4 ms·

Isn't visiting places filled with dead and decomposing people a fairly normal tourist activity? Various catacombs, graveyards, temples, battlefields, memorials,

Isn't visiting places filled with dead and decomposing people a fairly normal tourist activity? Various catacombs, graveyards, temples, battlefields, memorials, Pompeii... I've got no real thoughts on the "stupidity" of doing this, but visiting the wreck of a famous ship doesn't seem an obviously unsympathetic thing to do compared to visiting the ruins of a city.

ghaff 3y ago
Or the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
bell-cot 3y ago
Yes...but those are places where where the dead received "proper" burials. (Excepting Pompeii, and maybe some battlefields. Pompeii tends to get a pass because "ancient", "technically buried", and "A-listed Roman cultural site".) And generally, visiting ~none of those other places is a brag-worthy way to show off being one of the modern 0.1%. (Which, these days, gets very little sympathy in many quarters. Even without the "vultures draped in diamonds" aspect here.)
- noirbot 3y ago
  Oh sure. I'm not arguing this is a good idea or not a way to show off your money, just that it's kinda a weird assertion that visiting a place where people died and weren't properly buried at some point in the past is uniquely distasteful. It's not as if they're going to look at the dead bodies, and as someone else points out, there's almost no chance there's intact remains left at that depth after all this time. There's plenty of less-deep shipwrecks all over the Caribbean or other coastal areas where people probably died that are normal enough to scuba dive into and I'm not sure people think that that's distasteful. The "you spent how much on this" part is something I'm absolutely fine with people taking issue with, but it doesn't seem that much more gauche than flying to space or just flying your private jet around.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  It's very common for recreational divers to visit ships with bodies still in them. Maybe it's morbid, but it's common and generally you don't need to be "0.1%" to do it. If this story were about some working class people who died while scuba diving around a wreck in shallow water, would you still be trying to vilify them for it?
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    True about recreational divers. I'm trying to explain the sentiments which user paganel originally voiced - which I suspect are kinda common. My sense is that the strong negative feeling are tied to how much of a "just too many emotional points against it" corner case this is. A famous & famously tragic shipwreck, the dangers inherent in their extreme tourism, how very few people can imagine "it coulda been someone like me in that little sub", the "mass grave" scale of death, the kinda-mythical "forbidden underworld" aura to the site, etc., etc.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      I think some of the pushback that I feel to that is that it seems like a socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. I'm fine if your opinion is "screw rich people who spend this much on weird things", or even "Rich people who died doing something this frivolous deserved it." But just own that. If this had been the original diving expedition to the Titanic to find the wreck for the first time, or even the followups, and people had potentially died then, I doubt we would have had this many people out in the comments about how its distasteful and they're hoping it would dissuade anyone from doing it again. At least "I hate rich people" is a consistent view whether you agree or not. Trying to make that view more socially acceptable by adding new and inconsistent layers on top about how visiting a place people died is inherently something that makes them unsympathetic just feels weird.
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        > I think some...socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. Yes, some. But my feel is that if a similar number of even-richer people had (say) died in the crash of a luxury helicopter ferrying them to Everest Base Camp, then the negative reaction would have been far less notable.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I'm caught up on this "buried" thing. Like if the site is of historical significance what difference does proper burial make?
dongaudreau 3y ago
any evidence human remains ie posed to ocean water and 12k of pressure i believe is long gone
- ghostpepper 3y ago
  Not in the ocean, but I believe there are shipwrecks in Lake Superior with preserved bodies https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Whitey https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Whitey
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Even in the ocean, human remains may be partially preserved if the conditions are right for it. They found human remains in or around the Vasa, a Swedish warship that sank in 1628. Mostly just bones, but also a little bit of soft tissue more than 300 years later. > Organic materials fared better in the anaerobic conditions, and so wood, cloth and leather are often in very good condition, but objects exposed to the currents were eroded by the sediment in the water, so that some are barely recognizable.[43] Objects which fell off the hull into the mud after the nails corroded through were well protected, so that many of the sculptures still retain areas of paint and gilding. Of the human remains, most of the soft tissue was consumed, leaving only the bones, which were often held together only by clothing, although in one case, hair, nails and brain tissue survived.[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Deterioration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Deterioration The brain in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8xOCoct4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8xOCoct4w
dongaudreau 3y ago
i believe the ocean has long dissolved any human remains

