Dangerous psychology- Diving beyond one's training

[SWAMPY459]

Now to set the record straight,... No, I am not perfect. Yes, I did 1 time go beyond my training by entering into Vortex's cave. I got enormously lucky & survived. The good point is, it rattled me enough to seek the proper training, to go further safely.

So who is more reckless and has more bravado? someone who decides to try it in the middle of a dive, or the person who has the idea in the middle of a dive, then goes home and pulls up maps and charts, watches videos of others diving that cave, and posts on forums to get the "lay of the land" from those who have been before... THEN, with information in hand makes a decision whether or not to do the act?

 

[TMHeimer]

tstormdiver, Very good question. Lots of detailed hypotheses. I think the simple answer is they are just dumb. I suppose for some it could be a bravado thing, but why?-- It's scuba diving, not seeing if you can swim the English Channel with only 2 weeks training.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

IMO both are equally nuts. Dead is dead. Not knowing enough to get proper training for something that kills divers every year or thinking it won't happen to me makes no difference to the Reaper if it's in the middle of a dive or after one has "researched" the dive. What is more dangerous, deciding to do brain surgery in the middle of a CPR class or waiting til after one has looked it up on the internet and watched a few episodes of ER? Either is likely to end up badly.

Others have already said, videos, maps, charts, and "e learning" via Scubaboard are no substitute for actual cave training. I think that the biggest mistake is asking the question on Scubaboard. Too many purely recreational divers and amateurs. The question really needs to be asked over on The Deco Stop. That's where straight answers will come from for something like this.

 

[dbulmer]

Swampy

The difference is how prepared you are to heed the warnings that have been given to you by people who understand the risks involved in that dive. For a large part of the thread you came across as someone who did not appear to want to listen to the advice given and furthermore your reaction to some of the warnings appeared very hostile and ungracious.

Jim while I understand your point the deco stop is no guarantee of good info either. It's better to have a larger number of naysayers here than hear the same advice albeit in more colourful language from a smaller group.

 

[avengerki]

Sure I like to push the limits but it is limits of my comfort zone. I remember some medical training I received where I was shown how to perform a tracheotomy once and never performed it does that mean that tomorrow at lunch when I see a choking person and I can't clear the object that I am going to bust out a knife and perform a tracheotomy, HECK NO!!! Maybe if I was out hiking with a buddy and he suddenly had a swelled up throat and couldn't breath and no where near a timely rescue I might try it but only as a last resort, and just to clarify the procedure is alot more complicated than tv shows make it out to be if not done right the person could have a lot of other issues.

I would like to get into cave diving but I know that I won't even try it until I get additional training from prior experience in non-flooded caves. It really sucks being in one of the small passageway on your belly following someone and they suddenly get stuck and can't move and are freaking out, I would hate to think of the same situation while in scuba and not have the proper training to handle the situation.

Alot of times for me when thinking of doing something outside of my comfort level or training(Primarily on land) I will have a lot of prior internal debates about it weighing risks versus rewards, sometimes I will do it and other times I will put it off until after I get the proper training and/or gear. I have jumped over 40 feet off a cliff into water and it was really exciting and wanted to do it again so I started the climb up again and almost fell backwards that same distance onto dry ground the only thing that saved me was a person right behind me that was able to put an arm on my back to steady me, I had looked at the climb as a moderate free climb which was true when the path was dry but got much worse with the path being wet and when I did get to the top to do the jump again I almost wound up colliding in mid air with a person(intoxicated) that was diving from a lower location and didn't look up or pay attention to my warning that I was jumping from higher up I missed him by about 6 inches and then almost had him land on top of me in the water.

I have also jumped down a tunnel 30+ feet into water where I very easily could of knocked myself out by jumping to far out or even not far enough, what went through my head before that was thinking this will we be really fun and really dangerous but there is 2 people I trust who I know are medically trained one at the bottom area and another up top and also after watching about 10 other people do it and mentally keeping track of what they did. I only did that once and consider myself really lucky I didn't injure myself or worse.

With diving it just adds so much more risk to a task if you haven't had the training for the more advanced dive types that I personally would prefer to get the training first before attempting. I may push the boundaries a little but only after I have many more dives than I currently have and then only if it was slow steps building to something which would still probably end with me getting the training. I have had to many experiences in the past where I do it and then look back and go wow I'm an idiot.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Training decreases the likelihood of you dying or being injured.

I'd tweak that and say experience coupled with reflection on the experience decreases the chances of you making a mistake (or a series of them) that results in death/injury. Training is a much safer way of gaining that experience than the earliest divers did: read up, suit up, and go see what happens. But the idea that your diving is necessarily crossing some magical danger threshold if you're not taking a specific formal course and receiving a particular set of c-cards before doing X dive is, frankly, bull.

Training, especially the most useful training in the most demanding areas of diving, does not eliminate the risks that come with gaining experience. People die during training, and you can too. Any of us can die on any dive, regardless of training, c-cards, or experience, and while quantifying the difference in risk between the two ends of the spectrum (totally new diver without any of the right gear or training; fit, experienced diver with all the right gear and training) is easy enough it's still far from objective. Quantifying the difference in risk between a newly certified tech diver and someone who's read everything they could get their hands on, invested in the right gear and learned how to use it, and gained experience by gradually doing simpler versions of the more advanced dives they're interested in... yeah, good luck with that distinction. There are many non-obvious things one needs to know cold, and many techniques that need to be second nature, in order to do certain dives while being only as at-risk as possible in such an inherently life-threatening situation. How people pick those up is up to them, IMO, but at the very least you have to be constantly aware of the consequences of what you're doing.

