The upcoming 2025 movie Last Breath is based on an incredible true story that scientists still can't explain.
The survival drama tells the story of Chris Lemons, a seasoned deep-sea diver who becomes entangled in a perilous underwater situation as he is left alone at the bottom of the freezing ocean with no oxygen.
Lemons' story has become a legend and has already been the subject of a 2019 documentary, also titled Last Breath. The upcoming Hollywood adaptation stars Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' Simu Liu, Woody Harrelson (Vemon: Let There Be Carnage), and Finn Cole (Peaky Blinders) as Lemons.
What Is The True Story Behind Last Breath?
Last Breath is based on unbelievable true events that occurred on a deep-sea diving mission in the North Sea in 2012.
The mission involved divers Chris Lemons, Duncan Allcock, and David Yasuda who were carrying out repairs on the seabed around 100 meters under the surface.
To complete this mission the divers were tethered to a diving bell that was in turn connected to a surface vessel, the Bibby Topaz. The divers were connected by an umbilical cord that provided them with oxygen, hot water, power, and communications.
Due to an unknown reason, the Bibby Topaz's dynamic positioning systems failed, causing the vessel to drift in rough seas. This dragged the divers working below away from their position, but for Chris Lemons, the situation was much worse.
Lemons' umbilical cord was snagged on one of the undersea structures they were working on and ended up snapping entirely. This left Lemons with only five minutes of emergency breathable gas in his tank, but no light, warmth, or means of communication. Meanwhile, the other divers had been dragged away from his position.
The Bibby Topaz was able to deploy a submersible ROV that located Lemons with its camera and showed the man slowly suffocating to death. When the ship's positioning systems came back online the divers were able to collect Lemons' body from the worksite and return him to the diving bell, 30 minutes after his umbilical was severed.
The human brain and body can typically not survive without oxygen for more than six minutes (although there are some exceptions with proper training, like Kate Winslet's record-breaking achievement for Avatar: The Way of Water.)
The divers had assumed the worst, but miraculously, after giving CPR Lemons drew breath again and soon returned to normal, with no signs of brain damage from his ordeal.
How Did Chris Lemons Survive?
Experts remain baffled as to how Chris Lemons was able to survive 30 minutes without oxygen at the bottom of the ocean.
Some theories suggest it may have been due to the temperature of the ocean, which was around 4 degrees Celsius at the diving altitude. This freezing cold may have had a hand in cooling Lemons' metabolic processes which may have reduced his oxygen consumption.
Another contributing factor to his survival is likely the gas mix Lemons was equipped with which was a combo of helium and oxygen. Lemons and the other divers had been living in a diving chamber breathing only Heliox for weeks to help adjust their bodies for the conditions of the dive, a process commonly known as saturation diving.
This process would have resulted in Lemons' tissues being highly saturated with oxygen and may have provided him with an additional source of oxygen to survive the additional minutes.
These factors combined are the best solution experts can provide about how Lemons survived his ordeal, but there's no doubt it's a modern-day miracle.
Last Breath will be released on February 28, 2025.
