A former Titan sub passenger says they were told an implosion would be like a can of Coke being crushed with a sledgehammer

• A passenger on the Titan sub said they discussed potential implosions, The New York Times reported.
• Bill Price said pressure at those depths was likened to a Coke can being crushed by a sledgehammer.
• The Titan imploded on a trip to the Titanic in June, killing all five on board. 

A former passenger on the Titan submersible said that the potential effects of an implosion on board were discussed during his own expedition, The New York Times reported.

Bill Price, who ran a California travel business before retiring, said that he recalled conversations on the Titan's mothership in which analogies were used to convey the extreme pressure the vessel would come under, including a can of Coke being smashed by a sledgehammer.

Another was of an elephant standing on one foot with 100 elephants on top of it, suggesting that death from an implosion would be instantaeneous.

"In a macabre way," Price told The Times, "it was reassuring."

The Titan imploded on June 18, during a trip to see the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board.

Price told the Times that on his first dive on the vessel in 2021 the trip was aborted because of problems with its propulsion system.

He told the publication that when a system for dislodging ballast and returning to the surface also didn't work, passengers had to activate a backup plan by rocking the vessel from side to side to dislodge ballast, which eventually worked.

Despite the malfunctions, the vessel made another dive the following day, during which Price saw the Titanic's wreckage, he told the Times.

"The fact that we went through that, we experienced some worst-case scenarios, and we overcame it, my thinking was, 'We can do this,'" Price said. 

In the wake of last month's disaster, concerns by experts about the safety of the vessel and its experimental design have emerged.

A group of experts on deep sea technology as far back as 2018 questioned the safety of the vessel.

But OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among those killed, insisted that despite its experimental design the sub was safe, and that passengers were made aware of the risks.

CBS reported last year that passengers were asked to sign a disclaimer before their trip stating that the vessel was experimental in nature, and had not been approved by independent watchdogs or regulators.

One former passenger told the BBC that you had to sign a waiver that mentioned death three times on the first page alone, "so it's never far from your mind."

Investigators in Canada and the US have launched a probe into the disaster, amid reports that OceanGate avoided safety rules by operating in international waters.