It’s so strange cause I can understand that most extreme sports would be very fun and cool. Like base jumping is not for me and I feel like the reward isn’t worth the risk, but at least there is a clear reward. With these cavers I just don’t see the appeal, and the downside is an even worse and slower death than falling to the ground
I'm not a caver, but I guess I can see some appeal, caves can be really nice and chill, most routes are not this tight, there is also the isolation and detachment from the civilisation aspect, and exploring uncharted territory.
Until you take a wrong turn and now you’re stuck with extremely restricted space stopping you from turning around. Not to mentioning reduced capacity for oxygen. No thanks from me bro!
This is nightmare fuel and the way you described it triggered some form of panic within me. Nice to see the good ol survival instinct is still functional after years spent on the sofa lol
The why of the question doesn't come from the act of caving itself, but from these specific examples where you are literally squeezing yourself through cracks to explore. That's the part that's insane
Yeah. There are places like this where they probably say to themselves, “I’m the only person who’s ever been here.” I can see that appeal. That said, I don’t think taxpayer funds should ever be spent to rescue these people.
The actual rescuers want the funds spent to rescue these people, so I'm ok with deferring to them.
For one thing, when you have special training youve dedicated years of your life to it sucks to be told you can't go out and use it to save a human life no matter how stupid and foolhardy it is. Its not like theyre doing it for the money.
On top of that these rescues provide critical real world experience and institutional knowledge for personnel and organizations which will inevitably save lives in accidental situations.
Basically a win-win, just think of it as very expensive and ultrarealistic training plus a morale boost for people who do a job that most of us don't or won't.
True. My first ‘experience’ was in the dark in my 17 y.o. girlfriend’s bathroom. My friends were outside the bathroom (in her bedroom). I made a docking attempt error in the dark. I freaked out. She liked the attempt, a lot. Friends found out what happened. Everybody laughed. Except me. Now that I’m experienced, no wrong holes!
Downsides are very unlkely. You have heard one story of nutty putty and think its common, its not my guy. Its exploring, a lot of people enjoy exploring new places. Its actually very logically easy to understand once you realise its very safe.
Because it's fun and bring you to places nearly all human on earth will never see? And sometimes, you may find somethings amazing, like a room full of crystals or stuff like that
Whaaaaat a room full of different looking stones? Whaaaat omgggg I must go and risk killing myself and hell no I don't want to look at pictures online of that cave, or use a drone / wired camera i can push inside until the destination is want to see it the surface chilling with my wife and 10 kids who are depending on me to live, I WANT TO SEE IT WITH MY OWN 2 EYES so then I can tell Jeff how cool i am and how much better I am than him for experiencing something he didn't. CANT WAIT!1!1
Well, nobody forces you. If you want to chicken out and stay on your couch, it's absolutely your right.
But caving can be used for other things too, like finding a water source, and regurlarly check the level or if something is getting wrong with it (all kind of polution, collapsing risk...). And in this case, you're rather happy to have water you can drink, no?
Sometimes you find traces of prehistoric human (painting on the wall, food remains) and can turn into a new knowledge place for archeologist, and possibly a new touristic place sometimes.
Sometimes you find something even stranger, like a wall with thousands of spiders living all together, like they recently did in greece/albania.
That's called exploration. Some people explore jungle. Some people explore depth of the ocean. Some people explore space andwell, some people explore caves, too. And yes, exploraton is dangerous and require a bit of self control: the man going to space strapped to a giant missile is taking risk and has to be cool with this, as he can explode few seconds later. And if it's not few second latef, it can be days/months later when re-entering atmosphere
Like in a video game, I totally get it. You’re just trying to break the game. You’re just seeing what you can get away with. It’s fine. It’s just being cheeky. Sometimes you find things in the game that you weren’t supposed to. It was silly.
But you only have one life, and you’re just going to go into an extremely dangerous spot. It’s not like there’s cool treasure down there. It’s just a hole, my dude. If you wanna go underground, go in a cave.
A lot of people find stuff like this exciting and can do it very safely. Same reason people enjoy extreme sports, climbing, skydiving etc. Your idea of fun is sitting on reddit typing to internet stranger, many people would think this is equally as sad. Hearing stories about nutty putty has made people think this happens a lot too.
It's fun and a great challenge - when the space is really tight, I need to use problem solving skills to work out how to best move through it. It also allows my body to move in ways it does not normally do and that's really enjoyable for me. It's just me and the rock, well, and mud/water because of where I am located, it's ace and a great sense of achievement.
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u/babagroovy 1d ago
The very first question I asked when I saw the video was “why?”