Panic and Tech Diving

[JS1scuba]

I've been teaching diving for 20 years now. I have never used the words "panic or bolt" in any class I have ever run. It is also a failure point for instructor candidates.

In all the time teaching I have only had two divers "panic and bolt" both were from referrals from other instructors and never should have been in the water to begin with. We found this out on the first pool session.

For technical divers it's pretty simple to see who will and who will not bug out. One gas share drill will show you. Instead of promptly providing the long hose -- take a moment-- watch what happens. If the guy or gal are cool ... good chance there is no problem there. If the eyes get big, wide, and you see the fear in their face ......... you will have a problem.

I like to have discussions with divers prior to diving with them. It will include things about personal life, business, family etc. I try to find stressors and also ask "Is there anything that has gone on in the last 24 - 48 hours that upset you or is on your mind?" ....... if there is **** going on in their life that is out of sorts - i strongly suggest they sit out the dive until its clear.

I also want to know about all meds. If a diver is on anti convulsants, anti depressants, or other psychotropics i want to know.

Cheers

JDS

 

[ucfdiver]

Also, we were at the end of the dive with our lowest gas reserves, and if he was highly stressed, he could blow through a lot of gas in that length of time. I still don't know if that was right; the idea of doing a buddy search with an OOG diver on my long hose still doesn't sit well with me. But Danny is a very wise man.

Not that you would be any help (at this point) if he was low on gas...and by not letting the OOA diver surface, you've in essence, doubled your SAC.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Go back, at the moment I realized Kirk was gone, and find him. Points being that, at that moment, I knew where I had last seen him and it wasn't far; seven minutes later, after I had escorted the OOG diver to the surface and returned, he could be anywhere. Also, we were at the end of the dive with our lowest gas reserves, and if he was highly stressed, he could blow through a lot of gas in that length of time. I still don't know if that was right; the idea of doing a buddy search with an OOG diver on my long hose still doesn't sit well with me. But Danny is a very wise man.

I'm with you on this. I'm not about to do a buddy search while tethered to an OOA diver. That just doesn't make a lot of sense. Now you're increasing the possibility of having 3 recoveries instead of only 1!

 

[Slamfire]

I am not sure you can psychologically condition people not to panic...

I think you can. In my personal case, it happened with dogs.

I was 7 yrs old and had my left arm in a cast when the meanest dog of the neighborhood come out running from the open gates of its owners' home. It was a big mean dog and he was usually behind a fence but my luck of the day just happened to find him with the gates opened. I was trying to quietly walk past that house on the other side of the street to avoid any problems with the mutt. But the beast came running at me full speed crossing the street. He jumped up going for my throat, but I twisted a bit to the side and raised my right arm. The animal landed a good bite that left a scar on my right armpit. If I hadn't had a chain link fence behind me, that impact would have sent me to the ground and I would have been in real trouble. After a while of grabbing my armpit, he let go and once again jumped up for my throat. I managed to jumped as well and he left another bite scar in my chest just below my throat. By that time the owner of the dog had come out and finally managed to get control of her dog.

A year later, when I was 8, my brother and I and a group of our friends where playing in a field near our house. While we were playing two neighborhood dogs got into a noisy fight. None of the dogs was the one that attacked me. Nonetheless I was panic stricken to the point where I climbed up very high on the nearest telephone post. There were no pegs, or ladders or any type on climbing aides on that wooden post. It was just my panic propelling me to heights far above the dogs. Even today my brother, 2 yrs younger than me, still makes fun at my canine motivated climbing speed and ability.

I hated having that level of fear that took me to the heights of panic. I was just very uncomfortable around dogs. But dogs are a reality of our society and there were countless occasions where I had to suck it up and try to interact near them. When I was about 10 yrs old, I was visiting a relative of about my age. His grandma had a medium small dog that was very mean. It was so mean it was always tied up on a leash. Somehow that day that dog went loose. As soon as he saw me coming from the other side of the yard he came snarling and running at me full speed. But this time I did not go into panic mode or lost my control to fear. I still had a lot of fear but I turned around and faced him, waiting. I timed myself to deliver the perfect kick to the lower jaw of dog just as he dove in to bite my leg. The kick shut its mouth with a loud clap and sent him reeling backwards. The dog got up and became silent keeping his distance from me and no longer trying to attack me.

