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How Drowning Works

Stuff You Should Know

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The Instinctive Drowning Response

Drowning looks like one of two things: Either you are trying to catch your breath every time your mouth comes above water and it's happening so infrequently that all you can do is work on inhaling and exhaling or your layering is spasming and you're not breathing at all. But either way, you're not able to shout or yell or call for help or say anything. One thing about the instinctive drowning response is you're not kicking. You're just using your arms. I don't get that at all. Yeah. The whole point of that is to keep your head above water as much as possible.

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