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You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property. For example: http://www.caves.org/grotto/jamesrivergrotto/JRGCaveTripReleaseForm.PDF

Rental property does it: http://monkeyshines4kids.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Monkey-Shines-4-Kids-LLC-General-Liability-Release.pdf

and you can get a free one from nolo here: https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/new.aspx?id=154&utm_source=103&try=1&v=3&gclid=CPuF3peHg7ICFQmpnQodiCwAcw#q1

Shut up and start helping people.

Note: I have put my money where my mouth is. I live with two foreign PhD students who pay drastically reduced rent. They are also the nicest people people that I have lived with.

Thanks for the papers and links. Too bad no one shows up in front of a judge with just papers in their hand, especially with a multi-million personal injury dollar lawsuit at stake.

But in the off chance that you do, then prepare for an immediate recess to be called, while the judge and the opposing legal team visit the restroom, to proceed to laugh and wipe their ass with your "defense".

My point about legal costs still stands. Yet again, who wins in that scenario. Sure as hell ain't me, regardless of outcome.

And don't bitch at me. I sure as hell didn't write the rules. I'm simply a bit more of a realist when it comes to our legal system and how screwed up it really is.

This post removes moderation effort in this thread.

You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property. For example:
http://www.caves.org/grotto/jamesrivergrotto/JRGCaveTripReleaseForm.PDF

Rental property does it:
http://monkeyshines4kids.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Monkey-Shines-4-Kids-LLC-General-Liability-Release.pdf

and you can get a free one from nolo here:
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/new.aspx?id=154&utm_source=103&try=1&v=3&gclid=CPuF3peHg7ICFQmpnQodiCwAcw#q1

Shut up and start helping people.

Note: I have put my money where my mouth is. I live with two foreign PhD students who pay drastically reduced rent. They are also the nicest people people that I have lived with.

Cave diving is insane.

Indeed it is! I'm a caver. I do not cave dive for several reasons:
1) I'm not a diver.
    Cavers who wish to cave dive must spend years honing their diving skills and working as a team. They are also, usually, fairly acclimated cavers.

2) Cave divers have a near 100% fatality rate where "accidents" have occurred. Don't believe me? See the National Speleological Society's Caving Accidents report.

    Here's their website.

3) Of particular interest is year 1994. Scroll to the bottom to see the cave diving "accidents" report. Check out year 2000, also.

4) See my original discussion on this topic on slashdot. Clickey

Cave diving is insane.

Indeed it is! I'm a caver. I do not cave dive for several reasons:
1) I'm not a diver.
    Cavers who wish to cave dive must spend years honing their diving skills and working as a team. They are also, usually, fairly acclimated cavers.

2) Cave divers have a near 100% fatality rate where "accidents" have occurred. Don't believe me? See the National Speleological Society's Caving Accidents report.

    Here's their website.

3) Of particular interest is year 1994. Scroll to the bottom to see the cave diving "accidents" report. Check out year 2000, also.

4) See my original discussion on this topic on slashdot. Clickey

Cave diving is insane.

Indeed it is! I'm a caver. I do not cave dive for several reasons:
1) I'm not a diver.
    Cavers who wish to cave dive must spend years honing their diving skills and working as a team. They are also, usually, fairly acclimated cavers.

2) Cave divers have a near 100% fatality rate where "accidents" have occurred. Don't believe me? See the National Speleological Society's Caving Accidents report.

    Here's their website.

3) Of particular interest is year 1994. Scroll to the bottom to see the cave diving "accidents" report. Check out year 2000, also.

4) See my original discussion on this topic on slashdot. Clickey

1. they are hard to get to

2. they are hard to get supplies to and build in

3. they flood

4. they have air quality issues

5. and they ARE cool... until you put a bunch of servers in them, and then they heat up, and STAY hot, and are harder to cool than on the surface

the idea of servers in caves sucks

4 is questionable, most caves have good air flow (depends on your local though). Thermal and pressure differences between entrances create it (thermometric or barometric flows)

Other reasons not to put this type of things in caves:

* Caves are protected environments in most states
* Caves are commonly roosts for bats, which are having a hard enough time with WNS right now, let alone people intent on killing them
* Caves typically do not follow city planning, they go where they want to, following seams and faults in the rock
* Along with the flooding, they tend to have very high humidity (though there are dry caves too)

Im thinking these are more like mine tunnels or something..

