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Cave Diving: Totally Nuts · Stuff You Should Know

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