26 February 2024

Gruesome


A schematic drawing of the position in which an amateur cave explorer was trapped for 27 hours (until he died).

The full incident report is recorded at the National Speological Society News of October 2011 (scroll down to page 15 re John Jones at Nutty Putty Cave).
On the evening of November 24th, John Jones (26) and ten of his
family members including children entered Nutty Putty Cave
and toured the entrance area. After a short time, most of the
group left while John and others including his brother Josh
continued to explore. They proceeded to a tight, nasty, passage
known as Bob’s Push. This passage is mostly belly-crawl size
and undulates up and down before taking a decisive turn to the
left and downward. The remainder of the passage to its dead-end
is very tight and slopes downward at about a 60-degree angle.
John entered the passage head-first and continued head-first at
least 30 feet down the steep, tight section. At some point, he
realized he could not back out against the force of gravity. John
sent the others out of the passage and continued downward,
hoping to find a place to turn around...
Death by positional asphyxia can occur from prolonged inversion without any other injuries (cf. Saint Peter).  There are multiple documentary videos about this incident, including this one (hat tip to reader drabkikker, who located it).  The embedded schematic is a screencap from this one.

4 comments:

  1. An excruciating way to die, I'm sure. The Youtube channel Fascinating Horror has an episode on the incident (safe for work, no explicit material shown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWwPg8ruxfI

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  2. Few things heebie my jeebies like caving accidents. Throw in cave DIVING accidents and you've got high-octane nightmare fuel right there.

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  3. At 5:00 into the video, I had to NOPE out. I used to be able to tolerate all sorts of tiny passages with good humor and gymnastics, but age has changed me. If I cannot proceed while standing on two legs or "four legs", I am not going forward.

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  4. I used to explore mines in the US western states (Nevada/Utah/Arazona) with a good friend back when I was in my 20's. The places we'd squeeze thru were so tight you have to go in the same way you came out or you couldn't make the bends (feet first/head first). Now, thinking back to those days freaks me out. This story makes me curl my toes. So scary.

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