ghaff 3y ago

Or the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

bell-cot 3y ago

Yes...but those are places where where the dead received "proper" burials. (Excepting Pompeii, and maybe some battlefields. Pompeii tends to get a pass because "ancient", "technically buried", and "A-listed Roman cultural site".) And generally, visiting ~none of those other places is a brag-worthy way to show off being one of the modern 0.1%. (Which, these days, gets very little sympathy in many quarters. Even without the "vultures draped in diamonds" aspect here.)

noirbot 3y ago
Oh sure. I'm not arguing this is a good idea or not a way to show off your money, just that it's kinda a weird assertion that visiting a place where people died and weren't properly buried at some point in the past is uniquely distasteful. It's not as if they're going to look at the dead bodies, and as someone else points out, there's almost no chance there's intact remains left at that depth after all this time. There's plenty of less-deep shipwrecks all over the Caribbean or other coastal areas where people probably died that are normal enough to scuba dive into and I'm not sure people think that that's distasteful. The "you spent how much on this" part is something I'm absolutely fine with people taking issue with, but it doesn't seem that much more gauche than flying to space or just flying your private jet around.
mcpackieh 3y ago
It's very common for recreational divers to visit ships with bodies still in them. Maybe it's morbid, but it's common and generally you don't need to be "0.1%" to do it. If this story were about some working class people who died while scuba diving around a wreck in shallow water, would you still be trying to vilify them for it?
- bell-cot 3y ago
  True about recreational divers. I'm trying to explain the sentiments which user paganel originally voiced - which I suspect are kinda common. My sense is that the strong negative feeling are tied to how much of a "just too many emotional points against it" corner case this is. A famous & famously tragic shipwreck, the dangers inherent in their extreme tourism, how very few people can imagine "it coulda been someone like me in that little sub", the "mass grave" scale of death, the kinda-mythical "forbidden underworld" aura to the site, etc., etc.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    I think some of the pushback that I feel to that is that it seems like a socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. I'm fine if your opinion is "screw rich people who spend this much on weird things", or even "Rich people who died doing something this frivolous deserved it." But just own that. If this had been the original diving expedition to the Titanic to find the wreck for the first time, or even the followups, and people had potentially died then, I doubt we would have had this many people out in the comments about how its distasteful and they're hoping it would dissuade anyone from doing it again. At least "I hate rich people" is a consistent view whether you agree or not. Trying to make that view more socially acceptable by adding new and inconsistent layers on top about how visiting a place people died is inherently something that makes them unsympathetic just feels weird.
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      > I think some...socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. Yes, some. But my feel is that if a similar number of even-richer people had (say) died in the crash of a luxury helicopter ferrying them to Everest Base Camp, then the negative reaction would have been far less notable.
nathan_compton 3y ago
I'm caught up on this "buried" thing. Like if the site is of historical significance what difference does proper burial make?

dongaudreau 3y ago

any evidence human remains ie posed to ocean water and 12k of pressure i believe is long gone

ghostpepper 3y ago
Not in the ocean, but I believe there are shipwrecks in Lake Superior with preserved bodies https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Whitey https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Whitey
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Even in the ocean, human remains may be partially preserved if the conditions are right for it. They found human remains in or around the Vasa, a Swedish warship that sank in 1628. Mostly just bones, but also a little bit of soft tissue more than 300 years later. > Organic materials fared better in the anaerobic conditions, and so wood, cloth and leather are often in very good condition, but objects exposed to the currents were eroded by the sediment in the water, so that some are barely recognizable.[43] Objects which fell off the hull into the mud after the nails corroded through were well protected, so that many of the sculptures still retain areas of paint and gilding. Of the human remains, most of the soft tissue was consumed, leaving only the bones, which were often held together only by clothing, although in one case, hair, nails and brain tissue survived.[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Deterioration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Deterioration The brain in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8xOCoct4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8xOCoct4w

dongaudreau 3y ago

i believe the ocean has long dissolved any human remains