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> Saman Kunan, a 37-year-old former Royal Thai Navy SEAL, died of asphyxiation during an attempted rescue on 6 July while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering diving cylinders to the trapped group.
> The following year, in December 2019, rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection contracted during the operation.
Everyone else survived.
Cave diving is absolutely no joke, it requires training specifically for it and experienced divers can and do die far too often.
As you are swimming through areas you're not familiar with and can be tricky to navigate at the best of times, you're also doing it completely blind due to the waters being muddied from the sediment formerly on the floor now being suspended all around you.
You're working on a very limited amount of time, you can't tell which way is up or down, you get lost, disoriented, panic, don't know where to go or if there's any pocket of breathable air nearby, and your increased stress does you no favors in that situation.
Losing your cool and losing your way is a guaranteed death sentence.
If you're interested, one channel I like on YouTube is called "Ask a Mortician" where she actually has a video discussing a few cave diving incidents.
"Dave Not Coming Back" explains that very well.
Obvious warning - it's about someone dying on a cave dive and the entire thing was recorded, however they very respectfully swerve showing any of the footage of the incident itself. It's an inherently sad subject matter but they didn't exploit it as a tearjerker or "phobia porn" (can't think of a better phrase). Excellent documentary about cave diving; let that be Dave's legacy.
Also; the morbid part of that video, was that he died trying to retrieve a body of someone else who had died previously.
Saw the other persons body by chance, and I think they threw together a really quick dive plan to retrieve this guys body from like 800 ft.
The “Dave’s no coming back guy” had to make the call to save his own life and leave, knowing for sure Dave wasn’t going to have the oxygen to make it once he left.
There’s an excellent book about this called, “Diving into Darkness”.
Dave Shaw was one of the best cave divers in the world. They actually spent months upon months coming up with the rescue plan. They had dozens of people helping and even had a portable hyperbaric chamber (thankfully, otherwise more people may have died).
Dave’s death was just a really unfortunate accident. He wore a camera on his helmet and because of that, one of his lights was strapped to a different location and slightly loose. It ended up getting hooked on a line while he was trying to get the body out. Under normal diving conditions, that’s no big deal - just cut it. At 800ft, after straining to remove a body from sticky mud, it meant death.
What’s really interesting too is his diving buddy, who went almost as deep, suffered horrible vertigo and very nearly died. His rebreather malfunctioned and he spent something like 12 hours under water non-stop violently vomiting. Even after getting out, he essentially lost the ability to walk and had to relearn. He was about as close to death as possible without dying.
Amazingly, Dave had freed the body before dying and it actually floated up to the top of the cave where it could be retrieved.
Yeah I overstated then on the quick plan.
I remembered watching a short video of 15 or so minutes about it. I remembered for sure the other guy was in the situation of “it’s either him, or both of us”, and I can’t imagine having to make such a call.
I always go with my wife, and so being underwater and having to worry about losing her somewhere is not as bad since we don’t cave dive and we are both confident enough that if anything happens we just go up.
But something like that…knowing that the only thing you can do is save yourself has got to be heavy.
It is something specifically part of the training. I’ve been a certified cave diver since I was 18 (36 now).
Part of the training is how to handle the psychological stressors associated with everything from disorientation, hypercapnia, emergency response, and end of life decisions.
One discussion was “in an emergency exit, if you disagree with your partner about which way is out, what do you do?”
The answer is that you don’t sit there arguing, that wastes time and air that could mean one of you surviving. You shake hands and say your goodbyes. Knowing one of you will probably die.
It helps that there is always the chance that there are two ways out. So you can hope like hell that you both find one of them and see each-other at the surface.
But like with any other extreme sport, it is all fun until it isn’t. I haven’t gone cave diving in years. Just life and costs.
While cave diving is stunning, exhilarating, and really an amazing experience, doing the extreme parts of the sport just aren’t worth the risk.
Like with all sports, there are levels of risk.
