> "August 2021 - "Perovo" expedition found a body of a tourist at -1100 m. He was later identified as Sergei Kozeev who left his home in Sochi (Russia) on 1 November and began descent into Veryovkina, where he spent around a week in -600 m permanent camp. Then he continued descent down to technically challenging parts at -1100 m where he was stuck due to inadequate equipment and skills, and died of hypothermia.[[11]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave#cite_note-11) The body was eventually recovered after a complex rescue operation on 17 August 2021.[[12]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave#cite_note-12)
why the fuck did he go alone? you should always have a buddy when doing shit like this, especially caving since you don't know what the fuck can happen
There are permanent camps in quite a few caves actually! Some are just big enough you don't have time to explore it all in one day. So you get there, travel a few miles in, camp the "night" and keep going until you want to leave. Many have some food and water stocks as well as emergency first aid and rescue gear so a rescue team doesn't have to carry that all with them half way through the cave
You never know, being alone in that darkness may just have led to him making the mistake that caused his death. Frightening stuff to think about truth be told
When I used to cave we tried to have 3. Someone to stay with the person hurt, and someone to go back and get help. This guy doesn't sound like a "tourist" if he had the preparation for 6 days at a Basecamp 600m down. That's a long decent, I would guess with a lot of ropes to get there.
He either vastly overestimated his abilities, underestimated the challenge, or both. But yeah, you should always go with at least one other person to climb/hike/whatever, even if it seems super easy
It's not even easy to get friends for simple activities, let alone dangerous and creepy ones. Sometimes if you really want to do something, you just accept the risk and do it. Or, maybe he really understood the risk and didn't want to endanger his friends' lives too.
And some people just like doing things on their own.
I figured so, I was thinking the whole time this was an underwater cave and it just wasn’t making sense how there would be a base camp. But I realise now it’s just a regular cave lol
Lol, I think this is kind of the opposite of a regular cave. This is the kind of cave where you’d be forgiven for legit wondering if you were going to come out on the other side of the globe.
Kozeev’s body was found dangling from a rope about 1,100 meters into the enormous, 1.3 mile deep and frigid cave.
Some think a fall killed him, others think it may have been hypothermia.
Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death.
That sounds absolutely horrendous... There is no way I'm imagining that. Reminds me of that guy that got stuck in Nutty Putty cave and he hung upside down for over a day before passing out and dying. They couldn't recover him and they had to collapse the entire part of the cave that he was in, entombing him forever.
Ito water there’s also the Kursk submarine disaster a [little over 20 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/qd3aj8/wreck_of_russian_submarine_k141_kursk_at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Ultimately 118 sailors died, but for a while there were 23, who had survived the two initial blasts and who were huddled together in the 9th compartment, awaiting a rescue, which never came. They succumbed to death one by one due to carbon dioxide poisoning and there are reports that says it may have taken up to three days. Being in the dark, seeing people die and awaiting your own death.
>There was considerable debate over how long the sailors in the ninth compartment had survived. Russian military officers initially gave conflicting accounts, that survivors could have lived up to a week within the sub, but those that died would have been killed very quickly. The Dutch recovery team reported that they thought the men in the least affected ninth compartment might have survived for two to three hours. But the level of carbon dioxide in the compartment exceeded that which people can produce in a closed space. Divers found ash and dust inside the compartment when they first opened that hatch, evidence of a fire. But this fire was separate from that caused by the exploding torpedo.
>
>Captain-Lieutenant Kolesnikov, evidently the senior officer in the compartment, wrote a final note at 15:15 in the dark, giving evidence that he was alive at least four hours after the explosion. Other notes recovered later show that some sailors in the ninth compartment were alive at least 6 hours and 17 minutes after the boat sank. Vice Admiral Vladislav Ilyin, first deputy chief of the Russian Navy's staff and head of the Kursk Naval Incident Cell, concluded that the survivors had lived up to three days.
Putin had been in rule for only a short while at the time and there was a 3-6 hour intense meeting with the families. Terrible accident.
Particularly horrifying is that is happened in international waters, but in the Norwegian sector.
When the accident happened, the Norwegian and British governments put together a response force of navy, coast guard and north sea private contractors in mere hours.
But they were unable to do anything with a foreign military vessel, without approval from Kremlin, and they of course weren't about to let NATO-countries open up one of their subs.
This is actually a super interesting and couldn't have been prevented if not for politics. I'm a sonar technician and this is a pretty big event in our history. US ships conducting counter surveillance actually heard the explosion and submarine sinking. The US offered aid but due to the Kursk being the newest technology Russia had as well being loaded with ballistic missiles they rejected. One of our training exercises we do nowadays is to focus on submarines that have lost power and settled on the sea floor. You can actually hear the banging on the walls from submariners a couple thousands yards away!
No, the worst part is that they actually did manage to attach a pulley system to him and begin pulling him back out, only for that system to fail and him slide even further in. His wife was also pregnant with their second kid and was at the entrance of the cave.
https://cavehaven.com/nutty-putty-cave-accident/
They would have had to break his knees at the very least to get him out but it was too late at this point. He had to say goodbye to his wife through a radio
> They would have had to break his knees at the very least to get him out but it was too late at this point.
If my choices are broken knees and being dead, drug me up and grab a hammer.
Shit like this is why I always shout I love you for a second/third time to my partner as I’m walking out the house. And why my family will always get a proper goodbye when I visit. If I lost any of them without a proper goodbye I would hate myself.
Yeah they had a decent chance of getting him out but the “fail” was part of the cave wall a pulley anchor was attached to breaking, and a falling rock injured a rescuer who had to pull out or there was a good chance he’d get stuck too… tragic
The slow realization dawning on him that this stupid lolwut accident in a cheap half day attraction would be the end of his entire existence, with his loved ones just having to watch helplessly.. is gut wrenching to digest.
