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QUESTION:The big joke in the USN is one was supposed to know two ways out of
any space-even if there was only one access. Those of us in the main
engineering spaces were fully aware if we took a hit more than likely
we wouldn't realize it before we were dead. The USS Cole gives a very
fine example.
IIRC, the main engineroom forward and aft bulkheads retained their
watertight integrity. That's a plus, as is its power plant is gas
turbine-no 600/1200 PSI boilers to act as secondary bombs.
Cold sea water hitting a super hot pressurized boiler. That's
something you don't want to be anywhere near.
ANSWER: I saw something similar. When I got out of college I was developing a
process to make SiC "whisker" (ultra high strength single-crystal fibers).
The process involved heating the raw a materials in a tube furnace to 3500
C. Each batch was in a graphite tube that were pushed in sequence through
the furnace (which of course had a nitrogen or argon atmosphere).
The tubes were cooled after the "fire zones" in a water-cooled jacket. One
day, a point failure in the jacket opened and the water was instantly turned
to steam. The furnace started shooting out graphite tubes that looked like
tracer bullets. They crashed harmlessly into a curing oven (well, not
harmlessly to the oven). Had someone been standing in front of the furnace,
a tube would have gone right through them like a hot knife through butter
and cauterized the wound as well.
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