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Selects: Cave Diving: Totally Nuts · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
0:03
Speaker 1: chosen our two thousand nineteen episode Cave Diving Totally Nuts,
0:07
Speaker 1: one of the most apt titles for any of our episodes.
0:10
Speaker 1: Cave diving is indeed nuts, and you need nerves of
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Speaker 1: steel or to be utterly careless, because it's one of
0:16
Speaker 1: the most dangerous activities a person on Earth today could pursue.
0:20
Speaker 1: But both cave diving and the things that cave divers
0:23
Speaker 1: do and see are both immensely interesting. So I hope
0:26
Speaker 1: you enjoy listening to this classic episode as much as
0:29
Speaker 1: I did. Again, Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
0:36
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
0:45
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, Nurse Charles W. Danger is his middle name,
0:49
Speaker 1: even though it begins with W. Bryant. And there's Jerry
0:55
Speaker 1: Jerome Rolling. We're gonna stick with Jerome, Okay, it's a
1:01
Speaker 1: good cave diver's name. Yeah, I have just my regular
1:05
Speaker 1: name because I would never in a million years cave dive,
1:08
Speaker 1: but I never even scuba dived, I have. Yeah, I
1:11
Speaker 1: believe that open water stuff. I got really um like,
1:17
Speaker 1: I guess seasick. Right afterward two and I was convinced
1:20
Speaker 1: that it had to do with the arrows breathing. I
1:22
Speaker 1: was like, I'm done, which stinks, because it was really cool.
1:26
Speaker 1: Breathing underwater is one of the neatest experiences you will
1:30
Speaker 1: ever have. It's really cool, but not not snorkel Like
1:34
Speaker 1: you're totally you're underwater and you're breathing. Even if it's pool,
1:38
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Just take like a scuba lesson once
1:41
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll there, you go, You're done. I have
1:44
Speaker 1: dreams where I can breathe underwater a lot. But it's
1:47
Speaker 1: not like, hey, I'm aquaman and I'm just breathing like
1:51
Speaker 1: a fish or something. It's that I figured out how
1:55
Speaker 1: to very slowly draw in air, very carefully from the
2:00
Speaker 1: water around me. It's it's really a strange dream, but
2:04
Speaker 1: I have it a lot. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm
2:06
Speaker 1: not sure what it means. I don't either. I can't
2:09
Speaker 1: even begin to guess. But what's more boring than talking
2:13
Speaker 1: about someone's dreams? They say that nothing is more boring
2:16
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, I thought that was a pretty interesting
2:18
Speaker 1: one though. Thanks. If you're going to talk about your dream,
2:20
Speaker 1: that's a good one to go with. Um, we're not
2:23
Speaker 1: talking about your dreams today though, Chuck. Now we're talking
2:25
Speaker 1: about cave diving, right, which is not a dream. Again,
2:28
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I don't think it's not for me.
2:32
Speaker 1: Like I I couldn't even go like regular cavings, which
2:36
Speaker 1: I did the one time. I can't remember. Did you
2:39
Speaker 1: enjoy it? I did? It was a butt kicker physically,
2:42
Speaker 1: very hard work. But I remember describing the pancake thing
2:47
Speaker 1: that I went through where the you know, I was
2:51
Speaker 1: laying on my back squirming through in the in the
2:53
Speaker 1: rock face was three inches above my body and face
2:57
Speaker 1: and you could you're getting nervous now. I don't even
3:00
Speaker 1: like hearing about it. Yeah, that was a little weird.
3:03
Speaker 1: And I'm not even a claustrophobic guy, but I was like,
3:05
Speaker 1: this is you know, you could die in here. I've
3:09
Speaker 1: read about a poor guy, maybe the poorest of all time,
3:14
Speaker 1: well one of them, who was caving with his family,
3:17
Speaker 1: friends and family and got stuck and ended up dying
3:21
Speaker 1: his his like they could get to him, they could
3:24
Speaker 1: move his foot, they could touch his leg legs, but
3:27
Speaker 1: he was just so stuck that they just couldn't do
3:29
Speaker 1: anything for him. And so they decided to go home.
3:32
Speaker 1: He died. No, they were there the whole time, but
3:34
Speaker 1: he over like I think the course of twenty four hours.
3:37
Speaker 1: He he just died. The slow she's terrifying death. So
3:41
Speaker 1: they couldn't They could reach his foot, but not his mouth, clearly, yes,
3:45
Speaker 1: to give him, you know, nutrients. They tried to give
3:47
Speaker 1: him stuff through an ivy. I think they tried to
3:50
Speaker 1: give him a sedative and it kept falling out of
3:53
Speaker 1: his leg, so they couldn't even do that. Oh gosh,
3:57
Speaker 1: it was bad. It's hard to even here about, I know.
4:00
Speaker 1: In but this is cave diving, which is even more
4:03
Speaker 1: dangerous than caving. Yeah, And there's a couple of a
4:06
Speaker 1: few types of diving. There's the open water diving that
4:09
Speaker 1: you were talking about, there's cavern diving, and open water
4:14
Speaker 1: diving just means, if you know, if you get in trouble,
4:16
Speaker 1: go up and you'll reach the surface exactly. You're not
4:19
Speaker 1: gonna get hit in the head by a cave ceiling
4:22
Speaker 1: right or pinned down through crevasse. No. Cavern diving is
4:26
Speaker 1: a little different in that you're in a cavern, but
4:31
Speaker 1: you should be able to see sunlight above you, and
4:33
Speaker 1: if you go up, you can get your head out
4:36
Speaker 1: eventually you're from what I saw, the definition is you're
4:40
Speaker 1: no more than seventy ft deep, okay, and you're within
4:43
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty linear feet of the cave mouth
4:47
Speaker 1: or more specifically, your surroundings are illuminated by daylight. That's
4:51
Speaker 1: that's really what separates cavern diving from cave diving. It's
4:55
Speaker 1: kind of like remember a bio speleology episode, So this
4:59
Speaker 1: would be the twilight zone between the dark zone and
5:01
Speaker 1: the light zone. That that would be kind of cavern
5:04
Speaker 1: diving diving in the twilight zone. Right. Then you get
5:06
Speaker 1: to cave diving, and that is serious business. This is
5:10
Speaker 1: not uh what's considered recreational diving. Uh, this is going
5:17
Speaker 1: deep and dark. Yeah with David re Going deep with
5:21
Speaker 1: David Reese, I haven't spoken to recent a while. I
5:26
Speaker 1: love that guy. Oh he's a great guy. Yeah, So
5:30
Speaker 1: this is a technical diving. Can give another definition of
5:36
Speaker 1: on that Reese joke going deep wasn't good enough. Cave
5:40
Speaker 1: diving is diving with an overhead environment, so that separates
5:45
Speaker 1: it from open water environment. Like if if he goes
5:48
Speaker 1: and panic and swim straight up, you're gonna bonk your head. Yeah,
5:50
Speaker 1: you might have gone to the under foot um there
5:54
Speaker 1: and you have no direct vertical access to open air
5:58
Speaker 1: surface or light. Yeah, this is extremely important. Basically a
6:02
Speaker 1: horror movie, a nightmare, a living nightmare that you're doing
6:07
Speaker 1: on purpose that you've paid it a lot of money
6:09
Speaker 1: to equip yourself for. Um. The light thing is a
6:13
Speaker 1: really big one too. Like, here's the thing. It's really
6:15
Speaker 1: easy because you're thinking that this is cave diving and
6:18
Speaker 1: the word caves in there and we're talking about caves,
6:20
Speaker 1: but it's scuba diving really, but it's scuba diving inside
6:24
Speaker 1: a cave. This is a really important thing to not
6:27
Speaker 1: lose sight of. It's a cave. It's deep in the
6:30
Speaker 1: bowels of the earth, filled with water. Yes there are
6:33
Speaker 1: there's no light. There's only light is the light that
6:36
Speaker 1: you have and you're moving through it underwater. This is
6:40
Speaker 1: cave diving. I'm in awe of people who do this
6:44
Speaker 1: and I could watch videos of it all day long. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 1: it's very cool to see. Um, it's like scuba plus
6:51
Speaker 1: as far as the creep factor goes. A read one
6:54
Speaker 1: article about a guy who is a cave diving researcher
6:58
Speaker 1: and as we'll see. You know, there's scientific discoveries that
7:01
Speaker 1: have been made in these caves because just like the
7:05
Speaker 1: the deep dry caves, the things that live in there
7:07
Speaker 1: are remarkable. Um. And this guy was sixty nine years
7:11
Speaker 1: old and still going strong and said his family, you know,
7:13
Speaker 1: always worries about him, but he super experience, knows what
7:17
Speaker 1: he's doing. But it's still fraught with danger. I do
7:20
Speaker 1: have a few death stats if you want. I read
7:25
Speaker 1: a scientific presentation called thirty years of American cave Diving
7:30
Speaker 1: Fatalities two thousand fifteen. You got the same one. Huh.