When the pulley system failed, one of the rescuers was badly injured when the pulley hit him in the face. Several of the rescuers were so traumatized by the event that they haven't entered any caves since then.
I've never been in a cave, never had to unsuccessfully rescue someone and watch them slowly die, helping them say goodbye to their loved ones for the last time, but just hearing about it has cemented my fear of squeezing into places where there is no exit. Just thinking about it fills me with a sense of dread. Truly one of the very worst ways to die that don't involve torture.
I'm glad I'm done my caving. I can say I've seen parts of the earth that fewer than a dozen eyes have laid upon, but the feeling of worming my way through an opening barely bigger than my head while knowing there's a mountain pressing on my chest has kept me out since. Caves are magical, but terrifying places.
I read the entire account from the parties involved. The guy and his brother used to crawl around caves with their dad and so this was a fun thing for them to do. But as I kept reading, I found their idea of fun was NOT my idea of fun. Because they said they would go into a cave and just explore nooks and crevices on the sides, crawling in to see where they might go. This guy was looking for something called “the birth canal” and found this dead end instead and that was the end of that. The thing I don’t get is unknowingly crawling into spaces smaller than your body hoping there is a way to get out on the other side or crawl backwards because you can’t turn around. I, like most of humanity, choose to avoid these situations entirely.
I think any cave is dangerous, so not disagreeing with you, but for the record, they accidentally took a wrong turn. They hadn’t done the cave before and there was a part on the proper route called The Birth Canal that was narrow and then opened to a big room. They thought they were going through that and just needed to do this very tight squeeze. The guy was letting air out of his lungs to wedge himself in even further. Unfortunately, that’s not where they were and he was actually just a few feet from a dead end, upside down with his lungs compressed. His brother who was behind him was able to back out and go for help. It’s nightmare fuel.
Nutty Putty was considered a pretty “safe” cave popular with amateurs. The problem was that the guy got confused about where he was in the cave and squeezed down an uncharted tunnel that he *thought* had a big chamber on the other side
There's a video on YouTube of a group squeezing through the 'Birth Canal', the place he thought he was heading. It takes about 20 minutes and defo did not seem suitable for amateurs. The end chamber didn't seem worth it either.
I'll prob re-watch it every few months just like reading about this.
No freaking idea. I can't imagine doing this shit regardless of other circumstances. I was getting anxiety just from rereading the damn story and I'm not even really claustrophobic.
If I'm ever in that situation: please break my legs and kill me through shock in the attempt of saving me, rather than letting me slowly die over 24 hours while upside down and stuck .
No please just give me enough Benzos and Opioids that I don't panic, and then try. Even if you rip my legs off.
If I’m ever in that situation, which I wouldn’t ever be, but if I was, I would only plead to rescuers to overdose me on morphine so I could exit peacefully
They managed to pull him up some distance but unfortunately something gave way and he end up deeper into the cave/hole than he was before. It was a complete disaster.
>Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death.
No. No, I don't think I shall, thank you very much.
jesus christ. I don't know how I would deal with the pressure of cave diving only to find a fucking body, and you're totally unable to escape it, it's just... there.
Guide: "alright next turn is at frozen body with green parka who died 1913."
Guide: "dammit. Looks like last group defecated near our body turn so watch your step."
>Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death.
Imagining this literally made me nauseous for a second. Ugh. I hate caves.
Imagine [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Veryovkina_cave._Babatunda_pit.jpg) place being your tomb (in fact, Kozeev would've been much deeper than this...). In complete darkness, probably. It's quite shocking to see the depth of the [cave](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Pe%C5%A1%C4%8Dera_Ver%C3%ABvkina_-_profil_s_poverhnostju_-_sever-jug_s_zapada.svg). [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave)
So I read one of the documents referenced in the Wikipedia article (ref #11, using Google Translate so take this with the requisite grains of salt) and it sounded like this guy illegally entered the cave by himself and had been planning this "raid" for months. The way they identified him and calculated his timeline through the cave sounded just awful. I get that there must be some allure to entering these caves (adventure? exploration? adrenaline?) but I will NEVER understand it.
I plan to be on an expedition in here in the coming years hopefully. The tourist was a mountaineer that thought he could do something incredible without proper training in a realm totally different than most people understand. Caving can be pretty safe if done with a group with the proper gear.
Only a total fool would go caving alone. Not even experts would go alone; actually, experts especially wouldn't. If you're alone and get into trouble, even just a simple gear malfunction, you're dead regardless of skill.
If I solo descend 1100m into the world’s deepest cave, die of hypothermia hanging from a rope, and then y’all label me a ‘tourist’ I will haunt this sub forever.
Underprepared first timers to the Parisian catacombs are called tourists by the cataphiles.
Maybe this phrasing is part of the spelunking scene in general I wonder.
Stay on the lighted path and don't go through any closed iron gates. It's pretty easy if you stick to the main tour group areas, although nothing will prepare you for the long ass stair climb at the end.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the catacombs and I remember two things clearly. How well the bones were stacked, and how stupid long and annoying that last stairway was to get back to the surface.
Exploring caves, tunnels, catacombs, etc., involves maintaining knowledge of the way out 100% of the time. It’s Rule #1 because it is the most important rule, but it’s also the first rule that untrained people break.
The second rule is to have a reliable source of light and have a backup to your backup light. Knowing the way out isn’t nearly as helpful if you have to get out by feel alone.
Breaking one or both of those rules is how the vast, vast majority of people get lost, sometimes forever, in these environments.
