this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
322 points (98.5% liked)
AnarchyChess
6252 readers
1 users here now
Holy hell
Other chess communities:
!Chess@lemmy.ml
!chessbeginners@sh.itjust.works
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
First time I heard about it a few years ago I couldn't stop thinking about it for like a week. It was his fault, he used very bad judgement, but nobody deserves to die in such a horrible way.
I think about his two kids and wife as well, since I have a family of my own. Poor wife also endures online harassment apparently, since she remarried. So cruel.
If it's any consolation, they managed to get an IV in his leg and got him some anxiety and pain meds to make it a little easier.
If they got to him before he died, why couldn't they pull him out?
This was his situation.
There wasn't enough room to pull him out, even with pulleys. IIRC, he died within about 36 hours so there wasn't enough time to drill him out or something like that.
Assuming a lack of preexisting issues (which I feel safe assuming because a spelunker is probably either suicidal or fairly healthy), what would cause one to die in 36 hours? I recently referenced this in another comment, but I learned that one can survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, or three weeks without food. 36 hours doesn't align with any of that.
The body is very good at keeping blood from pooling in your legs. Your muscles do a very good job of keeping fluid from building up. It's very bad at keeping the blood out of your upper half, because it normally relies on gravity.
When you're upside down for that long, there's a number of things that happen. Your organs squeeze your lungs, making it harder to breathe. Your brain starts to swell. And your heart can't keep up with the demand to pump fluid out of the chest and head and back into your legs, and eventually fails.
Guy actually lasted a really long time. Heart failure usually happens in less than a day of being upside down.