NA - Found out I have a Phobia that I assumed everyone had

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
Joined
Aug 8, 2013
Messages
16,414
Display Name
Display name:
Sixer
I have always been terrified of large man made objects underwater. I assumed that gave everyone the heebee jeebees.

So much so that it never even occurred that it was a specific phobia but just that it was really actually creepy.

Yesterday was reading something and saw this word that looked fake: Submechaniphobia.

I am not bothered by water, I have Scuba dived, I have a pool, but if I were to be in water or under water near a bridge, dam, or large boat, I would have a mild panic attack.

This photo for example, gives me the same physical reaction as watching the GoPro videos of the dudes climbing radio towers.

1000


14NPh3nWZKz6dh_AGYdcX8KIDo5PUEG1ki5GXnMq70Y.jpg




Anyone else have this? Up until a day ago, I assumed everyone was panicked by this sort of thing.

I used to work in container shipping and I recall one of our vessels picked up some folks in the ocean whose boat sank. They had to get up next to our ship and grab the ladder. I remember at the time thinking I have no idea how they were able to be next to that thing in the water.

Anyone else have this?

I wonder what the root cause / fear is. It seems irrational.
 
yeah pic 1 something about that 8million hp spinny thing would do it for me
and pic 2 is he trying to get in or get out? In, meh. Out? oh ya.
 
I could swim / Scuba in open water just fine but if I had to approach submerged bridge pylons, it would be a no go
 
I think about 100ft down in total open water is more creepy. You look around and don't see your dive buddy (because he freaked out at 60ft on the way down to the pinnacle at 150ft). Then you start wondering if you'll be eaten by a shark and which direction the attack will come from. Your 15 miles from shore.

Being by big ships (very, very rarely) just gives the creeps because you don't know where all the large seawater inlets are.

Large columns aren't so bad.

Dam...no flicking way. Plus the creepiest fish ever (sturgeon and paddlefish) all swirl around in dark murky water along with logs and fishing line...no damn way.

Give me scuba gear and ill swim under the creepiest ship before I'd climb 50 steps of a tall tower.
 
Sinistar said:
I think about 100ft down in total open water is more creepy. You look around and don't see your dive buddy (because he freaked out at 60ft on the way down to the pinnacle at 150ft). Then you start wondering if you'll be eaten by a shark and which direction the attack will come from. Your 15 miles from shore.

Being by big ships (very, very rarely) just gives the creeps because you don't know where all the large seawater inlets are.

Large columns aren't so bad.

Dam...no flicking way. Plus the creepiest fish ever (sturgeon and paddlefish) all swirl around in dark murky water along with logs and fishing line...no damn way.

Give me scuba gear and ill swim under the creepiest ship before I'd climb 50 steps of a tall tower.
Click to expand...
Are the seawater inlets big enough to be a problem?
 
Neat dive at 2m30s:

 
I am right there with you, ever since I can remember. I thought that I was alone in this also.
 
I don’t have this as long as there is visibility. In murky water, we’ll there doesn’t actually have to be any large objects, my imagination can create them just fine....

Oddly enough, I can scuba at night. Not sure why. The brain is a funny thing.
 
Not crazy about those pipes but since the most awesome dive I've ever had was exploring a sunken luxury yacht on the first day it was allowed to be accessed, about two months after it had gone down with its owner in Hurricane Hugo in 1989, so I'm not too sure it's connected to your phobia.

interesting though... Apparently the stopped entering it about 10 years later due to stability issues.
 
Being around large objects underwater is no problem - I actually think it's really cool. But enclosed areas like a dam, or cave diving? Yeah, no thanks. I've never actually done it so I'm not exactly sure how I'd react, but I think the idea of being trapped underwater is the issue.
 
Bryan, yours is a totally irrational fear.

but since I have a few of my own, I don’t begrudge you yours. ;)
 
Scuba diving in Martinique many years ago. Beautiful clear water, like being in a huge cathedral. Swam up next to an anchored ~60' schooner and got the willies! Kinda' like what an ant must feel when he is walking around your shoe;-)
Same trip, down on a wreck near the shore. Having the shore for perspective was less creepy....But yeah!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
And are they ungrated?
Click to expand...

On the 12,000 ton (MGTOW-equivalent weight) Victory ship I served on, all the major through-hull fittings were grated.

It would have been crazy not to grate them. Clog up a heat exchanger or a pump, and you are looking at some major down time and major expense to repair...

-Skip
 
Those divers probably only see big dollar signs, they get paid well. I knew a guy a long time ago who would dive on the sea intake grills for the Seabrook nuke plant, he used to love to get the call. Those things would suck up lots of stuff, he said dead seals were the worst to deal with.
 
GeorgeC said:
Neat dive at 2m30s:

Click to expand...

