Why didnt the people on titanic just climb onto the iceberg they hit to avoid drowning?
“Just” climb onto an iceberg? You make it sound so easy! Have you ever found yourself plunged fully dressed into 35-45 degree F water? I didn’t think so, but if you had, you would know about the incredible system shock caused. Rapid submersion in near freezing water has the potential to cause instant cardiac arrest, even in young, healthy individuals. The initial reaction to such a shock is to gasp for air. If the mouth/face were to be underwater at the time, then guess what the lungs might be filled with instead of air? How much buoyancy (or consciousness for that matter) do you think you might have with your lungs full of water? Do you think you’d even know which way was up?Since heat loss is so rapid in water, hypothermia can take place in 10 minutes or less, which in this situation is a certain death sentence. In such cold, extremities are nearly useless in minutes. So on the off chance that a Titanic passenger plunged into the Atlantic would have any sensation whatsoever in their
The ship was going full speed when it hit it. Two minutes later the iceberg was already far away while the Titanic was still slowing down, even if people had understood what had just happened they would never have had the time to run on the bridge, find the iceberg, jump in the water and swim to it in a water so cold that 10 to 15 minutes in it would kill a strong man. By the time people did come on the bridge to start evacuating the iceberg was too far away to be seen in the middle of the night. Remember that the iceberg was only seen when it was barely 500 metres from the ship, by the time the Titanic came to a full stop the iceberg was probably already invisible.
The water was only 28F,and the iceberg was miles away because after it hit they ran Titanic at half speed ahead.Even if it was near it would have been more dangerous,the largest part of an ice berg is under the water,and could have caused more damage,not to mention that they flip over.What good would it be if people were on it and it flipped.
