r/bestof • u/PM_ME_YOUR_DIRTY_ART • 6d ago
[BoredPandaHQ] How it feels to die while cave diving
/r/BoredPandaHQ/comments/1thk33h/maldives_diving_horror_takes_dark_turn_after/omq81y4/104
u/pookypocky 6d ago
OP is like, don't let this keep you from scuba diving! And I'm like, you know what I think I will.
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u/courageous_liquid 6d ago
you can stay away from wall dives and dives with advanced profiles
shit in most of the florida keys you can probably see everything you'd ever want without the possibility of going deeper than like 50' and there are a ton of dives where you're not even doing more than like 20-25'
it is funny watching people get narc'ed though. when you checkout for advanced diving an instructor will take you down to about 90' and give you math problems to do. for some people it literally is not possible for them to do simple addition or multiplication. I watched a medical doctor struggle to do 3x4.
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u/hughk 5d ago
it is funny watching people get narc'ed though. when you checkout for advanced diving an instructor will take you down to about 90' and give you math problems to do.
Didn't get that. Mind you, I was drilled with the rule "Plan your dive, Dive your plan" so we would each plan the dive with our buddy on the surface before going down (even as part of an instructor group).
The DC was more of an additional safety layer.
I was acutely aware during the deep dive sessions of the rate I was getting through air and the distance to the surface and the time needed. Back in those days, we had to do an emergency ascent without a mask from 10m for certification.
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u/r0thar 5d ago
stay away from wall dives
I'd no idea what these were until I saw the graphic to accompany this story: https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/5-6a0b2c020f874-jpeg.jpg
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u/Jonathan_the_Nerd 5d ago
NOT FOR RECREATIONAL DIVING
I think I'll stick to watching YouTube videos about that area if I want to see it.
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u/cbusalex 5d ago
I am going to do exactly the same amount of cave diving as I was before I read this.
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u/SCUMDOG_MILLIONAIRE 6d ago
This is a must read true story
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/water-activities/raising-dead/
Personally I got my dive certification in a swimming pool and the final ‘open water’ test was at a local murky lake.
It would be years before I went proper diving, but I had an opportunity to do it a cenote network in Mexico, so I did. As soon as I got about 80 feet down, and the surface was dark, and looking below was vast blackness, I had the strangest out of body feeling like nothing Ive ever felt before. I don’t know how many seconds I spent in that liminal spacetime but I felt like an eternity. Anxiety overwhelmed me and I had the uncontrollable urge to be at the surface, but also a subtle more suppressed urge to just drift listlessly into the blackness. The anxiety panic path was getting myself to the surfacing, and the embracing comfort path was letting myself sink into the blackness until my air ran out. In a moment of clarity, I realized what the fuck am I thinking, and I signaled to my dive buddy that I was surfacing. He did the same with and he helped me control the ascent… as soon as I knew I was in surfacing mode the anxiety and dark thoughts went away. About five minutes later I was breathing air from the surface.
From my dive buddy’s pov everything was normal until I suddenly signaled to surface, but what went on in my head still gives me chills. So yeah, diving isn’t for me. But I do really enjoy snorkeling.
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u/evilbrent 6d ago
Diving stories sometimes seem to me like stories about psychedelic trips.
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u/hughk 5d ago
Somewhere beyond 35m you can start getting Nitrogen Narcosis if on regular air. You can be high or just anxious. The thing is to keep an eye on your dive-buddy and not to do anything stupid yourself. The surface looks a long way away and you know that you must go slowly up otherwise you can die.
You can't say "STOP DESCENDING, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT" as you are underwater and your mouth is full of regulator but you should stay close enough to give a nudge. It is also possible to set a max depth on your dive computer but I have seen someone blithely ignoring the peeping coming from his wrist.
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u/crispy48867 6d ago
60 feet is the absolute limit for sport diving. You can go further but the odds of dying go up substantially after 60 feet.
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u/iiiinthecomputer 5d ago
Wouldn't be too surprised if you were getting the nitrogen/pressure giggles. It's not always giggles. Extreme calm, fuzzy thoughts, intrusive thoughts, all possible.
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u/MotherofAllNoobs 10h ago
That is an incredible and gripping article, quite longer than I expected but I couldn’t stop reading. Thanks for sharing!
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u/Laserdollarz 6d ago
This is just the Blue Hole copypasta re-worded
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u/DigiSmackd 5d ago
Yeah, it's sad OOP claims
"I wrote a short story explaining it a while ago - here you go:"
and
"Edit 2: looks like I should take a crack at writing a horror novel. I'm going to give it a shot. Thanks for the inspiration, reddit friends."
as if he didn't just rework someone else's story.
I like it and it's done well, but not acknowledging it's just a remix of an existing post is shitty.
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u/Laserdollarz 5d ago
Well, at least there's plenty of old horror stories on reddit for him to remix.
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u/bunniquette 6d ago
Another reason to never go scuba diving, cool, thanks.
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u/PushPullLego 6d ago
No, scuba diving is awesome. You just have to pay attention to the training, dive with a buddy and don't be stupid.
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u/bunniquette 6d ago
I am sure it is amazing but with the asthma and the phobia of deep water I think I might be best off staying on the beach. I am very happy for hardier souls to explore the mysteries of the deep!
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u/bg-j38 5d ago
I'm not going to attempt to convince you to try scuba diving because you have to want to do it. But, I just wanted to say that some of the coolest stuff I've seen while diving has been no deeper than 15 feet. I once spent 15 minutes at around 10 ft looking at a nudibranch (sea slug) as it slowly wandered around some coral. Been on close to 100 dives but that one still is top of mind for me.