Around the 3 min mark, I get really uncomfortable.
Cannot figure out the root this response. We boat on a lake near here and I have seen kids jumping off of bouys.
Just the thought of swimming around the chain that anchors that thing makes me uncomfortable.
 
Last edited:
Do you have this feeling when flying near a towering cumulus? I got a really wild "fear of heights" feeling one time when flying at 10,000 and no clouds around except this huge white fluffy cloud starting around 3,000 feet going up above me probably another 2,000 feet. It wasn't a storm cloud, but being so close to it gave me a feeling I think is similar to what you are describing here. I got a sense of "smallness" and of "highness" I don't normal experience.
 
Salty said:
Do you have this feeling when flying near a towering cumulus? I got a really wild "fear of heights" feeling one time when flying at 10,000 and no clouds around except this huge white fluffy cloud starting around 3,000 feet going up above me probably another 2,000 feet. It wasn't a storm cloud, but being so close to it gave me a feeling I think is similar to what you are describing here. I got a sense of "smallness" and of "highness" I don't normal experience.
Click to expand...

No but if I see a radio tower when I am flying, even if it is a mile away, I get a little uncomfortable.
 
I used to free dive wrecks and stuff. Never bothered me in the slightest. Only way it would is if the stuff could get in the way of me and my ascent.
 
Totally guessing, but it sounds like a fear derived from some misunderstanding/overestimation of the risks. I mean, I'd not be too concerned about swimming by the giant prop but I guess that operates out of the assumption that the engines/drives are shut down. As a child, I didn't particularly like climbing into our boat from the rear while it was running after water-skiing. As an adult with a working knowledge of it's operation, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I wouldn't be too worried about swimming/diving near piers or buoys/bridges, but I wouldn't likely do cave diving or other tightly-enclosed spaces underwater. I'd think the deep water diving would be pretty panic-inducing, too, just from lack of visibility and "fear of the unknown".
 
As an avid wreck diver, I must say the first photo in this thread is a striking one! Not of a wreck, but a remarkable photo nonetheless.

I've dove on some big wrecks, the Andrea Doria is about 700' long, the Roy Jodrey about 625'. Both fascinating, though a little creepy due to their depth, current, and limited visibility where they sank. You don't always have much of a sense of how big they are.

The Vandenberg and the Spiegel Grove, of the coast of Florida, are both over 500' and in fairly clear water so you can tell how very large they are. I find them less creepy, though they are also in much shallower, warmer water, which might be the difference.

I find big intact wrecks to be less intimidating than the broken-up debris fields that are common at shallower wreck sites, if only because it's usually easy to navigate back to the anchor line for your ascent to the dive boat. It's much easier to get lost on a broken-up wreck.
 
Just pretend you are attaching a Limpet, maybe having a mission will quell your fears.
 
SoonerAviator said:
As a child, I didn't particularly like climbing into our boat from the rear while it was running after water-skiing. As an adult with a working knowledge of it's operation, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Click to expand...
What are you running for a boat? There are very few boat designs where I’d be comfortable boarding or letting someone board with the engine running.

Maybe it’s just my respect for airplane propellers. On my sterndrive, the engine is shutdown and the key is removed from the ignition and hung up in a highly visible spot before anyone gets near the boat.

Starters are cheap...humans are not....I do some water skiing and don’t mind turning my Chevy 350 off and on 25 times in a day, even with its carburetor.
 
jesse said:
What are you running for a boat? There are very few boat designs where I’d be comfortable boarding or letting someone board with the engine running.

Maybe it’s just my respect for airplane propellers. On my sterndrive, the engine is shutdown and the key is removed from the ignition and hung up in a highly visible spot before anyone gets near the boat. Starters are cheap...humans are not....
Click to expand...

Nothing but I/Os and Outboards. My father was always at the controls, so it wasn't as if there was a novice there. Obviously there's risk that he could inadvertently put it into gear, but it's just not a significant risk. Prop isn't going to engage itself, and if the shift cable were to fail while sitting in neutral . . . it would just stay in neutral. I don't mean that he would leave the engine running every time, but on the rare occasions when it was running I didn't particularly love it. As a matter of practice, the engine is shut off when boarding people from the water.

Jet skis/true inboards are less of a worry by design.
 
Lidowniphobia.

Whenever I approach a toilet with the lid down, I'm in sheer terror as I have no idea what I will find when I lift it.
 
I don't understand the fear, but I've never scuba dived either. I've always wanted to but have never done it. Not sure how comfortable I'd be underwater, although I have plenty experience with SCBA as a firefighter.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I don't understand the fear, but I've never scuba dived either. I've always wanted to but have never done it. Not sure how comfortable I'd be underwater, although I have plenty experience with SCBA as a firefighter.
Click to expand...

