Real Survival Stories - Deep Dive Mystery: Hit by the Bends

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Blue Lake holds a mystery deep beneath its surface. And Martin Robson wants to solve it. The British diver descends into the murky depths. But hundreds of feet underwater, an invisible and excruciating force suddenly overwhelms him. Semi-paralysed and sinking, Martin is only at the start of an extraordinary ordeal - one that will ultimately last not for hours, but days…   A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.   Written by Luke Lonergan | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Script edit by Joe Viner | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by Jacob Booth, Liam Cameron, Matt Peaty | Assembly editing by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.   For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions   If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFrills.ca. It's Friday, January 13, 2012, somewhere deep within Russia's North Caucasus mountain range. Nestled in a wooded glade, a light fog drifts above Blue Lake. At just 240 by 140 meters, Blue Lake is small and unremarkable. An opaque turquoise pool surrounded by snow-covered foothills. But beneath the surface lies a mystery. Every day, 17 million liters flow out of this body of water, feeding nearby rivers and streams.

But the lake never changes volume. That means the same daily volume of water must flow into the lake. But nobody knows where from. 160 meters below the surface, British diver Martin Robson is part of a team intent on finding the elusive hidden source. But after scouring the depths for as long as safety will permit, Martin is yet to find a thing, and his exploration window is drawing to a close. Now he has to ascend, slowly, making regular stops along the way to avoid decompression sickness more commonly known as the bends. Martin begins to swim upwards, kicking his fins as the dark of the deep eerily merges back into the blue light trickling down from the surface.

When he reaches 60 meters, he stops. He is expecting to meet his support diver, Andre, who should be delivering bailout cylinders with extra breathing gas. But Andrei is nowhere to be seen. Martin checks his gas supply. He should have enough left. So he continues up towards the habitat, a shallow depth submerged chamber where he will wait out his final decompression stop. But before he reaches the habitat, a pair of support divers approach from above.

Neither of them is Andrei. I actually asked them, what's the problem? And they just said, nothing, it's okay, we've just, you know, changed your plan. So in other words, we've decided to be your support divers and everything is okay but I knew something wasn't quite right now isn't the time to hang around so Martin presses on with his new support divers he reaches the habitat and pulls himself up and into the pressurized chamber. After completing his final decompression, Martin swims to the surface.

He climbs up and out of Blue Lake, the crisp mountain air flooding his lungs as he sits on a bench and starts to de-kit. Then he hears footsteps approaching. He looks up. A member of the team comes over and in a voice hollow with shock confirms Martin's hunch that something is indeed very wrong. It wasn't till I got out of the water and was sitting on the bench where I used to kit up and de-kit that someone came up and just said, We've lost Andre. Never wondered what you would do when disaster strikes. If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations,

people suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode we meet professional cave diver Martin Robson. In January 2012 Martin is invited to join a research expedition in southern Russia with the aim of locating the water source of Blue Lake. The mission is proceeding as planned until Martin's support diverrei Rodionov, suffers a fatal mishap. And then of course you think, okay, now we need to think about why this has happened and what went wrong. I think the general mood was one of just complete disbelief. With so much still planned, the team take the difficult decision to press on with the expedition. But as Martin once again descends into the deep, an invisible menace overwhelms him,

and disaster threatens to strike twice. It felt like I had just been shot in the back and had no control over my legs. They felt heavy as if I was wearing lead boots. Most people in a lot of circumstances like that, when things go horribly wrong, they bolt to the surface. If I'd done that, I probably would have been dead by the time I'd actually broken the surface of the water. I'm John Hopkins.

From the Noiza Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories. It's Thursday, January 19, 2012, 12.25 PM. Forty miles from the city of Nelcek, hidden within the forested foothills of the North Caucasus Mountains, Blue Lake gleams in the winter sun. To one side of the lake is a visitor's center. To the east, a narrow, single-track road snakes off into the trees. A gentle fog rolls across the water towards 50-year-old diver Martin Robson, who sits

at the lake's edge. Martin inhales deeply, wrinkling his nose as a now-familiar stench greets his nostrils. To locals, Blue Lake is known as sherekol, or rotten waters. The presence of hydrogen sulfide, which gives the water its luminous color, also produces the smell of rotten eggs. Unsurprisingly, few tourists ever make the trip. But Martin is no tourist. A world-renowned cave diver, he's here to lead an expedition to discover Blue Lake's elusive source, a mystery that has baffled geologists for decades.