7:34
Speaker 1: This is by the Divers Alert Network. A hundred and
7:37
Speaker 1: sixty one divers had died over that. Uh what how
7:40
Speaker 1: long was that two thirty year period? Uh? Sixty seven
7:45
Speaker 1: of them were trained, eighty seven were untrained, which is crazy, Like,
7:49
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're doing down there. To begin
7:50
Speaker 1: with a fool, yeah if you just take up cave
7:54
Speaker 1: diving for the first time, but like, yeah, exactly, because
7:56
Speaker 1: sixty seven trained cave divers pair wished Yeah, and how chuck?
8:01
Speaker 1: How what was the vast majority? Most common cause was
8:04
Speaker 1: aphixia due to drowning preceded by running out of breathing gas,
8:09
Speaker 1: usually after getting lost because of a loss of visibility
8:13
Speaker 1: caused by suspended silt. And that's where most of these
8:17
Speaker 1: are in Florida. And that's where I learned about the
8:20
Speaker 1: silt out. Also from the article you sent about the
8:24
Speaker 1: UM the cave rescue in Thailand in Thailand, which was
8:28
Speaker 1: apparently very silty. And a silt out is when so
8:30
Speaker 1: much silt gets kicked up that it just blacks out
8:34
Speaker 1: even with your light source. Yeah, the guy that was
8:37
Speaker 1: in that I think it was an article in Atlantic
8:39
Speaker 1: UM with the guy knew his name, Robert Layard. I
8:42
Speaker 1: think he's a cave diving expert, and he said, you
8:45
Speaker 1: can put your light up to your mask and you
8:47
Speaker 1: can kind of see your light, but that's it. And
8:49
Speaker 1: you're in a cave, so you don't know where to go.
8:53
Speaker 1: Even feeling your way around is not going to help you. UM.
8:56
Speaker 1: And the problem with the silt out is they can
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Speaker 1: last for so along in a bad a bad case
9:02
Speaker 1: of a silt out that you will run out of
9:04
Speaker 1: air before the silt settles enough for you to see through.
9:07
Speaker 1: So it's a bad jam. Well, and then this that
9:12
Speaker 1: you probably read the same interviews, but there's a panic
9:16
Speaker 1: is what this guy said is what usually happens, even
9:18
Speaker 1: with an experienced diver, because there's no escape, there's no
9:21
Speaker 1: quick way out, and things tend to have a domino effect.
9:25
Speaker 1: So if you're in a silt out, like you said,
9:27
Speaker 1: it's you try and stay as still as possible, and
9:30
Speaker 1: it's still maybe not gonna work. You're getting nervous, just
9:35
Speaker 1: kind of fidgety, now that you've pointed out it's panic
9:39
Speaker 1: inducing just to think about it, Like you have to
9:42
Speaker 1: remain perfectly still in the total darkness, and that might
9:46
Speaker 1: not even be good enough to let that silt stuttle settle.
9:49
Speaker 1: I I saw um and even a bigger estimate of
9:53
Speaker 1: the number of deaths from cave diving from the National
9:58
Speaker 1: Speleological Societies Cave Diving Section. They estimated more than four
10:03
Speaker 1: hundred deaths in the history of cave diving. But they
10:06
Speaker 1: said in the world was it just America? Okay? They
10:12
Speaker 1: placed a lot of them towards the beginning of cave diving,
10:15
Speaker 1: which took which started in the fifties or sixties. Hey,
10:18
Speaker 1: I wonder what's in their stage, which is crazy, because
10:21
Speaker 1: scuba diving started in about the fifties, so within a
10:24
Speaker 1: little while of somebody inventing scuba diving. Some people were like, oh,
10:28
Speaker 1: let's go into caves with this stuff. And they started dying,
10:31
Speaker 1: and so they pointed out like these people didn't give
10:34
Speaker 1: their lives in vain. Each death was a lesson learned
10:37
Speaker 1: for everyone else who who um, you know, was yet
10:40
Speaker 1: to come. But a lot of people died early on,
10:42
Speaker 1: and it's gotten much. They are far fewer deaths from
10:46
Speaker 1: cave diving. But it's like you said, they're they're typically
10:50
Speaker 1: are cave diving experts who are dying because they're pushing
10:53
Speaker 1: themselves further and further. If you have you know, no
10:57
Speaker 1: one's cave dive before. Every cave you dive into is
11:00
Speaker 1: a new exploration, and this is a huge driver for
11:03
Speaker 1: people who cave dive. This is why they do it.
11:05
Speaker 1: They're seeing something that no other human on Earth in
11:09
Speaker 1: most cases, has ever seen in the history of humanity.
11:12
Speaker 1: They're the first human to be in this place. Um,
11:15
Speaker 1: there's lots of stuff to discover for when humans were there,
11:18
Speaker 1: but now it's flooded. Um, there's there's just a lot
11:22
Speaker 1: of discovery. But as it's been going on for decades now,
11:26
Speaker 1: every time somebody discovers a new thing. That's one thing
11:30
Speaker 1: that that is not left to be discovered by everybody else.
11:33
Speaker 1: So they're pushing themselves further and further. When you cave dive,
11:37
Speaker 1: you might be a hundred feet under sea level, but
11:40
Speaker 1: you might be scuba diving for miles down through a
11:45
Speaker 1: cave system. Not downward necessarily, but horizontal miles um. You know,
11:51
Speaker 1: round trip for this this cave dive, which is nuts,
11:55
Speaker 1: but that's that's what they do. I can't remember where
11:58
Speaker 1: I was going with that. I started to get panicked again.
12:01
Speaker 1: Have you seen Once upon the Time in Hollywood? Yeah,
12:04
Speaker 1: you know the scene with Brad Pitt on the boat
12:06
Speaker 1: in his in that sixty scuba gear. Yeah, it's just
12:09
Speaker 1: so cool looking. Before we say this, I come from
12:12
Speaker 1: the future to warn us in the past that we
12:14
Speaker 1: should add spoiler alert here. That was that. Uh it's
12:18
Speaker 1: like when they used to call him skin divers. Yes,
12:20
Speaker 1: what do you think he killed his wife? Uh? Well,
12:23
Speaker 1: I think that's what you were led to believe. Whether
12:26
Speaker 1: I felt like it was up in the air well
12:28
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh. Also could have been an accident
12:31
Speaker 1: because he was clearly had that spear gun resting on
12:35
Speaker 1: his knee pointing at her right. Um. Yeah, the question
12:40
Speaker 1: is did his neurons fire and make his finger move? Right? Okay,
12:44
Speaker 1: So we took care of the spoiler that was like
12:47
Speaker 1: five minutes ago, I know. And now we're back to
12:50
Speaker 1: cave diving and we should talk a little bit about equipment. Uh.
