Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/27/the-story-of-the-nutty-putty-cave-will-haunt-you.html
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To be fair, the NSS (and NSS-CDS) have a lot of experience both recovering bodies from caves, AND also having to constantly justify why cave systems should be kept open. It’s a uphill (downhill!) struggle, since it’s their primary gig.
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Future archeology site.
If you can’t walk in it; I’m not going in a cave!
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I read a very short news item at the time, and it was enough to give me the willies every time I think about caves in general, to this day. It’s the combination of claustrophobia and fear of being swallowed up by the earth…
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Every day above ground is a good day.
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Nope. Watched about 5 seconds and that was all I could take.
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I’ve enjoyed multiple trips to Mammoth Cave and Cumberland Caverns, including spending the night in the latter.
One trip to a “wild” cave on private property with a group of experienced spelunkers who’d already been through and mapped out a relatively safe path convinced me I will never be a cave explorer.
Not far from the entrance of that cave was a beautiful structure, a stalagmite that had grown up to a height of about four feet then, for some reason, stopped. The water chemistry changed so it was being worn down and had formed a bowl. The spelunkers told me they’d named it “the altar”. As I said it was beautiful but also eerie.
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Long ago in college outing club I did some spelunking. One of the caves we visited included a feature known as the ‘gun barrel’–a fifty-foot long tube with a diameter just large enough to fit a medium-sized undergraduate.
I am so not going to click on this video.
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when i was attending UT in Austin, my GF and i threw in with a serious group of cavers mapping a system adjacent to Barton Creek. in it, there was a passage, about 50 meters long, called “one legged man pass”. keyhole-shaped, one had to navigate with one foot in the narrow “path”, with the opposite leg trailing behind as if in some ballet pose. we traversed this passage many times in our multiple pushes ever further towards the back(?) end(?) of the cave (not found in our time - early 80s). mapping meant bringing gear into very small passages in packs that were made or modified to be dragged between one’s legs, along with water and high nutrition small foodstuffs, as passages could be wide, but a ceiling clearance that only allowed for crawling for over a kilometer at a stretch. our longest foray into the cave, three of us spent 36 hours underground.
while i could not do this again, i may be more qualified to navigate “one legged man pass” now 
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can any comrades (@j9c @Grey_Devil ?)in the Austin area tell me if Airman’s Cave is still accessible down in south Austin? it is over 40 years ago when our team mapped some 6km of cave passage under a major shopping center and highway.
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instead of adding an edit to my previous response, i will add here, instead, a clip from the Wikipedia entry for Airman’s Cave:
2012, a security gate was installed in response to a sharp increase in traffic, which was considered to pose a serious safety risk to untrained individuals exploring the cave, as well as a threat to the cave and its fauna
Source
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I hadn’t heard of it, but it’s not like i’m looking for caves to explore 
That said because the ground can often be solid rock in some areas around Austin it’s not uncommon for the bore rig crews from my job to randomly hit voids and small caves underground. I currently have a project for Austin Water where we’ve months behind schedule because we keep finding voids
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isn’t that just the nature of such a limestone rich geography? Austin sits on top of some crazy cave systems etched out of the karst by millenia (nay, eons) of waters rising and receding and leaving systems that all end up in the Edward’s Aquifer*.
did you know that there is a very large cavern directly under the Texas State library, downtown? true story!
edit: aquifer not aqueduct! d’oh!
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Attempting some of these caves seems like an activity you’d want to be prepared with a cyanide tooth for. Tight spaces are one thing, if that’s something you are in to; but so many of the lethal failure methods being on the slow side is not good for the nerves.
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The story of the Nutty Putty cave will haunt you
Not if I don’t read it, it won’t.
edit: to change read to don’t read.
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I am close friends with a few people, some of whom I work with in my day job, in the Austin caving community at large. Cave exploring, typically through a grotto club…
https://www.cavetexas.org/texas-grottos
… is the one and only way to legally and properly access caves like Airman’s cave, which you noted is currently gated and locked.
Historically, people in Texas (I daresay the nonindigenous peoples) filled our caves with graffiti, garbage:
killed the bats (which help keep mosquito populations in check) living in caves:
and sometimes went into caves with bad air or no air and then they died, or even just got really unlucky:
… some ranchers cement them shut to protect their livestock from getting injured falling into one.
So are many notable caves in Texas gated and locked now? Heck yeah.
Healthy caves are really important in our arid central Texas area. They serve not only as crucial habitat, but as aquifer recharge features every time it rains. I can’t begin to describe just how much we depend on healthy drainage regimes and ecosystems for our water supply.
Having respect and reverence for natural places with key roles in our Texas ecosystem is not what a lot of Texans are good at, especially in the past 200 years. Gate the caves and lock 'em up fergunnessakes. It’s best for everyone including the cave itself.
A neighbor down the road who passed on semi-recently mapped a lot of caves in Texas and Mexico. He is missed. DM me to discuss further, if you like. You probably know him. I am friends with his sister who moved in.
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Youtubers have gotten tremendous mileage out of this story – which of course means you can spend all day listening to other horrible stories of people dying in terrible ways, if you’re into that.
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It’s scary, horrific, and tragic. But if I hear the words “nutty putty” one more time I’m gonna start giggling.
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Any space too tight to turn around in is a space I will never be entering. Caves are nice but I’ll stick to the ones spacious enough to walk around in.
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I think it is only going to get worse in the future. The headlines are going to be things like “over 400 painfully incinerated in the destruction of the Marvin McMarsface colony ship”.
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