"If a modern cruise ship sinks slowly, nobody should die"
That's the kicker, though. If the ship sinks slowly. *Titanic* sank in 2.5 hours, and they had 20 boats. Every boat launched would have been fully loaded, certainly, but would they have had enough time to launch all the boats? I was watching a documentary that covered this very topic a few months ago, and they timed exactly how long it took to load and launch one of the lifeboats. The consensus was that it would have been cut extremely close to actually get all the boats fully loaded and launched in the 2.5 hours.
Now, that's taking into consideration the fact that they were using 1912 technology. Today, launch system would probably be mechanized, so it would probably take less time to release a boat into the water. There also would have been at least one lifeboat drill, so everyone on board would presumably know what to do and where to go (presumably). So there's that. But the big unknown would be how quickly the ship goes down.
reply
share