12:54
Speaker 1: This A lot of this came from one of our
12:56
Speaker 1: old House Stuff Works colleagues from the website orld, Buddy
13:00
Speaker 1: John Fuller, who looks like mc es like. He's been
13:03
Speaker 1: mentioned twice that he's the tie that binds the Estre
13:05
Speaker 1: episode and the cave diving episode. Yeah, and some of
13:08
Speaker 1: this equipment thing isn't the most exciting stuff in the world,
13:12
Speaker 1: but we should talk about it anyway. I found it
13:15
Speaker 1: frankly arousing. You got your mask, uh, and this is
13:18
Speaker 1: something I didn't now. Um. They use sort of simple
13:21
Speaker 1: black masks because it absorbs light. Yeah, um, which makes sense. Yeah,
13:27
Speaker 1: because you're using your own light source, so it can
13:30
Speaker 1: get pretty bright. I saw a flashlight from underwater kinetics.
13:36
Speaker 1: Maybe it's like fifteen thousand lumens some ridiculous amount of lumens.
13:43
Speaker 1: Lots of lumens, a lot of lumens um And yeah,
13:46
Speaker 1: if you have that stuff bouncing all over the place.
13:48
Speaker 1: You don't want your light, your your you know, gold glitter,
13:52
Speaker 1: diamond dusted mask like reflecting it in your eyes and
13:55
Speaker 1: cuts down in visibility. But I take issue with Fuller
13:59
Speaker 1: saying that they favorite simple masks, because these guys do
14:03
Speaker 1: like the full face like, yeah, be a mask. Yeah,
14:06
Speaker 1: not the bread pitt skin diver sixties mask, which I loved. Yeah,
14:11
Speaker 1: I think I think some of them might, but I
14:13
Speaker 1: also saw plenty of them. Yeah, have like you know,
14:16
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what they call it, but
14:18
Speaker 1: just a really cool full face mask. Yeah. It looks
14:22
Speaker 1: like something that you could dive in a cave in
14:25
Speaker 1: or go to outer space in. Basically. Yeah. So then
14:28
Speaker 1: you've got your fins again, black rubber fins. But the
14:33
Speaker 1: difference here and uh that I gather from this in
14:35
Speaker 1: open water because you don't want those super long, super
14:38
Speaker 1: bindy fins because you're trying to not kick up silt,
14:42
Speaker 1: so you want those shorter, stiffer fins. Uh. And when
14:46
Speaker 1: you're down there swimming around, you're using little, short controlled kicks. Yeah,
14:51
Speaker 1: no big sweeping leg movements. No, it's a huge, huge
14:54
Speaker 1: difference between cave diving and open water diving. The water diving,
14:58
Speaker 1: your legs are extended out behind and you're fluttering those
15:02
Speaker 1: um those fins up and down, and you're propelling yourself forward.
15:05
Speaker 1: In a in cave diving, your bent your legs are
15:09
Speaker 1: bent at the knees, so your feet are up slightly
15:11
Speaker 1: above you, and mostly you're making frog kicks, which are
15:16
Speaker 1: all in the ankle, and you're just kind of waddling
15:20
Speaker 1: yourself along with these little kicks. You see what I'm saying.
15:23
Speaker 1: For twelve years, you've been doing little physical gestures of
15:27
Speaker 1: me like anyone else in the world could see them. Well,
15:29
Speaker 1: who am I talking to you? But you know that's
15:31
Speaker 1: the whole point. So the frog look chuck like, this
15:34
Speaker 1: is what they do, little frog kicks. But in doing
15:37
Speaker 1: that that you cut down on the potential of um
15:40
Speaker 1: coming in contact with the rest of the Cave's a
15:43
Speaker 1: couple of reasons why you want to do that. One,
15:45
Speaker 1: you want to preserve the cave. If you break off
15:47
Speaker 1: a stalactite stalactite coming from the ceiling um, that's a
15:53
Speaker 1: that's nature's work that you just messed with. You don't
15:55
Speaker 1: want to do that, bro. And then secondly, a lot
15:59
Speaker 1: of caves pretty much all of them have that silt
16:01
Speaker 1: sediment on the bottom. That's your enemy. If you kick
16:04
Speaker 1: it up, you've got a silt out. So you you
16:07
Speaker 1: want to really be careful what kind of um movement
16:11
Speaker 1: you're making with your fins, and then just how big
16:14
Speaker 1: your fins are and how flexible they are, and then
16:16
Speaker 1: one other thing about that too. You also want to
16:19
Speaker 1: maintain basically perfect buoyancy where you're completely neutrally buoyant relative
16:25
Speaker 1: to the top and the bottom of the cave. Yeah.
16:27
Speaker 1: What do they call the movement? Dragon float? Pulling glide?
16:32
Speaker 1: Pulling glide float? Yeah, thing you do when you recover
16:37
Speaker 1: a body. Well, a lot of this is body recovery,
16:41
Speaker 1: very sadly, um, well, not a lot of it, but
16:44
Speaker 1: part of search and rescue can very much involve going
16:47
Speaker 1: deep and getting very swollen, water logged bodies. But yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: you pull yourself along with your hand, like in a
16:53
Speaker 1: little groove by the rock and then just let yourself glide.
16:57
Speaker 1: It seems very relaxing considering you're doing the most horrifying
17:00
Speaker 1: thing on the planet. Yeah, so you might do that
17:02
Speaker 1: even instead of kicking, depending on where the space is,
17:05
Speaker 1: how tight it is that kind of thing. Also, it
17:07
Speaker 1: depends on how um uh solid the surroundings are, like
17:13
Speaker 1: you or anything like that. Um. And then also apparently
17:17
Speaker 1: you only do that when you have a current. There's
17:19
Speaker 1: one thing we should say, there's two kinds of cave diving,
17:23
Speaker 1: spring diving and sump diving. And in spring diving that's
17:28
Speaker 1: where you see like the pictures in like National Geographic
17:31
Speaker 1: magazine where it's just this beautiful cave and there's just
17:35
Speaker 1: two people in scuba gear floating in the middle of it.
17:38
Speaker 1: That's a spring fed cave where you've got water moving
17:42
Speaker 1: through it keeping it very clear because there's no way
17:45
Speaker 1: for sediment to settle because the currents moving to to
17:48
Speaker 1: um quickly and you use that current to pull and glide.
17:52
Speaker 1: That looks like something has a little bit more appeal, Yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: but I mean it's just as dangerous as anything else.
17:58
Speaker 1: Like you said, most of the people who die cave
18:01
Speaker 1: diving die in Florida, and that's what they're doing, is
18:03
Speaker 1: diving in those springs. That is true, uh. And the
18:06
Speaker 1: other time the sump kind those are a little more
18:08
Speaker 1: scary to me. That's a cave system where if you
18:12
Speaker 1: imagine like kind of like a zigzag like Charlie Brown's shirt. Say,
18:16
Speaker 1: that's the cave system. Inside of the cave, half of
18:19
Speaker 1: the bottom half is covered with water that you have
18:24
Speaker 1: to scuba through, but you also have to climb over
18:27
Speaker 1: through dry parts in air and then get down to
18:30
Speaker 1: the to the water again. That's the sump kind of
18:33
Speaker 1: that's super sentiment and you really got to know what
18:35
Speaker 1: you're doing there. That's the most dangerous kind by far. Uh.
18:39
Speaker 1: You have your suit that you're wearing, and you can
18:41
Speaker 1: wear a wet suit, standard wet suit or a dry suit.
18:44
Speaker 1: These are not cheap. They cost, you know, several thousand
18:48
Speaker 1: dollars for a good one. All this equipment is not cheap. Uh.
18:52
Speaker 1: So it's not the kind of thing that you just
18:54
Speaker 1: sort of decided to try out, right, So you have
18:56
Speaker 1: to be wealthy and totally out of your mind to
18:59
Speaker 1: cave die. Uh. Dry suits are sealed off, so you know,
19:02
Speaker 1: if you've ever put on a wet suit, part of
19:05
Speaker 1: the process is getting in that cold water and letting
19:07
Speaker 1: it fill up your wet suit, which will warm it up.
