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The cave divers who went back for their friends
- mikkom 10y agoThere is a documentary coming in 2016 about this dive, here is the english website: http://divingintotheunknown.com/en http://divingintotheunknown.com/en There was also an excellent article about the dive (with lots of pictures and videos that they recorded during the dive and interactive map) at the biggest newspaper in Finland, unfortunately only in finnish. http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/ http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/
- barking 10y agoVery brave men undoubtedly. I can't think of a sport that I'd enjoy less though.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoI could relate to a part of it - it's like being on Mars: just you, your mates, and the planet, equally unexplored and unforgiving.
- gadders 10y agoThis is a good long form article about another cave dive body recovery effort: http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead
- snori74 10y agoThere's also the very good "Snap Judgement" podcast about that here: http://snapjudgment.org/where-no-one-should-go http://snapjudgment.org/where-no-one-should-go
- sleepychu 10y agoThis story also aired on ThisAmericanLife http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/551/good-guys-2015?act=3 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/551/g...
- thomnottom 10y agoThank you. I was sure I heard this story before and it was bugging the crap out of me trying to figure out where.
- andyjohnson0 10y agoThanks for sharing that link. Heres a similar article from Wired: http://www.wired.com/1995/11/divers-2/ http://www.wired.com/1995/11/divers-2/
- jcoffland 10y agoI find the sentimentality towards dead bodies difficult to relate to. I would be fine with my body being left and would not want someone else to die attempting to retrieve it. I suppose my friends and family might not feel the same.
- kh_hk 10y agoI feel similarly. However the article notes: > Having the bodies would help the families grieve, and would also help to prevent lengthy delays to insurance and inheritance settlements. Risking lives to recover dead bodies does not sound logical and yet it's the norm on underwater accidents. One of the multiple examples of a recovery gone wrong is the case of David Shaw [1], particularly famous because there's footage of the recovery accident. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shaw_(diver)#Last_dive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shaw_(diver)#Last_dive
- kogepathic 10y agoI understand that people take pleasure in doing this sport because it's physically challenging and they find the challenge exciting. > more than 11 hours after setting off on a dive that was supposed to take five hours. I mean this is just insane. I can't even imagine trying to do something in which any mistake could instantly cause my death for 11 hours straight. > "There are lots of questions - the original questions - about where the cave goes, and where the water comes from, and they are still there," he says. "And I am not afraid of the cave." I appreciate this attitude, but I'm wondering if it would diminish the sport at all to have autonomous vehicles explore the cave before a dive. It doesn't remove the physical challenge of the sport itself, but it could help divers prepare for tough portions of the dive. e.g. at 110m depth, narrow passage. Single file proceeding with X minutes budgeted for issues.
- grecy 10y agoI'm an avid explorer, regularly setting off to do things that are not entirely "safe". (though nothing on this scale). The story of Chris McCandless[1] (Into The Wild) spoke to me so strongly, I made the trek[2] into the wilderness where he passed away, an old bus on the side of a trail in Alaska. Chris' is a very controversial story, with many people believing he was an idiot for wandering in there "unprepared" and many thinking he is inspirational. I wound up spending 4 years living in the North, exploring the far corners of Yukon and Alaska. I feel strongly there are some personality types that just need to get "off the map" and I love the part of Jon Krakauer's book Into The Wild where he suggests having a piece of wilderness on the earth that literally has no map. People can choose to go in there to explore. They'll (likely) find mountains, rivers, lakes, caves, etc. but nothing will be mapped, everything is to be discovered. When they return, they can't talk specifics, or show photos. Some of us want to go places that have been unexplored, and we accept that risk. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus
- monk_e_boy 10y agoYour story sounds amazing. I'm from the UK where every square cm of ground has been mapped, examined and sold to someone. Some questions. 1) What did you eat and drink? 2) Where did you sleep? 3) What was an average day like? 4) How did you deal with days like christmas day, new years eve, your birthday, the solstice and any other special day to you. 5) Did you see or find anything curious? Something that made you pause and wonder? 6) Is that sort of adventure a man thing? Did you ever hear of a woman doing something similar by choice? Just some questions that I have, don't answer them if they are impertinent. Just a curious :)
- f_allwein 10y agovaguely related: the largest successful rescue mission of a scientist who was injured in a cave in Germany http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27914426 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27914426
- wazari972 10y agoIt's surprising to see such an article #1 in HN ... right after a long weekend of cave diving training! It's a sport that requires a lot of preparation, planning, risk estimation and counter-measures. My hobby cave dives are nothing like such explorations, but the principles are the same. In the end, when you go diving, the level of risk is close to 0: one regulator may fail (risk around 1/100 if well checked), two won't fail during the same dive (risk of two failures 1/100 x 1/100 = 1/10000 which is negligible--if I got the figure right, I didn't double check! EDIT: it's rather 1/1000 x 1/1000 = 1/1.000.000). And we use two independent air tanks, and with air reserves managed with one regulator fault in mind, as well as the 'little' panic induce by the regulator fault. That's called the 1/4 rule, we use it in France in FFESSM diving organisation.
