book to read.

I almost kind of enter like a brain freeze when you talk about how many different ways

there are to die at death right because you know there's there's crushing burning you

know asphyxiation Taylor is a maritime historian and shipwreck expert and he'd written a thriller that takes place largely underwater in a stolen submarine.

He told me the book was based on his real world adventures and he's trying to bring some authenticity back to the genre of underwater adventure novels.

Oh, explosion, that's another big one.

So today we're coming back from a break with a short piece about submarines,

where almost every situation is a survival situation.

In summary, being stuck underwater in a submarine is a very bad idea.

Absolutely. Now, the surprising thing about the early days of submarines is just how early they really were.

People were building submersibles and heading underwater before anyone even thought about settling the frontier.

In fact, one of the earliest inventors was a wagon maker from Sussex, England named John Day,

who built not actually the first submarine, but one of the early ones in 1774.

You might consider him something of an unlikely candidate for posterity.

The counts from the time portrayed him as, you unable to read or write didn't have a

permanent home he was prone to depression and quick temper and and just broke as well

they was shy and not really one for spectacle. But he had this story that he told. He said that he had built a completely watertight compartment inside a fishing boat and that he'd sunk it to a depth of 300 feet and stayed there for 24 hours.

Not that he could do this, but that he had done it.

Of course, everyone he told wanted to see him do it again.

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