------------------- Need a little adventure in your life?
A life without risk, for a chosen few, just wouldn t be worth living.
Among this tiny segment of humanity exists an even smaller group of elite adventurers.
They lack the mental handicaps most people share. Normal, well-adjusted humans would never want to
crawl into a dark, cramped cave just to see if they could live through the experience.
Alas, many of those who descend into caves are never seen again.
Today we re going to tell you several stories of explorers who
entered caves and died there. But first let s explore the history behind this peculiar sport.
------------------- History Of Caving
For most of human history people didn t have a reason to explore hard-to-reach caves.
And this is because our distant ancestors were not stupid. Without specialized equipment
most of the world s cave systems are quite hazardous to people.
Exploring dangerous caves for leisure most likely started in England in 1842.
John Birkbeck liked to explore what are known as potholes. These are vertical caves
which require a climber to descend into them. Modern caving techniques mostly originated with
douard-Alfred Martel. Between 1889 and 1912 he explored caves in France, England, and the United
States. Martel liked to use ropes and steel ladders for cave exploration.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s people all over the world began to explore cave systems.
They organized themselves into caving clubs and planned expeditions to map unknown caverns.
In the 1950s technology improved with the invention of rope ascender technology.
This allowed explorers to quickly and easily travel vertically on ropes.
Those who go caving today have the benefit of hard hats, modern LED lights,
and wetsuits to keep warm and dry. Even with all the benefits of modern technology,
exploring caves is dangerous business. Some of the possible hazards include hypothermia,
drowning, falling rocks, and physical exhaustion. If immediate threats don t
kill a person, then fungal and bacterial infections might do the job later.
Scientists today are also concerned that explorers may be damaging cave ecosystems.
Many of these deep and inaccessible cave systems contain creatures that exist nowhere else.
The Alabama Cave Shrimp, for instance, exists in only one cave in the world.
Explorers to these cave systems can damage them in several ways. Exhaling inside the cave increases
carbon dioxide. This in turn makes the air more acidic which could kill some animals.
The hibernation pattern of certain insects as well as bats could be interrupted.
And simply moving around the cave could release organic material that
finds its way into drinking water. Most people who go caving live through
the experience. But for those that don t the end can be terrifying.
Floyd Collins
The Mammoth Cave National Park is in Central Kentucky. It is also
the longest cave system in the world. In the early twentieth century the Kentucky
Cave Wars were in full force. It wasn t an armed conflict so much as a marketing competition.
Tourists visited the National Park in large numbers. They also paid to visit the caves.
Cave owners and explorers needed to exploit this resource.
Floyd Collins was a cave explorer. In 1917 he discovered Crystal Cave. Today it is part of
the National Park, but at that time it belonged to Floyd. He commercialized it and charged tourists
to explore the cave. But the location was too remote, and Floyd didn t receive many visitors.
He decided it would be a good idea to find a route closer to the main road.
Floyd had a neighbor who owned part of the cave system called Sand Cave. He agreed to let Floyd
enlarge a passage in Sand Cave so that visitors could travel through it to Crystal Cave.
Floyd Collins began work on the passage. On January 30th,
1925, he squeezed through several narrow passages and found a large
chamber. But his lamp was going out, so Floyd had to go back the way he came.
He never made it out. While navigating the narrow passages Floyd knocked over
his lamp and put out the light. Then a rock fell from the ceiling and pinned his leg.
A friend found Floyd the next day and gave him food and water while rescuers tried to figure out
how to perform a successful rescue operation. On February 4th, the cave collapsed,
and rescuers couldn t reach Floyd. They dug a new tunnel but when they finally reached him,
he was already dead. He died from a combination of dehydration, hunger, and hypothermia.
The event was a media sensation. Because of the sudden fame, Floyd s corpse was the
center of drama for decades. The body of Floyd Collins was removed from the cave and buried.
But then it was stolen. Eventually Crystal Cave and the land were sold,
and then Floyd s body was displayed in a glass coffin.
It was 1989 before his body was finally put to rest in a more suitable location.
James Mitchell
In 1965 James Mitchell was a twenty-three-year-old scientist.
On February 13 he arrived in Dolgeville, New York with the intention of exploring a nearby cave.
The cave was discovered eighteen years earlier and was locally called Schroeder s Pants.