Six days ago, the mission was eclipsed by the tragic death of Martin's support diver Andre. Following the accident, some members of the team decided to go home. But Martin and a small group of fellow divers and scientists have opted to stay and complete the expedition. We don't want it to finish like this, with sort of like let's pack up and go home. We would like it to finish with some sense of accomplishment. And also there is some sense of accomplishment whereby we're also doing something as a little memorial if you like, you know, in memory of Andre. as a little memorial, if you like, in memory of Andre. Today, Martin is preparing to descend beyond 200 metres, or 650 feet, deeper than any of his previous dives.

It's one last roll of the dice to solve the mystery of Blue Lake. They believe it's what Andre would have wanted. They believe it's what Andre would have wanted. A team complete with medics and support divers wait in the dive center on hand should anything go wrong. They look on nervously as Martin, kitted out in his dry suit fins and breathing apparatus, enters the ice-blue water. Guided by a support rope known as a shot line,

he drops into the abyss. The walls of the lake slope inward, narrowing towards a vertical central channel like the middle of an hourglass. So now you're just in total darkness. It's completely black, just descending through the darkness. Like parachuting, you know, freefall, but not as fast. No visual reference, other than the line in front of you that's disappearing into the darkness. It is for me, an amazing feeling. Just absolutely wonderful. Just descending there,

completely weightless, just disappearing into the depths of the earth. Being alone in unfamiliar places is a feeling that Martin knows well. As the son of a Royal Navy officer, he had a somewhat nomadic childhood, but he spent most of his early years on the island of Mauritius. With his parents often preoccupied, a young Martin was left to his own devices. But solitude was never a problem for the adventurous youngster. The thing I remember with the most fondness about being on the island of Mauritius is the fact that I could just go off on my own, sometimes even getting my parents just to drop me, take the car

drop me in the middle of the jungle. I used to do a lot of like climbing up mountains on my own. I had no clue where I was, no map, no compass, and I just enjoyed the activity of going somewhere that hadn't been before, and particularly on my own. And I think that just gave me a sense of being able to function quite well without the need for a lot of support. When he was a teenager, the family left Mauritius for a more settled life in Portsmouth on the south coast of England. After leaving school at 16, Martin fell into a series of dead-end jobs. But late one night he switched on the TV and suddenly found direction.

I saw an advert and basically the advert was people in rigid raiding craft, the sort of like inflatable boats with hard hulls, you know, at high speed across the seas and up the beaches and people storming the beaches and jumping out of helicopters. And I just thought, that just looks like fun. That just looks brilliant. It was an advert for the Royal Marine Commandos. Right there and then, he decided that was what he wanted to do. He rushed himself down to the Royal Navy Recruitment Centre in Kent, where he passed

the initial assessment phase. Shortly after completing his training, the young recruit served in the Falklands conflict. Martin found his cool disposition and clarity of thought served him well during this time, even while missiles fell from the sky. It wasn't frightening at all. If one of these things lands on my head, I'm not going to know anything about it. So it will or won't happen. And it's just not quite another day at the office, but it's almost like that. It's just a part of what you're doing.

The acceptance of his mortality, of feeling calm in the face of danger, would stay with him long after he left the military four years later. Something else stuck with him too. When I was in the military was when I did my first dive and did a fair amount of diving when I was serving and I kept that going after I left." Though he continued to dive recreationally after the Navy, Martin never thought of it as a potential career. Instead, he became a firefighter, scuba diving occasionally as a hobby. Then, on holiday in Malta one year, he was taken cave diving by a local guide.

Then, on holiday in Malta one year, he was taken cave diving by a local guide. The thrill of exploring underwater caverns was like nothing he'd ever experienced. And that basically just really hit a nerve and just ignited a passion in me. So when I got back to the UK, I armed myself with some sort of geological survey maps and headed off to France to basically throw myself into any muddy pond, lake or river that I could find in the hope of finding some caves. Cave diving became Martin's sole focus. After several years honing his skills and gaining experience he received his instructor qualifications. He began traveling the world, teaching the art of the deep dive, how to descend and ascend