19:11
Speaker 1: That's the idea is that water warms. But that process
19:15
Speaker 1: isn't fun getting in and out of a wet suit
19:17
Speaker 1: isn't fun neither, to be honest, and it's not that
19:19
Speaker 1: flouttering nous. You know. We had to wear them when
19:25
Speaker 1: we Scooba dip with the whales, the whale sharks. It
19:27
Speaker 1: seems like a hundred years ago. It was easily a
19:30
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. The dry suits seal off that water,
19:34
Speaker 1: so you are dry. That's why they call it a
19:36
Speaker 1: dry suit. Your body doesn't get wet um. And the
19:40
Speaker 1: cool thing here is that you can layer up some clothing, uh,
19:43
Speaker 1: and then put on this suit because you can stay warmer.
19:46
Speaker 1: It's much more pleasant imagining silkies or something. Yeah, I
19:49
Speaker 1: love the silkies. Uh. And then John makes a good point.
19:52
Speaker 1: You want to you want to have like extras of
19:55
Speaker 1: just about everything. Like you don't go down there with
19:58
Speaker 1: a flashlight. I'd have eight flashlights strapped to every single
20:03
Speaker 1: limb on my body. Like I'm sure they carry like
20:06
Speaker 1: an extra I would have a bunch of extra light. Yeah,
20:11
Speaker 1: you get your little knife if you get snagged, you
20:13
Speaker 1: cut things. I would have nine knives, eight flashlights. Well,
20:16
Speaker 1: you do want a redundant amount of stuff, like you
20:20
Speaker 1: were saying, like you just because if something goes wrong
20:22
Speaker 1: down there, you are toast unless you can slowly and
20:28
Speaker 1: deliberately get yourself back to the surface of the ocean.
20:32
Speaker 1: That's right, that's so yeah. But the other thing you
20:35
Speaker 1: want to do too is you're in very cramp quarters here,
20:37
Speaker 1: so everything has to be strapped down pretty closely to
20:40
Speaker 1: your body or in like a pocket, because you can't
20:44
Speaker 1: have any stuff hanging down because you'll get tangled up.
20:46
Speaker 1: I don't want to get tangled up down there. I
20:49
Speaker 1: know this is kind of amateur hour stuff because we're
20:51
Speaker 1: not a good breaking point, but we should probably take
20:53
Speaker 1: an ab break right here. No, I think it's a
20:55
Speaker 1: great time, and we'll talk about how you breathe down
20:57
Speaker 1: there right after this. I sk asle sk as. You shouldn't. Sorry, everyone,
21:21
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. So you need to breathe down there.
21:26
Speaker 1: Everyone has seen a scuba tank, um, but it's a
21:30
Speaker 1: little bit different. It's quite a bit different in fact
21:33
Speaker 1: than open water diving. UM. You're going to need uh
21:39
Speaker 1: different things to go that deep, different kinds of air mixtures, uh.
21:43
Speaker 1: And there are a few different kinds that you can use.
21:46
Speaker 1: But we should probably talk a little bit about the
21:49
Speaker 1: bins and what happens to your body. I know we
21:52
Speaker 1: covered the bens in uh the which one was it?
21:55
Speaker 1: The what was the old time diving suit called diving bell?
22:00
Speaker 1: Was a diving bell? I think we cover the bends.
22:02
Speaker 1: We must have, probably so, yeah, because we've never done
22:04
Speaker 1: a scuba episode. So John from his original houseof Works
22:09
Speaker 1: article makes a very great point about pressure and talks
22:13
Speaker 1: about soda bottles and obviously if you shake up a
22:15
Speaker 1: soda bottle and then open it really quick, is going
22:17
Speaker 1: to go everywhere. Or if you're Josh and you've never
22:20
Speaker 1: in your life apparently opened a tonic bottle soda, I
22:25
Speaker 1: thought it was tonic, was probably both? Really Yeah, you
22:27
Speaker 1: got to open those very very slowly every time, no
22:29
Speaker 1: matter if it's shaken or not. I don't think any
22:32
Speaker 1: of those are my fault. But um like every backstage
22:36
Speaker 1: we've ever been to has tonic and soda on the floor,
22:39
Speaker 1: it would there. I'm cursed with that. But if you
22:42
Speaker 1: do shake up a soda bottle in the difference between
22:45
Speaker 1: opening it quickly and very very slowly is can be
22:49
Speaker 1: related to how the human body reacts under the pressure
22:51
Speaker 1: of that water. Yeah, so in this case, when you're
22:54
Speaker 1: scuba diving, opening the cap is analogous to slowly making
22:59
Speaker 1: your way back up to the surface at a graduated
23:03
Speaker 1: set of time. They're both decompression basically, is what it is.
23:07
Speaker 1: And so you could have rapid decompression where your soda
23:10
Speaker 1: goes everywhere, or your blood vessels burst, or you can
23:13
Speaker 1: follow these timetables to um to get the nitrogen bubbles
23:18
Speaker 1: out of your blood. And like you're saying, that's a
23:20
Speaker 1: big it's a big problem with scuba diving, especially if
23:23
Speaker 1: you're down below a hundred feet UM for an extended
23:27
Speaker 1: period of time, the nitrogen um can really build up
23:31
Speaker 1: in your blood, which can give you the bends. You
23:33
Speaker 1: can also suffer from nitrogen narcosis, which is bad news
23:37
Speaker 1: where you apparently feel like you're drunk because of your
23:40
Speaker 1: because you're intoxicated on nitrogen. Yeah, the same thing can
23:43
Speaker 1: happen with oxygen. Yeah, um, it's different, but you can
23:47
Speaker 1: have oxygen what's it called oxygen toxicity? Right, So there's
23:51
Speaker 1: like if you're just doing like a dive or whatever
23:55
Speaker 1: and it's like thirty feet of water and you're down
23:58
Speaker 1: for like a half an hour or something like that,
24:00
Speaker 1: you're just breathing compressed air like they just took air
24:02
Speaker 1: out of the air and put it into a tank,
24:04
Speaker 1: and that's what you're breathing, and you're fine, exactly. So
24:09
Speaker 1: if you're down for a while and you have this
24:12
Speaker 1: problem with too much oxygen or too much nitrogen, they
24:15
Speaker 1: started to get kind of crafty with the stuff that
24:17
Speaker 1: they put into the tanks. There's something called nitrox which
24:21
Speaker 1: deals with um the problem of nitrogen arcsis by removing
24:26
Speaker 1: a certain amount of the nitrogen and replacing it with oxygen,
24:29
Speaker 1: so with compressed air, with regular air that we breathe
24:32
Speaker 1: here at sea level. UM it's something like seventy eight
24:35
Speaker 1: percent nitrogen. Yes, And like Noyen, is that right? I
24:41
Speaker 1: had them backwards oxygen seventy eight percent nitrogen. In nitrox,
24:48
Speaker 1: you have something like thirty six percent oxygen and the
24:51
Speaker 1: rest nitrogen. So because you have far less nitrogen there,
24:54
Speaker 1: you are susceptible to the bends in nitrogen arc COSI
24:58
Speaker 1: is less susceptible. Then you would be breathing compressed air,
25:01
Speaker 1: so you can go down further and you can stay
25:04
Speaker 1: down longer. But the problem is, like you were saying,
25:07
Speaker 1: that oxygen toxicity can be an issue too, So they've
25:10
Speaker 1: come up with you. Even other stuff. Yeah, you can
25:12
Speaker 1: breathe helium, and there's something called helios seventy helium oxygen.