Every time any of us go under the water, we might not come back up (maybe the gear and corpse will)... I think people need to really believe and understand that and then do whatever they need to do in their own mind to protect themselves. For some, that means nothing more than slapping on an 80 while for others it means never diving at all. Everyone else is somewhere in between, and I find the haughty 'I'm special and on one side of the risk line because of my [c-card; instructor; agency; specific course; number of dives]' attitude to be amusing at best.

[EDIT] I see this is inexplicably in the Basic Scuba Discussions section, so I want to clarify for anyone reading this and thinking it's a justification for going your own way and ignoring all the people warning you off: I don't care what happens to you because of your choices.

My most cherished belief is that respecting others means letting them make their own mistakes, no matter the consequences. Everyone else in here is, as far as I can tell and excepting a few holier than thou sorts, warning you because they actually care about what happens to you. Just something to keep in mind.[/EDIT]

 

[FinnMom]

I think it's largely the thrill and excitement of the moment and how you let it cloud your judgement.
Most people are optimists. We can be really good at believing what we want to believe, or at justifying what we really, really want do in the heat of a moment. Experience makes it a lot easier to have imulse control, to better appreciate the magnitude of the consequences of catching that 1 in 2,000 chance that your guardian angel will be looking the wrong way at a critical moment.

 

[tstormdiver]

So who is more reckless and has more bravado? someone who decides to try it in the middle of a dive, or the person who has the idea in the middle of a dive, then goes home and pulls up maps and charts, watches videos of others diving that cave, and posts on forums to get the "lay of the land" from those who have been before... THEN, with information in hand makes a decision whether or not to do the act?

I did not do it "in the middle of a dive", SWAMPY459. I went with someone (also untrained) who had been there several times. Yes, still stupid. I'll readily admit it. Big difference is I LEARNED from my mistake very quickly & am not afraid to say what I did was stupid. Born out of ignorance, curiosity & peer pressure. Does that make it right? No certainly not. The best I can to with my mistake is to warn those like you that it CAN & WILL HAPPEN to you. It almost did me. Only by the grace of God (or whatever you believe in) did I survive. I truly wish someone had talk to me,... warned me before I made the incredibly poor decision to go. When I got back, my instructor, who is also a cave & technical diving instructor, lit into me & ripped me a new one. I deserved it, no doubt. I knew I was wrong my OW training should have been enough. You have no idea how much I wish my instructor had talked to me about this before hand, because I know there is no way I would have gone anywhere near that cave. To this day, that cave still gives me the creeps. I will still will not go near it, even being full cave trained now. I did not do my OW training with my current instructor & had only recently joined his operation as a dive master before the incident. He nearly let me go after that, but after a very long & serious talk about my judgement on the situation, he granted me another chance & offered to train me to cave dive safely. It took me 2 yrs & 5 attempts to pass his course. It was worse than any military boot camp.Yes, it was tough, but he was tough on me to make sure I had the good judgement to survive. As soon as I emerged from Vortex, I knew instantly how closely I came to death. I came out of that cave with less than 300 psi in my cylinders & my buddy, who had been in there many times, had abandoned me. I only had 10 min at most with what I had. Keep this in mind: NO AMOUNT OF OPEN WATER DIVING & TRAINING WILL PREPARE YOU FOR DIVING IN AN OVERHEAD ENVIRONMENT. Not even with all the videos, maps or verbal clues in the world.

How many divers (cave trained & otherwise) have now warned you it is not a good idea to pursue this dive without training? How many videos & thread track backs have been put into your thread? How many offers for help have you been given? My God man! People are trying to keep you alive. You have tons of advice & information to go on, what else do you need? I had only my OW training before my incident.

 

[tye1138]

Humans are very curious and exploratory beings. Doing things without thinking of the consequences is built into our DNA, its the very nature of who we are as a species.

There is nothing wrong with being curious and pushing ones limits, if you are prepared for the consequences if things go wrong. The issue is, most people don't understand the consequences and are completely unprepared. Being prepared allows us to be who we want to be, we can do what we want to do.

As an instructor, my job isn't to teach people, it is to prepare them for what lies ahead. We explain the pro's and con's of every type of diving and how to safely deal with each situation that might arise. From then on out, its the job of each one of us to understand and identify potential bad decisions before they happen.

The problem with SCUBA diving comes from, peer pressure, pre-planing troubles and the buddy system.

You're nervous about doing something, but your buddy talks you into it.
You're underwater and your buddy does something you're not prepared to do, but you want to stay with them for safety concerns.
You're with a group of people who talk you into doing something you've never done before.

In my opinion, the buddy system plays a role in some of these failures. Without the buddy system, when people are properly prepared to take care of themselves, they can make their own decision about what to do underwater. When diving with other people who are solo divers, there is no need to feel forced into doing something unfamiliar. If you wanna just chill out and do your own dive, you are prepared with the right gear and mentality. Obviously education is the key and good instruction SHOULD prepare you for pretty much anything you will run into underwater.

Most of the world's diving, isn't related to caves, so it is a very specific situation with its own dangers of which aren't seen to the naked eye.

 

[divad]

How long do you expect to stay alive and why are you "trying to keep people alive?" There won't be any food.