Funny somewhat related story.

I'm an avid scuba diver. I have spent a bunch of time in the Caribbean. Sometimes I get stuck on boats with tourist groups of divers, from places where the weather sucks in the winter. These are also places where obesity is a bit more common.

So, there's a whole population of large former athletes who are into diving. These are 300+ lb buys who were athletes but became victims to the American diet and beer. They still have the athlete mentality, but gravity kinda kicks their a$$.

Enter scuba diving. When you're diving you are close to weightless. The relief on these guys' joints is probably part of the hook, but they are now doing athletic and challenging stuff to feed their egos. These guys are a noticeable portion of the tourist dive community.

There are a couple of problems with this. To get near to neutral buoyancy, they require 30+ lbs of lead to offset all of their fat. If there's any sort of an issue underwater, carrying that much dispatchable weight, as they are erroneously taught to do, creates some unsolvable rapid ascent problems and they end up getting bent.

(Getting bent means the gas bubbles in your body expanded too quickly on ascent and blew out your arteries. If you don't go up slowly, you can suffer from serious and permanent injury)

Even if they don't get bent, the stress of even the smallest equipment issue is likely to trigger a stroke or heart attack. This happens more often than you'd think, a good chunk of diving deaths are due to bad biological to stress in an alien environment.

Now, we have our fatty, either bent or having a stoke, but immobilized. How do you get him back in the boat? I'm 210 lbs and pretty strong and I can't haul a guy that big onto a boat deck. Two of me might have a chance.

I've suggested dive boats should have hoist equipment to be prepared for this inevitable situation.

I've actually seen this take place and had the pleasure of giving mouth-to-mouth to a 400 lb former Linebacker from New Jersey.

He lived.