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Can you survive in an air pocket?

“At 70,000 parts per million, you lose consciousness pretty rapidly,” Eric Hexdall, a nurse and clinical director of diving medicine at the Duke University, told National Geographic. Hexdall calculated that, in an air pocket the size of a U-Haul moving van, it would take about 79 hours before you lost consciousness.

vocativ.com - How Long Can You Survive In An Underwater Air Pocket? - Vocativ
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Rescue workers are scouring the Yangtze River for survivors from the Eastern Star cruise ship, which capsized on Monday night with roughly 400 people on board. Although only 14 survivors have been found, China remains hopeful that underwater air pockets within the ship may be keeping some passengers alive. In fact, at least two survivors have already been rescued from air pockets.

The Chinese diver behind both of those rescues told CCTV: “the bottom of the ship had a layer of air cushion, which was 1.5 to 2m thick [roughly 5 to 6 feet].” But how long can you survive in an air cushion?

TL;DR: depends on the size (and a bunch of other factors) but about 80 hours. In an air pocket, the first problem is carbon dioxide build-up. Every time you exhale within the bubble, you release toxic carbon dioxide into a closed space. When carbon dioxide levels reach 50,000 parts per million, you’ll begin to feel sort of drunk. “At 70,000 parts per million, you lose consciousness pretty rapidly,” Eric Hexdall, a nurse and clinical director of diving medicine at the Duke University, told National Geographic. Hexdall calculated that, in an air pocket the size of a U-Haul moving van, it would take about 79 hours before you lost consciousness. The armchair science of air pocket survival came into its own in 2013, when a bunch of physicists got together online to try to figure out what size an air bubble would have to be to sustain life indefinitely. Although the math in that forum gets pretty dense, here’s the general idea: humans need about 10 cubic meters of air per day and, for every 10 meters below the surface of the water, that number decreases. 100 feet below the surface, for instance, the average human only needs about two cubic meters of air per day. To survive 100 feet underwater for three days, then, you’d need about six cubic meters of air—or a bubble about the size of a small dumpster.

Surviving Underwater In An Air Bubble (Stack Exchange)

The Science Behind Man Surviving Underwater for Three Days (National Geographic)

Trapped in an Underwater Air Bubble for Three Days (Slate)

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Is hitting water like hitting concrete?

Pressures caused by breaking the surface make water act more solid on shorter timescales, which is why they say hitting water at high speeds is like hitting concrete; on those short times, it is actually like concrete!

physics.stackexchange.com - Why is jumping into water from high altitude fatal?

$egingroup$

When you would enter the water, you need to "get the water out of the way". Say you need to get 50 liters of water out of the way. In a very short time you need to move this water by a few centimeters. That means the water needs to be accelerated in this short time first, and accelerating 50 kg of matter with your own body in this very short time will deform your body, no matter whether the matter is solid, liquid, or gas. The interesting part is, it does not matter how you enter the water—it is not really relevant (regarding being fatal) in which position you enter the water at a high velocity. And you will be slowing your speed in the water, but too quickly for your body to keep up with the forces from different parts of your body being decelerated at different times. Basically I'm making a very rough estimate whether it would kill, only taking into account one factor, that the water needs to be moved away. And conclude it will still kill, so I do not even try to find all the other ways it would kill.

Update - revised:

One of the effects left out for the estimate is the surface tension. It seems to not cause a relevant part of the forces - the contribution exists, but is negligibly small. That is depending on the size of the object that is entering the water - for a small object, it would be different. (see answers of How much of the forces when entering water is related to surface tension?)

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