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anti-drowning blowouts

no, the other kind of blowouts
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No, not like in the Gulf of Mexico, or like a tyre. I mean one of them wotsits you get at parties, you blow and this kind of sprung-loaded thing unrolls. Oh, just take a look at the link will you..

Car goes in the river (somehow) people inside can't quite get out in three/four minutes whatever, game over.

The lining of the lungs extracts oxygen, but most of the air in there is not near the lining of the lungs, so you could have 99% pure oxygen in the absolute centre of the lung and it still wouldn't help. Ok there's some Brownian motion. Our cetacean cousins have in their lungs a way to pump the air about so more of air gets in contact with the lining.

Our problem is one airway and no pump. I did think of some tricky kind of electric fan system going in through the nose and out the mouth, but not likely to work as just the one airway. I then thought about a balloon, which the drownees could blow into so enabling them to pump the air in their lungs around, but then thought what happens if the balloon slips away and it's still getting CO2'd up anyway.

Finally, I thought of the blowouts. They have a way to push the air back into the lungs, it's not as easy to rupture as a balloon and it has a mouthpiece anyway, so I'd upgrade the mouthpiece to be more like a scuba mouthpiece as less likely to fall out of the mouth and it might be possible to line the inside of the tube in the mouthpiece to contain something that absorbs CO2?

There you go..as a complete aside, I just got quoted about £20,000 GBP for the balloon envelopes for the DIY Vulcan bomber. Slightly over the budget <he said passing the hat around and ..ending up minus a hat>

not_morrison_rm, Apr 01 2011

these kind of blowouts http://www.google.c...CA&ved=0CD0Q8gIwAg#
[not_morrison_rm, Apr 01 2011]

Other useful tool... Integral_20Side_20A..._20Window_20Breaker
[normzone, Apr 01 2011]

Spare Air http://discountdive.../pix/spareair.a.jpg
[normzone, Apr 01 2011]

Rebreather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreather
[normzone, Apr 01 2011]

PFDs for Boats PFDs_20for_20boats
Use somthing like this to prevent the car from submerging [csea, Apr 03 2011]

[link]






       So we're looking at some combination of a SpareAir bottle and a rebreather? Interesting housing for the technology.
normzone, Apr 01 2011
  

       You mean I can get a Vulcan Bomber balloon envelope for twenty??????!!!!!!
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 01 2011
  

       [+]   

       //I just got quoted about £20,000 GBP for the balloon envelopes for the DIY Vulcan bomber// [marked-for-tagline]
FlyingToaster, Apr 01 2011
  

       //SpareAir bottle and a rebreather//   

       The only real advantage is, when you do struggle back onto land, you can also blow into it and have some modest celebration of still being alive.
not_morrison_rm, Apr 02 2011
  

       //Vulcan Bomber balloon envelope//   

       It's getting the stamps to stay on is the tricky bit. And don't talk me to about franking...
not_morrison_rm, Apr 02 2011
  

       If you're going to have an expensive air tank contraption, why not just get a spare air tank to begin with? Rebreathing the air in your lungs is better than holding your breath but certainly not better than a few minutes of fresh air.   

       **personal experience tells me that I can rebreath my own air for about 1.5 minutes.
DIYMatt, Apr 03 2011
  

       ; Rebreathing the air in your lungs ;   

       Interesting. How do you do it?
not_morrison_rm, Apr 03 2011
  

       //How do you do it?// -plastic bag over my head.
DIYMatt, Apr 03 2011
  

       "How do you do it" is not the question. "_Why_ do you do it" is the question.
mouseposture, Apr 03 2011
  

       Why not something to prevent the car from submerging in the first place? [link]
csea, Apr 03 2011
  

       There is very strong evidence to suspect [DIYMatt]'s experiment was flawed.
rcarty, Apr 04 2011
  

       Rebreathing the air from your lungs has a mainly psychological effect. It reduces the 'I can't breathe' panic. However, the lungs consist of a series of ever smaller bronchii which have a very large surface area. Most of the air in your lungs does come into contact with the surface.
Twizz, Apr 04 2011
  

       On DIY's thread: maybe he already knew this and wasn't specific, but you can buy air tanks that mount inside a vehicle. I have one in my to use for filling tires when off- roading. It came with a simple adaptor for re-filling with my shop compressor I haven't actually driven into a pond and waited for the passenger cabin to fill with water so I can time it with a stopwatch, but I'd think a tank that holds enough air to fill 3 or 4 33" tires would keep me alive for quite some time. If you live on a very small island and drive recklessly, or simply have an incurable phobia of driving into water, this might be a more affordable alternative to the Vulcan Bomber thing.
Alterother, Apr 04 2011
  

       I can rebreathe probably three times. I haven't tried more than that because it doesn't seem a very sensible thing to do under most circumstances and i think i probably get hypercapnia by the third time anyway, i just don't notice it.
nineteenthly, Apr 04 2011
  

       //Rebreathing the air from your lungs has a mainly psychological effect. It reduces the 'I can't breathe' panic.//   

       Quite frankly, if that is all it achieves, I'm quite happy with that. I would say quite a lot of fatal situations would be survivable if the person wasn't panicking. No, I'm not going to do the research on myself. Volunteers?   

       //Why not something to prevent the car from submerging in the first place//   

       That's the car maker's job. Anti-lock braking first used on planes, 1929, first mass produced passenger car use 1978, so wait 50 years and you might just see it. I was going to say "don't hold your breath" but that would be borderline recursive...
not_morrison_rm, Apr 04 2011
  

       Come to think of it, I happened to be in a friend's VW Beetle in the early '60s and we encountered a flooded arroyo (New Mexico.)   

       While numerous larger cars had to wati it out, the Beetle just plowed through, as it was air-cooled and pretty nearly hermetically sealed (I recall having to open the window before slamming the door, to prevent eardrum pain.)
csea, Apr 04 2011
  
      
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