-T

First. I applaud this guy for making such a neat device. Listening to the story break on NPR this morning was rather captivating. The reporter made the device sound relatively small - something able to fit easily within a single cave-bag after disassembly. After seeing the antenna array, though, I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. There is no *way* a group of cavers are going to carry this contraption around *as it is*. It is certainly a prototype and the device certainly has merit but, for the sake of the device and the caver(s) carrying it, it is hoped (at least by me) that it becomes a lot smaller and still able to transmit/receive with the surface counterpart.

You see, a device as large as the one in the pictures on the webpage would be unwieldy in many, if not most, caves in the US as most US caves are not walking passage. In its current form it would suffer a lot of abuse and probably become submerged in water, covered in cave mud, bumped, sat on, kinked, bent, folded, dropped, hoisted, scraped and buffeted from a normal days wear and tear. If the antenna wire itself became broken trouble would certainly ensue. So, I don't see the current form of cave rescue going away any time soon. (The cave-trip leader has a designated person that did NOT go on the cave trip to call by a certain time. If the trip leader has not called that person by that time a cave rescue is supposed to be carried out.)

Don't get me wrong - this is a very cave-worthy pursuit and many a caver would feel better about having this technology along for the trip - as long as the equipment could withstand the journey. Otherwise, it's just more dead weight.

Second. For the story itself - caving is not 'relatively safe.' It's more along the lines of relatively dangerous. Why? Anyone entering a cave with the attitude of 'relatively safe' is bound to get hurt. Very recently there have been people who went out for a day of caving and came back sans one member. See this story

I didn't know this guy but it seems arrogance killed him. Hate me for it if you have to but he went into a passage where 2 other people had to be rescued from years earlier. It's shameful that the cave owners/grotto overseeing the cave didn't have the foresight or fortitude to prevent future tragedies by closing that passage or making the cavers sign a form detailing that particular passage as off-limits. He died a slow death as hypothermia set in while he was upside down in a passage. He was supposed to be experienced. I heard about his story while he was still alive and I prayed that he could hold on long enough for a solution to extricate him could be found. I'm heartbroken and angry for his needless death.

Thirdly. One part of the radio broadcast that this story didn't relay is a story of the famous (or is it infamous) rescue of Emily Davis Mobley from Lechuguilla Cave very near Carlsbad, New Mexico. I think the broadcast mentioned that this (the Lechuguilla cave rescue) was the reason why he invented this device. (I remind you to see the above paragraph on caving being relatively safe. Still think so?)

You Tube of the rescue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7I7bXcSWK8
Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_rescue

Fourth. If you want to know more about caving visit Emily's website: http://www.speleobooks.com/

Finally: If you still don't believe me that caving is dangerous just you try cave diving. Near 100% fatality rate where 'accidents' have occurred. The rule of thumb is is something goes wrong while cave diving - you have two minutes to live.

Here's the official website for caving accidents in the Americas - http://www.caves.org/pub/aca/

FYI, There's NO FN WAY you'd get me to cave dive.

Actually, "spelunking" isn't really used in that way (at least in the USA) by people who regularly explore caves; "caving" is the preferred term.

For reasons that aren't completely clear, "spelunker" has come to mean "person who goes in caves without proper equipment or training" among American cavers. (At caving conventions, you'll see bumper stickers that read "Cavers Rescue Spelunkers".)

See Wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caving

For more info in general (at least on USA caving), check out the website of the National Speleological Society: http://www.caves.org/

or the chat forum, http://www.cavechat.org/

In particular the headlamps I have (Petzl and Black Diamond) are way too blue, they are blinding.

Being a card-carrying NSS member myself, I spend a good amount of time undergound relying on similar equipment.

Quality is everything when you want a focused, bright, white LED; they're almost impossible to get without some kind of flaw (too violet or blue, or a blue halo effect). Caving with low-quality LEDs can be migraine inducing to say the least... I'd hate to see what they would do to someone in their home.

