7. Spelunking Gone Wrong
Caving can be a fun sport for the family, but certain basic safety precautions are necessary. In June 1990, widower Gary Lutes took his sons, 13 year old Buddy and 9 year old Tim, on a spelunking adventure to West Virginia’s New Trout Cave. He was prepared with a pack of food, water and spare headlamps, but he foolishly left it behind when they reached “The Maze”, an area of jagged rocks that was a little tight to maneuver with the pack. He thought they’d backtrack to retrieve the supplies before their current headlamps burnt out. Unfortunately, the boys’ headlamps went dark shortly thereafter, and their attempts to backtrack to the pack got them lost. Lutes’ headlamp then died and the family was plunged into total darkness. For five horrific days, they had no food, no water and no light. They began coughing up cave dust and hallucinating with dehydration. Luckily, someone noticed that their car had been parked for several days and notified authorities. The rescue team said the family broke the cardinal rules of caving: always carry three sources of light each, and always tell someone where you are going and when you will return.
8. Floating Petri Dishes
This one’s not about one specific holiday from hell, as plagues of norovirus impact countless cruises. From 2010 to 2015, Celebrity Cruises and Princess Cruises have reported 15 outbreaks each while Royal Caribbean and Holland America have reported 10 each. Granted, only a fraction of passengers and crew are affected when you factor in the hundreds of thousands people on the high seas these days. But if you happen to be on a beleaguered ship or, god forbid, afflicted with this highly contagious gastro-bug yourself, you’ll no doubt be telling hellish holiday stories for years to come. The vomiting and diarrhea symptoms are bad enough on land, but being stuck on a boat on the rolling ocean certainly doesn’t help matters. The wildfire speed at which these outbreaks spread throughout a ship is alarming.