James set out with two friends. One was a nurse named Hedy Miller. The other was a
Harvard Graduate student, Charles Bennett. They tried to visit the person who owned the cave,
but he wasn t home. So, they decided to go for it and began exploring.
Unfortunately, it had been snowing a lot lately. There was meltwater pouring into the caves. James
and his friends would have received that warning had they been more patient.
The group descended into the cramped cave system and eventually came to an open area.
There was a shaft that descended eighty feet into another cave. Even though water
was pouring through this opening at a rate of ten gallons per minute James Mitchell decided
to climb down into the other cave anyway. While climbing down the shaft a rope wrapped
around James Mitchell s arm. He was unable to descend and couldn t climb back up.
Hedy and Charles tried for almost an hour to pull him up, but they weren t strong enough
to fight against the rushing water. Charles Bennet left the cave and tried
to find help. A rescue team did arrive, but it was too late.
They had to fly from Washington D.C. By the time they made it to the cave James was already dead.
The cold rushing water sucked heat from his body. Hypothermia was the most likely cause of death.
The rescuers tried to recover the corpse, but a cave collapse prevented them from gaining access.
They had to leave James there. He remained in the cave for 41 years.
His remains were finally retrieved in 2006.
Mossdale Caving Disaster
Dying in caves is not just an American event. The British also did their part.
The Mossdale Caverns are a labyrinth of various passages. Among the passages is
one called Marathon Crawl. It is a cramped space with a stream running through it.
Those who explore the area have to crawl sideways for over 900 feet to get through it.
The cave system was first explored in 1941 by Bob Leaky who became a legend in the caving community.
His solo exploration effort was a feat of extreme endurance. Some compared it to exploring the
South Pole. When Bob Leaky finished this herculean task, he didn t plan to enter the caves again.
In the summer of 1967 six people from a caving club at Leeds University visited Bob Leaky.
They wanted to finish mapping this cave system. The group used hand drawn maps based on what Bob
remembered. It would be their guide as they descended into the dangerous labyrinth.
Unlike Bob in the 1940s, this group had wetsuits. They were protected from hypothermia. But
the equipment wasn t enough to save their lives.
Six cave explorers entered the depths of Mossdale Caverns.
While they were in the cave a thunderstorm hit. By 9 pm the entrance to the caverns was below water.
This meant the explorers within the caves were also submerged.
The rescue effort was dangerous. A dam had to be constructed
to keep water from pouring into the cave. Several of the most accomplished cave explorers in the UK
joined the rescue efforts. In the end they found the remains of the young explorers.
All of them drowned when the labyrinth filled with rainwater.
It is still considered to be the worst cave exploration disaster in history.
John Edward Jones Caving disasters are not just relics of the past.
Even with modern equipment and trained rescuers it is still possible to get into fatal situations.
Sometimes the end can quite literally be the stuff of nightmares.
John was a medical student and an experienced cave explorer. While visiting family in Utah
for Thanksgiving in 2009, John and some friends decided to visit a nearby cave.
The cave was called Nutty Putty cave and was a popular spot for those who enjoyed caving.
John made it his mission to find a narrow passage
known as Birth Canal . He succeeded and was trying to crawl through the narrow space headfirst.
Before long he became stuck. John couldn t go back, and he couldn t keep moving forward.
John s brother Josh was among those who joined him in the cave that day. Josh grabbed John s
legs and tried to pull him out. But John slid deeper into the passage. His arms were pinned
underneath his chest and breathing was difficult. John was also upside down.
Rescuers used a rope and pulley system to try and extract John from the cave.
It looked like they might succeed. But then an equipment failure caused the system to fail,
and John fell right back into the crevice where he was again trapped.
The rescue team kept trying to pull John from the cave. But after twenty-four hours of being trapped
upside down he finally died. The stress on his body from being upside down was too much.
In the end, it was too dangerous to even retrieve the body. The cave was sealed,
and his remains were left there. ------------------------
Caving is like a lottery, and the unlucky winner gets to play another game. Will death arrive
quickly from hypothermia or drowning? Or will it take days or weeks as thirst and exposure
slowly drain the life from trapped victims? Most people who explore caves live to tell the
tale. But those who don t serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of us.
What do you think about caving? Is it a good thing that people are driven to
explore these hard-to-reach areas? Or do you think they might be just a little crazy?
Personally, I was always interested in caving. But
now that I ve read this script, I m kind of glad I never tried it.
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Thank you for watching Bad Things in History. ------------------------