We had a big screwup one time. I can't remember the circumstances, but I believe we were running a Scram drill (emergency reactor shutdown) when something got screwed up with depth control and we took a steep up-angle. Except instead of going up, we started sliding backward into the depths since we had no propulsion. I was the Throttleman, and my buddy Alec was the Reactor Operator. He was starting up the reactor as fast as it would go, and I was waiting for it so I could start putting steam to the main engines and get the boat moving forward again. I remember looking at the digital depth gauge and watching the number go up way faster than I was comfortable with. It was horrible standing there with 35,000 horsepower in my hands but couldn't use any of it while we sunk deeper and deeper. Finally, Alec yelled the words everyone was waiting to hear: "The reactor is at the point of adding heat!" (the power level at which you can safely start to use steam). I don't think he even had half the sentence out when I started whipping the throttles open. After what seemed like hours (probably 30 seconds on a clock) the boat shuddered and we started moving forward again.
We never got anywhere near crush depth, and we still had our last leg... the Emergency Main Ballast Tank Blow system ready to shoot us up to the surface if we needed it, but I didn't like being one component failure away from death.
Strangely enough, it was always somewhat comforting to know that a major catastrophe like that would have been nearly instantaneous. I like the way it's described in the thread:
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You would simply and instantly go from being alive and wondering when it was going to happen to being dead and not knowing it had.
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I couldn't have put it better myself.