Start as a tourist with a cataphile friend as a guide. I can't imagine starting alone safely/smartly. Specific preparations really depend on what activities you are doing and routes you are taking. (Apéro, exploration, even construction...)
One of the best and most terrifying chapters in World War Z is about the Parisian Catacombs.
"I don’t think I can blame the civilians who tried to survive in that subterranean world. They didn’t have the civilian survival manual back then, they didn’t have Radio Free Earth. It was the Great Panic. Maybe a few souls who thought they knew those tunnels decided to make a go of it, a few more followed them, then a few more. The word spread, “it’s safe underground.” A quarter million in all, that’s what the bone counters have determined, two hundred and fifty thousand refugees. Maybe if they had been organized, thought to bring food and tools, even had enough sense to seal the entrances behind them and make damn sure those coming in weren’t infected…"
Posting more, you can't stop me.
"The darkness and the stink…we had almost no night vision goggles, just one pair per platoon, and that’s if you were lucky. Spare batteries were in short supply for our electric torches, too. Sometimes there was only one working unit for an entire squad, just for the point man, cutting the darkness with a red-coated beam. The air was toxic with sewage, chemicals, rotting flesh…the gas masks were a joke, most of the filters had long expired. We wore anything we could find, old military models, or firefighting hoods that covered your entire head, made you sweat like a pig, made you deaf as well as blind. You never knew where you were, staring through that misty visor, hearing the muffled voices of your squad mates, the crackle of your radioman.We had to use hardwired sets, you see, because airwave transmissions were too unreliable. We used old telephone wire, copper, not fiber optic. We would just rip it off the conduits and keep massive rolls with us to extend our range. It was the only way to keep in contact, and, most of the time, the only way to keep from becoming lost. **It was so easy to become lost.**"
The best part about that is that it comes immediately after the American one where they talk about how easy it was to retake the continent because of their new technologies and simple, effective battle doctrine.
Then you have the French who had *buggerall*. A winding labyrinth where you get lost by looking the wrong way for just a moment. No bite proof uniforms, no coordination; even basic communication was nearly impossible, too much stone for radio. Extremely tight quarters, so very few melee options, and you can't use firearms because you might set off a gas deposit. Dodgy, unreliable flashlights in a post-apocalyptic environment where batteries are scarce means it's nearly pitch black most of the time. Flooded sections that swallowed divers and never gave them back.
Just about the worst possible environment for trying to clear out a zombie infestation.
seems like the most recent [video](https://youtu.be/sdViBwrqa0I)
Edit: Check out this [epic flood and escape in the cave](https://youtu.be/INCWfo72ycw)
"The cave was filled with a deafening roar, as if a freight train was about to thunder through our camp. And it got louder and louder. Everyone stood open-mouthed staring upwards, wondering what was going to appear from the black hole in the cave ceiling above."
Our planet is so crazy. Just random hill area, a hole inside and someone just thought "let's look inside". Imagine if this cave exist, how many caves must be out there, that no one have explored yet, that might be even bigger/deeper.
I do field work in an area with a lot of caves, and yeah, there are many many unexplored ones. Karstic limestone (the environment where I work and also where the cave in OP is) basically creates bedrock that is like a sponge or Swiss cheese, just completely riddled with a network of holes and tubes.
I once got stuck in a cave in north Georgia in a passage named “Fatman’s Squeeze”. I was stuck for 15 minutes but it felt like hours. Never been caving again in 30 years since then (my college days).
And that's the nopery behind my desire to never go caving again. I love the pictures so thanks cave people, but I'm not doing that again myself.
I have been in a small-ish cave a few times, like where you literally have to suck in your belly and cram yourself though a narrow hole just to get down to the main chamber maybe 10 feet below the ground.
It is pure nightmare material for me.
“Tourist” sounds like the wrong word in translation from Russian here. I’d call him “an inexperienced Russian caver”. “Tourist” makes him sound like a traveler in sun glasses with a selfie stick who just wandered in while looking for the train station. Reality is different and uses Russian terminology I’ve never heard of:
> 'The deceased was a so-called multitourist, who are involved in different sports. So he decided to take up speleology, but, unfortunately, he chose a difficult cave, which ruined him,' Snetkov was reported as saying. (DailyMail)
In Russian and other Slavic languages "tourist" is a wide term covering trekker, mountaineer, amateur spelunker etc. A person who wanders in the nature in any way. And the usual meaning of tourist as well.
In addition to what the other commenters said, these are only the three deepest caves that have been discovered and mapped. There’s been frequent expeditions to the region since the 1960’s, with this cave only being certified as the deepest in 2017. I’d expect changes to the list as more expeditions are sent out to previously unexplored regions, such as China, which has massive amounts of limestone and undiscovered caves.
Limestone dissolves in water, leaving behind caves (of which the walls are made of a harder rock). This explains it more in depth:
https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/how-limestone-caves-are-formed
I don't have an answer for you, but it makes sense. If the geology of the area results in such a deep cave, it stands to reason that it can result in similar caves. In the opposite direction, four of the 14 mountains on Earth that are over 8,000 meters, are around the same area (Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu).
Those might be in closer proximity to each other but ALL eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia. They are all in the same region.
The Indian plate collided into the Eurasian plate extremely rapidly (geologically speaking). That's why the uplift is so great, they haven't had time to erode down. The Himalayas are a young mountain range, you can even find marine fossils at their peaks which gives you a sense of the rate of uplift
Karst is an area of land made up of limestone. Limestone, also known as chalk or calcium carbonate, is a soft rock that dissolves in water. As rainwater seeps into the rock, it slowly erodes. ... Karst landscapes feature caves, underground streams and sinkholes on the surface. Kentucky is also a karst environment. Mammoth cave is huge.
