At that depth, the pressure is quite intense - around 6000 psi. That means 6000 pounds pr square inch - that's almost a Ford F150 truck pr square inch, everywhere. And now imagine how many square inches the surface area of a human is - especially your upper torso where your lungs are located.
The sub (hull) is made of a carbon fiber and titanium mix - and I'm not sure how that would react, if it buckles / collapses like regular metal, or if it simply shatters into millions of pieces like glass.
If the sub just collapsed / imploded into itself, well - that's that. The crew got crushed to death in an instant.
If the sub explode, then that would be a very violent reaction. Probably enough to kill them, purely from that - but let's say they don't die instantly from the crushing influx / wave of water:
Air / gasses in the body would compress significantly, if not allowed to exit the body. Your lungs would collapse in an instant, and your chest cavity would collapse on itself, until all air has escaped, and then replaced by water. Your ear eardrums would also rapture in an instant. With a severely collapsed upper torse, which would happen in an instant, I think your heart and major arteries would also become destroyed in an instant.
All that space would instantly get filled up with water.
I personally think that the violent process would kill them instantly - as in milliseconds...and then when all air has escaped the body, water would fill that space, until the pressure has reached an equilibrium.
EDIT: I personally don't think they suffered. The sub likely imploded in an instant, without little prior warning (noises) if the material behaves in the way I suspect it does. Just lights out, and that's that. Brain didn't even get time to react.
depending on the failure type (shear, compression, tension) carbon fiber behaves differently. but when the fibers actually break it pops so quickly that it exceeds human perception.
So let's say that they by some miracle survive implosion without getting knocked out, and have lungs full of air - well, that air would still compress by a huge amount. And with negative buoyancy, they would sink. Pressure at 2000 feet is still a bit over 400 PSI.
A 10 psi pressure wave can kill you instantly, which is just 22 feet of pressure under the surface. At any depth that a pressure vessel can rupture and implode spontaneously, it will just crush any humans within it.
This video will give you an idea of how quickly things likely imploded, and they never even got to the kind of pressures they would have experienced in that sub.
It seems the bullet is likely faster, bullet moves about 2.6 feet per millisecond which is more than enough distance traveled to kill a human, but the sub takes about 29 milliseconds to implode and kill occupants.
Just speculation, but since the majority of the hull was made by carbon fiber - it depends on how that carbon fiber imploded / collapsed. So far they've found the titanium parts, which are the front- and end parts. If they don't find any huge chunks of carbon fiber, I think it is safe to say that the fiber splintered like a bomb, inwards, like a bomb. And many of those fibers would still projectile in air, at the very moment of the implosion. Imagine carbon fiber shrapnel from the inside of the hull traveling toward the center of the hull.
The sub (hull) is made of a carbon fiber and titanium mix - and I'm not sure how that would react, if it buckles / collapses like regular metal, or if it simply shatters into millions of pieces like glass.
If the sub just collapsed / imploded into itself, well - that's that. The crew got crushed to death in an instant.
If the sub explode, then that would be a very violent reaction. Probably enough to kill them, purely from that - but let's say they don't die instantly from the crushing influx / wave of water:
Air / gasses in the body would compress significantly, if not allowed to exit the body. Your lungs would collapse in an instant, and your chest cavity would collapse on itself, until all air has escaped, and then replaced by water. Your ear eardrums would also rapture in an instant. With a severely collapsed upper torse, which would happen in an instant, I think your heart and major arteries would also become destroyed in an instant.
All that space would instantly get filled up with water.
I personally think that the violent process would kill them instantly - as in milliseconds...and then when all air has escaped the body, water would fill that space, until the pressure has reached an equilibrium.
EDIT: I personally don't think they suffered. The sub likely imploded in an instant, without little prior warning (noises) if the material behaves in the way I suspect it does. Just lights out, and that's that. Brain didn't even get time to react.