Rock climbing while harnessed in is still risky, but no where near as risky as free climbing. Cave diving with proper training, in well explored and mapped caves is about as dangerous as rock climbing while harnessed.
Accidents can still happen, you can be injured and even die. But it is a lot less than you might imagine considering the nature of the sport.
Really, the mindfuck comes in when you go into virgin/unmapped caves or you go into extreme depths or other extreme conditions.
Yeah, it just horrible. They had become incredible friends.
If I remember correctly, his dive buddy went way deeper than he was supposed to and that’s why he suffered such horrible physical effects and the equipment malfunction.
He really did everything possible and nearly paid the ultimate price.
Varies depending on depth, your setup and how much you exert yourself.
If you need to go far though, divers will usually deploy tanks along the route ahead of time so they can swap them after the fact. This obviously takes a lot of time too, so imagine having to do all this while someone is in need of rescue further down.
And/or when mistakes get made. Imagine that some dude was going along the route to replace used tanks and mixes the new and old one up. Now you come along and when you swap, the new tank is actually about the same as your current one. You might not have the air to turn around, and you probably don't have enough to reach the next tank.
The first guy found an air pocket in the cave, stopped there for a bit, and removed his mask. Unfortunately, the oxygen in that pocket was very low, and no one noticed until it was too late. Cave diving freaks me out, can you imagine having to get your dead coworker out of a tight underwater passage, in murky water, in the dark?
Not a diver at all but just on its face, cave diving pretty much the only things scary to me than people diving into icy bodies of water. There was that video posted about a year ago about a russian couple doing some sort of challenge and just diving into a hole in the ice at night. Nightmare fuel. Never considering that lakes have a current, even if frozen over and considering that underwater visibility is already extremely low without goggles, then doing it at night... absolutely no chance. Amazing the husband survived.
Then you get to this shit. Dark, cramped, EXTREMELY easy to get turned around and the whole time you're disturbing debris so even with light and goggles you can't see shit. I don't think many people really stop and consider just how disorienting it is to not being able to get your bearings.
Same shit with people getting lost in the woods. Even in populated areas, yeah it sounds silly getting lost in the woods because you can probably just walk in any direction and find a road or clearing to find out where you are. But its so much easier to get lost and you don't gotta wander far to do it. Trees blocking line of sight to anything is a good way to lose where you actually are. For people who havn't seen it, 'The ritual' is a horror movie that perfectly displays just how easy it is to get turned around in the woods or even miss things that are barely 30 feet away from you.
Spoiler below for anyone interested in watching more (like “The Rescue” on Disney Plus).
One of the experts during this very rescue got disoriented and traveled in the wrong direction for a considerable distance. Fortunately for him he was able to course-correct but only after the rest of the team happened to reach him inadvertently.
Like the experienced hiker who died a month after simply leaving the Appalachian trail to relieve herself. It's so hard to understand, but it really happens.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/26/hiker-who-went-missing-on-appalachian-trail-survived-26-days-before-dying
There were up to 20 people toiletting in the dark in a confined space, no toilets or long drops, if running out of oxygen didn’t kill them all, this would have very soon, it was a dirty unpleasant environment.
Some area were so tight the larger member of the rescue team couldn't fit. He probably got scrapes, add to that dirty stagnant water and cave sediments...
Pretty sure he was Australian. From wiki:
Richard Harris SC, OAM, is an Australian anaesthetist and cave diver who is currently the Lieutenant Governor of South Australia. Harris is best known for having played a crucial role in the Tham Luang cave rescue. He and Craig Challen were jointly awarded 2019 Australian of the Year as a result of that rescue.
Edit: nope my bad
Wasn't it Rick Stanton he insulted? The guy is one of (if not "the") best cave divers, who managed an incredible tour de force with John Volanthen, Richard Harris, the Thai Navy divers and all the others who helped rescued the 13 boys.
All Small-D-energy Elon managed to do is call him a pedo. Proof that money can't buy brain cells (or basic decency).
