Five hundred days inside a cave, alone, without time references and without contact with the outside world. Beatriz Flamini, an elite athlete, mountaineer and climber, is about to meet this challenge, which will also mean a world record for staying underground in these extreme conditions.
Tomorrow, Friday, it will emerge from a cavity, located in the province of Granada, where it has remained 70 meters deep and isolated for the last year and almost five months, oblivious to everything that has happened on the planet in all this time.
Predictably, he will give a press conference in Motril tomorrow, Friday, where more details of this extreme survival adventure will be known.
Passionate about solo expeditions to the highest peaks in the world and an expert in self-sufficiency, this defender of the environment contacted the producer Dokumalia two years ago to challenge her to remain alone and without outside contact in a cave for 500 days, Elena Mera, spokesperson for the so-called "Timecave" project, explained to EFE.
"It was a personal overcoming challenge like many others that he had done before. In this case, it also lent itself to all the studies that others wanted to do with it, with which many scientists signed up. He also proposed us to record the entire process in a documentary series", has detailed Mera.
After studying similar experiments carried out before in different parts of the world and being aware of the difficulty of the challenge, those 500 days are about to come to an end since Beatriz Flamini began to live this particular experience, which has led her to live in a constant dark night, alone and silent, for more than sixteen long months.
This adventurer, of whom the experts who have treated her highlight her great mental strength and iron will, has dealt all this time with her thoughts, her illusion, her fears, her courage and daring, accompanied by two GoPro cameras, without a screen that contain references to hours or days, to narrate their experiences step by step.
The producer Dokumalia has closely followed those 500 days and has recorded their daily life seventy meters underground.
Meals, exercises, bad and good days, problems and difficulties, doubts, changes in body and mind, length of days and nights, feeling of having entered an eternal loop of time stopped at 4 in the morning, moments of terror and euphoria , lack of memory and concentration, hallucinations, mood swings, unforeseen incidents that have been able to send everything to hell, philosophizing about the meaning of life and lucid reflections have not been lacking in this unprecedented experiment.
To carry it out, a simple methodology has been followed, in which a working group has been created with the psychologists and researchers involved, with speleologists and physical trainers, who have always remained connected and up to date on the opinions and hypotheses of everyone in each moment, and under the premise of not interfering in the challenge, just as Beatriz planned.
In these months, she has been leaving the cards that she recorded in the exchange area of the cave scheduled with the speleologists, and the producer has been collecting her experience from the beginning to the end, Mera has indicated, who is looking forward to how it will be going out and being able to share their adaptation abroad.
The production company's work has been complemented by that carried out by researchers such as Julio Santiago, from the Department of Experimental Psychology and Behavioral Physiology of the University of Granada, who during the Timecave project has studied how social isolation and extreme temporary disorientation affect to the perception of time.
From the University of Almería, research groups in clinical and experimental neuropsychology have assessed the possible neuropsychological and cognitive changes that this tremendous challenge has entailed in the face of loneliness, the absence of light and cognitive and social isolation.
Before entering the cave, an exhaustive assessment of Beatriz's cerebral cortex and associated cognitive functions was made through neuropsychological, clinical and experimental tests, and a program developed for the assessment of high reasoning abilities and semantic memory.
The Madrid company Kronohealth has also collaborated with Timecave to study Beatriz's circadian rhythms and sleep under the exceptional conditions in which she found herself.
The Motril Speleological Activities Group (GAEM) was in charge of preparing the cavity in advance so that it could be inhabited for 500 days and drew up an emergency plan, which included closing off the cave to prevent animals from falling and preventing the entry intruders, and a wide path to an esplanade to make it possible for an evacuation helicopter to land in an emergency.
During isolation, the main function has been to ensure Beatriz's safety, monitoring her state of health through surveillance cameras and video cards and notes that have been extracted from the abyss.
Another of its functions has been to provide food and water, and remove the garbage through exchanges that were made at an intermediate point in the cavity where it has not been possible to cross paths or maintain communication.
Over the course of 500 days, Beatriz has consumed a ton and a half of materials and food for this experience, 1,000 liters of water have been consumed, and she has read 60 books in those more than 16 months of solitude, darkness, and silence.
