This kind of melodramatic hyperbole is why it's difficult to have productive discussions about topics like this. For the most part - and I mean a really really large part - diving is safe and in fact quite easy to make almost perfectly safe, and it's almost unheard of (sure, there are exceptions that prove the rule) for anyone to die from putting their heads just inside a cave. Or even their whole body. Even by several body lengths.
... so where's the "line" at which it's not safe anymore. There are caves ... I've been in a few ... where you can be only "several body lengths" from the entrance, and with one errant fin kick so silt up the bottom that you can't see your hand in front of you. Now what do you do? Do you know which way is out? Did you bother to run a line, or simply rely on the fact that you could see the entrance? It's incredibly easy once the silt's stirred up to get yourself so turned around you end up going deeper into the cave, thinking that's the way out ... or you end up in that side passage right near the entrance that takes you into a completely unfamiliar part of the cave. Maybe you find your way out before you drain your tank. Or maybe you get lucky ... like that gal in Florida ... and someone who knows what they're doing finds you and helps you out. But the more likely scenario is that you'll run out of air long before either of those two events occur ... and in a few hours or a couple days, somebody finds your body and risks their own lives to bring it out so your family has something to grieve over.
That's not "melodramatic hyperbole" ... it happens all too often, as several folks on here with actual cave experience can tell you (though it's obvious you're not of a mind to listen).
If you love to harp on the dangers, the onus should be on you to specify the dimensions under which the way YOU dive is dangerous, or what exact aspects you see to have introduced danger. "Underwater" or "overhead" just doesn't express it.
I solo dive. Sometimes I do solo dives in rather deep or remote places, where I incur deco obligations, and/or where help is many hours away. Occasionally I do it in places where if something bad happened, there's no one even around who would know I was missing. Some people would call those kinds of risks dangerous. And if I were not appropriately trained, experienced, and equipped (both physically and mentally), the risks would certainly be beyond what a reasonable person would call acceptable. But having been trained, having experienced the potential hazards, carrying redundancies, having maintained a physical and mental state that enables me to manage the potential hazards reduces the risks to an acceptable level. I am more cautious in terms of paying attention to what's going on around me. I'll be quicker than usual to pull the plug on the dive if something doesn't "feel" right. I'm put more effort into planning and preparation, and into mentally assessing the risks as the dive progresses. Because, at all levels, that's what a responsible diver does. That same dive, performed by someone who is unaware of the risks, hasn't been properly trained, or even by someone who has overestimated their ability to manage the risks, would amount to an interview with Darwin.
IMO the kind of click-bait FUD spamming that started this post is of limited value and may be detrimental overall.
... detrimental in what way? The value someone gets out of such information is going to depend on the individual.
But most of the time, one can indeed just leave the situation.
See above ... people have died just a few feet inside of an overhead, both in caves and wrecks. All it takes is losing your bearings. If you don't have a line running to a place that provides access to the surface, and you don't have the ability to use that line for its intended purpose, then it might surprise you at how little distance it takes to remove your option to "just leave" ....
Someone earlier made this same odd assertion regarding walking into a cave seeming just like swimming into one. Being underwater imposes it's own sense of alien environment and danger, I just don't buy that people are not more cautious about doing things underwater. Fear of drowning is a powerful motivator, and hard to quell for many.
It depends on the individual. Most folks have a reasonable sense of survival. Not all do ... I've seen people do some surprisingly stupid things underwater, even on simple open water dives. I've seen people swim inside a wreck without a light, into a cave without a line, and attempt stupidly deep dives on a single AL80, without even a thought of whether or not they had enough gas in the tank to make it. Most of the time nothing goes wrong, and they come out of it just fine ... without even a clue of the risks they were taking. But all it takes is for one single thing to go wrong and their margins are so thin that they end up dead. Then we all get to hear some grieving soul refrain that we should "wait for all the facts" before we talk about what happened, when the only pertinent fact is that they took risks without proper assessment or preparation, and it bit 'em in the arse.
And for good reason. The outcomes in those sports are obviously going to be of a more binary nature with respect to injury and death than rec scuba. This would be more akin to going on a bicycling forum and constantly being harangued about the dangers.
After seeing some of the stupid things people do on bicycles, maybe it would be useful if that happened more often.
I wholeheartedly agree that taking charge of your own safety is no one else's responsibility, and that as a corollary entrusting your life to a pro should be done with a great degree of informed skepticism. Yet exactly what is flogged here day in and day out is to seek out professionals, just make sure it's a good one.
If the point is that on the one hand you need more training *from a professional*, this cert and that cert *from a professional*, mentoring and guidance *from a professional* - and that is pretty much the ONLY way advancement is presented by the professionals on this board, and on the other "oh, don't forget, taking a professional's advice will get you killed", the whole concept and messaging behind this self-policing needs reworking. The professionals part I mean. Maybe the irony wasn't so obvious as I thought.
Taking training *from a professional* is a very different thing than blindly following a *professional* into an overhead environment and simply trusting that they know what they're doing. The former occurs under very specific, controlled circumstances, by someone who has experience in the environment they're taking you into, and precisely for the purpose of teaching you how to recognize and mitigate the risks. The latter is a tour guide, being paid to show you a good time. As was the case in Italy, they often have little more ... or in some cases less ... experience in that environment than you do. They are not being regulated by any agency in terms of what they can and cannot do. You haven't vetted them ... as you (hopefully) have with your instructor. The risks you are taking in those two circumstances are not even close to being comparable. The fact that you'd even make that argument is a clear indication that you have no clue what you're talking about.
Have you ever even taken a tech class? I'm beginning to think not.
Also, skydiving and rock climbing are terrible analogies to rec scuba.
Actually they're good analogies in this respect ... in all of them you're putting yourself into an environment which is well beyond your everyday experience, and which can kill you quick if you haven't properly prepared to manage the risks. I realize you think that simple reef dives are inherently safe ... but I know of plenty of fatalities that have occurred in relatively shallow, benign water. Many of them have been rather extensively talked about right here on ScubaBoard in our A&I forum. Some of them involved former members ... some of whom were rather well known and experienced divers when those accidents occurred. The risks are there, always ... and all it takes, regardless of your skill and experience ... is to take them too lightly ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
