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Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

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Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#91

Post by pipio21 »

j9461701 wrote: post #33

I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. The fact that he went back into the same cave that nearly killed him only a month later...almost as if to say: "I would rather my kids grow up without a Dad than live without my adrenaline fix" I am neither a father or a cave diver though, so I might be missing a piece of the puzzle. Would either gro…

It is not really that risky. It was just an unfortunate accident. It is probably way riskier to practice road cycling or breathing air in a big city(because of diesel particles pollution).

This man has been doing this for 24 years, if something diving today with him is safer because of the experience he got.

There are extremely risky sports like B.A.S.E, jumpsuit skydiving or freestyle motorbike stunt. This is not that risky.

I have seen a lot of people die in their 50s of cancer after smoking 3 packs a day. You don't see people around telling smokers: You have children, you should not take risks like this.

Even working too much could be riskier than diving caves. A fried of mine is quadriplegic because he felt sleep in the car for working too much.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#92

Post by huhtenberg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #74
j9461701 wrote: post #33

I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. The fact that he went back into the same cave that nearly killed him only a month later...almost as if to say: "I would rather my kids grow up without a Dad than live without my adrenaline fix" I am neither a father or a cave diver though, so I might be missing a piece of the puzzle. Would either gro…

> I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. People die. A key responsibility of being a parent is to make sure arrangements are made for you children should you die. I suppose whether this risk is warranted involves some complex calculus taking, among it's many inputs, the quality of arrangements that the parent has made, the actual mathemat…

> A key responsibility of being a parent

... is to be there for your children.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#93

Post by idlewords »

benzofuran wrote: post #43
j9461701 wrote: post #33

I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. The fact that he went back into the same cave that nearly killed him only a month later...almost as if to say: "I would rather my kids grow up without a Dad than live without my adrenaline fix" I am neither a father or a cave diver though, so I might be missing a piece of the puzzle. Would either gro…

With the proper training and experience, this is an academically rewarding sport / hobby, and is quite safe - still less so than normal open water diving but not the death trap that it seems. The NSS-CDS ( http://nsscds.org ) keeps accident analysis articles on hand (only seems like older ones are available on the website right now, dead tree is still the boss in this arena) covering these. Similarly though, there's…

A similar trough exists in general aviation—accident rates are markedly higher for somewhat experienced pilots than for beginners. The consensus among pilots seems to be that you are most dangerous between the time you think you know what you're doing, and the time you survive your first big scare.

There's probably a good lesson here for computer programmers...

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#94

Post by castis »

Chris2048 wrote: post #70
castis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not a cave diver, have no emotional attachment to this article, and I don't have even a rudimentary understanding of the culture surrounding cave diving but I made an account just to say I think those people should have arbitrary limits placed on them."

With you, except for "no emotional attachment to this article" - why is this needed?

They don't mention anything about the central topic of the article; the man who was stuck in the cave. If they had any sort of emotional reaction to the article, I imagine they would have said something about it.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#95

Post by Chris2048 »

castis wrote: post #94
Chris2048 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With you, except for "no emotional attachment to this article" - why is this needed?

They don't mention anything about the central topic of the article; the man who was stuck in the cave. If they had any sort of emotional reaction to the article, I imagine they would have said something about it.

I understand. My point is, why do they need an emotional reaction?

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#96

Post by eric_h »

Chris2048 wrote: post #88
vertex-four wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, we have to define "very high risks" - is it literally just anything more dangerous than driving? if so, why do we stop at driving, why couldn't we be safer? - and then compare "number of cave divers" vs "number of deaths", and then figure out the subcategories of cave divers who're most likely to die and figure out whether this theoretical person falls into them, and so on and so forth. Taking a specifi…

Well, that was an example, not a proposal to an official risk limit. But maybe - you'd need a proper analysis of the relative risk. Isn't that done with cars/driving? All sorts of vehicle legislation may be driven (npi) by driving incident data / risk analysis. > Taking a specific incident and combining it with "that sounds dangerous" I'm not. I think it sounds dangerous before this specific incident. But you are rig…

> a meaningful, proper analysis would be appropriate

Maybe you should just base it on what a given repetitive activity does to your life insurance premiums.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#97

Post by benzofuran »

fit2rule wrote: post #85
avh02 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to follow up on depth (not just from a difficulty point of view), if care isn't taken - i'd assume that once there's a pathway to the surface, the water pressure would push the air out and drown him. I also assume they're experts who know what they're doing, but at the same time, I guess there'd be too many unknown unless there was some established air-tight drilling technique specifically for this type of scenario?

To be honest, its a fascinating scenario which leaves many questions. I'm going to have to ask my geology friends if there is such a thing as an air-tight drilling technique that would not have resulted in the scenario you describe - google-fu doesn't seem to produce results - but I imagine there might be some sort of air-tight sleeve that can be used at the head of the shaft, which may as well be rather thin diamete…

A lot of us cave divers work in other areas as well - I'm an engineer in Oil & Gas - a lot of other folks I know are either scientists or engineers. This sort of activity appeals to us for some reason.

You described a blowout preventer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_preventer) by the way :)

Many cave systems are quite shallow, and while I don't know the details on the one there in Mallorca, by the size of what's described it was probably above the water table even though there likely wasn't a free-air connection to the surface.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#98

Post by Chris2048 »

sametmax wrote: post #36
j9461701 wrote: post #33

I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. The fact that he went back into the same cave that nearly killed him only a month later...almost as if to say: "I would rather my kids grow up without a Dad than live without my adrenaline fix" I am neither a father or a cave diver though, so I might be missing a piece of the puzzle. Would either gro…

You can decide that having children doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything for them. If you greatest joy in life is this, you may choose to take the risk. Children are not an all or nothing proposal.

> If you greatest joy life is this

How about not having children, then? Or at least until/unless you have stopped diving?

> doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything for them

There are a lot of small things you don't need to, but the big things you should. Your life, their father, is a big thing. If it means more to you to dive, do that instead.

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#99

Post by Chris2048 »

Xero wrote: post #50
sametmax wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can decide that having children doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything for them. If you greatest joy in life is this, you may choose to take the risk. Children are not an all or nothing proposal.

"Children are not an all or nothing proposal." I'm not sure I understand this mentality. Why force a life into this existence if you don't do everything in your power to make it as accommodating as you can? Modern life in it of itself will be working against it.

Should we strive for an equal society? As such, shouldn't all children be born with equally (or minimally) committed parents?

Re: Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen

#100

Post by Procrastes »

idlewords wrote: post #93
benzofuran wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the proper training and experience, this is an academically rewarding sport / hobby, and is quite safe - still less so than normal open water diving but not the death trap that it seems. The NSS-CDS ( http://nsscds.org ) keeps accident analysis articles on hand (only seems like older ones are available on the website right now, dead tree is still the boss in this arena) covering these. Similarly though, there's…

A similar trough exists in general aviation—accident rates are markedly higher for somewhat experienced pilots than for beginners. The consensus among pilots seems to be that you are most dangerous between the time you think you know what you're doing, and the time you survive your first big scare. There's probably a good lesson here for computer programmers...

> There's probably a good lesson here for computer programmers...

That sounds like a great Ask HN topic[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792764

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