- elcapitan 10y agoI guess that depends on how you think about risk - if it's about some probability of an unfortunate event, or maximum unavoidable damage in case of that event. A 1/10000 chance of certain death doesn't sound like something I'd like to take.
- wazari972 10y ago> A 1/10000 chance of certain death doesn't sound like something I'd like to take. (maybe I was a little bit off, it's more likely that the risk of failure is 1/1000, so sum is 1/1.000.000) but the point is, it's more risky to drive back home after the weekend than to recreational cave dive, especially with dive fatigue!
- elcapitan 10y ago> it's more risky to drive back home after the weekend than to recreational cave dive, especially with dive fatigue! I think that's the same issue with risk assessment and mixing up probability and impact: A problem when driving home is not a 100% certain death sentence, and it is not something you could not mitigate. You can drive slower, try to avoid dangerous streets etc. And even in the event of an accident you have systems that might save you (airbag etc).
- pi-rat 10y agoAn article from a Norwegian newspaper about the original incident, with visualisation of their diving profile, timelines, etc: http://www.vg.no/spesial/2014/dodsdykket/index_eng.php http://www.vg.no/spesial/2014/dodsdykket/index_eng.php
- sccxy 10y agoGreat visualisation. At first I didn't understand what happened, but this article made everything understandable.
- kfk 10y agoOK, before people start saying why the hell would you do such a sport. Not the same but similar - I did caving for a big part of my childhood until I was 20. I miss it. The connections you build with the people you do this are very strong, your life depends on it. The places you see are mind blowing - try running into a 60m dive after entering a small hole of maybe 30 cm of diameter, or visiting a room bigger than a stadium at -500m. And there is a certain romance around it - places with names from people that discovered them long ago, places yet to be found, old guys telling gone stories of exploration. Up in the mountains, maybe 1 hour from my old home back in Italy, there is still a search for a special entrance to a big cave system (runs 1 km deep) in order to do explorations also during the winter (a big lake inside the cave closes the "classic" entrance after summer), this search has been going on for 20+ years now, still searching.
- callahad 10y ago> visiting a room bigger than a stadium at -500m. Surely you mean -50m, right? :) Which system was that? It sounds lovely.
- visarga 10y agoIt's not a cave, but it's big. It has amazing echoes. The Slanic Salt Mine in Romania: http://www.romania-actualitati.ro/files/poz%C4%83%20222.JPG http://www.romania-actualitati.ro/files/poz%C4%83%20222.JPG
- kfk 10y ago-500m Check here: http://www.scintilena.com/speleoit/atlas/molise/pdn.gif http://www.scintilena.com/speleoit/atlas/molise/pdn.gif I got until the first P80. People camp close to this place few days to explore the part after that - here (remember, at -500m): https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bancacapasso.it%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F10%2FPozzo-della-neve2.jpg&f=1 https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bancaca.... Edit. Uhm, I think the guy in the middle is my father like 15/20 years ago, I have to ask him.
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- spraak 10y agoOne of the pictures is captioned > The Plurdalen Valley Which is funny because the -en in Norwegian means 'the' and 'dal' means valley. So in a way it says 'The the Plura valley valley'
- konschubert 10y agoIt seems quite egoistic to take such extreme risks for leisure if you have a wife and possibly kids who love you.
- erkkie 10y agoWhere do you draw the line?
- simplemath 10y agoStop base jumping or first descents on cave dives after having children
- J-dawg 10y agoI sometimes think this when I watch the Isle of Man TT races (which, incidentally, happen later this month). At least one of the top riders is a family man, he brings his wife and kids to the island every year. There is an excellent documentary about the races [0] which I highly recommend. The wives of these people seem very accepting of what they do. The bereaved wife of a TT racer is featured quite prominently in that film. She is very philosophical about the whole thing, basically saying that his obsession was so great that it wouldn't have been reasonable to ask him to stop. [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1698010/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1698010/
- imakesnowflakes 10y agoWhat about being a soldier? Does it seem egoistic continue being a soldier, if you have a family? We seem to be Ok, with people, risking their life to protect the interests of the country and thus protect our interests, but not ok if they risk their lives for themselves?
