Quoted By:
I'm at home sick so I'm just going to save lives.
John Ogden and five of his friends were 3.2 kilometers (2 mi) deep into an unmapped part of England’s Mossdale Caverns in 1967 when the rain began to fall. For hours, they’d climbed and crawled their way through the dark, winding tunnels of the cave, exploring a part of the world no one had ever seen. Deep in that labyrinth of stone, they had no way of knowing what was coming.
In the downpour, the creek outside of the mountain was rising. Soon, there was a full-on flood. The entrance was buried under a rising lake, and the water came rushing into the cave through every pathway. Ogden and his group were crawling through a narrow tunnel when they heard the rumble of rushing water behind them. It spilled in, first rising up over their feet and quickly climbing to their necks.
The group’s only hope was a small crack in the rocks up ahead. Ogden forced himself up the fissure, pulling his head up to a tiny pocket of air at the top. There was no room for anyone else. Beneath him, the water filled the tunnel, and every one of his friends died. Ogden alone had his head above the water, trapped in a narrow crevice.
It took days before anyone found him. By then, he was dead, too, still stuck there in that narrow pathway, struggling for a last gasp of air.
