Dumb Question

[Sludge]

There is a little rubber Godzilla in the "Godzilla Room."

[whodunit68]

There is a little rubber Godzilla in the "Godzilla Room."

there are several.

[MORGAN]

There is a little rubber Godzilla in the "Godzilla Room."

And they seem to be multiplying. When I first did that dive there was one. The last few times there have been three.

I seem to remember hearing or reading that Sheck Exley did the initial exploration of that area, and named the Godzilla Room. I am guessing that the rubber Godzillas came later. When you get to the Godzilla Room it does seem big enough to hold Godzilla!

[Jim Wyatt]

Here's an even dumber question:
why is it called Godzilla circuit?

Because someone put a rubber Godzilla doll on the line....

[gasdiver]

The first time I dove it in the 80's, there was no plastic toy. I was told one of the rock formations looked like Godzilla, but I could never pick that feature out. Regardless, the name stuck and the toy came later...

[gschaut]

I think ANY jump that divers routinely do visually should be changed to a "T". That way nobody is tempted to do visual jumps. Sooner or later visual jumps are going to get you into trouble.

+ 1

[RN]

I tend to think,what if that section of the cave got blown out,and you had a fairly new cave diver,perhaps the worst case scenario,but maybe not too unrealisitic considering low silty areas and entry level circuit. Would encountering line arrows that would guide you to a dead end, that didn't tie back into the mainline cause confusion or panic? Could this contribute to an incident or accident? Line arrows that conflicted caused a double fatality in this system once before.

The way I train my students is when they come across markers that contradict their course of travel to mark it as such. In this particular case a non-directional should be placed on the team's exit side so if something happens that causes confusion or panic there is a marker on the line telling the team of divers which side they entered from, and thus, which side has the continuous guideline to the surface. If you're passing these markers without marking your exit side then you are only increasing the chance for confusion should something happen farther into the passage.

[cerich]

i disagree, in a shtf dive they should be shown the shortest distance without a jump. Showing both to a freaked out diver in zero viz will just confuse them when they get to the jump. In this case you can keep them on a continuous line so...

I'm with rjack, I think they should stay. From the Godzilla room the distance back to the entrance, no matter which direction you choose to follow the line, is roughly the same. If you go one way there's a jump, and if you go the other way there's not. But the distance is about the same. Yes, if you choose one way there's a jump to be made, but there's also a jump to be made back to the mainline.

Brian

[rjack]

This thread got me thinking about inconsistencies here and accidents in Mexico in the past. Many times we have had a tendency to look at cave diving accidents in Mexico,shrug our shoulders,and blame it on the line arrow wars of the later 90s,but without really doing a true accident analysis here,and benefitting from it. Probably the one accident that occurred in Mexico that eliminated the "snap and gap" was when a couple teams entered,and common protocol at one jump was to pull the mainline over to the rock that had the jump line. This caused the last team to blow this T,and actually go deeper into the cave (paraphrasing the best I can from memory,so forgive me if the details are specific). I recall one accident that a team was following the line arrows only to reach end of the line,and no further line in front of them. In actuality the cavern was a few hundred feet away,they couldn't see light,and even if they knew for sure there is good chance they didn't have enough length in safety reels to make it. They both perished while trying to reverse their course. There was a documented incident where someone came to an end of the line arrow pointing out,but it 20+ft in front was the line you needed to pick up to exit. Unfortunately a passing team previously blew out this section of tunnel,and they couldn't see any line in front of them,but fortunately this had a happy ending because they had enough gas for an exit. It has been said perhaps we need to eliminate all jumps in favor of T's,and perhaps this would eliminate some inconsistencies that apparently we have in Florida caves. Either way,a line arrow at an end of the line pointing toward another line is probably not the best choice as some accident analysis from Mexico may suggest. Safe diving.

The problem with this is the Calimba dive (which started off with the snap n gap issue) ended up so far away on the Paso de Lagerto line that another entrance was vastly closer (Grande Cenote). These divers swam over a thousand feet on a line during their exit which they had not traversed during their entry and never planned to be on at all. If you reversed all the arrows based in this incident, then divers entering from Grand Cenote and jumping to the Paso de Lagerto line would find all the arrows pointing away from their exit.

The same thing would happen here if you reversed all the arrows here. Divers entering the gozilla circuit one way would find all the arrows pointing towards their exit. Divers entering the other way would find all the arrows pointing away from theirs.

I'm happy with them the way they are or as a T. In either case, I don't think shuffling arrow directions around is a substitute for people having the awareness and personal line markers available to only ensure they only exit on personally verified lines.

[phillip1]

We did the same in El Toro in Caroli's room, we hung a Barbie doll on a tie off to symbolize Thomas' love at the time Caroli because her image appeared in his mind when he thought he was going to die in El Toro in that room. It is now called Caroli's Room, Goodzilla room sounds way cooler though.