FACT: 90% of divers give up just before finding something really neat in an underwater cave
Then there's another 1% that aren't even part of the original statistic because they're spawned by the pure awesomeness of what's inside that cave.
Aside from some fish which evolved with no eyes (which is kind of cool), the only other thing you are likely to find down there is a dead body that everyone decided was too dangerous to recover.
That’s a fact. Salvaging those ship wrecks gave me such anxiety. I died a few times by getting lost.
Theres a good podcasts by stuff you should know on this. A scary thought to me is about kicking up sediment, causing zero visibility and they cant even see their hand in front of their goggles
I've done training dives in man made quarries under zero visibility conditions. There's no way in hell I'd go into an actual cave under those conditions.
It was bad enough when you'd almost run into a purposefully placed sculpture or bathtub in that flooded quarry.
You had to do a scavenger hunt to find stuff to pass your training and it was super disorienting.
I don't know if PADI still does that sort of thing or if it was unique to my training center conditions but it was wild.
I'll stick to open water, thank you very much.
Oh those sorts of training conditions absolutely still exist. I got my rescue diving certification in an old quarry much like what you said. Really helps make you appreciate the conditions when out in the Caribbean and you have >100 ft of visibility in every direction.
Oh, I totally agree with you. It's literally like night and day. You just transported me from those murky depths to those absolutely crystal clear Caribbean waters... So many fun memories in every condition.
Here is a clip from Donald Cerrone on the Joe Rogan show where he tells a story like this. I really loathe Joe Rogan but this story is fantastic. Nightmare fuel.
https://youtu.be/or92IMcLoIc?si=0CemG6Qopl_-Bl8d
I dare you to watch this and not get absolutely freaked the fuck out, lol.
If this is the clip I think it is it’s been the joke of the cave diving community. Cerrone has almost reached meme status for this interview. Watch the Dive Talk video reacting to this clip if you’re curious.
Thanks for sharing, I'll look that up and check it out, as I'm really curious about things like this that I've not experienced. Regardless of whether he's an idiot or joke or whatever, I can totally see how a scenario like he describes could happen and how scary it could be. I definitely won't be trying to learn how to cave dive anytime soon.
Edit - here's the link to the dive talk video if anyone is curious like me
A couple takeaways for me after watching their breakdown -
Caves are also not uniformly shaped, the way you go in could look a lot different on the way out.
There's nothing in this cave worth dying for
That's precisely what someone would say if there's stuff worth dying for in there.
You took it further than I would. I'd listen to the sign these days, but there was absolutely a time that, that sign would have just been a challenge.
Edit: for you grammar nerds. Do I need that comma? It seems like it should be there, but it also seems superfluous at the same time.
With the "that, that" the comma helps, but you actually don't even need the second that for that sentence to make grammatical sense.
I feel like if they replaced the first "that" with "when" it would read smoother. "...a time when that sign"
There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for
There’s nothing outside it to live for. Show me the damn cave
But what if there really is something valuable, wouldn't they put a sign just like this to prevent people walzing in?
Just so we're clear, your argument is that there really might be something in there that would make being dead worthwhile?
You have to ignore many different warnings to even get to the area youre not supposed to be in! First and foremost, humans by design do not breathe water, therefore we have no reason to be under water.
humans by design do not breathe water
I don't know how you can just go around making claims like this without a source. I'll give you 10 minutes to provide me five peer reviewed research papers that assert your claim.
Okay, they almost had me convinced. But the second to last sentence is just crying out for a treasure.
That's a good point. If I was hiding treasure in an underwater cave, I'd wanta sign like this at the entrance. It'd keep it out most of those medeling kids.
I believe this is one of the caves at Ginnie Springs. If so, I know a guy who died in there. Cave diving is no joke.
https://youtu.be/or92IMcLoIc?feature=shared
I know it's Rogan but the guy telling the story about what he went through makes you want to stay on dry land.
Basically yes. Once you go inside a cave like this, it gets dark real fast. You can't tell where "up" is and you can't find your way back. So these people often drown or suffocate.