safely, how to hold your nerve under pressure. He soon made a name for himself, which led to various invitations to join expeditions across the globe, including a multinational team of scientists and divers who asked Martin to help them locate the mysterious water source of Blue Lake in southern Russia. He said yes immediately, thrilled to be joining. But along with the excitement comes an awareness of the dangers. From extreme water pressure to freezing temperatures and the ever-present threat of equipment failure, deep diving is riddled with potential hazards. I would not take any risks either with myself or with anybody else. But if I'm doing something where I have the opportunity to explore, then you try and set it up so that the risk is as minimized as

possible and almost non-existent. To me, the risk of something going wrong compared to the, and I wouldn't call it a reward because it's not, it's the privilege of seeing something on this planet that no one else had seen up to then. And for that, you might take a chance. This episode is brought to you by Adidas. When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back to tell us we'll be okay, to remind us of our ability to believe,

because their belief in us transfers to self-belief and reminds us of all that we're capable of. We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag, you got this. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Neeson. Buy your tickets now and get a free chili dog. Chili dog not included. The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. It's 12.40 p.m. Martin is 190 meters underwater.

Well over 600 feet. This is the deepest dive he has gone on this expedition so far. He has followed a different route to a new part of Blue Lake in an attempt to find the source. He's been told he might see discarded Nazi field artillery sunk to the bottom in this area. But at 190 meters he sees nothing. No caves, no source, no artifacts. Before his dive, the team decided he would go even deeper, past the 200 meter mark where the last vestiges of light vanish completely. So Martin aims his headlamp and illuminates a path down. Deeper he goes. With the pressure growing, every 60 seconds at these depths

will require an additional 30 minutes of decompression on his way back up to the surface. He soon hits 209 meters, the equivalent of 47 London double-decker buses stacked one on top of another. The pressure is equal to a small car sitting on his chest. But Martin stays calm, composed.

At 214 meters, the depth gauge on his watch freezes as the extreme pressure overwhelms the electronics. This is now deeper than he had planned to go, deeper than anyone has gone. as the extreme pressure overwhelms the electronics. This is now deeper than he had planned to go. Deeper than anyone has gone. But he can't stop now. Because there it is. Eventually the bottom of that part of the lake hoved into view and it was just incredible.

It was just completely barren, silt-covered rocks. But it was still something very special because no one had ever seen that. So again, felt very privileged. At 214 meters down, Martin's powerful strobe light is a speck in the unending darkness. As he swims, the lake's rocky floor slopes away from him. Cracked and cratered, covered in weedy vegetation that twists in a slow dance, he runs his gloved hand along the surface. It's mesmerizing. But it's not why he's here. And there is still no sign of the all-important source.

Time ticks away. After 25 minutes underwater, unfortunately, Martin needs to leave. Because of the depth I was at, I didn't spend too long there, but I did have a little swim around and then turned around and navigated my way back to what we call the shot line to make my ascent. It's now 4.05 pm. Martin has been slowly rising through the water for three and a half hours, ascending meter by meter, allowing his body to adjust to the changing pressure with regular decompression stops.

He now dangles by the support line, 24 meters below the surface. The sun's rays spill down through the murk. He checks his watch again. Time to move up to his next decompression stop. But then, as he moves, something hits him in the back. Out of nowhere, Martin's spine is being pummeled by a wave of explosions, doubling him over in agonizing pain. He lurches forward, his joints burning, his back cracking and popping.

There's no mistaking what this is. It's the bends. Decompression sickness, aka the bends, is probably the greatest peril of deep water diving. The deeper a dive, the higher the pressure, forcing nitrogen gas to dissolve into the blood and tissues. If a diver rises too quickly, as the pressure decreases, the nitrogen doesn't have time to clear. Instead, it forms dangerous bubbles,

somewhat similar to opening a can of fizzy drink inside your veins. Even if a diver accounts for this and takes time to slowly decompress on their way up, allowing the bubbles to disperse, it's still not a totally foolproof system. The damage can cause permanent paralysis, even death. The pain is unbearable, as Martin is now discovering.

It felt like I had just been shot in the back, and my legs just, you know, I had no control over my legs. They felt heavy as if I was wearing lead boots. They felt strange as if I had a pair of ice cold thick wet woolly socks on. Martin spins 90 degrees, his legs flopping around like jelly as he violently jolts backwards. He's lost all feeling in his lower half and begins to sink. Semi-paralyzed underwater, he needs to grab hold of something or he will plummet to the lake floor.