That day became my emancipation day from my fear of dogs. It no longer meant that I was not afraid of dogs, but rather that the fear no longer controlled me. I started rationalizing that if it came to getting into a fight with a dog, I could also inflict damage. I would probably come up bleeding myself, but I could make sure my opponent would fare worse. My worries started shifting away from the fear of getting bitten or bleeding and more towards gaining the upper hand in a fight and dominating. I started to accept bites and bleeding as unavoidable in a fight, but I would be the victor.

My confidence grew as I hit a growth spurt at 13 and I realized I was bigger and stronger than most dogs. I still had my fear of dogs, but it was nowhere near the level needed to control my actions through panic. It was around that time that the dog of another kid I met that very same day came running at me. Once again I stayed still waiting. This was a medium large sized dog. It did not go for my legs, but jumped up towards my upper torso. I timed myself to deliver a violent shove with the heels of both hands and one of my knees. The dog went flying backwards and landed badly on one of its hind legs. I found out later the leg was fractured. As the dog's owner approached his whimpering dog, I realized the dog had not run towards me in a snarling aggressive way. The poor animal was coming to me in a playful manner to probably greet me by licking my face. I felt bad. I realized that judicious use of force was another aspect of controlling my fear that I needed to learn.

Obviously, some people have a better ability to handle fear than others. But I do believe you can learn to rationally face your fears and control them. If you know that a fear will rise under certain conditions, envision yourself in those conditions and make the decision of what you will be doing under the worst case scenario. The decision has to be firmly made well before you encounter the scenario in reality. When you encounter the situation, it is not decision making time, it is time to act, the decision was made a long time ago. In a sense, this is what the training scenarios are making you do.

 

[DiverLaura]

I had another instructors student panic on me in 220' on a silty shipwreck. Thanks to the other instructor telling them they could bring a camera (I'd insisted that they were not ready behind the scenes). The student, thinking they were more dialed in than they were (didn't know what they didn't know) added one thing to many, didn't have a good attachment point set up for their camera (i think they usually carried it in a goodie bag to 'protect' the wide angle lens and hadn't tested new attachment) anyhow, not enough hands on the descent, one thing led to another, cratering in on the wreck, silt cloud of magnificent proportions, and by the time i was involved i saw the big-wide-white-bug-eyes that accompany vapor lock of the brain, just before the bolt-o-rama starts. All I can say is thank goodness I still (this was many years ago) dove with heavy steels as stage bottles because i was able to make myself negative enough to a) rip the camera out of his grip and toss it on the hull of the wreck (its not like it was gonna go anywhere) and get a hold of the guy (230lbs of tightly coiled muscle ready to act) by the chest straps and hold him on the wreck long enough to get him 'breathed down' get IN HIS FACE eye contact... i was quite literally looking into the eyes of a dead man for about 3 minutes, they were completely empty, vacant... I held on with all my strength and somehow (most likely purely with physical contact and being so totally in his face and yelling NO NO NO NO!) we broke the panic cycle and kept his hands away from his drysuit and BCD inflators. Basically in my mind screaming "oh no you don't, I'm so not gonna let you kill us both". We talked a bit about it afterwards, but it wasn't until many years later that he thanked me for saving his life. He knew and I knew that the only place he wanted to be at that moment was on the surface, and it was just luck that i was able to get him under control, to 'ground him' since he was double my bodyweight.

Panic is an incredibly scary thing to deal with when you are looking it in the eye. Even more so when you KNOW if it has its way someone will very likely die.

