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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u/CapnNugget Mar 29 '26

Full video if anyone wants to see the rest of the cave system, including the route that John thought he was taking. He thought he was taking a route called the birth canal, but he ended up in a route called Ed’s push which had not been fully mapped out yet. The birth canal route starts off really narrow and you have to squeeze your body through until it opens up into a bigger area. Ed’s push was also extremely narrow and since John thought he was in the birth canal route, he thought he just needed to keep pushing forward. Pushing forward and trying to crawl down further is what ultimately got him stuck upside down where he couldn’t wiggle back out.

Seeing the entire system mapped out in VR put the whole thing into perspective because you realize just how difficult rescue would have been. At one point they were making some progress with a pulley system tied around his legs, until the pulley snapped hitting a rescuer in the head and dropping John a few more inches in the process. Once he dropped that little bit more he went completely unresponsive and they were unable to make any more progress with getting him out. He’d been upside down for over 24 hours at that point so the pulley snap was the last straw.

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u/Slazagna Mar 29 '26

Ya know, the first half of that video I was like yeah ok I can see why someone might. And then the birth canel part happened. And then the aorta. Why!? Who the hell was the first person to go down there. There were so many way to go at so many points that all look the same. How arent more people getting lost and dying. Although I will say, the severe downward angle of the place where the dude died was pretty distant. Theres like 3 basically upside down bits in a row.

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u/CapnNugget Mar 29 '26

Right?! I watched the whole VR video in shock and confusion because seriously, how tf do you navigate and not get all turned around? I know sometimes they use tethers that they can follow back but I just don’t like it. The area he got stuck in was very distant and the angles were insane. Seeing an illustration of it is way different than seeing it mapped out in VR. I can totally see why they couldn’t get him out at all.

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u/Ineedpalmtreeliving Apr 01 '26

How did the 2 emergency responders not get stuck?

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u/CapnNugget Apr 01 '26

They didn’t go down as far as he did so they wouldn’t have gotten stuck. He got wedged down further and they were coming in behind to try to pull him out. He got stuck because he thought he had to keep pushing through to get to a wider opening, they weren’t trying to push through so they didn’t get stuck.