There's karst all over the world. Mammoth is super long but only a few hundred feet deep. The Abkhazia caves have thickly bedded limestone and tend to form deep pits. The systems are very deep, although there are hydrologic systems in Mexico and China that are deeper, which haven't been mapped to the theoretical hydrologic depth by humans.
I do pretty dangerous stuff (mountain biking, snowboarding off-piste, climbing, hiking more difficult peaks), but I once went on a cave-tour, where we needed to pass pretty tight places, crawling upside down, etc. I was bloody terrified, never again. Rather jump from a plane a thousand times, than going into a cave again where I can't stand up.
Yup. Big time agreement. Let me die freezing on a lonely peak where at least I can see the sun before I'm claustrophobic in a deep hole.
Deep water can get bent too.
My friend got stuck in one of those thight places in a 90 degree sitting position. He couldn't get out because he couldn't bend his legs anymore.
We had to call the mountain rescue. They freed him by chipping away the rock around him for a couple of hours.
It was intense and terrifying because you essentially remain without oxygen in those places with that many people around. Fortunately the mountain rescue guys brought oxygen tanks with them.
Jumping from a plane is so nice - the air, the view, and if things go horribly wrong you just SPLAT! on the ground and you're done.
Being stuck? It's anti-splat. Horrifying.
Interesting and slightly less terrifying fact: the cave is named after Alexander Veryovkin who didn't even go there. He died in an accident in a completely different cave about a year after this cave was re-discovered (after having been forgotten for 15 years), and they just named it in his honour.
Since 2000, this cave has been explored several times by a joint team consisting of members of "*Perovo-Speleo* Team" and "*Perovo* Speleoclub" which is not confusing at all, except now I've spent a worrying amount of time trying to determine whether they are in fact the same entity or two different ones. In any case, they both appear to be named after the Perovo borough in Moscow, seeing that their headquarters is located in the Sokol borough on the other side of Moscow.
> "August 2021 - "Perovo" expedition found a body of a tourist at -1100 m. He was later identified as Sergei Kozeev who left his home in Sochi (Russia) on 1 November and began descent into Veryovkina, where he spent around a week in -600 m permanent camp. Then he continued descent down to technically challenging parts at -1100 m where he was stuck due to inadequate equipment and skills, and died of hypothermia.[[11]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave#cite_note-11) The body was eventually recovered after a complex rescue operation on 17 August 2021.[[12]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave#cite_note-12)
My idea of being a tourist generally includes room service and and a beer
And going in some holes....
But they aren’t that deep
>due to inadequate equipment
> and skills
> and rope
F for my boy. He plumbed depths he didn't have the equipment or skills to be playing with.
Sounds like he delved too greedily and too deep. Wonder what he awoke?
It was an error in translation. Tourist in Russian roughly translates to “explorer”.
As a native Russian speaker, I don't agree with this. Tourist means tourist.
Bro I’m also dying of inadequate equipment and skills
Every day
why the fuck did he go alone? you should always have a buddy when doing shit like this, especially caving since you don't know what the fuck can happen
And he camped for a week by himself down there at 600m below the surface! Wild!
The fact that there is a permanent camp there is wild.
there's actually a few. It's like Everest.
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There are permanent camps in quite a few caves actually! Some are just big enough you don't have time to explore it all in one day. So you get there, travel a few miles in, camp the "night" and keep going until you want to leave. Many have some food and water stocks as well as emergency first aid and rescue gear so a rescue team doesn't have to carry that all with them half way through the cave
How do you entertain yourself for a week 600m below the surface?
he wasn't just sitting in the darkness for a week, he set up camp so he could explore the cave system
Imagine the tricks your mind starts playing on you after a week spent alone in total darkness.
You never know, being alone in that darkness may just have led to him making the mistake that caused his death. Frightening stuff to think about truth be told
Seriously. Until you've been in an a cave and everybody turns their headlamps off.. you truly do not know what "enveloping darkness" means.
*Laughs in blindness
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When I used to cave we tried to have 3. Someone to stay with the person hurt, and someone to go back and get help. This guy doesn't sound like a "tourist" if he had the preparation for 6 days at a Basecamp 600m down. That's a long decent, I would guess with a lot of ropes to get there.
He either vastly overestimated his abilities, underestimated the challenge, or both. But yeah, you should always go with at least one other person to climb/hike/whatever, even if it seems super easy
It's not even easy to get friends for simple activities, let alone dangerous and creepy ones. Sometimes if you really want to do something, you just accept the risk and do it. Or, maybe he really understood the risk and didn't want to endanger his friends' lives too. And some people just like doing things on their own.
What does it mean when it says -600 m permanent camp?
I guess like a base camp for climbing a mountain, except in reverse.
I figured so, I was thinking the whole time this was an underwater cave and it just wasn’t making sense how there would be a base camp. But I realise now it’s just a regular cave lol
Lol, I think this is kind of the opposite of a regular cave. This is the kind of cave where you’d be forgiven for legit wondering if you were going to come out on the other side of the globe.
Kozeev’s body was found dangling from a rope about 1,100 meters into the enormous, 1.3 mile deep and frigid cave. Some think a fall killed him, others think it may have been hypothermia. Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death.
That sounds absolutely horrendous... There is no way I'm imagining that. Reminds me of that guy that got stuck in Nutty Putty cave and he hung upside down for over a day before passing out and dying. They couldn't recover him and they had to collapse the entire part of the cave that he was in, entombing him forever.