Like you, I'm a bit pessimistic about this LED-floodlight thing.

I find it entirely possible to live a double life as a geek and an explorer. The caving world is full of geeks. It seems to be a general misfit personality thing.

Cavers have such geeky projects as ground penetrating radio location and communications, 3D cave mapping software, science of all sorts, not to mention the peculiar smell of clothing which has been muddied underground and then left in a trash bag for weeks.

For USians see the National Speleological Society to find out more. Other countries have similar organizations, I just don't happen to know the URLs off the top of my head. Try googling to find your local org.

cheers all,
TK
/. #18903
NSS #33262

When I first read the article I thought I smelled BS too. The number of "you can't have a varying magnetic field without a varying electric field!!" post's below also indicate a frustration with the marketroid speek that pervades the article and a general lack of scientific cluelessness of the writer.

The key to understanding how this thing works (and yes the technique is old) is getting to understand the difference between NEARFIELDS and FARFIELDS. The nearfield is the zone CLOSE to the antenna less than .5 pi wavelengths away while the transition zone to the farfield is from .5 pi to 1 wavelength away. Since the magnetic field is decaying with the inverse CUBE of the distance away from the antenna (along its axis anyway) and the electromagnetic field is only decaying with the suare of the distance, eventually the EM field dominates at a certain distance from the emitter (the FARFIELD). These sites helped me understand this much better than I did a few minutes ago :-]. http://www.caves.org/section/commelect/mm/mm06.htm l and http://www-training.llnl.gov/wbt/hc/NonIonizing/Ne arFields.html. again nothing new here just a rehash of a discovery made by Faraday et. al.

I'ld recommend that you go with LEDs instead. Lots more flexibility. Far more options.
Let me give you a few of the links from the upcoming LED section of my site. (Yep, that was a plug.)

American Science and Surplus
Inner Mountain Outfitters
Gilway
Superbright LEDs
Overall you'll find that they'll work with any decent source of 3.5 to 6 volt (depending on the LED) current, which includes the cheesy little plug-in transformers that you can buy at Radio Shack. But they'll work better off battery power or some other means that is truly DC. I ran a tiny custom jobbie in my bathroom as a functional light source for weeks, all running off standard nine-volt batteries. I just turned it on and left it on to see how long it would last. These, BTW, were rebuilt versions of the LED-based clip-on lights that they sell for bike riders.
Of course if you've got a cheap supply of watch batteries or have a recharger for them then you could just hang photons about the place.
Lastly, if you're just going for cool low-level lighting, good old FLAME can be plenty of fun. In other words, don't dismiss the possibilities of oil lamps and such until you've tried them. Properly set up, especially if they're indirect, they give a just variable enough glow to be quite satisfying. I've also had fun with building custom lamps based on isopropyl alcohol. You know, the stuff sold for 99 cents a bottle to put on small cuts. A big (say, two inches around) alcohol flame in a deep container with a well setup oxygen supply will last for hours. Since the flame isn't very hot, is non-toxic, and blows out readily it's easy to experiment using things like soup bowls while you figure out what you want to do. Yo could cheat and go somewhere like Illuminations (I'm not providing a link, there are too many mall businesses as it is) and buy wicks, but you shouldn't need to bother.
And with all of this the fire department has only come by here once (damn those witnesses!).
Rustin

Actually, it's not the word that's the problem--it's the attitude of the people that choose to use that word.

Caving is a very dangerous activity--more so than most because it's a very short trip to disaster. Rescue is difficult--no helicopers here folks. An inexerienced person can be just fine one minute and the next--when his flashlight batteries go dead--he's toast. Oh, yeah, those cell phones don't work well underground, either.

"Adventure Sports" are attracting a lot of people these days that should just stay home in front of the TV. Caving is one of the more dangerous of these and it's not to be taken lightly. In addition to the danger there's the aspect of how fragile the cave ecosystem is and how easy it is to do real lasting damage.

However, local caving groups are very receptive of new members. The National Speleological Society can hook you up with a local group if you really want to learn about caves and how to safely explore them.