This Decompression Wasn't Explosive

When I was a kid (about 1967), I remember reading about an explosive decompression that happened to an airliner while flying over the empty wilderness of Catron County, New Mexico. The engine turbine blade shattered, sending a piece of shrapnel through the airliner window, resulting in explosive decompression. The passenger seated next to the window went through the window (no doubt busting bones to squeeze through). To my knowledge, his body was never found - not a surprise, considering the country. With the recent Southwest Airlines incident, the hole was bigger, and to some extent less dangerous:

People and objects can indeed be forced out of an airliner at cruising altitude when a large hole opens in its fuselage. This results from the substantial pressure difference between the external atmosphere at high altitudes and the air inside a pressurized cabin: When the cabin is breached, air rushes outward all at once. While such an event can involve thousands of pounds of force, it's focused in the area immediately surrounding the hole. A passenger seated just a few rows from a five-square-foot hole could probably hold himself down without a seat belt. Anyone who was wearing his seat belt would be very unlikely to sail through the gap, regardless of location. (That is, assuming their seats remain bolted to the floor.) The few people who have slipped through holes not big enough to bring down a commercial aircraft—and there are a handful of famous examples—were located right next to the breach and weren't wearing a seat belt low and tight across the hips.