Oxygen supplies in the sub were estimated to last about 72 hours without power. It isn't known how many sailors died during that explosion or how many were alive when the sub settled to the bottom of the Barents Sea. Reports said that sailors on the stricken ship, trapped 380 feet below the sea in a hollow steel tube, communicated with other Russian ships in the area by pounding on the ship's hull. The Russian navy, in a frantic rescue operation, tried to lower oxygen and power lines hundreds of feet to the sub, but the effort failed. They tried lowering a small, rescue sub to the ship, but because the Kursk was lying at an angle, the rescue sub could not properly latch onto the Kursk's escape hatch.
Submariners are a strange breed.
They go in for the most dangerous of all naval service and willingly put themselves in metal tubes that can easily be crushed by the tremendous pressure of the ocean depths. They know the capability of their boats and know instinctively when the situation is lost. You can be sure that those Russian sailors on the Kursk who survived the explosion knew the hopelessness of their situation as the flooded ship settled to the bottom of the sea. They knew the chance of rescue was remote and that they would most likely die in the icy depths of the Barents Sea, far away from wives and girlfriends, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. Maybe you think it's rough when the computer's hard drive goes out.