Pilot Declares Emergency Because Of Extreme Hypoxia
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as an audible example of what hypoxia sounds like and how consciousness fades gradually.
What it is
Air traffic audio of a pilot slurring and incoherent while declaring an emergency due to extreme hypoxia, with controllers at Cleveland Center struggling to understand him.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2011 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Cites blhack · 2011-11 · on “The Hushed Dangers of Startup Depression”
Thanks for saying this, Thomas... The worst part of depression is a sortof profound loneliness. This is the feeling that ends up leading a lot of people towards suicide. There's nobody that "gets" them, and nobody that they can talk to about what they're feeling. They feel isolated from their friends and family, and this feeling is exaggerated by people who don't understand that they are suffering from a neurochecmial/neurophysiological deficiency; not from something that they can just "push through". Imagine telling somebody with cancer that they just have to wake up one day and decide they don't have cancer anymore. What makes all of this worse is the feeling that what you're going through
Cites lake_rogue · 2014-03 · on “Cops find five Indian Ocean practice runways in MH370 pilot’s simulator”
The effects of hypoxia are profound on human performance -- it's not as simple as being unconscious and incapacitated, it can be irrational and incoherent. As an example, listen to the incoherency of this professional pilot suffering effects of hypoxia at 32,000 feet (flying a LearJet 25) -- he sounds falling over drunk, complaining about flight control problems, oblivious to the profound effects of hypoxia that he and his copilot are experiencing: [this video] Then listen to him after being coached to descend to 11,000 feet when everything really is "A-OK". He sounds like a completely different person at 4:10. The co-pilot who sounds young and spritely at 4:00 (who me? unconscious, nah, just a m
Cites slavak · 2020-09 · on “American Airlines Bans Wearing Too Much Personal Protection Equipment on Board”
There's also this ( [this video] ) famous recording of a Learjet 25 crew suffering hypoxia at 32,000 feet. I think it demonstrates quite well that you're _not_ going to lost consciousness within a few seconds at that altitude, although the danger is not to be understated.