John Jones was exploring the famously tight Nutty Putty Cave in Utah
when he got stuck upside down in a tunnel the size of a dryer door.
Because of the angle he was stuck, blood began to pool in his brain,
ensuring that he would die if he wasn't rescued soon.
This is the story of John Jones and the Nutty Putty Cave disaster.
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John Edward Jones was born into a big family of seven kids.
As a kid, John and his brother Josh were introduced to spelunking or cave exploring by their father.
During their childhood, they would go on caving expeditions all over their home state of Utah
where they learned to love exploring the dark underground tunnels.
At 26 years old, John was now married and had a one-year-old daughter.
His wife was also pregnant with another child,
and they were now living in Virginia, where he was attending medical school to become a pediatric cardiologist.
That year for Thanksgiving, John went back home to spend time with his family and they all decided that it would be fun to explore the famous
Nutty Putty Cave to celebrate and connect over the holiday.
On November 24th, 2009, at around 8:00 PM,
John and 10 other friends and family squeezed through the tight opening of Nutty Putty Cave.
First explored in 1960 by caver Dale Green,
Nutty Putty Cave is located 55 miles (88.5 km) south of Salt Lake City, Utah.
At its peak, Nutty Putty attracted 25,000 visitors a year
and was famous for its narrow, slippery tunnels and particularly tight squeezes.
Formed by hydrothermal vents shaping their way through the limestone,
Nutty Putty Cave is named after the putty-like brown clay that lines its walls.
Hydrothermal caves like Nutty Putty are characterized by a series of large domes
connected by narrow, twisting tunnels.
And the different sections of Nutty Putty have names appropriate for their size, such as the Birth Canal,
the Aorta, the Maze and the Scout Eater.
In total, Nutty Putty was surveyed to be 1,355 feet (413 m) long
and 145 feet (44 m) deep underground.
Nutty Putty Cave also has a bit of a tumultuous history.
Due to its popularity, there had been excessive smoothing of the limestone rocks in the cave
and it was predicted that a fatality would occur in one of those sections.
In fact, in 2004, five years before John Jones would enter the cave,
two boy scouts nearly died in two separate instance within a week of each other.
In one of those cases, it took rescue crews 14 hours to rescue a 16-year-old scout from the cave
using a complex system of pulleys.
Following this incident, the cave was closed to visitors and wasn't reopened again until May of 2009.
A gate was also installed at the entrance and visitors would need to book ahead of time
to ensure that there was only a single group entering the cave at once.
Upon entering the cave, the group explored the largest room of the cave known as the Big Slide.
After that, John, his brother, Josh, and two friends decided to try to find a more challenging section they had heard of
called the Birth Canal.
The Birth Canal is a narrow squeeze that drops down and opens up into a larger room
and looks as though you're being birthed as you come out of it; hence, the name.
John found a hole in the wall that he thought led to the Birth Canal and went in head first.
He crawled along his stomach for some time and didn't see anywhere that the tunnel opened up any further.
In fact, it narrowed as he crawled along.
Now, it's not entirely clear exactly where John was in the cave at this point.
Some sources think that he had correctly entered the Birth Canal,
but then accidentally turned down another section known as Scout Eater
whereas other sources claim that he was in a tunnel beside the Birth Canal named Ed's Push.
In either case, these tunnels don't lead anywhere large enough for a person and are unexplored as a result.
Eventually, he came upon a sharp downturn in the tunnel that went nearly straight down.
Maybe thinking that this was the drop that he was looking for in the Birth Canal,
John inched his way down the tunnel that measured only 10 inches by 18 inches across.
Before long, John realized he had made a huge mistake
and the tunnel didn't open up at all.
It narrowed even further and he was now stuck upside down.
The first person to find John was his brother Josh
and when Josh got to his brother, he tried pulling him up and out of the tunnel,
but was only able to move him just a little bit before John slipped out of his hands
and slid right back into the crevice.
When John slipped back in, he got wedged even further into the crevice
and this time, one of his hands was pinned underneath him and the other was forced backward.
The only thing sticking out of the crevice now were just John's feet and ankles.
Realizing the severity of the situation, John and Josh said a quick prayer
and then Josh hurried out of the cave to get help.
