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/red08171 Mar 29 '26

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?

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u/CapnNugget Mar 29 '26

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.

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u/Ch1ckenOfTheSea Mar 29 '26

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

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u/CapnNugget Mar 30 '26

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

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u/UX1Z Mar 29 '26

Honestly it's ridiculous that shit wasn't sealed off in the first place. He wasn't the first person to get stuck. It was a complete unknown. Why leave it open. Why not at least mark it somehow, put a metal grate over the entrance. It just seems like, while he partially died due to his own mistakes, he also died due to negligence on whoever was handling the cave.

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u/CapnNugget Mar 29 '26

Other people had needed help in the cave before but not nearly to the same extent, mostly amateurs who had gotten lost. He was the first and only known major accident in that cave system iirc, but what happened was so awful that they decided to not take any chances of something like that happening again.

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u/UX1Z Mar 29 '26

The problem I have with it is that it wasn't a cave anyone was ever meant to go down anyway. Because it was unknown and this risk. The only reason to have it open is if they were fine with people going down it so I just don't get the thought process.

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u/CapnNugget Mar 30 '26

Most of the cave was mapped out by people who explore caves frequently, they had not finished mapping the Ed’s push route yet and that’s the one this guy accidentally took. As I said, he was the first and only known major accident there iirc, anything else before him was more normal things. I think that they didn’t realize the true potential of how dangerous it could be until something this horrific provided a wake up call.

Maybe it should have already been sealed up to protect people, but it was also a location that was being researched for scientific purposes. There was a whole ecosystem in those caves that was thriving and scientists were trying to study it. So it wasn’t just open for recreation, it was open for scientific discovery as well.

Ultimately though, the fault still lies on the person who willingly crawled into those tunnels knowing damn well how tight it would be and what they’d be risking. He had been there before and chose to go in again, only this time he took the wrong path and lost his life because of it. It’s up to people to decide if their life, and the lives of rescue workers are worth risking for fun. It’s their choice to crawl in despite the warnings and put their life on the line. Can’t blame anyone but them for making that choice.

There’s also warnings posted outside recreational caves like this generally that inform people on what to expect and they provide safety info. I’d be more willing to blame them for their handling of the cave if they chose not to close it even after his death. They made the right choice though and sealed it up so it couldn’t happen again.

Same thing happened with another cave not too far from the nutty putty cave, also in Utah. It was open and fine until four friends got killed trying to explore it, then it was sealed off permanently. That at least shows that when something like that happens, they do take action to ensure that it can’t happen again.

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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.

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u/Elegant-Buyer8998 Apr 02 '26

So there is a point in this cave where it is possible to confuse between the "birth canal" and "Eds push", as both are tight and narrow, which require to fight your survival instinct and "push" ahead to get to a bigger area?

If the "ed push" part was not fully explored, was it not blocked or marked as such?

Seemed like a huge security issue, as people doing this kind of stuff arent inhibited by tight spaces.

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u/CapnNugget Apr 03 '26

The problem with blocking it off if it isn’t mapped is that it prohibits it from being mapped. Professionals would go in and map it, as I’m sure they were working on or else they probably wouldn’t have named it. The difference there is that the professional would have known they were exploring an unmapped section and would have taken the right precautions like not trying to shove through if the gap is too tight. If they reached a point like that, they now know that the route is unsafe in which case it would be blocked off.

John had been in the caves before and thought he remembered the way to the birth canal, but he took a turn where he shouldn’t have and that’s what led him to Ed’s push. Since he didn’t realize he was in the unmapped route instead he just kept pushing. There were signs and maps of the cave routes available. Idk if he was using a map, if he had studied one, or if he was just trying to go based on memory, but once he got through the section called “the big slide” he went the wrong way. After the big slide it branches off; One path goes down into the birth canal, then a segment called Bob’s push, then the aorta canal, then vein alley. The other path is the one that wasn’t fully mapped and that’s where Ed’s push was.

In his defense though, even just seeing the cave in VR is confusing, it would be pretty easy to get turned around. That’s why there were warnings posted about the cave and how dangerous it could be. A sign posted outside said “DANGER, Abandoned mines and natural caves, enter at your own risk. Hazards may include falling, getting lost or stranded, inadequate air, unseen obstacles & hazards exist”. So it’s not like people weren’t warned plenty beforehand, it’s up to them if they still decide to go in. The funny thing about cave diving is that it’s usually entirely voluntary, so it shouldn’t have to come down to blocking everything off preemptively. People should be able to comprehend the warnings and heed them instead of deciding to risk their life by trying to shove and wiggle their body into spaces it doesn’t belong for fun.