I’m relatively qualified. Studied physics all through college and spent a couple years working in quantum computing. I’ll chime in here because Schrodinger’s cat jokes are a pet peeve.

You are correct that, as far as we understand, it is literally impossible. There has been a competing theory for decades, but I’m not really up on the specifics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie–Bohm_theory. The reason it is generally rejected is that it appears to violate relativity.

Anyway… the cat thought experiment is such a fun thought experiment to me because it specifically makes us think about a very practical issue with respect to quantum computing: decoherence. If you take his thought experiment to an extreme, it actually should be theoretically possible to create a state in which a macroscopic object (the cat) and a quantum object (the radioactive source) are indeed entangled. But that is absurd according to everything we’ve ever seen. So what’s up? The missing concept here is decoherence – while this state may theoretically exist, it’d decohere on timescales so small we can’t even imagine. The fun connection here is that decoherence is the exact thing we’re trying to fight in quantum computing. Essentially we’re trying to make this thought experiment a reality for a much less complex system.

Some more on decoherence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

This has always been a weird take, what do you think attracts people to that kind of SAR work? Generally a love for the outdoors and activities like this. You’ll have a hard time finding someone capable of high angle rescue that doesn’t enjoy or understand climbing as a sport.

I hate getting into these discussions.

This is Arnaud Petit and Stéphanie Bodet, two professional climbers with far more experience than you. They are doing the second ascent of a 900 meter 8a on Angel Falls (Rainbow Jambaia, 31 pitches) which is about the same height as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Here is a story about it. You almost never plan to climb routes this long in a single day, especially not on the second ascent. They most definitely planned to sleep on the wall and brought the proper equipment. This is called big wall climbing

Just be happy for people doing what they love and do what you love: your life will be better. We’re all motivated by different things.

They’re just having fun

Most responsible climbers bring something with them to pack it out, but there are some irresponsible ones that do what the comment above mentioned. That is the exception, not the rule though.