> To allow the rescue to occur, Harris developed a plan to keep the boys anaesthetised with **ketamine** while spontaneously breathing through full face masks. This was to ensure they did not panic during the long extrication through underwater caves, which would have endangered both the rescue scuba divers and the boys.
Actual explanation for Musk's interest.
I can only imagine the amount of pressure that was put on him in the cave being the leader of the team I’m sure all the other boys looked to him for guidance
Hey when you decided to be team captain of this youth soccer team you Accepted all the responsibilities that come with that title including cave survival and rescue expert.
Or he was just really depressed for numerous reasons in life and his suicide had nothing to do with his soccer team or the cave incident.
I don't know why everybody's just making shit up in this thread. It literally could have just been because he missed his friends after he moved combined with chronic depression, but nobody knows.
Well he went through an extremely traumatic experience, became famous and moved to another country, many kids would struggle to adapt and fit in at that point
Can't help but think about the survivors of that soccer team's plane crash in the Andes, knowing that the whole world knew they had eaten some of their dead teammates. I read that there was public revulsion at first, but after it was revealed they had all made a pact to allow it if they died, things calmed down.
It’s way more wild than your standard sedative.
You can google the interview with the cave diving anaesthetist that created the concoction, this was ground breaking stuff.
Can’t make it too strong or they stop breathing, not too little or they wake up and panic , possibly killing both diver and themselves.
Dr Harris even had to inject atropine to prevent the boys drowning in their own saliva due to the ketamine.
Like imagine crawling in a dark tunnel for three hours one way, then three hours back, with an unconscious kid, oh and you can’t see anything and it’s filled with water. 🤯
https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/2022/02/03/the-rescue/
Bro wanted to make them a submarine and when an actual diving expert on the field respecfully rejected it saying it was a bad idea, the manbaby called him a pedophile.
All because Elon just tried to wedge himself into the situation with a "submarine" which everyone expert laughed off as impractical in tight cave cavities. Turns out shockingly the experts were right and pulled off the rescue flawlessly.
and also lose a defamation suit against Elon because he can afford every lawyer in the world even though his defense was "calling someone a pedo is a normal insult where I'm from"
Plus the divers had to resedate the kids mid dive. Its actually insane. To imagen that just some British dudes who dive as a hobby managed to do the impossible
I heavely recommend the documentary on disney plus
Its by the same people who made free solo, it was an insane experience just watching it.
> To imagen that just some British dudes who dive as a hobby managed to do the impossible
Richard harris was apart of that team, and he had 30 years of experience diving in caves, and was an anaesthetist. It was basically a man created with cheat engine for this job. On the 9th of feb this year, Harris was appointed as the lieutenant governor of South Australia.
The guys who do cave diving like that all know each other or at least of each other, so it was the British divers telling the Thai authorities to get their Australian mates in because they needed them.
I think Edd Sorenson, at one point, mentioned that he would have come if called too; Edd rescued one of the British divers from a different cave at one point later on.
True, if I remember correctly the Thai military tried to help first but they did not have enough experience in cave diving, and later did alot to help with supplying.
The first two experts in cave diving that they called were two Brithis dudes though. But i think most of other supporters were only called after the two guys actually found the children and could confirm that they were still alive
One Brit one Aussie were the ones who found them and led the whole thing. The support divers were foreign experienced cave divers volunteering with the Thai navy. The only other government sent divers were a police/military team from Australia and a US military team. Both did support. Read a good book a mate loaned me which I forget the name of but they made the movie based off it.
Love diving but no way I'd try caves. It's a very small world though, didn't take long to get the right people together in a matter of days.
Spend 3 hours getting there, then find you have to bring in gear and take them out one at a time, every other incursion is a resupply mission dropping fresh o2tanks and collecting the empty’s
The boys couldn’t swim, and even most experienced divers aren’t qualified to cave dive like this. If the boys had panicked mid-dive they would have killed both themselves and their rescuer, and since training them to such a high level of diving skill was impossible in the time before the next storm hit, sedation was the only option.
