Rovic
I find this post and its title "to ALL newbies" somewhat irresponsible. Sure, there are some sorts of diving that incur smaller margins for error - tech diving and cave diving specifically being 2 examples - however to suggest that these risks need to be considered at entry level is ridiculous. New divers are taken through several recreational courses and must provide proof of relevant specialty course completion (eg Deep, Nitrox, Cavern etc) at recreational level, and in many cases a minimum number of logged dives before they are allowed to embark on any kind of technical courses such as cave diving. Yes, there are increased risks involved with cave diving. There are risks involved in every type of diving. That's why there are so many safety checks, drills, skills, backup systems, redundancy planning and academic coursework etc (I could go on, but you get the idea) to complete so that students are informed of, and learn to avoid the inherent risks. And that's at any level not just cave diving specifically.
Surely the whole point of Scubaboard is to offer advice and encouragement to new and potential new divers, not scare them away with an over dramatised news article, clearly written by someone who knows nothing of the sport (several references to Oxygen use rather than trimix, nitrox etc - Oxygen has an max operating depth of 6metres) and has just included his own (largely uninformed) opinions and bias to make his news story as sensational as possible.
This featured article is not a true representation of diving, and as long as the irresponsible re-posting of stories like this continues on dive forums, who knows how many true 'newbies' out there will put off diving for good, or never give it a go at all. They will never know what they are missing. And shame on you for encouraging it.