‘You’re dead anyway’: what OceanGate’s CEO told the terrified passenger on the Titan submarine

A documentary cameraman who made a test dive in the doomed Titan submarine has recounted how the company’s CEO said “very strange” things.

Brian Weed was working for the Discovery Channel TV show ‘Expedition Unknown’ in May 2021 when he boarded the Titan submarine that imploded last month.

Once on board, Weed told Insider about a “very strange” conversation he had with Stockton Rush aboard the Titan.

He said, ‘Well, there’s oxygen on board for four or five days, and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, “Well, you’re dead anyway.”

Weed continued, “It felt very strange to think, and it almost seemed like a nihilistic life-or-death attitude in the middle of the ocean.”

Weed described Stockton Rush, pictured here, as having a “cavalier” attitude to basic security

Weed said Rush’s attitude to “basic security” was “arrogant” and that he felt “uncomfortable” from the start.

Weed said the test dive was plagued with mechanical and communication problems and had to be aborted.

“That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of ​​going down to the depths of the Titanic in that submarine,” Weed said, adding that it just didn’t feel safe.

Weed backed out of the documentary project due to security concerns, and production of ‘Expedition Unknown’ was later canceled as well.

Rush died aboard the submarine, which imploded last month while descending to see the wreckage of the Titanic.

On board was one of Pakistan’s richest men, Shahzada Dawood, along with his son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding and French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

The submarine lost communication with its operator, OceanGate Expeditions, less than two hours after its dive to the famous shipwreck last month, with five people on board.

A large-scale rescue operation involving aircraft and a fleet of vessels had scrambled to the area 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, as oxygen supplies in the submarine dwindled.

French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) sat on the submarine with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition

There were five people on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding (left) and Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19.

The five men on board all died after the Titan submarine imploded during his expedition

It was then announced that the five men on board died instantly after the submarine suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’.

Last week, the submarine’s debris was towed ashore in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Weed’s comments come after an unnamed CFO who worked at OceanGate said she had been asked to take control of the doomed Titan.

Huge chunks of metal are unloaded from the Horizon Arctic vessel at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

The unnamed staffer said that after chief pilot David Lochridge was fired in 2018 for raising safety concerns, she couldn’t trust the late CEO Stockton Rush.

She told the New Yorker, “It shocked me that he wanted me to be chief pilot, since I have an accounting background, so I couldn’t work for Stockton.”

Lochridge was fired in 2018 after OceanGate disagreed with his demand for stricter safety checks on the submarine, including “testing to prove its integrity.”