Staying Alive: Patterns for Failure Management from the Bottom of the Ocean
summary
Claim: technical SCUBA and rebreather failure patterns map to complex engineering failures and teach concrete practices. Specific tools and practices described include checklists and run book rehearsals, routine testing of backups, and staged fire drills to introduce simultaneous faults. A striking statistic offered is one in 50 rebreather owners dying within five years. Built systems are low‑tech: repeated drills, least‑experienced‑leads rotations, and tested backups that demonstrably reduce cognitive load and stop cascades when they get exercised regularly.
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chapters (27)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:11Rebreather
- 2:22Decompression Sickness
- 3:40Chemical Burn
- 4:26Rebreather Safety
- 4:59Failures
- 6:29Environmental Effects
- 9:37Postmortem Analysis
- 10:31Safety in Systems
- 10:59Rule of Safety Procedures
- 11:32Normalization ofdeviance
- 12:21How does that affect your judgment
- 14:27Safety procedures can be more dangerous
- 15:23The length of the interval should not be based on how likely it is
- 15:39Two ways that we commonly excess the riskiness of an endeavor
- 16:01Based on the size of your regret
- 16:34Complex systems are chaotic
- 17:12Pressure makes people bad
- 20:45The floor of your operating capacity
- 22:44You are a single point of failure
- 23:30The best weapon against failure
- 24:09Tools to develop better judgment
- 24:56Postmortems
- 25:53Risks
- 26:34Fire Drill
- 29:57Success in Diving
- 31:17Links
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