Hell or Highwater: Surviving Oceanova

by Kipling Mattas, Alex Beyman, Alessandro Fillari

The Oceanova Project captured the global imagination when announced in 2016.

Three years later, a small crew of miners and researchers made their home over a thousand miles from shore, two miles beneath the sea. On February second, after three months of operation, the two-billion dollar installation was battered by shockwaves resulting from an undersea earthquake.

Kip Mattas was onsite as an engineer when the habitat — Compass I — began to take on water.

He escaped with two colleagues, eventually finding himself alone on the seafloor in a high-tech dive suit. He endured six terrifying hours before reaching the surface, and rescue.

He was the sole survivor. This is his story.

Genres: Science Fiction

87 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 14, 2017

Reviews

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a huge fan of the 2017 horror game Narcosis, I was thrilled when, upon revisiting the game, I discovered the dev team released Kip's "account" of the Oceanova disaster. This book is a quick read but it does an excellent job of making the disaster feel real. If I were to find this novel without knowing the game, I would've been convinced it was a true story. The writing is excellent and exceeded my expectations- whether you're a fan of the game or not, this is worth the read. Would put in a similar genre as Into Thin Air (Krakauer) and other first-accounts of disasters.