ISSUE 14 ARCHIVE - QUIZ: ARE YOU A SAFE DIVER?

Rob Hunt

Q1) SAFEGUARD

You have been granted dominion over your local dive shop and all that lies within for five minutes whilst the owner nips out to buy a sandwich. What will you do?

a) Explain to anyone that happens to pop in that the owner is out for a few minutes but that you’ll be glad to help with anything you can in the meantime.

b) Get your fingers in the till.

c) Punch anyone that comes in repeatedly until they admit to having the ways of a bandit.

Q2) SAFE AND SOUND

You find out through the information superhighway that the US Navy is inadvertently killing a large number of whales with an experimental type of sonar. What action will you take?

a) Organise an online whale protection petition and explore further campaign options if it attracts a lot of names.

b) Begin serious research into whales and the properties of sound waves in order to help the US Navy design a system that kills whales more effectively and in larger numbers. Hopefully blow up a few dolphins along the way.

c) Turn up in America and fight the Navy with your fists until they stop doing it.

Q3) SAFECRACKER

Your buddy says diving is like crack to them and that they’re addicted. How do you intervene?

a) Make a mental note that whenever you want to dive you know where to find a buddy.

b) Attempt to make them overdose by fashioning a dive computer out of an old Casio digital watch with random buttons glued on and persuading them you can go to 100 metres with it.

c) Force religion on them, starting by signing them up with at least three different weirdo cults and culminating in an invasive and traumatic exorcism with a 50:50 chance of survival.

Q4) SAFETY STOP

You’re emerging from the London underground, having achieved a maximum depth of 24 metres. As you slowly ascend on the busy escalator, you realise you have been below the surface for exactly half an hour and have thus exceeded your no-decompression limit by a minute. What do you do?

a) Since the tube line rises and falls in various places, use the PADI Wheel to make a quick calculation and realise that according to your multilevel profile you haven’t exceeded any limits and can therefore safely ascend directly to the surface. When you do, punch a juggler in the Covent Gardens.

b) Panic, hold your breath, and bolt directly for the surface. When you do, punch a juggler in the Covent Gardens.

c) Maintain a depth of five metres for eight minutes by walking backwards on the escalator and shoving everyone behind you out of your way. Stay out of the underground for at least six hours and spend the time punching jugglers in the Covent Gardens.

Q5) SAFE HOUSE

A fellow diver on a liveaboard takes ill with what, to your limited medical knowledge, could be jungle fever, a touch of the bendipops, or a case of the sniffles. What is your diagnosis?

a) If there’s no one suitable on board, call a doctor or emergency helpline to help assess whether it’s anything serious and whether the diver needs immediate medical attention or even an air-evacuation.

b) Rifle through the boat’s supplies of antique, unmarked medications and create an exciting cocktail based on tablet colour / size or something similar and force-feed this to the diver.

c) Quarantine the diver in their room by barricading the door and starting a fire if necessary. Develop serious concerns about their contagion travelling through the air- conditioning system and make the decision to cast them adrift in a dinghy. Develop serious concerns about who else may be infected but has yet to display visible signs. Arm yourself. Develop symptoms.

Q6) JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK IN THE WATER

A great white shark has followed you to the tropics due to a personal grudge it has against members of your family. Michael Caine is involved somehow. What next?

a) Stop anthropomorphising animals and go diving.

b) Use the kids as chum.

c) Get a bit emotional after a few tins of Wife Beater and threaten to “head into its manor and fin the b*****d”. Four months later, pieces of your body are recovered in South Africa, apparently dressed as a seal and armed with a Stanley knife.

Q7) THE SAFEST HANDS IN SOCCER

It’s the annual charity football match between your dive club and arch local rivals Snipington Divers. What’s your plan?

a) Play in goal wearing a pair of fins and bikini.

b) Break someone’s legs.

c) Abandon the match due to a lack of policing resources. Spend any money already raised erecting “No ball games” signs in local parks and any areas where youths like to congregate.

Q8) SAFE PASSAGE

You’re writing a novel about treasure hunting divers on the high seas. In the latest chapter, the rugged yet wily hero with a proper English name like Steve, is being pursued underwater by Klaus, a German [baddie]. What happens next?

a) You burn all surviving copies of the manuscript and then smash your laptop and your fingers to pieces with a hammer.

b) Steve abruptly surfaces and finds himself on the shores of an idyllic tropical island. Klaus is now three minutes behind our hero, as his German efficiency made it impossible for him to omit a mandatory safety stop. Fortunately for Steve, his ruggidity protects him from the bends and he escapes into the jungle where he meets Angelica, a beautiful-yet-intelligent Peruvian marine biologist.

At first they don’t get on, but...

c) As above except the marine biologist is called Divina and she’s from Bolivia.

Q9) SAFE SEX

Two days into your Open Water course and, having followed regulations correctly, you discover that you’re hopelessly in love with your dive instructor, however you’re terrified of being infected by offspring. How do you handle this sensitive situation?

a) You’re both the same sex so it doesn’t matter.

b) Get drunk and worry about it tomorrow. Forget to worry about it tomorrow.

c) Marry them and populate the world with a small army of little bundles of environmental catastrophe that physically resemble you.

Q10) SAFETY IN NUMBERS

Riots break out in your area and so you begin looting your local dive shop. What’s going into the boot of your Mondeo first?

a) Regs and BCDs.

b) The shop’s cat. Well, it seemed like a funny idea when you were high on adrenaline.

c) Considering your financial security and what really costs you the most money in diving, get the compressor going and fill the boot with a lifetime’s supply of air.

Q11) SAFE MODE

You’ve been making the world a better place by posting your opinions on internet dive forums. A newbie asks which organisation is better to learn with, PADI or BSAC. Well?

a) Consider mentioning that these days, they have more similarities than you might imagine, with good and bad divers (and instructors) being produced by both, before instead deciding to smash your laptop and your fingers to pieces with a hammer.

b) Tell them that diving’s easy and only “loosers” need instruction. Point to the fact that you have 38 dives (simulated) and one real one (Maldives, 1997) to your credit and it never did you any harm.

c) State that you refuse (as usual) to engage in such a debate due to it being a “legal minefield” (as usual). Engage in a lengthy and heated debate with the first person who recommends the organisation that you’re not affiliated with (as usual).

Q12) ELF ‘N’ SAFETY

You’ve went a bit mental due to being separated from reality during the four-week liveaboard of your dreams, and have become convinced that elvenfolk are responsible for your safety underwater. How will you dissuade them from power-inflating your BCD at 30 metres?

a) Get a grip.

b) Take control of your situation by power- inflating your BCD yourself at 30 metres.

c) Take a full inventory of any items that could be used as weapons on the boat and begin a war with the pesky fairy-fellowship.

Score one point for every a), a nail gun for every b), and a government health certificate for every c).

HOW DID YOU DO?

Mostly points: You’re less safe than a panicking diver at 25 metres. Half a mile inside an underwater cave system.

Mostly accidentally nailed to things: You’re the kind of person that frolics in box jellyfish ridden waters in your pants.

12 government health certificates: You are pretty much the safest diver, and human being, imaginable. Safety is boring.