And if he's unable to swim back up, then his fate will be to bob in the depths, waiting for his air to run out. His hands flail, and in the nick of time, he manages to get a grip on the shot line. He has bought himself some time. Now, as the initial shock recedes, he needs to formulate a plan. But it isn't as simple as just going back to the surface. If he surfaces too quickly, the nitrogen bubbles inside him will expand,

causing brain and heart failure. Because of the dive I have just done, the surface is not my friend. Most people in a lot of circumstances like that, when things go horribly wrong, is they bolt to the surface. It's fresh air. That's where I'm supposed to live, on the surface. I'm not supposed to exist underwater. I need to be on the surface where I can get some help. And if I'd done

that I'd probably been dead by the time I'd actually broken the surface of the water. And I knew that. He is left with one option. The only choice I've got really is something that is in some quarters not frowned upon, but is actually thought of as being just complete insanity. To go back down. It may seem totally counterintuitive, but going deeper might be Martin's only path to survival. In order to remove the bubbles that have just exploded in his spine, he needs to squeeze them back into his tissues.

The only way to do that is to increase the pressure. The only way to increase the pressure is to go down. Hopefully, when he descends, Martin will recover some feeling in his legs. He will then be able to ascend again more slowly up to the surface, where he can receive re-pressurization treatment. It's a faint hope, but it's all he has. Martin takes one last look at the light on the surface. Up above, he sees two support divers swimming in his direction.

He signals to them, trying to let them know his outlandish plan. Then he prepares to let go of the line. I signaled, I gave a thumbs down signal which means I'm going to descend and so I let go of the line and I just disappeared back into the darkness. It's 4.06 PM, deep below the surface of Blue Lake in southern Russia. Martin sinks like a stone through the gloomy depths. The gases in his body froth and fizz an agonizing, unseen torment. Swimming closely behind him is fellow-d diver Rumaan, who is there to assist in whatever small way he can. Martin looks at the shot line reeling past him as

he heads further and further down. But deeper means crushing the bubbles moving his legs. Deeper is the new hope. When he reaches a depth of 36 meters, Martin pulls on the shot line. At this depth and pressure, he begins to regain some feeling in his legs. His plan seems to have worked. The bubbles must have dispersed sufficiently. He kicks his legs gently, gesturing to Rahman that he's got some sensation back. They take their time. They can't rush this. Rahman pumps some air into Martin's dry suit, providing

him with some additional buoyancy before the men signal to each other that they are ready to ascend. Soon, the day's faint light glows from above as Martin nears the surface. He can make out the dark, blurry figures of his support team jostling above the water line. Martin pulls on the line and signals to Rahman that he is ready to approach the habitat. A small box-like chamber, five meters below the surface, rigged with a seat, communication gear and a fresh oxygen supply. So in the water we had a thing called a habitat. So basically if you take an upturned glass and push it into a bowl of water,

the glass won't fill up with water. There'll be an air space in the glass with water underneath it. So basically I will sit in this dry habitat. The advantage are I can come off my rebreather briefly and eat and drink and communicate with people and just wait out the decompression in a much more comfortable environment.

Martin pulls himself into the habitat. He struggles to his feet, the weight of his gear straining against his weakened legs. Weakened, but working. Crucially, not paralyzed. He slumps down on the hard plastic chair. His exhausted body radiates heat, quickly warming up the small chamber. He takes off his mixed gas rebreather, a device that uses a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium to help him breathe safely at extreme depths.

Then he pulls his pure oxygen mask over his head and inhales the fresh air. It's a sweet release after more than seven hours in the water, hours that have all merged into one long, arduous journey back to the surface. After a few moments, he switches back to his rebreather and closes his eyes to rest, a dull pain pulsing in his back and legs.

Hopefully, one last decompression stop will alleviate the symptoms he is experiencing. He just has to wait for the last of the bubbles to wash from his spine. Despite the extreme peril he was in just moments ago, Martin soon doses off. He's exhausted after hours of exertion. Sleep is a welcome respite. But there is something he doesn't know. The peril is far from over. His plan hasn't worked. The bubbles in his spine aren't dissipating. They're expanding. The pressure slowly building,

ready to burst at any moment. It's a few minutes later. Inside the habitat, Martin is dozing gently, his head lolling against the white plastic wall of the submerged capsule. When suddenly... The pain of this decompression sickness, of this bend, came back. And it came back, you know, with a vengeance. Martin is jerked from his position, equipment tossed to one side as searing bolts of pain shoot through his lower body. Gritting his teeth, he looks down at his legs shoved out in front of him. He tries to move them, but they won't budge.

