Everyone in their life is trying to achieve some great milestones which will give them an identity by identifying their true potential. One such achievement has been made by a 50-year-old Spanish mountaineer, Beatriz Flamini, who survived 500 days in a cave. Interesting right? Read on!
This is the story of an extreme athlete who has spent almost 2 years inside a cave with no human contact and finally is now out of the cave successfully. From 20th November, 2021, to 14th April, 2023, the 50-year-old Spanish mountaineer & extreme athlete, Beatriz Flamini completed a 500-day challenge, possibly setting a world record while living 230 feet below, that is 1 year, 4 months, 25 days. When she went into the Granada cave, she was 48 years old.
This is incredible! I can’t even think how she has done this. But I understand your curiosity to know what she might have done in the cave for 2 years, why she wanted to do such a challenge, did anything went wrong during her 510 days challenge, and how she lived without human contact in complete isolation. We have everything covered to feed your curiosity. Keep reading till the end.
No communication, except:
A group of psychologists, scientists, as well as speleologists from the universities of Almera, Granada, and Murcia kept tabs on her journey; they communicated via specialized but constrained messaging technology, according to reports.
So, there was clearly no contact with the outer world, even the sunlight, day and night. With the exception of her support group, Flamini had no interaction with anyone. They provided her with new clothing and food and took care of her waste “every 5 poos.”
You can imagine by this that, Flamini left without knowing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the loss of a family member, demonstrating how this rule of no communication even applied to major global events and personal grief.
Hence, it proved that no communication with outer means no communication. Also, she said the people who knew her respected her rules and she is thankful to them.
How was her experience in the cave?
The 50-year-old claimed in her 1st press conference after resurfacing that she lost the chronology of time after day 65. She wanted to discover how the human mind & body can cope with isolation and deprivation. While filming her voyage for a soon-to-be-released documentary, she managed to maintain herself in shape despite having a shower.
Flamini claimed that she believed she had only spent 160-170 days in the cave. Although there were some challenging times, there were also many beautiful ones, and she experienced both while keeping her challenge to spend 500 days in a cave, she expressed.
She also mentioned that she hadn’t spoken in a year and a half because she had no one with whom to talk but herself. She recalls that the flies’ invasion was one of the hardest experiences she had in the cave.
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How she passed her time in the cave?
Flamini worked out, painted, drew, and knitted wool caps while she was underground in that isolated cave for almost 2 years. Her support crew estimates that she consumed 1,000 litres of water and read 60 books while using two GoPro cameras to record her journey.
How her expedition is helpful in scientific studies:
Flamini was to be observed as part of a study investigating how the human brain and circadian rhythms are affected by social isolation, lack of touch, loss of the day/night cycle, and other factors. Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles of bodily and behavioural changes.
According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, these patterns, which include feeling sleep at night and hungry during mealtimes, are controlled by a “master clock” in the brain and can affect body temperature. The suprachiasmatic nucleus, a group of about 20,000 neurons, serves as the master clock in vertebrate animals.
As a result of our circadian rhythms being out of sync with the times of day, we experience jet lag when we go to another part of the world. To better understand how social isolation and severe transient disorientation affect people’s perceptions of time, experts have been examining her case.
Did she make any Guinness World Records?
33 miners from Chile and Bolivia presently hold the Guinness World Record for something like the “longest time survived trapped underground,” having spent 69 days trapped in 2010 at a depth of 2,257 feet.
The support team for Beatriz Flamini goes on to say that she has beaten the record for the longest time spent in a cave. However, the Guinness World Records has not yet acknowledged whether there is a record for voluntarily spending time in a cave.
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