25:19
Speaker 1: The weakness here is or I guess the downside is
25:22
Speaker 1: that you lose body heat six times faster than with
25:26
Speaker 1: compressed air nitrox. So then you've got to think about
25:28
Speaker 1: Hypothermias's cold down there, it is cold. And then there's
25:31
Speaker 1: one called trimex, which is oxygen, nitrogen and helium, and
25:35
Speaker 1: apparently this is what you use for the deepest dives. Yes,
25:39
Speaker 1: And it's like all of these things have their pluses
25:42
Speaker 1: and their minuses. There is no perfect gas, but people
25:45
Speaker 1: have figured out things like um like if you want
25:47
Speaker 1: to use helios um, you can stay down longer. You're
25:51
Speaker 1: not gonna get nitrogen arcosis in your case of the
25:54
Speaker 1: bends is probably you're less susceptible to the bends because
25:57
Speaker 1: the nitrogen is not present. But you also can't breathe
26:02
Speaker 1: that up closer to the surface. There's not enough oxygen
26:04
Speaker 1: in it, so you have to carry an extra tank
26:06
Speaker 1: of oxygen or mixed air to to switch to as
26:10
Speaker 1: you get closer to the surface. That there's like a
26:13
Speaker 1: lot of different clever things you can do to make
26:16
Speaker 1: it safer for you to stay down longer and go
26:19
Speaker 1: further into a cave system when you're diving in it. Yeah,
26:22
Speaker 1: and the rule of thumb is they go by the
26:24
Speaker 1: rule of thirds, which I saw it described a little
26:27
Speaker 1: bit differently than the House of Works article describes it.
26:30
Speaker 1: The way I saw it was is you want to
26:33
Speaker 1: make sure you always have two thirds of your tank
26:36
Speaker 1: left when you're at your deepest part of the dive. Yeah.
26:39
Speaker 1: I think that's what Fuller's thought. Maybe he just said
26:42
Speaker 1: it in the way that sounded a little backwards, but yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: that's that's the rule though, is if you know you're
26:47
Speaker 1: going to go to us the very deepest spot you're
26:49
Speaker 1: going to, you want to only use one third of
26:52
Speaker 1: your oxygen of your tank mixture to get that far,
26:55
Speaker 1: because sometimes it can take longer to get get out
26:58
Speaker 1: than it did to get in, and you want to
27:00
Speaker 1: be back on the surface with a third left in
27:03
Speaker 1: your tank basically right. Plus don't forget you're also going
27:06
Speaker 1: to have to slowly unscrew the cap on the soda bottle.
27:10
Speaker 1: It takes time, and therefore it takes some of your air,
27:13
Speaker 1: your gas, and your tank to um to do the
27:17
Speaker 1: decompression schedule and slowly work your way up to keep
27:20
Speaker 1: those nitrogen bubbles from um explosively producing in your blood.
27:25
Speaker 1: How do those tables work? Do you have no idea?
27:28
Speaker 1: Do you just learn this stuff? You have it like
27:31
Speaker 1: on your paper? Yeah, I mean obviously not just regularly.
27:36
Speaker 1: It's laminated. It's laminated, it's basically but you're looking in Yeah,
27:40
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're an experienced diver you know those
27:42
Speaker 1: things back and forth. But because there's such a thing
27:46
Speaker 1: as nitrogen arcosis or hydrogen, you can breathe hydrogen, but
27:49
Speaker 1: apparently it has a trippy effect on you too. You
27:52
Speaker 1: would want to be able to have something to look
27:54
Speaker 1: at so you're not just relying on your brain. But
27:57
Speaker 1: they haven't printed out. Yeah, So the idea is like
28:00
Speaker 1: how much leeway is it? Like you can't go like
28:03
Speaker 1: don't go ten feet higher or you're in big trouble,
28:05
Speaker 1: Like it can't be it's not down right, I don't
28:08
Speaker 1: think it's that, although I suspect that as we advance,
28:12
Speaker 1: like we'll have it down to the inch and like
28:15
Speaker 1: by different kinds of people in genetics and stuff like that,
28:18
Speaker 1: But right now it is I think it isn't graduated
28:21
Speaker 1: in ten ft or maybe ten meters because that's an atmosphere,
28:25
Speaker 1: but it says stay at this depth for this amount
28:28
Speaker 1: of time before moving up ten ms to hang out
28:31
Speaker 1: for another minute, So I think it's longer than that. Yeah,
28:35
Speaker 1: And what you're doing is you're allowing the nitrogen that's
28:38
Speaker 1: dissolved in your blood to turn back into gas, go
28:41
Speaker 1: to your lungs and then be expiated to be breathed
28:44
Speaker 1: out by you slowly. That's what you're doing. And so
28:48
Speaker 1: they figured out that after say ten minutes at thirty meters,
28:52
Speaker 1: you have removed enough of that blood or that nitrogen
28:56
Speaker 1: from your blood that you can safely move up to
28:59
Speaker 1: the next ten meters above and you're neutral. At this point.
29:02
Speaker 1: You're just hanging out, hanging up, sinking and you're not
29:05
Speaker 1: rising unless you try to. Know, you have a buoyancy
29:07
Speaker 1: vest that is is keeping you neutral. Yeah, you're just
29:10
Speaker 1: hanging out. Yeah, you don't want to rise now if
29:13
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble and like you're out of air,
29:16
Speaker 1: you want to make your way to the surface and
29:17
Speaker 1: just take pressure, you know pressure luck like bens be darned, right,
29:21
Speaker 1: Like I'm either going to drown or have the bends
29:23
Speaker 1: and maybe the bens won't kill me, but drowning will
29:26
Speaker 1: definitely kill me. Even though we learned the drowning is
29:28
Speaker 1: not necessarily what you think it is. Um, the that's
29:32
Speaker 1: but if you aren't in any trouble, you want to
29:34
Speaker 1: go through the decompression schedule, got it? Yeah? I mean,
29:38
Speaker 1: I just I knew about this stuff, but I've never
29:40
Speaker 1: really kind of thought about exactly how that worked. I
29:42
Speaker 1: wonder if we do need to do a Scooba episode now,
29:45
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not. I mean, what are you doing while
29:48
Speaker 1: you're waiting around? You're just waiting around looking at the fish,
29:53
Speaker 1: looking at fish. If you're with you should be with
29:56
Speaker 1: a buddy. It's tough to communicate unless you have radio, right,
30:01
Speaker 1: and in which case, if you do have radio, you're
30:03
Speaker 1: probably listening to XM or something like that instead. But
30:06
Speaker 1: you can communicate with hand signals or US. Sure, yeah,
30:09
Speaker 1: you could listen to stuff you should know. It would
30:11
Speaker 1: be nice. It's a great idea. So let's go back
30:15
Speaker 1: to traveling. We talked about the grab and pull, the
30:18
Speaker 1: pulling glide, grabbing float. Uh, you can also have one
30:23
Speaker 1: of those, and this is what I would totally have
30:25
Speaker 1: one of those cool little DPVS Driver Propulsion vehicle. It's
30:29
Speaker 1: the little torpedo looking. It's sort of like a boat
30:35
Speaker 1: propeller that's enclosed and it just pulls you along. You
30:39
Speaker 1: just hang onto it and it drags you behind it. Yeah.
30:41
Speaker 1: I always thought those were really cool. Yeah, they are cool.
30:43
Speaker 1: They're kind of James BONDI yea very much. But that's
30:46
Speaker 1: gonna save you from breathing uh more, because you're exerting yourself.
30:52
Speaker 1: It's gonna save you from just exerting. You know, you're
30:54
Speaker 1: not gonna be as tired. I mean, think about it,
30:57
Speaker 1: diving for miles under the Earth's surface, like for miles along.
