Michale Packard was swallowed by a whale and survived, much as in Finding Nemo.
While we doubt Packard pulled a Dory and talked to the whale to get away, he did ‘f*****g fly out’ of the creature’s jaws.
It all began on June 11, 2021, when Packard went out at daylight and conducted two successful dives.
But it was not a third time lucky for him since the final time he dropped, he was ‘slammed’ by an extraordinary force.
He added that he just got slammed. Everything was like a freight train, and then everything went dark. And water was rushing around him in the dark, and he could feel pressure on his whole body. And he was rushing through the water at breakneck speed.
He was like, What the f**k’. And he realized quickly that he was in a whale, not a shark, and then his regulator slipped out. He was like, ‘I better grab that f—-ng thing’. And he reinserted it into his mouth. And he is in there, trying to get out, and [the whale] is freaking out.
Yes, this is hardly the best position for a guy looking to capture a few crustaceans.
Packard went on to say that he feared his life was over. He was thinking to himself, ‘This is it, Michael. That’s all there is to it. This is the way he will die’. He was certain that he would not be able to get out of this situation. It was a done deal, and he considered his children and wife.
In a surprising change of events, and what sounds like a description of a sick whale: All of a sudden, the whale just went to the surface, and he began shaking his head and acting all erratic, and then bang! He flew right out of his mouth. And he was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh.’
He stated that he was floating since his suit is like a dry suit, and he didn’t have time to deflate it when he came up, because air expands. So here he was—this enormous blimp on the surface. Thank God he didn’t have the bends or something because he continued breathing.
As he drifted away, the guy had one last thought: He was just looking up in the sky. He messed up, but he believes he’ll make it.
What scares him more, the guy says, is his plane crash.
Yes, you read it correctly: the guy who was swallowed by a whale was also involved in an aircraft accident, and they’d love to see his insurance costs.
So, what exactly was the crash, he asks? horrible and ‘haunting,’ from what he has heard.
He sat in the jungle for three days with a punctured lung and four broken ribs, 180 stitches in his head, and a cut Achilles, Packard recalled.
He likely would have lasted another day, so he had a lot of time to think about his death, and that was certainly more PTSD than this.
You’d be mistaken if you assumed Packard had a fresh outlook on life at this point.
He expressed that he is still the same old guy doing the same old s***.