The Spanish climber spent 500 days in a cave without natural light and contact with the outside world

Spanish climber Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days in a cave 70 meters deep, without natural light, contact with the outside and signs of the passage of time, in an unprecedented experiment followed by scientists and ended on Friday.

The 500 days that Beatriz Flamini, considered an “elite athlete”, spent in a cave in southern Spain is also a new world record, as they surpassed all previous known cases. However, the isolation was never so intense and there was at least an hour One inside the cave, that is, there was a reference to the passage of time.

The experience of Beatriz Flamini is therefore considered unprecedented, due to the harsh conditions of isolation, according to the Andalusian Federation of Speleologists, who supported the climber before and during her stay in the cave.

The federation prepared the interior of the crater before Beatrice Flamini’s entry, on November 20, 2022, with security cameras installed.

An “exchange” area was also set up, where the support staff left food, water and other items and where Beatrice Flamini left the rubbish she had produced, memory cards from a video camera and written notes, usually with some requests.

Throughout this period, Beatrice Flamini did not see other people or speak to anyone else.

As she said Friday at a press conference, a few hours after she left the cave, she never spoke out loud on her own, ensuring that she only made her voice when she was recording the camera.

At the press conference, the athlete apologized for the suffocation, justifying that she had not spoken to anyone for almost a year and a half.

The idea for the experience, which Beatrice Flamini insisted on Friday was an “activity” for an “elite extreme sportswoman”, came from the climber herself, who suggested it to a documentary producer.

Beatrice Flamini has dedicated herself to solo expeditions into the highest mountains in the world and is considered an expert in self-sufficiency in extreme conditions.

This experiment has been and is being monitored, since preparation, by teams of researchers from two Spanish universities, in Granada and Almeria, from fields related to health (physical and mental) and various social sciences.

Scientists have observed Beatriz Flamini’s behavior and the changes of her body inside the cave, in the images collected by the cameras, and have analyzed the notes she wrote and the recordings she made and left on the exchange platform.

Researchers will now continue to monitor the climber and she underwent a medical exam on Friday, once she left the cave, with the first diagnosis showing that she appeared to be in good general health.

According to what she said herself on Friday, from all that scientists and doctors had told her before that could happen to her inside the cave, after a long period of seclusion, she was only experiencing auditory hallucinations.

Without any idea how much time had passed, Beatrice Flamini saw two speleologists and a psychiatrist enter the place where she had lived for 500 days, “when she was asleep,” on Friday morning.

“I thought they had come down to tell me I had to leave because something had happened,” she told reporters, and admitted she knew nothing of what happened in those 500 days in the world, as she was “anchored on November 20, 2022” and the feeling that you entered the cave “a little while ago.” .

When I saw the light [ao sair da cova] I didn’t feel anything because I went in for a while,” he added, without going into too much detail, as a documentary and book about the experience are in the works.

In addition to recordings for the camera, being photographed and written, Beatrice Flamini read 60 books during this period and painted.

Support teams provided more than 1,000 liters of water and 1.5 tons of food and other items.

Beatrice Flamini did not press the panic button installed inside the cave, entering at the age of 48 and leaving at the age of 50.

She herself, who explained that she ate when she felt hungry or looked thin, said the secret to apparently keeping her balance was to focus on the “here and now” up, to read, to draw, to exercise, and always respond to what he felt like doing.