The first rescuer to arrive was a woman named Susie Motola
and by the time she got to John at 12:30 AM,
John had been trapped for three hours, 400 feet (122 m) into the cave, and 100 feet (30.5 m) underground.
Susie introduced herself to John's black running shoes
that were the only thing visible in the tunnel and John responded by saying,
"Hi, Susie. Thanks for coming, but I really, really want to get out of here."
Over the next few hours, dozens and dozens of rescuers arrived and worked to free John from the cave.
They brainstormed different plans to free him and even discussed lubing up the walls of the cave to slide him out.
Eventually, they decided on a series of climbing cams.
A rope would then be fed through the cams and attached to John's legs
and the rescuers would then pull on the other end of the rope and pull John up from the crevice.
As they attached the cams, they also began drilling away at the chunks of rock to widen up the tunnel.
Unfortunately, due to how narrow the passages were, the drilling was slow and it would take over an hour
for just a couple of inches of rock to be removed.
Another thing complicating the rescue was the position of John's body.
The ceiling above where John was stuck was so low that they couldn't just pull him straight up.
They would need to pull him up a little bit and then readjust and then pull some more,
and then readjust some more.
The first attempt using just the climbing cams was unsuccessful
and so rescuers decided instead to feed the rope through pulleys that were bolted to the walls of the cave.
Again, this was a painfully slow process because of how narrow the cave was
and although a team of almost a hundred rescuers worked frantically to get John out of Nutty Putty Cave,
only a single person was able to access John at a time.
Meanwhile, 19 hours into the rescue,
John's condition was beginning to worsen.
The human body is adapted to pumping blood into the brain against the force of gravity when we're upright.
When we're upside, down blood pools in the brain and the heart is unable to work hard enough to pump blood out the brain.
This also causes the heart to work much harder as it tries to continuously pump blood out of the brain
against the force of gravity.
Eventually, the strain on the heart and the pooling in the brain is fatal.
As time went by, John started to have difficulty breathing,
and was alternating back and forth between being calm and being panicked.
Around this time as well, a two-way radio was brought into the cave and lowered down to John
so John and his wife could talk to each other.
Although they were both worried, they tried to comfort each other as best as they could.
Finally, rescuers finished drilling the holes and attaching the pulleys into the walls of the cave.
Eight men then grabbed one end of the rope and began inching John out of the crevice.
After so much time spent upside down,
John's legs were in a lot of pain, and so the team had to stop frequently to give him breaks.
But eventually, they did actually manage to pull him up high enough for one of the rescuers to make eye contact with him.
He looked tired, his eyes were red and he complained about the pain in his legs,
but would actually smile at rescuers.
After one final rest, the rescuers pulled John up once again, and he was almost out
when all of a sudden, the entire team fell backwards as the rope went loose in their hands.
The closest rescuer was knocked unconscious when one of the pulleys broke free from the wall of the cave.
When he came to, there was too much dust in the tunnel for him to see anything.
When the dust settled, he saw that a large piece of rock that had rope tied around it had broken,
causing the pulley to break free.
At the same time, he realized that John had slid right back into the crevice.
This time, it seemed as though he was even deeper than before.
The rescuer had also suffered severe facial injuries from the impact
and had to have someone come in and take his place.
When the new rescuer arrived, he noticed that John's breathing was much more shallow
and less frequent as John was now struggling to stay alive.
The new rescuer desperately tried to drill a new hole for the pulley,
but after exhausting himself was replaced, once again.
Another new rescuer arrived and the next replacement tried to talk to John,
but couldn't get any response.
Shortly after that, a medical professional crawled into the cave to where John was
and John was pronounced dead at midnight on November 25th, 2009.
The official cause of death was ruled to be cardiac arrest.
During the rescue, a total of 137 rescuers worked continuously for 27 hours
but ultimately, were unsuccessful in saving John Jones from the Nutty Putty Cave.
The following day, authorities determined that retrieving the body would be too dangerous
and so cement was poured over the entrance
and John's body has remained there ever since.
If you made it this far, I just want to thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video.
My name is Sean and welcome to my channel Scary Interesting.
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