31:02
Speaker 1: Even though you're floating, you're still working. Yeah, yeah, that
31:05
Speaker 1: little kick your your ankles are going to get tired
31:08
Speaker 1: after a while, your little ankles. Yeah, and that would
31:11
Speaker 1: help a lot. But I would imagine you really want
31:13
Speaker 1: to practice on that thing, because if it got away
31:15
Speaker 1: from you, it's gonna pull you into like a cave
31:17
Speaker 1: wall or something like that. You're in trouble, kick up
31:19
Speaker 1: that salt. I would think that little propeller will kick
31:22
Speaker 1: up salt. I guess if you're not on the bottom,
31:25
Speaker 1: I think you keep it away from the bottom. All right,
31:29
Speaker 1: I think we should take another break and we'll talk
31:31
Speaker 1: about what I think is one of the cooler parts
31:34
Speaker 1: about this whole thing. Are these guidelines right for this
31:37
Speaker 1: spoiler alert that we shouldn't know. I would skis watch
31:52
Speaker 1: sk but you should knows. All right, you're underwater, you're
32:03
Speaker 1: hundred feet into a cave. It's pitch dark. You've got
32:07
Speaker 1: your little flashlight, but you need a little trail of
32:11
Speaker 1: bread crumbs, right, yea more than that. You can get
32:13
Speaker 1: disoriented down there, even if you're super experienced. So you
32:17
Speaker 1: need something that says go this way, uh to to
32:21
Speaker 1: live right, So you have guidelines, like not written guidelines, no, no,
32:26
Speaker 1: an actual literal guideline right. Um. And they were laid however,
32:32
Speaker 1: many years before by people who originally explored the cave,
32:36
Speaker 1: and they the yellow lines or gold lines I'm sorry,
32:40
Speaker 1: are yellowish and color and they use those as like
32:43
Speaker 1: the main line through the main parts of the cave. Yeah,
32:46
Speaker 1: and it's like a little thinner than a rope, but
32:49
Speaker 1: it's basically a nylon string that is throughout the main tunnels.
32:54
Speaker 1: Like you said, these little side tunnels are gonna have
32:56
Speaker 1: white lines if you branch off and you know, you know,
32:59
Speaker 1: you look at the ler and you know where you
33:01
Speaker 1: are basically in a side tunnel or the main channel,
33:04
Speaker 1: and they end within about five to ten feet of
33:06
Speaker 1: the mainline. Um. That mainline too, doesn't go right to
33:10
Speaker 1: the top of the entrance, because apparently that is an
33:13
Speaker 1: invitation for dumb dumbs to say, like, hey, look, let
33:17
Speaker 1: me see where that leads, right, so they don't even
33:19
Speaker 1: put them on the surface, no fet from the entrance.
33:22
Speaker 1: Like you said, Yeah, I saw a really interesting video
33:26
Speaker 1: from the nineties called a Deceptively Easy Way to Die
33:30
Speaker 1: And it's like blood on the asphalt, but for cave diving,
33:33
Speaker 1: it's like an instructional video with recreations and crazy camera
33:36
Speaker 1: shaking like oh it's out of control. Yeah. Um. And
33:40
Speaker 1: the guy it's from the the cave Diving chapter of
33:45
Speaker 1: the National Splunking Society. Um, and like it really like
33:52
Speaker 1: it is meant to scare you. The guy even says like,
33:54
Speaker 1: am I scaring you a little bit? Good? It's just
33:57
Speaker 1: like like like a car safety video, but into with
34:00
Speaker 1: the song cave diving don't do it right? He? Um?
34:03
Speaker 1: Is that a Heather's reference? I think? So? Okay? Um,
34:08
Speaker 1: But he was saying this guy who was astounding, it
34:11
Speaker 1: was almost like he was a ventrila Chris. He barely
34:13
Speaker 1: moved his mouth and words were coming out, you gotta
34:16
Speaker 1: go watch this um. But he was saying, not only
34:19
Speaker 1: do they not put um like the lines near the
34:22
Speaker 1: mouths of caves to tempt people. They say, if you're
34:25
Speaker 1: not an experienced cave diver going on a cave dive,
34:28
Speaker 1: but you're going to be diving somewhere in the area
34:29
Speaker 1: of a cave, don't even take a light with you,
34:32
Speaker 1: just to keep yourself from being tempted, from being like, oh,
34:35
Speaker 1: I got a light, let me go down in this.
34:37
Speaker 1: If you don't have a light, even the most foolish
34:39
Speaker 1: among us probably would not go into a cave. But
34:42
Speaker 1: if you do have a light, you might try it.
34:43
Speaker 1: Even if it's not experience that makes sense, But you're
34:47
Speaker 1: still a dumb dumber to do exactly. Uh. They do
34:51
Speaker 1: have entry lines though, and that is if you go
34:53
Speaker 1: to it explore in a cave. It's it's a temporary
34:56
Speaker 1: line that you do and you this is the one
34:58
Speaker 1: that you do tie to a big rock on the
35:01
Speaker 1: surface and then you take that to the main line
35:03
Speaker 1: that's fifty two feet inside and then everything's all connected.
35:08
Speaker 1: Because John makes a great point, you've got to be
35:10
Speaker 1: able to if in the worst case scenario, if it's
35:13
Speaker 1: dark down there, pull yourself along this line, give the
35:17
Speaker 1: okay sign to your buddy, um, and you've got to
35:21
Speaker 1: maybe do this in total darkness with your eyes closed,
35:25
Speaker 1: so your flashlights off, where it's silty silt out. Yeah,
35:29
Speaker 1: that's scary stuff. I have the impression that you're kind
35:32
Speaker 1: of supposed to be hanging on to this guideline basically
35:36
Speaker 1: all the time, really, yeah, or like pinches away from
35:41
Speaker 1: it at all times. I would want it within grabbing
35:43
Speaker 1: distance for sure. Did you read up about the dwarf markers?
35:47
Speaker 1: I predicted that the dwarf markers existed, because yeah, before
35:53
Speaker 1: I got to that part, I was like, surely they
35:55
Speaker 1: have like an arrow. Yeah, it's it's like a plastic
35:58
Speaker 1: basically arrow on the line saying this way not that way. Well, yeah,
36:02
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you're in a cave system and
36:05
Speaker 1: you turn around, you were like, wait a minute, that
36:07
Speaker 1: doesn't look anything like what I thought I just came through.
36:10
Speaker 1: Talk about panic. Luckily you have the guideline. Well, which
36:13
Speaker 1: way is the guideline? Leading you. So that's what these
36:15
Speaker 1: dwarf markers are, their arrows pointing the way to the
36:18
Speaker 1: mouth of the cave, the way out. Basically, did you
36:20
Speaker 1: see the history of the Dorf marker, Because immediate it
36:24
Speaker 1: was like, why is it called a Dorf marker? It
36:27
Speaker 1: was just such a weird name. And apparently I got
36:29
Speaker 1: this from a brief history of the cave diving line
36:33
Speaker 1: arrow by Alexander Cofield Fief And Uh, there was a
36:39
Speaker 1: death in nine at Peacock Springs in Florida where pre
36:44
Speaker 1: doorf marker, and I guess this person died from the
36:48
Speaker 1: situation you just explained, like went deeper into the cave
36:51
Speaker 1: instead of on the land. I know. Uh. And a
36:54
Speaker 1: man named Lewis Holzendorf invented this thing out of duct tape.
36:59
Speaker 1: So he made these duct tape arrows and they called
37:01
Speaker 1: him dwarf markers. But because they were Dorf I'm sorry,
37:04
Speaker 1: because they were tape and all dwarfed up, they would
37:07
Speaker 1: deteriorate or fold up and not work over time. So
37:11
Speaker 1: later on flash forward, a man named Forest Wilson invents
37:14
Speaker 1: these modern dwarf markers, and one of the stipulations he
37:18
Speaker 1: was like, we gotta call him dwarf markers still, which
37:20
Speaker 1: is very cool. But these are finally made out of plastic.
37:23
Speaker 1: It's a plastic triangle you folded over the line and
37:25
Speaker 1: snap it shut, basically. So thanks to Forest Wilson and
37:29
Speaker 1: Lewis Holsendorf, the worst case scenario is I'm getting out
37:34
Speaker 1: of here and you're just going deeper and will never happen.
37:37
Speaker 1: Forest Wilson told everybody we go out and call him
37:39
Speaker 1: dwarf markers, and they're like after a Holsendorf. He's like,
37:43
Speaker 1: who oh man, that's a good dumb joke, a lot
37:50
Speaker 1: of set up to I just used up a lot
37:52
Speaker 1: of our air, all right, So you've got these dwarf markers,
37:55
Speaker 1: they're telling you where to go. You're diving if it's
37:58
Speaker 1: just a regular sort of and I was about to
38:01
Speaker 1: call it a recreational dive, but technically it's a technical dive.