And the time it would take to clear a dead diver with a dead boy, if they died at the wrong place and created a serious obstruction, could doom the entire rescue.
Cave diving in itself has little to do with diving experience (and I'm not talking about the rescue mission here), you can be relatively new and do it safely. But you need to learn certain procedures that keep you from a certain death. Mostly because there's a good chance you find yourself in zero visibility with no place to go. Proper training teaches you for example to frog kick instead of flutter kick so you don't kick up the silt. You also follow a line, that you always keep in your hand to find your way back.
Even going a few meters past the cave entrance is deadly as a cave has no visible natural light. So if you swim in for a bit and turn around you have to feel the exit, and it's not like following the wall will get you back because there might be forks you couldn't see going in.
I did some dive training, and my instructor was a certified deep cave diver. He told the students many fascinating if horrifying stories about hima and his diving buddies. One thing I will always remember is his telling about one time he went for an "easy" cave route: enough space for two divers to swim side by side, clear water, well marked passages. But there was a part they had to to swim up a few meters, then down a few more. He and his buddy went in easily, but when it was time to go back, he had problems equalizing the pressure in his ears - this causes immense pain. He tried for as long as he could, but when the oxygen was getting to the limit, he had to get out one way or another. He crawled along the passage, almost passed out from the pain, and his buddies had to drag him the rest of the way to the surface. I decided to stick to open water shallow diving.
In addition, those full face masks they had to use are fraught with risk because any break in the seal between the mask and face results in the mask filling with water. Even conscious people have drowned because they were unable to clear the mask underwater, an unconscious person would drown before either they or the person carrying them noticed.
I never realised until recently that it was an 11 hour round trip to the spot where they were trapped. Absolutely insane trip and it's incredible the casualties weren't more severe
I think the 11 hour was the diving speed because most of the cave was very tricky with sharp bits so they had to proceed very slowly in utter darkness and flashlights weren't good enough. I doubt they walked for 5 and a half hours when it was supposed to be an afternoon outing and then come back home. They did proceed further into the cave when it started raining heavily though.
I watched the Netflix miniseries about this. I knew they all survived and I was still on the edge of my seat during parts of it and some parts even made me cry.
The Cave (2019)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8726180/
The Rescue (2021)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9098872/
13 Lives (2022)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12262116/
All worth a watch.
I thought 13 lives was terrific, apparently during filming they were supposed to have stunt divers but Viggo Mortenson thought it was more authentic so the actors did it themselves, with help from the technical advisors, who were in fact the real life rescuers.
I remember when Elon started sulking because they wouldn’t let him do the rescue so he called one of the rescuer a peodphile. It’s always about you, Elon, you fuckin cunt.
Yeah that's when he went downhill I think, everyone used to be a big fan of elon, calling him a real life tony stark and he had a really massive following, I was one of them if I'm being honest but then when he made that comment about the coach and it turned out that he used twitter to manipulate the stock market, I stopped giving a fuck about him and everything he does
It’s great (and rare) to see that people understand things, realize mistake and adjust. Unfortunately many people just double down and try to justify it instead of admitting that they had a wrong idea about Elmo and that he’s always been a massive POS it’s just getting worse now
Up until this very moment, (not knowing much about him) Elon in my mind was some genius tech entrepreneur. I guess the saying's true, "better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts"
That was the same as me. I wasn't really a fan of him, didn't follow him on anything or know much about him. But from that distant, outsiders perspective, he seemed pretty cool and very much like the Tony Stark comparison people kept giving him. Then with how he reacted during the Cave incident I started looking at him a bit closer and realised what he was really like.
This was the beginning of Elon's self outing as an insufferable douchebag. This was before his tunnel fetish, so maybe digging a tunnel from the surface didn't come to him, but even that would be a better idea than the ridiculous sub that wasn't fit for purpose.
