Fact checking 'Last Breath': Can you really survive underwater for 29 minutes?
One of the most horrifying diving accidents in recent memory is now the basis for a new movie.
On Sept. 19, 2012, three divers descended 300 feet below the surface of the North Sea to replace a pipe on an oil rig manifold. But amid rough waters and equipment failure, the ship they had been tethered to started to move away. While desperately trying to get back on the vessel, one of the diver’s umbilical cables got caught on a metal structure and snapped, leaving him trapped on the seabed with roughly five minutes of oxygen in his tank. His fellow divers, meanwhile, were pulled away with the ship and unable to rescue him.
The traumatic event was the basis of the 2019 documentary “Last Breath,” which has since been adapted into a dramatic new thriller (in theaters now) starring Finn Cole as stranded diver Chris Lemons. Woody Harrelson co-stars as Lemons’ mentor, Duncan Allcock, while Simu Liu plays their pragmatic colleague Dave Yuasa.
Alex Parkinson, who directed both the documentary and the movie, breaks down the heart-pounding true story:
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What happened to Chris Lemons in the movie 'Last Breath'?
Because of the ship’s computer malfunction, it took more than half an hour for systems to reset and for the crew to locate Lemons, then 32, whose eyes were closed and limbs appeared motionless. By the time he was pulled back up into the diving bell, Lemons had been without oxygen 29 minutes, and everyone onboard assumed they were recovering his body.
But miraculously, Lemons quickly woke up after Allcock performed CPR while an emotional Yuasa looked on. His first sentence after regaining consciousness: “Dave … you OK?” Although that may seem too Hollywood perfect, “they really were (his first words),” Parkinson says. Because of Lemons’ inherently caring nature, “he really came to and immediately thought, ‘What’s wrong with Dave? What happened?’ It’s a beautiful movie moment, but that is true.”
Can you really survive underwater for nearly 30 minutes with no oxygen?
A title card at the end of the film notes that researchers have no scientific explanation for how Lemons managed to survive that long without oxygen.
“Three minutes without oxygen is generally when you start getting brain damage,” Parkinson says. “It’s not only remarkable that he survived that amount of time without oxygen, but also with no brain damage. It’s absolutely astonishing.”
While Parkinson says there is “no definitive answer,” he has spoken extensively with neurosurgeons and anesthetists about the topic. He believes that the right combination of factors helped keep Lemons’ vitals stable.
“The idea is that if he had more oxygen, he would’ve carried on breathing, his body would’ve gotten colder, and he would’ve died of hypothermia,” Parkinson says. “But if he had less oxygen, he would’ve died of asphyxiation instead. So talking about the insanely good luck of it, I personally think he ran out of gas at precisely the right point of when his body temperature was at the right moment to be able to slip into stasis.”
Did Chris Lemons ever go back underwater after the diving accident?
Just three weeks after his near-death experience, Lemons and his co-workers went back underwater to finish the repair job they had set out to do. He is now a dive supervisor and continues to work on the same ship where the accident occurred.
“It was very important for him to get back on the horse, which is a rubbish analogy when you talk about being underwater,” Parkinson jokes. “But it was very important for Dave and Duncan as well, and they all went down together as a team. It closed that (chapter) for them psychologically so they could move on – it’s truly amazing.”