The Hunger That Does Not Exist: A Paradox of the Deep Abyss

We imagine the ocean as a place of silence and cold. We think of the diver as a lonely figure, fighting against the crushing weight of the water. But there is a secret that few people know, a secret that hides in the belly of the man who descends into the dark. It is not the pressure that breaks him first. It is not the cold. It is the hunger that behaves in a way that defies all logic of our surface world. When a human being lives under forty atmospheres of pressure, inside a steel tube for weeks, his body forgets how to be hungry in the normal way.