I thought that paralysis would be, you know, your muscles going to atrophy and they're sort of soft and jelly-like and but no, my paralysis was the complete opposite. It was like every nerve in my back was firing and to say that it was painful was an understatement. in my back was firing and to say that it was painful was an understatement. Martin rips out his rebreather and pulls his oxygen mask back on over his head. Oxygenating his blood and tissue goes some way towards easing the crazed, cramped-like pain ripping through him. It also gives him some movement back, enough to wiggle his way upright. Through the pain, Martin's experience comes to the fore.

There's only one place he knows he can go to to find relief, back to the depths once again. But as the water pressure increases around him, so too does the pressure of the oxygen Martin is breathing. At these depths, the human body cannot cope with such a high concentration of O2. At least not for long. So I put this full face mask on with oxygen and descended down to nine meters and now I am clock watching. I'm clock watching almost every minute because I am now deeper than the depth at which pure oxygen becomes toxic to the human body.

He's not only contending with the bends now. He also has the issue of oxygen toxicity to deal with. And the most profound symptom would be a convulsion, followed by your unconscious. And if you're unconscious underwater, then you're going to die. You're going to drown. His time below is limited like never before. He is stuck between the ultimate rock and a hard place. The bends of he goes higher.

Oxygen toxicity as he goes deeper. Another minute passes, alleviating some of the pain from the nitrogen bubbles, but it's a risky maneuver. The minutes stack up. He's pushing his luck. You start off thinking one minute and then two minutes and then you're getting into ten minutes and eleven minutes and then up I'm at 20 minutes, and it's how long do I think my body is going to accept this huge insult of very high partial pressure of oxygen. After over 20 minutes, Martin can't risk staying down here any longer. The freezing water temperature is rapidly becoming another critical factor. He is well insulated in his high-tech dry suit, but the cold will eventually penetrate,

bringing the risk of hypothermia. And so he swims back up to the habitat, yanking himself into the chamber and collapsing into a heap on the floor. He can't stand up. His legs remain in a state of paralysis. The agony below his waist is now coupled with a sharp pain in his stomach and back. Nerves firing, he battles to pull off his oxygen mask. He tries to focus.

How can he remove himself from this cycle? He can't keep going in and out of the water. And with the bubbles still in his spine, he can't just go up to the top. Not yet. Obviously by now everybody knows something has gone horribly wrong and they are doing their very, very best to follow whatever instructions I'm trying to give them to help me, because I'm still in a position where if I go to the surface now, I'm quite literally done for. Descending to nine meters isn't enough.

In order to sufficiently crush the bubbles to give him a chance of surviving on the surface. He needs to go deeper. He grabs his rebreather and plugs it in. He's got to go back down one final time. So I put my rebreather back on, and again, to the surprise of a lot of people, I come out of the habitat and I go back down again, and I disappear back down to about 16 meters. And that's going to be, you know, my last pressurization, if you like, my last squeeze of my body before I try and get back to the surface.

Martin waits and waits and waits. Each minute at this pressure crushes those bubbles a little bit more. He takes in some heavy breaths. Then he manages to move his legs just a little, but enough to give himself a little kick back up to the surface. Though of course he must do so slowly, agonizingly slowly. I made my way back to the surface from those 16 meters and it took hours because I came up at the speed of a snail because I want to give myself every chance of being alive

and in a position where I can receive more treatment. moment. out in Belgium. Oh, it's just in. We can now confirm the stolen favorites have resurfaced at McDonald's Canada. The international menu heist. Try them all while you can, for a limited time in participating McDonald's in Canada. At Grey Goose, we believe that pleasure is a necessity. That's why we craft the world's number one premium vodka in France, using only three of the finest natural ingredients, French winter wheat, water from Jean Sac, and yeast. With Grey Goose, we invite you to live in the moment and make time wait. Sip responsibly. Eventually, Martin's hooded head breaches the surface. He flops his torso onto the platform, moonlight now shimmering on his heaving, trembling drysuit.

Support divers and medics surround him, but Martin pulls himself up. Slowly, but surely, with pain still thrumming in every fiber of his body, he wobbles to his feet. He shuffles into the dive center, where a colleague takes him by the hand and guides him to a bench. As he begins to take off his equipment, questions are thrown his way. How is he feeling? What happened? What does he need? But after so long in the water, Martin's immediate focus is actually on his rumbling stomach. I've been underwater for a very, very long time. So then, much to everybody's surprise, I stopped and had a bowl of hot soup, something to eat. And then I started to make my way up to the ambulance.

