Colin Hamilton – Escape routes

Yes, instead of making the free ascent or whatever, escaping through the hatch, they send out a submersible that drops onto the hatch, and you make a dry ascent.

Conventional submarines, to make an escape, it depends on how much air you’ve got.

You’re in a small compartment, probably not as long as this, say 16 of you. You’ve got your breathing apparatus, you’re breathing clean air, but you can’t stay down long.

On a nuclear submarine, you’re still running your reactor, you’re generating oxygen so therefore you can stay down indefinitely, theoretically, run out of food, so it’s different.

At one time, you’d all gather round, you do your escape routine and off you’d go.

Now, you wait until you hear somebody up top, and then the submersible arrives on the back of a submarine usually.

Off it comes and it drops down onto the hatch, theoretically, as long as it’s nice and upright and not lying on its side, and you make your escape through that.