With the news that the likely fate of the OceanGate Titan submersible was a "catastrophic implosion", terrifying TikTok videos have shown exactly what this may have looked like.
The five passengers on board the sub have been pronounced dead after it went missing in the Atlantic on a dive to the shipwreck site of the Titanic. The announcement that no one survived was made on Thursday, June 22, after a round-the-clock search and rescue mission.
The announcement came after a debris field had been found by the US Coast Guard in their search. Rear Admiral John Mauger, First Coast Guard District commander, said they had found debris linked to the Titan.
"The debris is consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," he said in a press conference.
There has been a lot of speculation as to what could have caused the incident, and what the experience may have been like for those on board - Hamish Harding, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, Stockton Rush and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Implosions happen incredibly fast, and at the depth of the Titanic wreckage, around 3,800m, the pressure is more than 300 times that at the sea's surface.
Now, TikTok animators have depicted what the catastrophic implosion may have looked like underwater.
In one video, by user @sincerelybootz, a vessel similar in appearance to a military sub is seen to suddenly flatten out, before curling into a taco-shaped piece of metal and ripping apart. Nothing is left beside air bubbles and shrapnel.
"It's very instantaneous as far as death when it comes to any lives that may be on board," the narrator says.
Another clip, by @starfieldstudio, shows the OceanGate Titan careening toward the seafloor as it begins to crumple like a metal can which has been stamped on. Metal explodes after the implosion, leaving no trace of the deep-sea craft.
"The hull would immediately heat the air in the sub to around the surface of the sun's temperature, as a wall of metal and seawater smashed one end of the boat to the other, all in around 30 milliseconds," reads the caption.
A former Navy doctor has spoken out about just what would have happened to the crew in their final moments. Dr Dale Molé said: "It would have been so sudden, that they wouldn't even have known that there was a problem, or what happened to them.
"It's like being here one minute, and then the switch is turned off. You're alive one millisecond, and the next millisecond you're dead."
While an investigation continues, the US Coast Guard has revealed that it's unlikely the bodies will ever be found due to the harsh conditions thousands of metres below the ocean's surface.
Five big pieces of debris were found around 1,600 feet from the RMS Titanic. While it's not clear what caused the implosion, the debris would only have been found if the vessel had suddenly imploded.
Several vessels remain at the debris site, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, as the investigation into the five deaths continues. Horizon Arctic, a commerical vessel who operated the Palegic Odysseus 6K ROV and first found the debris field yesterday, remains at the site.