38:04
Speaker 1: But if you're just out there having a good time,
38:05
Speaker 1: you're probably down there for about an hour or so
38:08
Speaker 1: at least. But if you're really like doing scientific investigation
38:13
Speaker 1: or inquiry, or if you're after a body, then you
38:15
Speaker 1: can be down there for hours and hours doing your thing, right, So, um,
38:19
Speaker 1: Some of these extraordinarily long cave dives can last into
38:23
Speaker 1: the double digits of hours, and they'll have tanks placed
38:28
Speaker 1: along the path. Basically who where tanks? Maybe? All right,
38:34
Speaker 1: the ghost of Dorff himself is handing these out. Um,
38:38
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's dead or not yet. Tim Conway,
38:41
Speaker 1: no Lossdorf. Yeah, I don't think he's with this, Okay, Yeah,
38:46
Speaker 1: so he's this friendly patron spirit who hands out tanks.
38:49
Speaker 1: I think, although who knows, he may still be around. Well,
38:52
Speaker 1: why did you say that you didn't think he was.
38:54
Speaker 1: I got the idea because someone else developed it and
38:56
Speaker 1: named it after him, that it was in memorium. I
38:59
Speaker 1: might have been wrong. No, it's like it's a good point.
39:01
Speaker 1: At any rate, they'll leave tanks along the way so
39:03
Speaker 1: you can be like, well, here's my new fresh tank.
39:05
Speaker 1: It's pretty pretty amazing. But yeah, these the cave dives
39:08
Speaker 1: can last a very very long time. And like you're saying,
39:12
Speaker 1: when they're doing this stuff, there probably are being employed
39:16
Speaker 1: by maybe the National Geographic Society, a museum, uh, some university,
39:22
Speaker 1: and they're exploring the geology of these caves that no
39:25
Speaker 1: one has ever seen before. They're also conducting underwater archaeology,
39:30
Speaker 1: which is a huge new aspect for cave diving because
39:33
Speaker 1: what they figured out is we've lost a lot of
39:36
Speaker 1: human settlement um archaeology when the sea levels rose after
39:43
Speaker 1: you know, eleven thousand years ago and people were running
39:45
Speaker 1: around in America on the coast more than we realize.
39:48
Speaker 1: And we're starting to figure that out because of this
39:52
Speaker 1: cave diving archaeology that's become a thing. Yeah. The uh,
39:56
Speaker 1: the largest as in longest not deepest um underwater cave
40:01
Speaker 1: is in Tuloom on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and they,
40:06
Speaker 1: I think it was a few years ago, discovered that
40:09
Speaker 1: two flooded caves actually connected, making it the longest. It's
40:13
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifteen miles. If these things, you know,
40:16
Speaker 1: if you go from end to end and and there
40:19
Speaker 1: are um tons and tons of Mayan like extinct animal
40:24
Speaker 1: stuff and Mayan artifacts like you were talking about, it
40:28
Speaker 1: just the waters rose and the stuff just got sucked in. Yeah.
40:31
Speaker 1: They found the oldest mostly in tech skeleton in North
40:37
Speaker 1: America in one of those caves, the Hoyo Negro h
40:41
Speaker 1: It was a woman named Nea and a I A
40:44
Speaker 1: I believe, Well that's what they named her, and um,
40:47
Speaker 1: she was from something like a fourteen thousand, five hundred
40:52
Speaker 1: years ago. Wow, which is way older than the Clovis people.
40:56
Speaker 1: Can you imagine coming upon that it would be pretty neat. Yeah. Yeah,
40:59
Speaker 1: but this White cave divers too. Yeah. Yeah, it's one
41:02
Speaker 1: of the things. The deepest is pretty new as far
41:06
Speaker 1: as findings go. Well, the deepest in America is Phantom
41:09
Speaker 1: Springs Cave in Texas, which is chump change at four
41:13
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty two ft. The deepest now it passed
41:16
Speaker 1: Italy's Pozzo del Meto. Um. It is in the Czech
41:21
Speaker 1: Republic on Pazzo demorros uber to this one. The Ranika
41:27
Speaker 1: propost is deep. It's amazing. And I don't think they've
41:33
Speaker 1: gone to the bottom. I think they go as far
41:35
Speaker 1: as they can go, and then I think they drop
41:38
Speaker 1: a line and measure from there right exactly. Yeah, that's
41:41
Speaker 1: and apparently dating GPS doesn't work at all in these
41:44
Speaker 1: cave systems. It's just impenetrable on your own. Um, so
41:48
Speaker 1: they have to tie off ten ft increments on rope
41:52
Speaker 1: and just lower it down. That's how they figured out.
41:54
Speaker 1: The one in the Czech Republic and this is a
41:57
Speaker 1: big team. This isn't just like alright, we got our
42:00
Speaker 1: sy system, right. It's like you've got a lot of
42:02
Speaker 1: people involved in something like this, right, for safety obviously, yeah,
42:07
Speaker 1: and for some fellowship and for fun. Yeah. The reception
42:11
Speaker 1: afterward is quite nice. Right, So how do you do this?
42:14
Speaker 1: How do you get certified? Oh? Well, um, there's a
42:17
Speaker 1: lot of steps you want to take. You want to
42:19
Speaker 1: become a basically a professional open water diver first, with
42:24
Speaker 1: years and years of experience. Yeah, this one guy said
42:26
Speaker 1: at least fifty dives, yeah, before you even think about
42:29
Speaker 1: a cave right, um. And then after that you want
42:31
Speaker 1: to start training for cavern diving. You want to do
42:34
Speaker 1: that for a couple of years and then right, and
42:37
Speaker 1: then you start doing cave diving. And one of the
42:39
Speaker 1: ways they didn't think about this, but it makes sense.
42:41
Speaker 1: One of the ways you train for cave diving is
42:43
Speaker 1: doing night diving, taking a night diving course. Yeah, because
42:47
Speaker 1: there's no yeah, there's no sunlight. There are probably night
42:52
Speaker 1: diving in caverns or something like that. That's probably kind
42:54
Speaker 1: of creepy too. Yeah, but once you are a certified
42:58
Speaker 1: cave diver, you are part of basically the top one
43:02
Speaker 1: percent of divers in the world. There's this. I saw
43:05
Speaker 1: an estimate of seventy five professional in the world. Yeah. Um,
43:11
Speaker 1: so you're part of a very elite group who are
43:14
Speaker 1: actually exploring, like pushing the limits of human exploration on
43:17
Speaker 1: Earth right now. Yeah. And I saw the one guy
43:20
Speaker 1: who was who had um. I think it was a
43:22
Speaker 1: guy who helped out with the rescuing Thailand, which we
43:25
Speaker 1: got to talk about. Yeah. I mean he was saying,
43:27
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff is tough to do because you
43:30
Speaker 1: think you just go in and retrieve a body, but
43:32
Speaker 1: it's a crime scene first of all, so you can't
43:35
Speaker 1: photograph it. So you have to go down there and
43:37
Speaker 1: first look around and make as many mental notes as
43:41
Speaker 1: you can to recreate this for an artist perhaps, or
43:44
Speaker 1: for at least note taking. And uh, he said, it's
43:48
Speaker 1: really tough emotionally, um, and physically to get the body out.
43:52
Speaker 1: It's not you gotta be made of tough stuff exactly.