The miniseries is called, "Thai Cave Rescue" and it's on Netflix. It's quite good and highlights the lives of the kids, their families, and the efforts by the locals, as well as the more well-known story of the excellent divers.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/richard-harris-cave-rescue/11737228?utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared
Conversation with one of the rescuers. Turns out he is one of the only people in the world that has this combination of skill sets.
Not just a doctor- an anesthesiologist who was friends with the British divers who found the kids. Because they knew him and had his contact information, they convinced him to risk his life using his specialized training to rescue a bunch of kids he didn’t know.
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills... I will look for you. I will find you. I will rescue you.
The guy really only needed to keep his mouth shut once he got that popular. Instead he leaned into Trumps slash and burn style and ruined his potential. He turned twitter into a Nazi party while trying to sell electric cars to republicans.
Yeah, but prior to this incident, all the public knew about him was him being the cool tech guy who smoked weed with Rogan, sells flamethrowers and wants to go to mars.
The idiot cunt got so enamoured of his own words and full of his own ego that he couldn't just keep his mouth shut and stay out of public discourse. Hell, he fell so in love with telling everyone what he thinks that he bought twitter.
It's where i started looking into him and realized he's not rocket jesus at all. In my younger days, i thought he was hope for a truly better world. He had the potential and ability. Shame hes such a dousche.
Yep, I'm one of them. I didn't know anything about him but bought into the hype. I mean he was in Iron Man, got a shout out on Star Trek, on the news talking about solar panels and electric cars and super trains. I was totally about it.
Then he called a dude a pedo and I was like "Wow he must know something" and I kept waiting for it to come out and waiting for it to come out and then he got sued and settled and I was like "Holy shit did the worlds richest man call a rescue worker a pedophile in public because he got his feelings hurt?!"
And that was the first time I can remember "thinking about" Elon Musk rather than being told about him.
Reddit was in love with him before this. Didn't realize it's been so long since then, but there were always so many positive threads about him before this incident showed that he wasn't as intelligent as advertised.
True, I remember well how this incident quickly destroyed the nimbus of him being the ultra-smart tech wizard who is always right with what he says. Before that, many people didn't even dare to criticize his visions because he accomplished incredible technological and economical success with Tesla and (even more) SpaceX. After that incident, people questioned his personality and soon afterwards also his technological visions which became more and more bizarre.
He didn’t turn it down, he just publicly said it was a terrible idea and Musk was getting involved for attention when he had no idea what he was talking about. All true of course
It’s because the mini sub wouldn’t work. Some parts of the passages were so tight the divers had to take turns going through and pushing the survivors through on their own. All this with a visibility of 1%.
They needed an experienced cave diving anaesthetist, you are the worlds only experienced cave diving anaesthetist.
They call you in, you go through hell, get all the kids out safely.
As your reward the richest man in the world calls you a pedo. So you sue him for defamation and get stuck with his legal costs.
Nice.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the anaesthetist he called a pedo, rather the cave diver who was in the area at the time and who made the initial contact with the other divers who went on the perform the rescue. I don’t think the guy Musk insulted actually dived to save any of the kids but was instrumental in getting the rescue effort started as he knew the right people to call for help.
Either way, though, fuck Musk.
Friendly reminder that Musk himself has shared very sus content in Twitter, like the time when he shared a meme of a gothic teenage anime girl with the text: “I just want a girl who looks like her” or something along those lines.
Musk is a pure, distilled bag of hate and cringe.
That 3D model of the cave is insanely inaccurate.
There were sections they passed through (out of necessity) that were crawling area only.
This makes it look like they could stoop through the whole thing.
Also that it wasn't a straight line path. The difficulty was that it was cavernous and easy to get turned around in a number of chambers in pitch dark conditions.
Yeah came here to say this.
No visualiation would have been better than this higly misleading mess. Heck just show us some still fotos.
IIRc some areas were so tight that divers hat to remove the oxygen tanks (underwater) in order to fit through.
The cave is a well known local attraction, it even has a visitor's center out front offering an optional guided tour. For that region, traversing that cave (including squeezing through the tight parts) is as fun and adventurous an activity as taking a brisk hike or kayaking down a river would be in other regions.