Martin shuffles to the waiting vehicle, battling through the pain, and climbs inside. The ambulance speeds towards the nearest hospital in Nalchik, 40 miles away. His body is still full of dangerous nitrogen bubbles, blocking blood flow, pressing on his nerves, threatening his brain and spine. He will need an extended stay in a pressurized hyperbaric chamber to slowly and safely reintegrate the nitrogen into his bloodstream. And even then, there's no guarantees. He could suffer lasting paralysis, brain damage, or worse. The ambulance squeals through the snow-covered mountain paths of the North Caucasus,

flying around corners and skidding across dirt tracks. Inside, Martin is in excruciating pain. He has bored himself some time, but more suffering was inevitable, and now another attack has hit. His legs have now entered what is known as spastic hypertonia, continual spasms causing agony in his muscles. He twists and contorts on his stretcher. Finally, they arrive at the Republican Clinical Hospital in Nalchik. A cold wind whistles as Martin is pulled from the ambulance and wheeled into the emergency room.

I'd been led to believe that there was, you know, what we would call proper medical facilities. as Martin is pulled from the ambulance and wheeled into the emergency room. I'd been led to believe that there was, you know, what we would call proper medical facilities. So when I got to Nalchik, expecting proper hyperbaric facilities, it was basically what we call a one atmosphere oxygen treatment chamber. Basically, it's just a slightly larger plastic device, slightly bigger than a coffin with a hinge lid and a kind of like, you know, a Dr. No type perspex dome. This isn't right. Martin was under the impression that a fully operational hyperbaric chamber existed near to Blue Lake. The small chamber here in Nelchik isn't fit for purpose.

It cannot treat the bends in the way Martin requires. And I was put into this thing and pressurized to one bar of oxygen. Oxygen as a therapeutic gas is great, but I needed to be at a much higher pressure. Oxygen as a therapeutic gas is great, but I needed to be at a much higher pressure. And even after being in this little pod for a little while, there was a bang and a hiss and I think all the seals failed. And then I was taken out and just put into a hospital ward and just left there basically. And I just laid in this hospital bed in excruciating pain. It's clear that Martin needs to be taken somewhere with a fully operational hyperbaric chamber.

The question is where. His friends and colleagues busy themselves, placing urgent calls far and wide, but the odds are stacked against them. They're in the throes of a bitter Russian winter, stranded in a remote mountainous location. Wherever Martin needs to be, he's not getting there quickly. Ultimately, it will take the help of a stranger many hundreds of miles away, the involvement of the upper echelons of the Russian government, and time, a lot more time, to save Martin Robson's life. It's about eight hours after Martin arrived at the hospital in Nalchik.

He is now out of the small pressurized chamber and in intensive care. His life hangs in the balance. But progress has been made in finding a hyperbaric chamber. His team have contacted 77-year-old Dr. Gennadiy Sokolov, Russia's foremost authority on decompression sickness. Though he's over 1800 miles away and now retired, Dr. Sokolov drops his birthday plans to find a way to save Martin's life. With most state-of-the-art hyperbaric chambers hundreds of miles from Martin's location, the main problem is finding a way to move him while keeping him pressurized. To make matters worse, the bad weather has closed airports. Now, eight hours into his hospital stay, death,

by brain aneurysm, heart failure, or organ collapse could all occur at any moment. Dr. Sokolov uses his contacts. Urgent appeals are made. Favors are called in. Eventually, the alarm gets sounded all the way up the chain of command to the very top, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Services. Apparently, having a renowned British diver die on Russian soil is a bad look. One to be avoided at all costs. So Martin's case gets expedited. He's been made a priority.