43:57
Speaker 1: That's it. You didn't have anything else on it. Well,
43:59
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the Thai cave rescue. That's
44:02
Speaker 1: what we're going on. But the thing is, there weren't
44:04
Speaker 1: anybody's There was one former Thie seal Navy seal who died,
44:11
Speaker 1: and because he died, the Thai Navy realized, we don't
44:14
Speaker 1: have any professional cave divers and stuff. We need to
44:17
Speaker 1: make this part of our formal training. So now they
44:19
Speaker 1: do have that. Yeah, But in two thousand and eighteen,
44:22
Speaker 1: in the summer, you know, the whole world was watching
44:25
Speaker 1: because these these twelve soccer players and their coach were
44:29
Speaker 1: hiking along in a cave system that got flooded from
44:32
Speaker 1: a monsoon and they were trapped in what became a
44:35
Speaker 1: some cave. And um, just from everything we learned about
44:40
Speaker 1: cave diving, the idea that they managed to get all
44:43
Speaker 1: twelve of the soccer players and their coach out to
44:47
Speaker 1: safety in one of the most treacherous types of caves
44:51
Speaker 1: you can dive and no one died except for this
44:54
Speaker 1: one diver is astounding. Man. Yeah, and the one guy
44:58
Speaker 1: was talking about just how silty was down there, and
45:01
Speaker 1: uh so you're trying to rescue these people with his
45:05
Speaker 1: minimal movement as possible, so you're not getting a silt
45:08
Speaker 1: out conditions. I just where's that movie? It's got to
45:12
Speaker 1: be coming? Sure? Yeah, yeah, isn't you got anything else? Uh?
45:16
Speaker 1: Hugh Jackman lead diver. Why not? I got nothing else?
45:23
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess this last part about regulations is
45:26
Speaker 1: it's not super highly regulated. You're sort of um dealing
45:30
Speaker 1: with the local authorities and it sounds like uh like
45:35
Speaker 1: hazardous or treacherous hiking. You gotta you gotta check in
45:38
Speaker 1: with an office and usually say this is what I'm doing,
45:41
Speaker 1: this is where when I'm going in and when I'm
45:43
Speaker 1: coming out, And you gotta sign that little piece of
45:46
Speaker 1: paper when you return, otherwise they're gonna come looking for you. Yeah.
45:50
Speaker 1: But there's also places where you like you can cave
45:52
Speaker 1: dive all you want, where you just pay a fee.
45:54
Speaker 1: They just are like, go with God, do your thing.
45:57
Speaker 1: There's this flooded mine I've talked about before. I don't remember.
46:00
Speaker 1: It must have been the Abandoned Minds episode in Bond Tear, Missouri.
46:04
Speaker 1: It's just this a flooded nineteenth century mine like Vogue
46:09
Speaker 1: could clear water a hundred foot visibility and you just
46:12
Speaker 1: swim around the mine. Hey, there's Rambo, But was he
46:15
Speaker 1: in the mine? Yeah? He hit out in the mind
46:17
Speaker 1: in First Blood. I'll bet we had the same conversation
46:20
Speaker 1: the Abandoned Minds episode, because I don't recall it. Are
46:23
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Nope? Well, if you want to
46:26
Speaker 1: know more about abandoned minds almost said if you wanted
46:30
Speaker 1: more about cave diving, read about it, probably don't do it. Uh.
46:35
Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for listening, oh,
46:36
Speaker 1: you can read about on how stuff forks even right?
46:39
Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for listener, man,
46:44
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one of the follow ups from
46:46
Speaker 1: our conversion therapy podcast. We got a lot of really
46:49
Speaker 1: good responses on that and one bad one. Did you
46:53
Speaker 1: see that guy? I didn't see that one. Now. Yeah,
46:55
Speaker 1: we had a guy who wrote said he was quitting
46:57
Speaker 1: us because of our liberal bias. But it was ring
47:00
Speaker 1: because he says, well, I don't think conversion therapy is
47:02
Speaker 1: something that works. I do think that homosexuality is a disease.
47:07
Speaker 1: He's one of those. And h yeah. I wrote it
47:10
Speaker 1: back and just I was very nice. I was like,
47:12
Speaker 1: you could probably find podcasts that are better suited for you.
47:14
Speaker 1: You didn't say, Sionara, no cultural appropriation. Yeah, I just
47:19
Speaker 1: said good luck to you, sir. That was very classy. Chuck. Yeah. Um.
47:24
Speaker 1: I always think it's interesting when people write us to
47:26
Speaker 1: tell us. They're quitting it. Have you ever taken the
47:29
Speaker 1: time to do I have not. You just quit something, right, Yeah,
47:32
Speaker 1: keep it to yourself. Maybe, like you know, ran about
47:36
Speaker 1: it to friends for a little while to get it
47:38
Speaker 1: off your chest. But like, just so you know, person
47:41
Speaker 1: prison I've never met. Uh. This is from Jordan's He says, hey, guys,
47:46
Speaker 1: is a Southern Baptist turned agnostic. I absolutely detest the
47:50
Speaker 1: acceptance of the garbage psychotherapy pseudo science of CT. Josh
47:56
Speaker 1: mentioned that have you ever been an early teenager and
47:59
Speaker 1: late teen ager? You know what it's like to be
48:01
Speaker 1: sexually confused or curious. When I was between the ages
48:03
Speaker 1: of fourteen and seventeen, I was called gay or the
48:06
Speaker 1: F word many times. I did have what some might
48:09
Speaker 1: consider tell tell signs stereotypically at least associated with being gay.
48:14
Speaker 1: The bullying and verbal abuse was so intense and frequent
48:17
Speaker 1: I truly started to question my sexual preferences. That question
48:21
Speaker 1: was put to bed quite definitely, definitively one night when
48:24
Speaker 1: a very good male friend of mine and I decided
48:26
Speaker 1: to experiment some I'll spare the specifics, but I realized
48:30
Speaker 1: that night this is just was not doing it for me.
48:33
Speaker 1: But being the good Baptist boy that I was, I
48:36
Speaker 1: felt guilty about that night, and even though I was
48:38
Speaker 1: not aroused, it was still a homosexual act. I carried
48:42
Speaker 1: that guilt with me for many years and through college,
48:44
Speaker 1: until I realized almost every other male friend of mine
48:46
Speaker 1: had some kind of experience that they could look back
48:49
Speaker 1: on and say, this is when I knew I was
48:51
Speaker 1: straight or gay, or buy or trans or whatever. At
48:55
Speaker 1: that point, I was finally able to let go of
48:57
Speaker 1: that guilt, and what a relief that was to my
48:58
Speaker 1: mental health. I wanted to thank both of you for
49:01
Speaker 1: making the point that an experience or a feeling you
49:04
Speaker 1: have in that time of your life should not be
49:07
Speaker 1: anything to feel guilty about. I didn't know that when
49:09
Speaker 1: I was, and I was mentally abusive to myself over
49:12
Speaker 1: a long time. What a shameful is how many people
49:15
Speaker 1: would use the knowledge of such an act as a
49:18
Speaker 1: weapon to abuse the person even more Boo hiss. So
49:22
Speaker 1: to every teenager out there, please don't think there's something
49:24
Speaker 1: wrong with you because of your curiosity. Embrace yourself. Don't
49:27
Speaker 1: worry about what your peers or elders may think. You're
49:30
Speaker 1: perfect the way you are, nice boom. That's from Jordan's
49:33
Speaker 1: Thanks Jordan. Jordan wasn't even anonymous. Good for you, Jordan's Yeah,
49:37
Speaker 1: he even drew a little mic dropping right. That was
49:40
Speaker 1: a great email. Yeah, that's funny. If the guy who
49:42
Speaker 1: said he wrote in to say he was quitting us,
49:44
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, cave diving. You get to the listeners
49:48
Speaker 1: like that's it. He's gonna send us another email. He's like, oh,
49:51
Speaker 1: this next one is called the gay disease. Maybe I
49:54
Speaker 1: should listen. Uh, well, that was very nice with Jordan
49:58
Speaker 1: to shout it out to everybody out there. Rady go
50:01
Speaker 1: if you want to shout something out to support and
50:04
Speaker 1: encourage your fellow humans, we love that stuff. You can
50:07
Speaker 1: go on to stuff you should Know dot com and
50:09
Speaker 1: send us something on one of our social links. Or
50:12
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50:16
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50:20
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50:25
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50:31
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.