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The film Last Breath stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole as three saturation divers who encounter a life-threatening disaster — but it’s not a far-fetched tale.
In the movie, which debuted in theaters on Feb. 28, their characters are used to working deep underwater fixing structures, but on one fateful night, a massive storm puts all their lives in danger. While working, the trio of divers are physically yanked from their assignment location when the support ship they’re tethered to — the Bibby Topaz — is blown off course.
Of the three divers, Duncan Allcock (Harrelson) works in the diving bell, helping to manage and guide the other two in the water, David Yuasa (Liu) and Chris Lemons (Cole). As they are pulled by the moving ship, Lemons’ tether snaps, and he’s left stranded over 300 feet below the surface with only a small emergency tank of oxygen containing about six minutes of air.
Last Breath is a heart-pumping disaster thriller, made even more remarkable by the fact that it’s all a true story. But the most shocking part about Last Breath is that Lemons managed to survive over 25 minutes without oxygen at the bottom of the ocean — and scientists and doctors are still unclear about how.
“Everyone comes at it from a standpoint of ‘I don’t understand, this shouldn’t have happened,’ which makes it even more incredible,” director Alex Parkinson told PEOPLE.
Here’s everything to know about the true story behind Last Breath, including how the real-life incident unfolded and Lemons’ miraculous survival.
Who is Chris Lemons?
Chris Lemons is a former saturation diver from Scotland.
Saturation divers work deep in the ocean and, with precaution and practice, become accustomed to extreme depths. Though their bodies acclimate to large bodies of water, they still need to avoid potentially fatal decompression sickness (sometimes called “the bends”) and spend time in a decompression chamber after their dives to help regulate.
Lemons’ was put in the spotlight after a September 2012 incident, which unfolded when he was working on pipelines in the Huntington Oil Field in the North Sea alongside fellow divers David Yuasa and Duncan Allcock, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, their dive supervisor, Craig Frederick, was in the diving bell managing their tethers (a.k.a. “umbilicals”), which provide hot water and breathable gas to the dive suits. Though it seemed like a typical day, the crew ran into trouble when an alarm went off.
What event inspired Last Breath?
On Sept. 18, 2012, Lemons, Yuasa and Allcock were working in the North Sea when the dive team’s support ship, Bibby Topaz, was damaged during a heavy storm, per the BBC. The vessel then lost its computerized positioning system and started to drift aimlessly, getting pulled away from the dive site by massive swells.
The trio was ordered to return to the diving bell as quickly as possible, but as they made their way back, Lemons’ tether cables became caught in the pipeline structure. As the boat drifted further away, Lemons tried to hold on to prevent being lost at sea. But eventually, the pull from the ship was too strong, and the tether cables snapped.
Lemons was left stranded with no heat and only a small emergency tank containing about six minutes worth of breathable gas. The rest of the crew scrambled to find a way to save him, knowing he only had a few minutes of air. Without heated water being pumped into Lemons’ suit, there was also the risk of him dying from hypothermia.
The Topaz crew eventually realized they would have to do a manual reset on the ship to bring its systems back up, which allowed them to pilot the vessel and the attached diving bell back to the dive site where Lemons was, The Times reported.
“It seemed like the most hopeless possible situation, and I very much resigned myself to what I felt was absolutely certain death,” Lemons told PEOPLE.
By the time Yuasa dove back in the water and found Lemons, over 35 minutes had passed, and he had been without oxygen for nearly a half hour. He was found unconscious and having muscle spasms, a common symptom of oxygen deprivation.
Back in the diving bell, Lemons was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, with the crew fearing for the worst. But miraculously, after just two breaths, Lemons regained consciousness, according to the BBC.
How did Chris Lemons survive in Last Breath?
Doctors and scientists still aren’t entirely sure how Lemons was able to survive almost a half hour without oxygen, and experts are even more baffled about how he somehow experienced no physical or mental effects from the ordeal.
“My surviving, I don’t really like the word miracle, but it does seem miraculous,” Lemons told PEOPLE. “But what’s even more incredible is to have survived without any sort of major brain damage.”
While there’s no tested theory about how Lemons pulled through, some believe it was a combination of the depth, temperature and the gas mixture he was saturated with during the dive.
“It’s called saturation diving for a reason,” he explained. “Because of the pressure, your tissues are saturated with the gasses that you breathe, so my tissues were saturated with that very high content of oxygen, and I guess that just about gave the building blocks of life enough to survive.”
But there are other theories as well. Director Parkinson told PEOPLE that timing may have played a “crucial” role in Lemons’ survival.
“If he had less gas, he would have passed out from asphyxiation; if he had more gas, he would have died from hypothermia,” Parkinson shared. “But the idea that he passed out exactly when he did, at least according to a few people I’ve spoken to, was at the precise moment when his body temperature was at the right temperature to slip into stasis.”
Still, ultimately, it remains a mystery how Lemons came out of the situation unscathed.
“It’s a miracle,” actor Finn Cole told PEOPLE. “So many things had to go right in order for him to survive.”
What happened to Chris Lemons after his near-death experience?
Despite his harrowing experience, Lemons returned to work just three weeks later. He was joined by his fellow divers, Yuasa and Allcock, and their first mission was to return to the site of the accident.
“We went back to the very same place because my umbilical was caught that night on a transponder bucket, which is like a metal outcrop, and that shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “So it was straight back to the scene of the crime.”
A few months after the incident, Lemons married his fiancé Morag Martin, and his experience has turned into a 2019 documentary (also titled Last Breath). Off-screen, Lemon continued his work as a saturation diver until 2022, after which he transitioned into a supervising role.
In addition to his diving career, Lemons is also a public speaker, sharing his unbelievably true story at different events.
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