Now if you will ever crash you will also be remembering very well how you used two very important minutes of your life in order to comment on HN about how the article was not really useful, instead of looking up for some damn precious helicrash survival step guide. Nevermind, it will be my last thought, as well.

I'm the same way, but then I figured that I won't be regretting it for long.

Takeaway for us in the real world: locate an exit before you start moving.

My Dad was in the Canadian Coast Guard the HUET classes are mandatory.

It's a good thing because I think Dad said over half the crew couldn't even swim!

Not that it matters you'd be dead in three minutes anyway without a Mustang suit.

I don't have a source, but the same thing was explained to me during a sea survival course. It was a requirement to be able to enter a Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

This course included spending time in a very cold pool in full gear and attempting to activate and enter an inflatable life raft (over and over, and in the dark).

I was reasonably insulated but not in a survival suit, and I lost virtually all muscle control after about 15-20mins.

The shivers left me so weak I could barely climb the ladder out of the pool.

The instructor explained to me that this was the major point of the exercise. The right strategy is to try to minimize heat loss by bringing your knees up to your chest and not moving much (Assuming you have floatation).

With my rudimentary knowledge of physics, I would assume that helicopter blades and a rotor, although designed to hold the weight of the aircraft and its occupants, are not designed to slice through water. Given the level of resistance water provides, the speed with which the blades slice through the atmosphere, and the fact that a falling human hitting water at terminal velocity ends badly for the human, it's not really possible for a helicopter to push water the way a water propeller is designed to do.