lamont
Contributor
The answer to this question is really pretty simple, which is to stay out of the incident pit. Training and experience are things that help keep you out of the incident pit. Experienced cave instructors and explorers just have more training and experience and can dig deeper to stay out of the incident pit.
In the case in JB, though, the incident clearly began on the surface with the decision to violate not only intro limits, but full cave limits and violate basic rules of accident analysis. That's a case where you can make a simple decision on dry land to either make it more or less likely to wind up in the incident pit. Generally in most fatalities there are going to be decisions made on the surface that make winding up in the incident pit more likely.
In the case of the IPE incident, the divers were within their limits and obeying all the rules which reduces the stress. That is another reason why to not do visual jumps -- it isn't just a question of if the cave is going to get silted out and have a zero visibility exit. You can't look at a visual jump and say to yourself "this passage will never silt out, so I won't put in a jump" you need to consider coming back to that jump under massive amounts of stress with a medical issue like that, and having a properly setup jump pointing the way home can help keep you from falling further into the incident pit.
And diving over your limits and doing full cave dives when you're not full cave trained is also going to magnify stress, and that can't be eliminated from a cause just because the divers involved were "experienced". The knowledge of lack of training can cause more stress when things go sideways, which can cause the diver to circle down the incident pit tighter.
So, you want to know how to avoid panic? Proper training and not violating the rules will help, no matter how people want to try to rationalize that away.
Generally, once you hit the "big eyes" point in the incident pit, there are going to have been a lot of mistakes made prior to that. I'd vastly prefer to just avoid either seeing or presenting the "big eyes". Dives are a lot more enjoyable without that expression being involved... Prevention is the best cure....
In the case in JB, though, the incident clearly began on the surface with the decision to violate not only intro limits, but full cave limits and violate basic rules of accident analysis. That's a case where you can make a simple decision on dry land to either make it more or less likely to wind up in the incident pit. Generally in most fatalities there are going to be decisions made on the surface that make winding up in the incident pit more likely.
In the case of the IPE incident, the divers were within their limits and obeying all the rules which reduces the stress. That is another reason why to not do visual jumps -- it isn't just a question of if the cave is going to get silted out and have a zero visibility exit. You can't look at a visual jump and say to yourself "this passage will never silt out, so I won't put in a jump" you need to consider coming back to that jump under massive amounts of stress with a medical issue like that, and having a properly setup jump pointing the way home can help keep you from falling further into the incident pit.
And diving over your limits and doing full cave dives when you're not full cave trained is also going to magnify stress, and that can't be eliminated from a cause just because the divers involved were "experienced". The knowledge of lack of training can cause more stress when things go sideways, which can cause the diver to circle down the incident pit tighter.
So, you want to know how to avoid panic? Proper training and not violating the rules will help, no matter how people want to try to rationalize that away.
Generally, once you hit the "big eyes" point in the incident pit, there are going to have been a lot of mistakes made prior to that. I'd vastly prefer to just avoid either seeing or presenting the "big eyes". Dives are a lot more enjoyable without that expression being involved... Prevention is the best cure....