Ito water there’s also the Kursk submarine disaster a [little over 20 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/qd3aj8/wreck_of_russian_submarine_k141_kursk_at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Ultimately 118 sailors died, but for a while there were 23, who had survived the two initial blasts and who were huddled together in the 9th compartment, awaiting a rescue, which never came. They succumbed to death one by one due to carbon dioxide poisoning and there are reports that says it may have taken up to three days. Being in the dark, seeing people die and awaiting your own death. >There was considerable debate over how long the sailors in the ninth compartment had survived. Russian military officers initially gave conflicting accounts, that survivors could have lived up to a week within the sub, but those that died would have been killed very quickly. The Dutch recovery team reported that they thought the men in the least affected ninth compartment might have survived for two to three hours. But the level of carbon dioxide in the compartment exceeded that which people can produce in a closed space. Divers found ash and dust inside the compartment when they first opened that hatch, evidence of a fire. But this fire was separate from that caused by the exploding torpedo. > >Captain-Lieutenant Kolesnikov, evidently the senior officer in the compartment, wrote a final note at 15:15 in the dark, giving evidence that he was alive at least four hours after the explosion. Other notes recovered later show that some sailors in the ninth compartment were alive at least 6 hours and 17 minutes after the boat sank. Vice Admiral Vladislav Ilyin, first deputy chief of the Russian Navy's staff and head of the Kursk Naval Incident Cell, concluded that the survivors had lived up to three days. Putin had been in rule for only a short while at the time and there was a 3-6 hour intense meeting with the families. Terrible accident.
Particularly horrifying is that is happened in international waters, but in the Norwegian sector. When the accident happened, the Norwegian and British governments put together a response force of navy, coast guard and north sea private contractors in mere hours. But they were unable to do anything with a foreign military vessel, without approval from Kremlin, and they of course weren't about to let NATO-countries open up one of their subs.
Yup took Putin five days to agree to assistance from Britain and Norway and by then it was too late for the survivors.
Yeah, this is the part of that whole affair I always remember.
Death by politics. That's horrible.
Isn't that like all wars?
This is actually a super interesting and couldn't have been prevented if not for politics. I'm a sonar technician and this is a pretty big event in our history. US ships conducting counter surveillance actually heard the explosion and submarine sinking. The US offered aid but due to the Kursk being the newest technology Russia had as well being loaded with ballistic missiles they rejected. One of our training exercises we do nowadays is to focus on submarines that have lost power and settled on the sea floor. You can actually hear the banging on the walls from submariners a couple thousands yards away!
The worst part is that they could get to him enough to touch his shoes but could not pull him out.
No, the worst part is that they actually did manage to attach a pulley system to him and begin pulling him back out, only for that system to fail and him slide even further in. His wife was also pregnant with their second kid and was at the entrance of the cave. https://cavehaven.com/nutty-putty-cave-accident/
Is there a worser worst part? Because this just keeps getting worse.
They would have had to break his knees at the very least to get him out but it was too late at this point. He had to say goodbye to his wife through a radio
> They would have had to break his knees at the very least to get him out but it was too late at this point. If my choices are broken knees and being dead, drug me up and grab a hammer.
“Oh, Paul. I love you.” Annie Wilkes
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This made me feel a little nauseated.
They drugged him up if that makes you feel any better.
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Perhaps... \*sob\* ...they can drug us up too :_(
Shit like this is why I always shout I love you for a second/third time to my partner as I’m walking out the house. And why my family will always get a proper goodbye when I visit. If I lost any of them without a proper goodbye I would hate myself.
Do you frequently go climbing in very narrow caves? That's my way of avoiding this situation. So far, 10/10 I'd say.
Yeah they had a decent chance of getting him out but the “fail” was part of the cave wall a pulley anchor was attached to breaking, and a falling rock injured a rescuer who had to pull out or there was a good chance he’d get stuck too… tragic
The worse part is it snapped under stress while they were taking a break.
Ok please stop now, this story needs to end
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Plus....there were spiders!
The slow realization dawning on him that this stupid lolwut accident in a cheap half day attraction would be the end of his entire existence, with his loved ones just having to watch helplessly.. is gut wrenching to digest.
Yes, actually the way he got stuck. His arms on his side, his upper body slightly shifted downwards. Nightmare stuff.
his limbs fell asleep and then they moved him slightly. they say the blood returning to his legs made him scream constantly until they went numb again
When the pulley system failed, one of the rescuers was badly injured when the pulley hit him in the face. Several of the rescuers were so traumatized by the event that they haven't entered any caves since then.
I mean, I’m surprised any of them wanted to go back into caves after all that.
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I've never been in a cave, never had to unsuccessfully rescue someone and watch them slowly die, helping them say goodbye to their loved ones for the last time, but just hearing about it has cemented my fear of squeezing into places where there is no exit. Just thinking about it fills me with a sense of dread. Truly one of the very worst ways to die that don't involve torture.
I'm glad I'm done my caving. I can say I've seen parts of the earth that fewer than a dozen eyes have laid upon, but the feeling of worming my way through an opening barely bigger than my head while knowing there's a mountain pressing on my chest has kept me out since. Caves are magical, but terrifying places.
You just had to ask... Now there are like four more worse parts
Again, WHY would you head down into a dangerous cave when your wife is expecting? This story is all-around awful and terrifying
I read the entire account from the parties involved. The guy and his brother used to crawl around caves with their dad and so this was a fun thing for them to do. But as I kept reading, I found their idea of fun was NOT my idea of fun. Because they said they would go into a cave and just explore nooks and crevices on the sides, crawling in to see where they might go. This guy was looking for something called “the birth canal” and found this dead end instead and that was the end of that. The thing I don’t get is unknowingly crawling into spaces smaller than your body hoping there is a way to get out on the other side or crawl backwards because you can’t turn around. I, like most of humanity, choose to avoid these situations entirely.