As an instructor, I have seen some panic incidents. The worst was a diver who panicked at 30 mfw and tried to take me out. It is a long way up from 30 mfw with a panicked diver attached to you. The cause was he had made a gear change and didn't check it out in shallow water before he needed it. One of my hard fast rules is always check out any new untried gear/configuration change on an eval dive before a mission dive.

Some people are very panic and stress prone and some should never dive. The smart ones give it up and the not so smart cave in to peer pressure and....


Dale

 

[Rhone Man]

I think you can. In my personal case, it happened with dogs.

I think you can condition people to respond better to particular stress situations (which I think tec diver training tries to do). But I am not aware of any way to make people "less panicky" generally, other than getting them stoned.

 

[jjones9527]

I think good solid training, and routine practice of drills in order to make reactions instinctive and thoughtless makes a diver more able to cope with a stressful situation instead of panicking.

Last year a buddy and I inadvertently scootered into the crack in the Jodrey. For those unfamiliar with it shes broken about a third of the way from the bow and lying on the side against a rock wall in very dark water. Normally you follow the port rail to get to the stern, however we were a little too low and ended up inside the cargo hold.

Once we realized what we had done it was full stop, take a few breaths, get orientated, and start making our way back. I admit my heart was pounding when I first realized what we had done, but by taking those couple breaths, staying calm we easily managed to find our way out. Getting into a pickle like that really lets you know how you and your buddy will react when things go bad.

 

[Slamfire]

I think you can condition people to respond better to particular stress situations (which I think tec diver training tries to do). But I am not aware of any way to make people "less panicky" generally, other than getting them stoned.

Maybe we're talking about different degrees in the spectrum. I do believe that there could be people at one end of the spectrum that are so controlled by their fear and so prone to panic that they are "untrainable" and should not be diving.

As for me, I agree with the saying that states that "being healthy is simply dying at the slowest rate possible". We're all going to die some day. When I accept that fact, I can see that dying underwater is not one of the worst ways to go. In fact toxing out at great depth could be a pretty nice way to go, comparatively. I'm not suicidal and I'm not reckless, but if I have to leave this world underwater, I've decided to leave it in a dignified way and not sunk in panic and terror. Please understand that I'm not talking about giving up early when there still is a fighting chance, but it's the decision I hope to make if I encounter that worst case scenario.

 

[rjack321]

Interesting that Danny pre-scripts lost buddy. That's an easy exercise to do unannounced. In fact, I've never pre-scripted that one and never had it pre-scripted for me during my training.

As for an OOA with a missing buddy within the cavern, I'll 2nd James' response.

Lost buddy is scripted in Cave1 (and in fact nobody is even taken off the mainline) at this cavern + Intro level its mostly an "understand the recalculate and search" concept and running through the motions.

Its unscripted in Cave2, where a buddy will be physically removed from the line you're on and left hidden in the dark somewhere. They don't want to leave Cave1 students unattended in the cave so they don't do this in C1.

Personally I think Danny's wrong about the lost buddy in the cavern while your other buddy is OOA scenario. Guess it partially depends on the exact circumstances. I'd probably blow off all stops and leave the OOA buddy on the surface then promptly re-enter too. Unless I could see the "lost" buddy and they were close enough to reach.

 

[LiteHedded]

Lost buddy is scripted in Cave1 (and in fact nobody is even taken off the mainline) at this cavern + Intro level its mostly an "understand the recalculate and search" concept and running through the motions.

Its unscripted in Cave2, where a buddy will be physically removed from the line you're on and left hidden in the dark somewhere. They don't want to leave Cave1 students unattended in the cave so they don't do this in C1.

Personally I think Danny's wrong about the lost buddy in the cavern while your other buddy is OOA scenario. Guess it partially depends on the exact circumstances. I'd probably blow off all stops and leave the OOA buddy on the surface then promptly re-enter too. Unless I could see the "lost" buddy and they were close enough to reach.

you're having a really bad day with this one. be careful not to get hit by lightning when you leave him at the surface lol