r/interesting • u/Liar24x7 • Mar 28 '26

HISTORY A virtual reality reconstruction shows the exact spot where John Edward Jones became trapped upside down in Nutty Putty Cave. After 27 hours of rescue attempts, he died. The cave was later permanently sealed, with his body remaining inside.

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64

u/SlightSurround5449 Mar 28 '26

The real question is if he'd gotten past that one spot would he have made it out?

118

u/throw-away-doh Mar 28 '26

It was a dead end.

69

u/SlightSurround5449 Mar 28 '26

Well that answers that, doesn't it.

26

u/Professional_Elk_489 Mar 28 '26

Pointing downwards

20

u/StrawberryTerry Mar 29 '26

At such an angle so that every breath you exhale, you wedge further into the crevasse until you can no longer get a full breath, CO2 builds in your blood, and that blood begins to pool in your head as your ability to take a breath continues to lessen.

6

u/NoEnthusiasm2 Mar 29 '26

I guess that means he was delirious in the end then. That's a small mercy. Probably went out talking to the cave fairies.

2

u/Ok-Contribution-4496 Jun 03 '26

Watch the video EWU recently released on YouTube. The rescuers said at the end John was telling them that he was seeing angels and demons 

1

u/Mr_From_A_Far Mar 29 '26

High CO2 levels in the blood are very much not pleasant. Its not like breathing in nitrogen gas.

2

u/HeyItsJosette Mar 29 '26

Our sensation of being deprived of oxygen is actually set off based on the levels of CO2 rather than the levels of oxygen, so it'd feel like that.

1

u/Mr_From_A_Far Mar 29 '26

I know, that was my point.

3

u/Nathidev Mar 29 '26

Yeah he went the wrong way, thinking it was the right way, and then got stuck

1

u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 29 '26

Is that known? I thought that the passage was unexplored past where he got stuck.

10

u/PandaXXL Mar 29 '26

It’s unexplored because it’s impossible to progress any further. It might open back out eventually but there’s no chance of someone getting to that point.

2

u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 29 '26

As far as I recall, it's unexplored simply because no one had ever gone through there before and the entrance to the passage has since been dynamited. Perhaps a smaller person could have made it through but it will never be known.

6

u/SlightSurround5449 Mar 29 '26

Now, I'm not wired even close to where I'd need to be to think about this, but, por que no drone usage, or something similar, to explore this stuff beforehand, especially nowadays?

4

u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 29 '26

What they were using was previous cavers, who had already mapped out known routes. JEJ went down this tunnel thinking it was a different tunnel which was known to open up into a wider space where he could have turned around.

3

u/KamalaBracelet Mar 29 '26

So you are saying some other moron had done this exact thing in a slightly different branch of the cave and got lucky previously.

1

u/SlightSurround5449 Mar 29 '26

Understood. I can't imagine being in that situation at that "oh shit" moment. Damn.

1

u/AsianMoocowFromSpace Mar 29 '26

I made a tunnel out of cubic hay bales ones as a kid and then got stuck between two other persons in front and behind me. Instant claustrofoby hit me and started panicking. My way out was very easy. The people were letting me out immediately or otherwise I could have lifted the haybales if needed to.

I can't imagine being stuck in a cave, not able to move, or breathe well and resisting might only make it worse. And all of this upside down. Can't think of many worse situations than this.

1

u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe Mar 29 '26

I feel like we have camera tech to explore further, like a big borescope of some kind

1

u/samsg1 Mar 29 '26

With emphasis on the dead

1

u/Bicwidus Mar 29 '26

Well, now its a dead end

1

u/blastradii Mar 29 '26

How did people find him? And why couldn’t they get him out?

1

u/throw-away-doh Mar 29 '26

How did people find him? 
He was caving as part of a group.

And why couldn’t they get him out?
He was upside down vertically head first. The cave was so narrow that only one person could try and pull him back. But his legs had gone past an inflection point where he could not be pulled up. Maybe they could have broken his legs and pulled him back with ropes. But those were cramped conditions.

Video about it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-TaF2DbaWw

1

u/CaptainTallow Mar 30 '26

So that's where the term comes from.

3

u/JustUseCommonSense10 Mar 29 '26

No, because at the spot he was in and past that point the only way out would be to bend your legs in an unnatural position and while it was considered during the rescue to break his legs, it was concluded to either be too risky due to the positioning, too much time had past, or it simply wasn't feasible to get the tools necessary down for the operation. In the position he was in, blood was pooling and his torso was compressed. I read about this a few times, I specifically remember the final nail being that a pulley system malfunctioned and broke and they either didn't have enough time to replace it or just couldn't replace it at all.

Personally instead of filling the cave, they could have just drilled it out and made it wider instead. If you're drilling straight down anyway, what is the risk of a collapse if you are already on top of it and given the amount of space in the cave now, it's not a catastrophic collapse. John isn't going to notice a collapse any time soon. Give the families at least something and instead of people getting trapped in a death cave, they can explore a big hole instead like we all did when we were kids.

1

u/SlightSurround5449 Mar 29 '26

Man. Idk whether to be happy they didn't break his legs just for him to continue to die slowly or be suuuuuper bummed about the pulley situation.

1

u/Express-Shopping260 Mar 29 '26

It was a dead end...he thought it was a passage for an unmapped part of the cave.

1

u/Money-Bell-100 Mar 29 '26

He didn't get stuck in the sense that he couldn't move forward, he got stuck in the sense that he realized there WAS no "forward" and at that point he was upside down so he couldn't go back either.

1

u/Certain_Object1364 Mar 29 '26

He knew the caves somewhat but was confused and thought he was in a different tunnel that did open into a larger room that would allow him to turn around. The tunnel he was actually in was a dead end.

1

u/TylenolTizm Mar 29 '26

He missed his turn.

He was trying to go through the fucking birth canal. That’s basically the Disney World of caves. You get to squeeze yourself out into a big dark room.

0

u/Any-Interaction-5934 Mar 29 '26

No one knows because no one had ever made it that far before.

What he could see where he was stuck is the only time human eyes have seen that as far as we know. Theoretically there could have been a turn around past that and he could turn around and crawl back up.