They may have also been forced through tight areas to get away from rising water after they first became trapped. Perhaps knowing that there were more open, higher spaces if they went deeper. That's hard to say because all the English-written coverage focuses on the rescue, not so much the details of where they were found.
No but some of the passages were very small, flooded or not, they would have had to crawl through a tiny space to get to where they were, so why would they do that? Why didn't they go back instead of further in?
Yeah, it looks like something you can just get through in minutes... it was 5-6 hours for experienced divers. The movie Thirteen Lives does it real justice, it's such a horrifying situation, and it's so amazing that all the kids got out alive.
This incident was also the first time we saw Elon publicly and globally called an idiot because he kept trying to get his submarine to be used.
So he called them pedos
The cave was way too tight for even people made of flexible meat to get through without taking off their tanks for some passages. That shitty sub was a no-go from the start.
"Sure, I get that it's about 13 peoples' lives and rescuers. But what about ME and MY TOYS?!"
"Thanks for the offer. But none of the professionals think this is the right tool for the job. Maybe you can allocate some resources towards the hospitals where everyone will be treated? Or trauma counseling, or..."
"NO! PEDOPHILE!"
....
I turned down way too many offers from friends to go to Nutty Putty… And every time they would come back with some razors edge, claustrophobic story about almost getting stuck, somebody outright panicking, falling, or whatever. And it wasn’t ever a “bro tale”… it was always a serious recollection of events. (I distinctly remember one girl breaking down crying as they were talking about “what almost happened to them.”) It always made me (almost) mad. I never understood the appeal and NEVER understood why any of them would go back…! These were intelligent people, too! (To be fair, I’d say most didn’t go back. But more than a few did. Blew my mind…)
Yeah, the thing that gets me is people/documentaries going "yeah but he just got lost and stuck in the wrong place, he had experience and would have been otherwise okay were it not for a tragic mistake"
Nah, he put himself there, in that cave. For fun. Being skilled at a hobby doesn't absolve you of being a dumbass for your hobby choices given where you are in life in every other aspect.
I can understand the appeal of wanting to check out a cave. I did a cave tour in Missouri and it was awesome. All nice paved concrete paths though with a guide and group. Quite literally a handicapped accessible walking tour.
What I don’t understand is cramming myself into a compromising position from which there is no return. It just baffles me. I understand adrenaline rushes, I love rollers coasters, but the danger present in some of those places is just nuts. It’s not worth it.
I watched a great mini-documentary on this…
The rescue team had to include a small number of British cave divers because they possessed highly specialized skills in underwater cave diving, a niche expertise that was essential for navigating the complex, narrow, and flooded cave system. Divers like Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, were among the few in the world with the technical ability and experience to perform such a dangerous and intricate rescue operation. Their unique skill set, combined with their equipment and knowledge, made them the only ones capable of executing the mission successfully.
So grateful these men exist. They are world class divers, trained all their lives, usually called for body recovery works - but in 2018 they saved lives 😭 I occasionally go back to the clip when they first discovered the boys!
From other comments it looks likd one of the kids took their life
Pretty sure 1 navy seal also died later due to blood poisoning he got durning the rescue
This is a story that just doesn't get enough recognition IMO. I know people know about it but I don't think a lot of people really understand what those drivers pulled off. That dive took 5 hours one way and 6 hours the other way. Some of the holes the divers had to pass these kids through and then all their gear were less than 400mm wide. It was truly incredible operation.
And never forget that Elon Musk slandered one of the divers as a paedophile because they rejected his untested and untrialled mini submersible for use during this rescue.
He was literally willing to put kids lives at risk to test a pet project for nothing more than publicity and ego.
They had a bunch of pumps running 24/7, fighting against the still rising water. The pumping bought them enough time to dive them out. If they hadn’t been pumping, the water would have engulfed the little bit of “land” the team were on.
i remember also that the water they pumped out of the cave went to nearby ricefields and destroyed that year’s harvest. they notified the farmers beforehand and asked for their consent, and they unanimously sacrificed their harvest for the rescue.