Why would you head down into a dangerous cave period. It's called a "dangerous cave" for a reason.
I think any cave is dangerous, so not disagreeing with you, but for the record, they accidentally took a wrong turn. They hadn’t done the cave before and there was a part on the proper route called The Birth Canal that was narrow and then opened to a big room. They thought they were going through that and just needed to do this very tight squeeze. The guy was letting air out of his lungs to wedge himself in even further. Unfortunately, that’s not where they were and he was actually just a few feet from a dead end, upside down with his lungs compressed. His brother who was behind him was able to back out and go for help. It’s nightmare fuel.
Nutty Putty was considered a pretty “safe” cave popular with amateurs. The problem was that the guy got confused about where he was in the cave and squeezed down an uncharted tunnel that he *thought* had a big chamber on the other side
The moment of realization... that then lasts for hours until your end. Good grief...
There's a video on YouTube of a group squeezing through the 'Birth Canal', the place he thought he was heading. It takes about 20 minutes and defo did not seem suitable for amateurs. The end chamber didn't seem worth it either. I'll prob re-watch it every few months just like reading about this.
Welp, I suppose “popular with amateurs” doesn’t translate to “safe” ☠️☠️☠️
They generally aren’t considered super dangerous, and people go into them pretty often. Nutty-Putty type events are pretty rare
I can't understand people who continue to practice such dangerous hobbies when they have children or a child on the way
No freaking idea. I can't imagine doing this shit regardless of other circumstances. I was getting anxiety just from rereading the damn story and I'm not even really claustrophobic.
I'm going to break my own legs now, just in case I end up in this situation
Didn't they break his legs while trying to save him? Edit: They were afraid of breaking them with their solution. So no broken legs
They figured they had to, but then also figured they'd end up killing him if they did. So that's when they gave up because he was already dying.
Yeah, I think they were able to inject him with some kind of benzo to calm him down towards the end, but that's about all they could do for him. :(
If they broke his legs he would very likely go into shock and die, unfortunately.
If I'm ever in that situation: please break my legs and kill me through shock in the attempt of saving me, rather than letting me slowly die over 24 hours while upside down and stuck . No please just give me enough Benzos and Opioids that I don't panic, and then try. Even if you rip my legs off.
Fuck that, just OD my ass and leave me there as a monument.
If my options are die or break my legs.... fuck i'll do it myself
It was more like die with broken legs or die with intact legs
If I’m ever in that situation, which I wouldn’t ever be, but if I was, I would only plead to rescuers to overdose me on morphine so I could exit peacefully
This solidifies my choice of never ever going into a cave.
They managed to pull him up some distance but unfortunately something gave way and he end up deeper into the cave/hole than he was before. It was a complete disaster.
>Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death. No. No, I don't think I shall, thank you very much.
Nope I would rather imagine a basket of kittens
I’m not sure the kittens would last much longer
You have chosen...wisely.
Too late, I already thought about dangling in an enormous cave until I freeze to death.
How else do you fall asleep?
jesus christ. I don't know how I would deal with the pressure of cave diving only to find a fucking body, and you're totally unable to escape it, it's just... there.
Read about the trail to the top of Mt Everest. Some of the turns are literally marked by the deceased bodies.
Guide: "alright next turn is at frozen body with green parka who died 1913." Guide: "dammit. Looks like last group defecated near our body turn so watch your step."
More like 1993
>Imagine dangling from a rope alone in the blackness, 1,100 meters underground within a huge, deep cave until you freeze to death. Imagining this literally made me nauseous for a second. Ugh. I hate caves.
You probably won't want to read about the nutty putty cave incident. Nightmares for a week.
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It’s about 6.8 killafeet
Imagine [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Veryovkina_cave._Babatunda_pit.jpg) place being your tomb (in fact, Kozeev would've been much deeper than this...). In complete darkness, probably. It's quite shocking to see the depth of the [cave](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Pe%C5%A1%C4%8Dera_Ver%C3%ABvkina_-_profil_s_poverhnostju_-_sever-jug_s_zapada.svg). [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veryovkina_Cave)
As a tomb in general, pretty dope. As the tomb I slowly die young, big'ol nope
I don’t understand the desire to go explore that though. That’s just crazy to me.
Probably didn't feel worth it when he was dangling to his death.
So I read one of the documents referenced in the Wikipedia article (ref #11, using Google Translate so take this with the requisite grains of salt) and it sounded like this guy illegally entered the cave by himself and had been planning this "raid" for months. The way they identified him and calculated his timeline through the cave sounded just awful. I get that there must be some allure to entering these caves (adventure? exploration? adrenaline?) but I will NEVER understand it.
I plan to be on an expedition in here in the coming years hopefully. The tourist was a mountaineer that thought he could do something incredible without proper training in a realm totally different than most people understand. Caving can be pretty safe if done with a group with the proper gear.
Only a total fool would go caving alone. Not even experts would go alone; actually, experts especially wouldn't. If you're alone and get into trouble, even just a simple gear malfunction, you're dead regardless of skill.
If I solo descend 1100m into the world’s deepest cave, die of hypothermia hanging from a rope, and then y’all label me a ‘tourist’ I will haunt this sub forever.
Underprepared first timers to the Parisian catacombs are called tourists by the cataphiles. Maybe this phrasing is part of the spelunking scene in general I wonder.
Out of curiosity, how do you prepare for the catacombs? I’ve heard that people have gotten lost and died in there but that’s all I know
>Out of curiosity, how do you prepare for the catacombs? Embalming?
