SmarterEveryDay
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2016–2025
10:18 · 12M views · Jul 22, 2016
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day undergoes hypoxia training and experiences his own impaired thinking as oxygen is withdrawn. The video shows how quickly and unnoticeably oxygen deprivation degrades judgment, illustrating why you put your own mask on first.
It is the go-to demonstration of how hypoxia silently disables decision making, cited in threads on altitude, flying, diving, CO2 and breathwork.
13 comments from Hacker News
Destin from Smarter Every Day (YouTube) has a wonderful video demonstrating this effect [0]. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but you can see how much of an effect it has starting around the 6:00 mark. [0] this video
30-40k ft is absolutely a problem. Even if you remain conscious, you're completely unable to think coherently and generally have no idea what you're doing. Stay there long enough and you will unquestionably suffer brain damage and probably death as well. SmarterEveryDay did a good video about hypoxia training that demonstrates the very rapid onset and severe effects of hypoxia at cruising altitudes: this video
This Smarter Every Day video demonstrates how dumb you can get under (less mild) hypoxia (and why it's important to take care of your own oxygen mask before others') this video
Destin from the 'Smarter Every day' YouTube channel did something similar (in a PSA-sort of style), and it's partly funny, partly scary to watch: this video
To take this tangent even further afield... Here's an actual real life demonstration of why you should put your oxygen mask on first: this video