Pre-pandemic, a lot of SCUBA shops offered a 'Discover SCUBA' experience, occasionally free, more often $25 or $50, which got you an hour of classroom orientation and an hour in the pool, generally enough to see if you were sufficiently interested to take the full SCUBA class. Once you get past the initial 'holy crap, I'm breathing underwater and I sound like Darth Vader' impression, most people seem to enjoy the experience. It helps that the pool water is clear and the bottom is both visible and close by.
 
I'm an open water diver, been down to 120ft deep, dove reefs at night, and I've dove into some tight cenotes,..BUT I'm right there with ya @SixPapaCharlie , I don't like large man made underwater structures either!!!
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Are the seawater inlets big enough to be a problem?
Click to expand...

Let'sgoflying! said:
And are they ungrated?
Click to expand...
I'm mainly going from Navy experience (not a diver) and then scuba experience later on. For the Navy there are several hull penetrations. Some move water a massive flow rates from large diameter pipes. I would guess they are grated somehow but its been too long. But it wasn't the fact they were covered or not it is this...

Bill said:
Even grated, if they are sucking in hard enough it could suck you to the grate. Just like some kids who used to sadly get sucked to the bottom drains of pools.
Click to expand...
.

This won't help @SixPapaCharlie any - there are lots of ways to bite it down there around the ship. When we had divers do security sweeps we would tag out the dangerous stuff. Its not trivial.

Start with something as simple (and disgusting) as the sanitary overboard pump. Not sure if that was a poppet valve or not. Then you have trim pumps that can pump tank to tank, tank to sea and sea to tank. So you could get blasted or sucked onto one of them. Now add hovering tanks...these move a crap ton of water fast but are based on nearly zero differential pressures. These have quite large pipes and variable (proportional) values so they can go from pumping out to pulling in within a second or so. This is the level I would consider to start to be life threatening.

Now add missile compensation tanks. Hell, those don't even use pumps they used quite high air pressure and I think the pipes may have exceeded 20". I once blew the forward missile comp tanks pierside to empty them for indicator repair. The topside watch called down. I met him he was soaked to his waist standing on the brow. Go look at a Trident submarine and distance from the surface to the brow :eek:. He said he thought the ship was sinking. If you had been a diver with that heavy airflow rate I'm sure you'd bite it. Then there is the nuke stuff which also moves a lot of seawater! The other risks were any of the underwater planes and/or rudder moving. Same goes for MBT operations, torpedo external fairing doors, etc, etc, etc. And of course the screw turning. And we haven't even gotten to active sonar yet :oops:

Lets say you think there is an unauthorized diver in the water....thats a nice starting list above to neutralize the threat.

I have been very close to cruise ships underwater. They are deafening loud. The shadow is creepier than the actual structure. But the really creepy part is just not knowing all the places that thing might be sucking or blowing water. And not knowing if they have a strong enough fathometer to cause internal body damage.

I think back to Brian's post...its all the creepy stuff you don't know that fills your mind down there. Once you are around it gets less creepy.
 
My wife and I rented some snorkel gear while on our honeymoon in Hawaii. The first beach we went to was pretty murky and couldn't see much past the end of your outstretched hand. My wife freaked out and said "I don't like it.. I can't see what's coming at me!" So we moved to another beach the next day - this one was crystal clear, could see forever. She got in the water and popped back up - "I don't like it... I can see too far!" At that point, I knew my curious desire to try SCUBA was shot.
 
jesse said:
What are you running for a boat? There are very few boat designs where I’d be comfortable boarding or letting someone board with the engine running.

Maybe it’s just my respect for airplane propellers. On my sterndrive, the engine is shutdown and the key is removed from the ignition and hung up in a highly visible spot before anyone gets near the boat.

Starters are cheap...humans are not....I do some water skiing and don’t mind turning my Chevy 350 off and on 25 times in a day, even with its carburetor.
Click to expand...
Diving in Belize a few years back we went out on our first day. Coming thru the break the waves were probably 8-10ft. I think the boat was a 38ft or 40ft. Nice big heavy boat. We were rocking an rolling all over the place. A few got so seasick they decided to wait it out in the 5ft-7ft waves further out while we dove. Man, jumping in the water was so stress relieving. Not worrying about get plowed by another divers tank, etc.

But then it was time to get on. Holy crap. There is no way the captain is gonna go idle and not have rudder authority. The deck hand is standing on the platform. Then from about 3ft under the water you see him and platform and the screw go out of the water. A few seconds later he's completely underwater including the ass of the boat. So the risks were getting chopped up underneath or getting smashed by the platform. Still not that ominous if you keep really alert and also don't panic. But then its time to remove fins (some did, some didn't). I quickly took both mine off and, clipped on my BP harness so I'd have them at all times. I grabbed the ladder on the way down. Got both feet on. Did the ride and hopped off onto the platform on the way back. Needless to say that took out the majority of the divers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top