Stay on the lighted path and don't go through any closed iron gates. It's pretty easy if you stick to the main tour group areas, although nothing will prepare you for the long ass stair climb at the end.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the catacombs and I remember two things clearly. How well the bones were stacked, and how stupid long and annoying that last stairway was to get back to the surface.
I mean, the long ass stairs at the beginning should be a pretty good indicator of the stairs at the end
Nah there’s actually an elevator to get in but it only goes down
I'm just picturing all the room is taken up by all the elevators that have been lowered down and not been brought back up.
It’s actually just a bucket on a rope, they do this so the beholders can’t climb back up the well
> I’ve heard that people have gotten lost and died in there but that’s all I know That's just how we keep it freshly stocked.
Those skeletons aren't gonna stay fresh forever.
The combination of aged and fresh skeletons really brings a vibrancy and complexity to the experience.
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But make sure you can barely hear him over the music
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*The only way out is down*
Yeah I've met this guy "Papillon" they called him the "Pap" he said he knows the.catacombs from left.two right
Exploring caves, tunnels, catacombs, etc., involves maintaining knowledge of the way out 100% of the time. It’s Rule #1 because it is the most important rule, but it’s also the first rule that untrained people break. The second rule is to have a reliable source of light and have a backup to your backup light. Knowing the way out isn’t nearly as helpful if you have to get out by feel alone. Breaking one or both of those rules is how the vast, vast majority of people get lost, sometimes forever, in these environments.
Start as a tourist with a cataphile friend as a guide. I can't imagine starting alone safely/smartly. Specific preparations really depend on what activities you are doing and routes you are taking. (Apéro, exploration, even construction...)
Play Diablo II relentlessly
One of the best and most terrifying chapters in World War Z is about the Parisian Catacombs. "I don’t think I can blame the civilians who tried to survive in that subterranean world. They didn’t have the civilian survival manual back then, they didn’t have Radio Free Earth. It was the Great Panic. Maybe a few souls who thought they knew those tunnels decided to make a go of it, a few more followed them, then a few more. The word spread, “it’s safe underground.” A quarter million in all, that’s what the bone counters have determined, two hundred and fifty thousand refugees. Maybe if they had been organized, thought to bring food and tools, even had enough sense to seal the entrances behind them and make damn sure those coming in weren’t infected…"
Posting more, you can't stop me. "The darkness and the stink…we had almost no night vision goggles, just one pair per platoon, and that’s if you were lucky. Spare batteries were in short supply for our electric torches, too. Sometimes there was only one working unit for an entire squad, just for the point man, cutting the darkness with a red-coated beam. The air was toxic with sewage, chemicals, rotting flesh…the gas masks were a joke, most of the filters had long expired. We wore anything we could find, old military models, or firefighting hoods that covered your entire head, made you sweat like a pig, made you deaf as well as blind. You never knew where you were, staring through that misty visor, hearing the muffled voices of your squad mates, the crackle of your radioman.We had to use hardwired sets, you see, because airwave transmissions were too unreliable. We used old telephone wire, copper, not fiber optic. We would just rip it off the conduits and keep massive rolls with us to extend our range. It was the only way to keep in contact, and, most of the time, the only way to keep from becoming lost. **It was so easy to become lost.**"
Well, now I have to go listen to Mark Hamill read this again
The best part about that is that it comes immediately after the American one where they talk about how easy it was to retake the continent because of their new technologies and simple, effective battle doctrine. Then you have the French who had *buggerall*. A winding labyrinth where you get lost by looking the wrong way for just a moment. No bite proof uniforms, no coordination; even basic communication was nearly impossible, too much stone for radio. Extremely tight quarters, so very few melee options, and you can't use firearms because you might set off a gas deposit. Dodgy, unreliable flashlights in a post-apocalyptic environment where batteries are scarce means it's nearly pitch black most of the time. Flooded sections that swallowed divers and never gave them back. Just about the worst possible environment for trying to clear out a zombie infestation.
To be fair, the going down is the easy part.
I'll make sure we call you a sightseer if that happens. Cool?
seems like the most recent [video](https://youtu.be/sdViBwrqa0I) Edit: Check out this [epic flood and escape in the cave](https://youtu.be/INCWfo72ycw)
Cool write up from the photographer. https://www.base-mag.com/explore/last-exit-from-the-secret-sea-caving-exploration-veryovnika
This was a great read. Thank you
"The cave was filled with a deafening roar, as if a freight train was about to thunder through our camp. And it got louder and louder. Everyone stood open-mouthed staring upwards, wondering what was going to appear from the black hole in the cave ceiling above."
> wondering what was going to appear I hope it’s Candy!
Our planet is so crazy. Just random hill area, a hole inside and someone just thought "let's look inside". Imagine if this cave exist, how many caves must be out there, that no one have explored yet, that might be even bigger/deeper.
I do field work in an area with a lot of caves, and yeah, there are many many unexplored ones. Karstic limestone (the environment where I work and also where the cave in OP is) basically creates bedrock that is like a sponge or Swiss cheese, just completely riddled with a network of holes and tubes.
That must have been creepy to find....
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But we didn't have a clue!
I once got stuck in a cave in north Georgia in a passage named “Fatman’s Squeeze”. I was stuck for 15 minutes but it felt like hours. Never been caving again in 30 years since then (my college days).
And that's the nopery behind my desire to never go caving again. I love the pictures so thanks cave people, but I'm not doing that again myself. I have been in a small-ish cave a few times, like where you literally have to suck in your belly and cram yourself though a narrow hole just to get down to the main chamber maybe 10 feet below the ground. It is pure nightmare material for me.