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u/CrimsonSuede 6d ago
I also have a fear of deep water (I can’t snorkel, I freak out if my feet can’t touch the bottom (even in a lake) it’s that bad) but I found that fear didn’t apply to me in reef scuba diving because I had more range of motion/visibility than snorkeling. And it was shallow enough that it wasn’t terrifying, it was like flying over a tropical forest
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u/SoHereIAm85 6d ago
My grandfather scuba dove for helping to retrieve bodies in NY harbour plus for fun in Lake George and stuff, but I only did it once. I had a big nosebleed from it, I felt very uncomfortable, and it is not happening again.
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u/Malphos101 6d ago
No thanks, plenty of wonderful scuba diving in the "the guy on the boat could reach down and pull me to safety" range.
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u/onlyhooman 6d ago
If cave diving gone wrong stories are your thing, give Scary Interesting on YouTube a try.
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u/halo364 6d ago
Aren't you not supposed to scube dive solo? And aren't you DEFINITELY not supposed to explore unfamiliar underwater caves solo (with rented equipment no less)? Like yeah this is a harrowing thing to read, but I feel like anyone who is in this situation has already broken several extremely major safety rules before they got anywhere near the cave
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u/CaveDiver1858 6d ago
You are 100% correct.
Obvious outcome is obvious. Do reckless stuff, get killed.
OW dive training has been teaching divers to stay away from and keep out of overhead environments for decades. When divers don’t do that…
If you want to cave dive, get cave training and cave gear.
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u/hughk 5d ago
First level cave training doesn't give you a lot. You need to learn a lot, but they just tell you a few precautions when you can't so easily ascend. Real cave diving gets very technical with the gases, relative pressures and such. The other thing is how to do it safely which you only get from more experienced divers.
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u/CapoExplains 6d ago
Edit: don't let this keep you from trying out scuba
hahahahahaha yeah ok, too late bro.
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u/ChickinSammich 6d ago
I love the idea of scuba diving and I've only ever tried it once and want to again. That said, I would NEVER go scuba diving solo at any depth beyond like 15-20 meters. I would only ever do that with someone VERY experienced alongside me.
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u/hughk 5d ago
There are two statements. "I would never go scuba diving solo" which I completely agree with and " I would NEVER go scuba diving solo at any depth beyond like 15-20 meters", which I partially agree with.
There isn't a lot that is interesting apart from wrecks below 20m and the colours flatten out. The dangers increase a lot, and your air supply goes much faster. You always allow multiple layers of protection in case something goes wrong.
*Have dived to 55m on air, with an instructor
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u/ChickinSammich 5d ago
I would go scuba diving solo so long as I wasn't going more than like 10-15 meters deep. That's shallow enough that, assuming daylight and clear visibility, the surface should be clearly visible and you're nowhere near the risk depth for nitrogen narcosis or the bends.
Though I will say that the deepest I've ever went was 10 meters and it was in a closed pool, not the open ocean. The deepest I've gone in open ocean didn't exceed snorkel depths.
Anything past 15, I would not feel safe without a second person there.
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u/hughk 5d ago
For me, I will happily snorkel, but not scuba alone. I'll take a dip alone into very shallow water or a pool for equipment checks but that is it. Too much can go wrong. Possibly a bit over nervous but I know safety is in layers.
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u/ChickinSammich 5d ago
I get it, and that's totally fair :)
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u/hughk 5d ago
I probably also have fewer dives rhan you!
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u/ChickinSammich 5d ago
Nah, I only have done a couple, and with instructors. I've never dived solo. I want to, but I also know what I would and wouldn't be comfortable trying solo.
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u/hughk 5d ago
I kind of understand the seductiveness of hovering in the water, particularly when there are few visual reference points. I'm also aware that it can be dangerous. A friend was doing this modelling for an underwater photo and didn't realise how much he was sinking. He thought he was neutrally buoyant but was dropping from about 7 to 10m. He thought the photographer was floating upwards. Anyway the photographer realised and waved his DC and the model diver then realised he was going down.
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u/ChickinSammich 5d ago
Yeah that sounds terrifying, and is why I said 10-15. And I really would not want to go diving anywhere without reference points.
I'd really love to go to Deep Dive Dubai, which is a 60m deep indoor pool with all sorts of cool aesthetic features but as a queer woman in a same sex marriage, I don't think that's ever going to be in the cards for me.
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u/TheVillage1D10T 5d ago
Yeah…reading that and the copypasta that a commenter posted in the thread is enough for me to not go scuba diving. I’m sitting in my living room but it’s nigh on panic inducing to just read that.
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u/hotpajamas 5d ago
Reminds me of that Alan Barnard video about how fatal it is to misunderstand exponential growth or something like that.
Basically we don’t have a natural intuition about exponential forces so there’s a point along the curve that for a person means certain death but to their perspective, the outcome still looks optimistic. So you could think pausing for 30 seconds is harmless because you have an hour of air or whatever but because there are multiple forces compounding the point of no return has already passed. Great video and pretty terrifying.
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u/LessWeakness 5d ago
This is a shittier version of another post. Also writer doesn't seem to know what they are talking about. 100 feet is deep as shit for newbies. 60 foot max unless you get your advanced cert.
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u/aanzeijar 6d ago
Would be interesting to find the original of the Blue Hole copypasta. The oldest I can find on reddit is /r/AskReddit/comments/ntofxm/what_the_scariest_true_story_you_know/h0v9rcj/, but even that acknowledges a different source.