The Ministry enlists the help of the Southern Regional Search and Rescue Team based in Sochi, around 350 miles away. They swiftly assemble their hyperbaric life raft, known as the Dart, a movable chamber that resembles an astronaut's space module. The Dart is attached to a huge transporter aircraft. They will carry him from an airport to a recompression chamber in Sochi. They're granted special dispensation to fly. Sochi. They're granted special dispensation to fly. So eventually I get taken from the hospital to an airport. The ambulance driver was given

the instructions on driving from Nalchik to this airport to drive quickly. You've got to drive like a bat out of hell. So he did. And it was comical because the back know the back doors of the ambulances are open you know we lost some stuff out the side door I thought I was gonna disappear on my stretcher down the high street you know it's like because he was driving like a maniac. Martin arrives at the airport in one piece is loaded into the dart and flown to Sochi where the hyperbaric chamber awaits. By the time he arrives and meets Dr. Sokolov, it's been 29 hours since the bends hit. The doctor explains that he has calculated that Martin will need to be in the chamber

for an excruciating nine days. It's the only way to save him. And so, Martin enters the pressurized capsule. It's walls laden with equipment and dials. It's his new home and his last chance of escaping the worst consequences of the bends. The door is shut with just myself and a medical technician called Dennis. They have to have someone in there with me. And the door is shut and they start to pressurize me on the start of a very, very long and occasionally uncomfortable journey back to the surface.

Slowly, over the 216 hours, Martin can do nothing but sit and wait. It's an arduous and often painful experience, but having endured so much already, he somehow finds the strength to battle through. He even manages to maintain an optimistic outlook despite the grim prognosis. At no point did I think I would ever die. Everybody else thought that. I was the only person who was fairly convinced that everything's going to be okay. And it wasn't this mindless optimism. It was more like it was an absolute determination. This is not going to end badly. It is going to be fine.

And so there's a sense of almost like closing out thoughts that are irrelevant and are not going to help and working on things that will help. Dr. Sokoloff said, who is this human being? Because he obviously realized that this is not someone who's just going to lay down and die. And I had no intention of doing that. Summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered

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Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. This podcast is supported by Talkspace. When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace. Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online.

Military members, veterans, and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones. I just answered a few questions online, and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her anytime. It was so easy to set up.

And they accept TRICARE. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couples therapist through Talkspace too. Talkspace works with most major insurers, including TRICARE. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com slash military. Go to Talkspace.com slash military to get started today. That's Talkspace.com slash military to get started today. That's Talkspace.com slash military. After more than a week in the chamber, and ten days since decompression sickness hit under the water of Blue Lake, Martin walks out of the door of the hyperbaric chamber,

alive and well. His colleagues and Dr. Sokolov greet him with beaming smiles. The bubbles have dispersed, the bends have gone. Finally he is back on the surface. One of Martin's friends and fellow divers, Mike, steps forward with his arms spread wide. Martin grins. It was emotional because I was only there because of everybody else. And Mike had asked me, he said, I know you're English and that you don't do these things.

He said, but when you come out, you're going to have to hug everybody. You understand that? I said, yeah. I said, but I'll only do this on one condition. He said, but when you come out, you're going to have to hug everybody. You understand that? I said, yeah, I said, but I'll only do this on one condition. He said, what's that? I said, I'll come out. I'll have a proper shower. I'll go back in and then I'll come out again, a little bit more human. And then we can do the filming and I'll do all the hugs.

And that's what we did. And it was, it was very emotional. After Martin returns home, his desire to get back into the water never wavers. He hits the gym, building his strength back up to continue pursuing his passion. Six years later, in 2018, he returns to Blue Lake. He visits the memorial that has been built there for Andre, and returns to the scene of his own near death. Ultimately, Martin puts his survival down to two crucial factors.

The unselfishness of other people and my own determination. When the wheels come off to be able to focus on what needs to be done, someone said to me, you lose a shoelace. It's like your world is ending. If your house blew up, it would be fine because you'd be able to cope. It's that kind of thing. In the aftermath of his ordeal, Martin's perspective has shifted. Before, he says, he used to be closed off to others, fiercely independent, reliant on nobody but himself.

That's no longer the case. Trying to look at people sort of perhaps more open-mindedly and to give other people more time, more of myself to them. You know, almost like to pay it forward because you don't know what's going to happen in the future. So it's definitely sort of opened my eyes to the nicer parts of human behavior. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we journey deep into the Amazon. In 2002, Dave Boyer heads to Brazil to explore the largest tropical rainforest on Earth.

It's a place of breathtaking beauty and constant sensory stimulation. But here, just one wrong step can lead to calamity. When Dave and his travel companion Crystal stray from the trail, they realize that once you're lost in the Amazon, you might never be found. The pair will have to battle downpours, darkness, and despair in a slow torture that goes on for days. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen today without ads and without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiza Plus.

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