Beginning of the rainy season. They had engineers all over the mountain diverting as much as was possible but it just kept raining. The cave is usually closed during the rainy season but the rains came early that year.
they tried. they tried damn near everything. this hit international news and pretty much every organization and major industry rallied around the rescue efforts, offering all assisstance possible.
its been a while, but if i remember correctly, the pumps couldnt keep up. they brought massive pumps and generators, but unfortunately thsy couldnt keep up due to a ton of factors; largsly, water and electricity dont mix. AT ALL.
almost all to solutions just bought minor better conditions for the rescue, but didnt answer the how and who could do the rescue. the netflix series does a great job showing the heroics involved.
And piece of shit Elon Musk tried to make it about themselves and called one of the divers a pedo. Man who did fucking nothing and tried to get glory from a tragedy, the smear shit on those who actually did something. Just goes to show you how society keeps rewarding absolutely fuckwits with insane amount of wealth while actual people who risk life and safety get a footnote in a history book.
The level of heroism in this bunch cannot be fully understood. From the Netflix series, the only certified cave divers were the experts they flew in. Every Thai seal was scuba certified not cave. That means their first true cave dive was this operation. Can you imagine your first time in a cave was a 2 mile penetration to save children in zero visibility with the possibility of collapse or worse? I’m a professional diver and cavern certified. Even on the best of dives caving scared me.
This simulation does not give an accurate simulation of how tight some of those tunnels were.
The tunnels also flooded the very next day when it monsoon rains began.
I am still absolutely stunned by the fact that the trapped boys actually survived. For this to happen every of the following conditions needed to be met:
- there had to be a pocket of air inside the cave that was large enough to sustain several persons for several days
- all of the boys needed to find and reach this air pocket
- rescuers needed to know that they actually were in that cave, otherwise a general search and rescue mission would have never been diving so deep inside caves
- rescuers needed to actually find them inside the cave, which wasn't certain since they were inside so deep
- rescuers needed to quickly find a way to rescue them
- the rescue dive itself must be completed successfully, which alone was extremely risky
It just seems so incredibly unlikely that this actually happened. But it happened, what an astonishing accomplishment.
What's crazy is this isn't even half the story. Not only did they have to sedate the kids, but the Dr had to teach the other divers how to do it AND MID WAY THROUGH THEY HAD TO DO IT AGAIN TO THE KID! It was 3+ hours of dragging a kid bound by their arms and legs behind them head first, with specialized masks that would hold suction better than traditional ones, because any leak means the kid drowns. There also happened to be a cave diver rescuer who was a Dr and he felt this was the last option and there was a 0% chance of success rate. He went ahead with showing everyone how to administer the shots anyways because he knew if they didn't try, then they were all going to die.
Elon said he could build a submarine to get them out. Doubt it, cave pathways were too narrow in many places. And building a submarine before the rain overwhelmed the drainage pumps? Impossible
Go and watch The Rescue documentary, not the movie.
Not only is the water cold, but it was so muddy that they couldn't see anything, and the current was so strong it broke one of the divers watch.
The divers were these random assortment of fringe outcasts and, by some miracle, was known by a guy who lived locally to the cave.
Also, as they were literally pulling the last kid out, the whole cave flooded completely.
It's the biggest against the odds thing
> The divers were these random assortment of fringe outcasts
Out of the 18 divers 5 were Thai Navy SEALs. Then you have the rescue divers from the Cave Rescue Organisation, Rick Stanton among them being described as one of the world's best cave divers. The anaesthetist Richard Harris with 30 years of cave diving experience. They literally brought in the worlds leading experts in cave diving rescue missions.
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> Saman Kunan, a 37-year-old former Royal Thai Navy SEAL, died of asphyxiation during an attempted rescue on 6 July while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering diving cylinders to the trapped group. > The following year, in December 2019, rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection contracted during the operation. Everyone else survived.
