Thursday, May 20, 2010

50+ Ways to Die in a Cave

Snakes, why is it always snakes? Hey, that's no. 44!
To be precise, it's 52 Ways to Die in a Cave by author James M. Tabor.  Personal favorites:

30. Animals eat rope (easy, just cover the rope in poison!)
29. Chemical contamination of rope (doh!)
32. Hair caught in rappel rack (ow.)
42. Asphyxiation by methane, carbon dioxide, blast fumes, etc. (Death by blast fumes! \m/ )
45. Struck by lightning while in cave stream (really? that can happen?)
27. Rappel into pit without ascent gear (this is a metaphor for a lot of things actually)
18. Rope cut by falling rock (that's just so unfair)

...and #52 (drum roll, please!)....

Stuck in crevice!  (how perfectly banal)

And then there's a disturbingly great amount of ways to die by whatever crappy gear you've brought along that failed to secure/protect you. Great.

Via Boing Boing.

3 comments:

Aaron E. Steele said...

I'm curious about the Bill Wallace book, looks like one of those fictionalized true-story adventure books!

ze bulette said...

re: #52, are you familiar with the story of Aron Ralston?

Jay said...

Yes, unfortunately.