I’ve probably spent more time underground than you probably have sitting in college classes so we will have to agree to disagree.
Again. The cave wasn’t the danger. Being locked up somewhere is what was the danger.
Heck, we/I LOST a person on a paddling trip. One would not even think such a thing possible but it happened.
So, some college student(s) fucked up. What do YOU think should happen to them?
nm
60 hours went by before he was freed. He had no water and no food and was restrained against his will for more than 2 days because of their negligence. He missed classes and/or work for more than 2 days. Luckily it appears he didn’t need daily medication, tho.
What do you think should happen to them, billfish?
What should happen to anybody that forgets something? Where something REALLLY bad could have happened but nothing actually DID?
You’ve never done that and never could right?
So what do you think should happen to them?
ETA: So you don’t think anything “really bad” happened here?
Nothing really. I’d bet good money everybody involved in this ( and a shitload of observing third parties) has learned a lesson.
Do people forget /fuck up on purpose?
What else is there to do?
Who controls access to the cave? And what qualifications/credentials must an individual requesting access produce in order to get their mitts on the key?
What should happen, imho, is that whoever held such credentials should be required to repeat whatever training/certification process exists before they are permitted unsupervised access again.
Getting stuck in a cave builds character through delayed grottofication.
It’s very common for caves to be locked up (at least in the US) for various, sometimes overlapping reasons:
[ul]
[li]Owners of private land with cave entrances may want to discourage people from trespassing.[/li][li]The lock may keep people out of danger - caves can have long, steep drops or tight places where people can get stuck. Inexperienced people unfamiliar with the dangers of caving can easily get hurt. [/li][li]Caves are precious natural resources - some have rare rock formations, some are home to endangered species, some contain artifacts from indigenous peoples. People who don’t know or don’t care can cause all kinds of harm.[/li][/ul]
And in addition, he spent most of this time in fear of a slow and painful death.
Show me a cave not hard to find or not hard to get to near any decent sized human population…and I’ll show you what USED to be a thing of beauty that is now just a faint echo of what it once was.
Unless it’s a completely solid door, that won’t work; somebody could just use a reach-extending tool to get the key and let themselves in.
Easy enough solved by putting it far enough from the gate/out of site and fixing it to the wall with a carabineer or just putting it in a box that closes with a latch.
Now we’re getting somewhere. I’d thought of your idea above, but thought of the same issue. Adding a box that closes with a latch makes it non-trivial to get the key.
At some point, it’ll be hard enough that someone determined to get in would just break down the gate rather than go to the trouble of getting the key. So it doesn’t have to be perfect. Especially if the gate is just supposed to limit liability and make it their own fault if they go in and get hurt.
I can’t tell if that was a joke or if you really think that first, someone could do that and second, that such a person might find himself or herself at the door to this cave with the appropriate tools.
Zo! Has there been any follow-up in the news about this? I want to read about the shitstorm the day after!
Didn’t anyone back in town notice that he was missing?
A group of 12 or 13 is just not that big. I wonder if maybe he was extremely unpopular for some reason.
I recommend everyone read this article. He was a beginner who almost got lost in the cave before getting locked in.
Also, I like that a bunch of colleges kids decided that after spending 60 hours without food and adequate water, he was cool not going to the hospital.
College freshman in September. Probably not unpopular, just hasn’t settled in with a group of friends yet - few people have two weeks into college. His roommate probably thought he found a girlfriend (or boyfriend) - and they might not be close enough to care.
My freshman year was LONG ago, but it was at least two weeks before I had friends I saw with enough regularity that they’d have worried if I disappeared for a few days. For a few weeks you a a stranger among strangers - going to dinner with some kid from your floor that you seem to have something in common with, and meeting up with that kid from orientation that you seemed to hit it off with, and hoping that your English class forms a study group because there seem to be cool people in that class.
So, he broke from one group to join another and got lost in the process. The front group didn’t know he was trying to catch up, and the trailing group didn’t know he didn’t find the front group.
They no doubt came in a few separate vehicles and just didn’t realize he was missing. It shouldn’t happen, and they didn’t follow protocol, but I can at least understand it all now.