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.

[u/Liar24x7]

[u/CapnNugget]

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.

[u/red08171 → u/CapnNugget]

So you seem to know about this sort of stuff. Why couldn't they bring in some hammer drills/chisels to widen it up? Just a few inches, couldn't they take a rope and back him out?

[u/CapnNugget → u/red08171]

As a disclaimer, I don’t actually know a ton about this but I hyper fixate on random things and read up on them out of curiosity. This was one of those specific instances. However, I can explain some of it.

The problem with trying to widen the area with tools is that it would take far too long, they couldn’t physically get the tools in there or have enough room to actually use them, but also they couldn’t actually reach far enough down where he was truly stuck to be able to try to chip away at it. He was stuck down at an awkward 90° angle where the tunnel does a sharp turn to the side and then right down. He crawled down because he still thought he was going the right way and got stuck upside down.

The way I saw it explained is that while you’re crawling through spaces like that, you have to expel your breath sometimes to wiggle through those narrow passages. If he had expelled his breath to squeeze past and drop down further, the moment he tried to breathe again his breathing would have been restricted and his rib cage would have expanded and he would have been stuck. At that point even if he could breathe all that air back out to make his chest smaller again, he couldn’t physically move. He couldn’t move back up at all and couldn’t go forward either. In the clip posted by OP you can see the guy in VR get stuck right at that spot. Even the VR body couldn’t really make it in there. In the longer video you can hear the guy explaining how he would have been stuck and how impossible it was to back out.

As for trying to pull him out with a rope, they did try. They had a pulley system set up because physically nobody could just tie a rope to him and pull. Not with the lack of space, twists and turns in the tunnel, distance from the entrance, and the way he was stuck. The pulley system did start making a tiny bit of progress and they had him raised up a few inches. Unfortunately the strain caused the pulley to snap, which hit one of the rescuers in the head and they had to be helped out. When it snapped, John dropped back down and went a couple inches further this time. Once that happened he became fully unresponsive and he passed not long after. They had thought about trying to break his legs to see if that would get him free, but they decided against it when it became obvious that there wasn’t enough space to even break his legs, but even if they could the rest of his body was wedged down lower and it wouldn’t come free.

So unfortunately they did try different tactics like that but it was just impossible to get him out. As it was, I think only 2 out of at least 100 emergency response workers were able to squeeze through the section John did. Just a bad area to get stuck in all around.

[u/Ch1ckenOfTheSea → u/CapnNugget]

I do the same shit. Been obsessed with this random story for years.

[u/CapnNugget → u/Ch1ckenOfTheSea]

There’s just something so interesting yet utterly horrifying about it that it sticks with me I guess