In cave dive training, you learn how not to do that.
It's dark so requires torches (more than one as a backup) and very easy to get disoriented. You can easily get lost and run out of air. Risk of being blinded by silt even with a torch, leading to more risk of disoriented and getting lost. If anything goes wrong such as equipment malfunction then you don't have the option of going to the surface as you do in open water (albeit with the risk of a bend). It's often cramped with places to get stuck, snag equipment, or get tangled in your guideline. There are sharp rocks you can hit your head on.
Cave diving is a completely different skill set than open water diving. While they both are underwater with diving tanks, cave diving takes specialized skills.
A very specific set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you
"There are older and fouler things than Orcs, in the deep places of the world..."
--Gandalf
Farther is the correct word, and has been confused with further for so long (over a hundred years), that they both mean exactly the same thing nowadays, so not sure why people are taking issues with it.
Unless I'm missing something?
I don't see any comments of people taking issue with it. But words do mean things, and some people like to speak with precision.
Words apparently don't mean things anymore, Merriam Webster added a new definition for "literally" this year
Merriam Webster is a descriptive dictionary. They don't tell you how words "should" be used, they say how words are used.
Using literally as an intensifier goes back literal centuries. The earliest written citation we've found of that usage goes back to 1769. It can be found everywhere from Dickens to Brontë.
It's also hardly the first word to go on a similar path towards becoming an intensifier. Very originally meant "genuine", really meant "in fact", absolutely meant "completely", etc.
But who complains about sentences like "I was really bored to death", or "I was absolutely rooted to the ground"? Does saying "it's very cold" just mean "it is a genuine fact that it is cold"?
Literally still means what it means. You can't use literally to mean "yellow", for example. People aren't generally confused when they come across the word.
Language is a complex and nuanced subject, but it often helps to remember that "all words are made up."
Idioms and hyperbole are both used extensively in language to imbue feeling to statements, most people would roll their eyes at someone who interjects with a "there's no actual evidence that boredom can be lethal" or a "I highly doubt that vendor would accept human limbs as payment," but somehow lots of people stan for "literal" snobbery.
If it makes you feel any better, you can think of it as a homophone from the same root: "in a manner related to literature," speaking to artistic yet inexact use of words in a sentence.
Also... I'm all for the language evolving and words changing their meaning over time, as they've always done, but that one is crazy. Hopefully common use will, in time, fix that and get that new definition changed... but ehh, I don't hold much hope.
Bring on the AI overlords? Reading the Polity (Sci Fi) series at the moment, and it really doesn't seem like a bad option!
They also added a new definition for "very" to mean something other than, "factually", or, "verifiably".
The title correcting it to further is what caught my attention, but no, I'm not seeing people taking huge issue with it either.
And there's nothing wrong with being correct, I like to be eloquent too.
I was just saying farther is just as correct as further, and found it interesting is all. They may have been misused a hundred years ago, but not for a long long time, they have identical meanings nowadays!
Am I the only one for whom prefacing a statement with "FACT", makes said statement less credible?
Why have you forsaken me? In your eyes forsaken me In your thoughts forsaken me In your heart forsaken me, oh
Off the top of my head, rope to put down Gide lines in case you get silted out so you have something to follow to get out.
Also extra everything, if your open water diving and you run out of air (or other critial equipment failure) you can roll the dice on the bends by going straight to the surface, not so with cave diving; your just going to drown.
If I'm not wrong so many people got oxygen poisoning in there and got confused with their path where they came in and out then went in deeper instead of going out when the tank almost empty
I think a water breathing potion would also be appropriate, either that or water affinity+breathing and/or turtle helmet
I'm not a caver or a diver, but I've read a few stories about cave diving. A big one is a cable on a retracting reel. Caves which are frequently explored will have guide cables bolted along the walls for long stretches. You snap your cable onto these and then use it as a leash back to the guide. This allows you to explore off a certain distance without getting lost. You can always follow your own line back to the guide, and follow the guide back out. In an "unimproved" cave, you'd presumably want lots of extra line to build your own guides.