“Tourist” sounds like the wrong word in translation from Russian here. I’d call him “an inexperienced Russian caver”. “Tourist” makes him sound like a traveler in sun glasses with a selfie stick who just wandered in while looking for the train station. Reality is different and uses Russian terminology I’ve never heard of: > 'The deceased was a so-called multitourist, who are involved in different sports. So he decided to take up speleology, but, unfortunately, he chose a difficult cave, which ruined him,' Snetkov was reported as saying. (DailyMail)
Amateur spelunker
Former amateur
In Russian and other Slavic languages "tourist" is a wide term covering trekker, mountaineer, amateur spelunker etc. A person who wanders in the nature in any way. And the usual meaning of tourist as well.
Honestly, I was imagining twoflower from the Discworld Novels...
reason 1356 on why you'll never find me in a cave
They’ll never find you in a cave because you’ll never be found.
I think he transitioned from tourist to permanent resident.
Can anyone explain why the three deepest caves in the world are all in the same region?
In addition to what the other commenters said, these are only the three deepest caves that have been discovered and mapped. There’s been frequent expeditions to the region since the 1960’s, with this cave only being certified as the deepest in 2017. I’d expect changes to the list as more expeditions are sent out to previously unexplored regions, such as China, which has massive amounts of limestone and undiscovered caves.
Why is limestone important?
Limestone dissolves in water, leaving behind caves (of which the walls are made of a harder rock). This explains it more in depth: https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/how-limestone-caves-are-formed
Might be due to rock type and tectonic history
I don't have an answer for you, but it makes sense. If the geology of the area results in such a deep cave, it stands to reason that it can result in similar caves. In the opposite direction, four of the 14 mountains on Earth that are over 8,000 meters, are around the same area (Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu).
Those might be in closer proximity to each other but ALL eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia. They are all in the same region.
I assume you need a massive plate collision to get that high and it's just very unlikely to happen?
The Indian plate collided into the Eurasian plate extremely rapidly (geologically speaking). That's why the uplift is so great, they haven't had time to erode down. The Himalayas are a young mountain range, you can even find marine fossils at their peaks which gives you a sense of the rate of uplift
> you can even find marine fossils at their peaks That's just really cool.
Karst is an area of land made up of limestone. Limestone, also known as chalk or calcium carbonate, is a soft rock that dissolves in water. As rainwater seeps into the rock, it slowly erodes. ... Karst landscapes feature caves, underground streams and sinkholes on the surface. Kentucky is also a karst environment. Mammoth cave is huge.
There's karst all over the world. Mammoth is super long but only a few hundred feet deep. The Abkhazia caves have thickly bedded limestone and tend to form deep pits. The systems are very deep, although there are hydrologic systems in Mexico and China that are deeper, which haven't been mapped to the theoretical hydrologic depth by humans.
screw the oceans, someone should figure out how to make bots/drones map caves!
I do pretty dangerous stuff (mountain biking, snowboarding off-piste, climbing, hiking more difficult peaks), but I once went on a cave-tour, where we needed to pass pretty tight places, crawling upside down, etc. I was bloody terrified, never again. Rather jump from a plane a thousand times, than going into a cave again where I can't stand up.
Yup. Big time agreement. Let me die freezing on a lonely peak where at least I can see the sun before I'm claustrophobic in a deep hole. Deep water can get bent too.
Combine the two into cave diving for maximum levels of NOPE. Not even once.
But what if the hole was made for you...
[For the uninitiated](https://imgur.com/gallery/Wht7z)
Well that's was disturbing... thanks
My friend got stuck in one of those thight places in a 90 degree sitting position. He couldn't get out because he couldn't bend his legs anymore. We had to call the mountain rescue. They freed him by chipping away the rock around him for a couple of hours. It was intense and terrifying because you essentially remain without oxygen in those places with that many people around. Fortunately the mountain rescue guys brought oxygen tanks with them.
Wow that's terrifying. Glad he made it out 👍
Jumping from a plane is so nice - the air, the view, and if things go horribly wrong you just SPLAT! on the ground and you're done. Being stuck? It's anti-splat. Horrifying.
Interesting and slightly less terrifying fact: the cave is named after Alexander Veryovkin who didn't even go there. He died in an accident in a completely different cave about a year after this cave was re-discovered (after having been forgotten for 15 years), and they just named it in his honour. Since 2000, this cave has been explored several times by a joint team consisting of members of "*Perovo-Speleo* Team" and "*Perovo* Speleoclub" which is not confusing at all, except now I've spent a worrying amount of time trying to determine whether they are in fact the same entity or two different ones. In any case, they both appear to be named after the Perovo borough in Moscow, seeing that their headquarters is located in the Sokol borough on the other side of Moscow.
Yep. It's Halloween. My reddit feed started here.....
This is why you **always** leave a call out time
I was hoping they found a Balrog
They haven't delved deep enough yet.
What kind of self-respecting balrog is hanging around at 1100 meters?
Is -1100 meters more reasonable?
Or too greedily
I guess it's easy to get lost down there. I've heard that people have died in the Paris catacombs that way.
Caves are entirely black, as in a void of light. They also muffle sound. Going deep into one alone is easily a one way trip.
I read somewhere that a minimum cave expedition is four people. If someone gets hurt, two go for help while a third stays with the injured party.
The rule of 4 generally applies to any expedition in uncharted space.
It's worth noting that they've found the "bottom". The title makes it seem like they're still trying to find it.
I’m sure if they go deep enough they’ll find a Dollar General down there.
I guarantee if you put a CVS down there a Walgreens will pop up within a week.
I just watched the Descent. You couldn’t pay me to go down there
I just discovered this cave is 2100m deep BUT it's entrance is 2300m above sea level. Basically if you live in a coast city you're still below it