Wow. Hypoxia effects demonstration

[Tegg]

Hypoxia is no joke, then again I wish that there was a good way to for every rebreather diver to experience it for themselves in a controlled and monitored environment.

I learned a lot when I experienced it. Never want to have that in the water.

[wiley1]

A buddy and I "experimented" with this in a plane to see what the affects were. One flying on oxygen while the other is off oxygen. I made it to 18,000. The key was "zero" movement. If you did so much as lift your arm to put it on the yoke, it was going to be lights out for me.

[Jon Nellis]

20+ years ago, they used to ask for one volunteer to go off O2 in the chamber at 35,000ft and do a similar plastic shape puzzle as fast as possible. I volunteered of course. I got all the pieces in the puzzle and managed to turn on the O2 at the panel with my mask hanging halfway off my flight helmet, blowing 100% O2 across my face, but never got the mask on my face. The chamber staff had to snap it on, and I don't really remember turning on the O2. That's what they told me I did. Total time was maybe 45 seconds.

Besides being completely insidious, when you are focused on a task, your brain will put more effort into the task than peripheral situational awareness, making detection even more difficult. Suggestion, don't do anything else when prebreathing the loop.

A few years later when I was doing a lot of mountaineering and was acclimatized to high altitude, I didn't get much of any symptoms in the chamber at 25,000ft. After about 7-8 minutes, I finished filling out both sides of the page with color recognition questions and math problems (that I double checked), only to look up and find 20 people staring at me with their mask on, waiting to finish the chamber ride or hoping they could watch me pass out, not sure which.

[crd_kats]

That was interesting. Thank you.

[adam0321]

I went thru the "chamber" while on active duty. It is deadly and not very easy to detect. What I thought was very interesting was that the Lt. playing paddy cakes with me (everyone gets a task to perform) lost right from the get go. After everyone was back on oxygen, the flight surgeon was still doing perfect. The chamber crew just asked him to go back on O2. I am not too sure how he was
able to perform so well for so long. Adam, you ever see happen? You went thru it many more times than me. For me once.

Yes I have seen that. We had a guy that after 5 minutes off oxygen at 25k could still do basic math problems. At u minutes he could still count backwards by 3. Effects everyone differently I guess. I know for myself I have about 3 minutes before I don't know where I am.

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