- rev_bird 10y agoHonestly, it does seem sort of egoistic to continue being a soldier if you have a family, at least to me. I'm going to have a hard time explaining it in a way that doesn't seem confrontational, but the most exaggerated example of this is Pat Tillman[1], the professional football player to turned down a $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. Two years later, he was killed by friendly fire, making a widow out of the woman he married right before enlisting. Even if you ignore all the absurd, bungled propaganda surrounding his death, he probably did a lot of good in the Army -- but was it as much good as if he'd stayed home and used a couple million dollars to help vets or something? I very much understand the sense of duty that pulls people toward the military, and I know it's frequently a complicated situation. But I don't think I'll never understand these guys who marry a woman, have a kid or three in between deployments, then just go running back into a war zone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman
- Zorangee 10y agoOnline food delivery in chennai http://zorangee.com http://zorangee.com
- known 10y ago99% people do NOT donate their organs posthumously
- ohitsdom 10y ago> "This incident happened, and then they've made a film and they all come out as heroes," he says. "But these two people should never have died in the first place." What should the divers have done to avoid this? Were they just not experienced enough for a dive of this magnitude? One mentions they should have done a practice run, but what does that mean? How do you practice for a dive?
- yoo1I 10y agoI have no experience diving in caves, I just read about it on the internet, but this stuck out at me: > But after descending about 85m Kankanen returned. Looking upset, he explains in the film that he slept badly and is simply not in the right frame of mind for the operation. This happened on the retrial mission, but it hints very softly at the culture in which this group of people went cave diving. I interpret the comment about not having to have died in the first place, as meaning that cave diving is extremely dangerous, and so planning and execution need to be perfect and require a great deal of mental control. The first person died after he got entangled by some cord, and then after panicking being unable to switch to a fresh air supply. Why the second diver died is unclear. So maybe they weren't in the right frame of mind to deal well enough with running into dangerous problems at depth.
- avar 10y agoFor people interested in getting into diving as a sport I recommend reading "Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them" by "Michael Ange" (just search on Amazon). It contains numerous case studies of diving screwups that either ended in death or near-death and what can be learned from them to avoid those situations.
- SeanDav 10y agoAn even more impressive, and tragic, story at over 270 meters depth, in one of the worlds deepest sinkholes: http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead
- anamoulous 10y agoThanks, I had this weird sense that I had already read this story before but I thought it had been in Africa? Turns out it was this article.
- stuff4ben 10y agoThe article hints at them having done something wrong and that it could have been prevented. Any divers/cavers know?
- Overtonwindow 10y agoIncredibly brave people. I don't know about the rest of you lads, but I don't have the balls nor the fortitude to even attempt such a feat of humanity. My hats off to them all.
- ey0001 10y agoIs it because of the water pressure that the guy who died couldn't stop ingesting the water?
- gommm 10y agoI'm not a diver so what I'm about to say may sound incredibly naive but I'm surprised they don't use more advanced communication tech when diving than just relying on light signal. They could use some kind of haptic feedback system working to communicate between each other through RF waves. If one person presses a button, the other members feel a vibration or some similar haptic feedback. This would allow people to signal danger more easily. It would also make sense to have a notification signaling when any member is outside of the RF range. Having such a tech would have allowed Gronqvist to have directly been alerted when Huotarinen became stuck either by Huotarinen alerting him or by the notification that Huotarinen was outside of the RF range (which would probably not carry very far in that situation). If other members had been alerted faster, Huotarinen would have had less time to start panicking and would maybe not have needed that cylinder of gaz. So, maybe I'm incredibly naive and there's a good reason but it seems stupid and dangerous to rely on a torch to signal distress (which is often not going to be visible to members in front of the group).
- anro 10y agoAs a cave diver (norwegian as well) i can tell you that a good light with a tight spot IS a incredible good way to communicate under water where there is no natural light at all. Lack of seeing your teams light is the first thing you notice. The only thing that could be better than a light is voice communication, but to do that in any meaning full way you will need to have a full face mask (like commercial divers) and that bring with them a lot of other problems. (like gas sharing etc). And Patrik did in-fact notice that Jari had a problem, and stayed 20minutes trying to help him before Jari died. The problem was the "surprise restriction" after point of no return. So the problem wasn't really a communication problem, but they didn't follow good cave diving practice and thats most likely whats killed them. Normal cave dives starts and ends in the same opening, so you will never be at a point where you cant exit the same entrance as you started. When you do a more complex dive like a traverse as the Finnish did you always make sure you have dived ALL of the cave you want to traverse before! Normally you will do a setup dive from the other side of the system, and place a "cookie" (non directional marker) on the line where you turn. If you reach the cookie from the other side you can, if you up for it, continue to the other entrance. By doing so you ensure that everybody know of hazards like small and tight restrictions and that they dont catch you by surprise when you have passed the point of no return. (when you dont have gas/scrubber time to exit the entrance you started from)