A Spanish extreme athlete, Beatriz Flaminiwho voluntarily isolated himself from the world by entering a cave in November 2021recently came out of his self-imposed exile after a record 500 days.
When the climber entered an isolated cave in the Spanish region of Granada on November 21, 2021, the world was still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia had not invaded Ukraine, and Elon Musk had not yet become the Twitter czar, as you remember Oddity Central.
Flamini was 48 years old when he entered the cave, but he had turned 50 when he came out and had no idea what had happened in the outside world in the last 500 days. Although he did not contact any other human being, Beatriz was carefully observed by a team of scientistsincluding psychologists and speleologists, in what is considered the first experiment of its kind.
“I’m still stuck on November 21, 2021. I don’t know anything about the world. I’ve been silent for a year and a half, not talking to anyone but myselfthe extreme athlete told reporters as she emerged from the 230-foot (70-meter) deep cave for the first time.
What did Flamini experience in his confinement?
Living in total isolation for so long caused Flamini to experience ‘auditory hallucinations’, because “you are silent and the brain invents it”but the hardest thing he had to endure was an invasion of flies inside the cave, which left it covered in small insects.
Beatriz Flamini’s team say her 500 days in complete isolation count as a new world record, though Guinness has yet to confirm if there’s a category for voluntary time living alone in a cave. More importantly, the data collected from her unique experience is expected to be invaluable in research into the impact of social isolation and extreme time disorientation on people’s perception of time.
flamini, who spent most of her time reading 60 books, exercising, drawing and knitting beanies, had to be held after leaving the cave, because her senses were just beginning to adjust to the outside world, so she kept losing her balance. She said she stopped keeping track of time at one point, after about two months, and estimated that she had been inside for “160 to 170 days,” not 500.