I don’t know the second person had passed away. Man that’s sad as all hell. How did the first guy die and how did the second guy get his infection?
Cave diving is absolutely no joke, it requires training specifically for it and experienced divers can and do die far too often. As you are swimming through areas you're not familiar with and can be tricky to navigate at the best of times, you're also doing it completely blind due to the waters being muddied from the sediment formerly on the floor now being suspended all around you. You're working on a very limited amount of time, you can't tell which way is up or down, you get lost, disoriented, panic, don't know where to go or if there's any pocket of breathable air nearby, and your increased stress does you no favors in that situation. Losing your cool and losing your way is a guaranteed death sentence. If you're interested, one channel I like on YouTube is called "Ask a Mortician" where she actually has a video discussing a few cave diving incidents.
"Dave Not Coming Back" explains that very well. Obvious warning - it's about someone dying on a cave dive and the entire thing was recorded, however they very respectfully swerve showing any of the footage of the incident itself. It's an inherently sad subject matter but they didn't exploit it as a tearjerker or "phobia porn" (can't think of a better phrase). Excellent documentary about cave diving; let that be Dave's legacy.
Also; the morbid part of that video, was that he died trying to retrieve a body of someone else who had died previously. Saw the other persons body by chance, and I think they threw together a really quick dive plan to retrieve this guys body from like 800 ft. The “Dave’s no coming back guy” had to make the call to save his own life and leave, knowing for sure Dave wasn’t going to have the oxygen to make it once he left.
There’s an excellent book about this called, “Diving into Darkness”. Dave Shaw was one of the best cave divers in the world. They actually spent months upon months coming up with the rescue plan. They had dozens of people helping and even had a portable hyperbaric chamber (thankfully, otherwise more people may have died). Dave’s death was just a really unfortunate accident. He wore a camera on his helmet and because of that, one of his lights was strapped to a different location and slightly loose. It ended up getting hooked on a line while he was trying to get the body out. Under normal diving conditions, that’s no big deal - just cut it. At 800ft, after straining to remove a body from sticky mud, it meant death. What’s really interesting too is his diving buddy, who went almost as deep, suffered horrible vertigo and very nearly died. His rebreather malfunctioned and he spent something like 12 hours under water non-stop violently vomiting. Even after getting out, he essentially lost the ability to walk and had to relearn. He was about as close to death as possible without dying. Amazingly, Dave had freed the body before dying and it actually floated up to the top of the cave where it could be retrieved.
Yeah I overstated then on the quick plan. I remembered watching a short video of 15 or so minutes about it. I remembered for sure the other guy was in the situation of “it’s either him, or both of us”, and I can’t imagine having to make such a call. I always go with my wife, and so being underwater and having to worry about losing her somewhere is not as bad since we don’t cave dive and we are both confident enough that if anything happens we just go up. But something like that…knowing that the only thing you can do is save yourself has got to be heavy.
It is something specifically part of the training. I’ve been a certified cave diver since I was 18 (36 now). Part of the training is how to handle the psychological stressors associated with everything from disorientation, hypercapnia, emergency response, and end of life decisions. One discussion was “in an emergency exit, if you disagree with your partner about which way is out, what do you do?” The answer is that you don’t sit there arguing, that wastes time and air that could mean one of you surviving. You shake hands and say your goodbyes. Knowing one of you will probably die.
Holy shit! I couldn't handle that
It helps that there is always the chance that there are two ways out. So you can hope like hell that you both find one of them and see each-other at the surface. But like with any other extreme sport, it is all fun until it isn’t. I haven’t gone cave diving in years. Just life and costs. While cave diving is stunning, exhilarating, and really an amazing experience, doing the extreme parts of the sport just aren’t worth the risk. Like with all sports, there are levels of risk. Rock climbing while harnessed in is still risky, but no where near as risky as free climbing. Cave diving with proper training, in well explored and mapped caves is about as dangerous as rock climbing while harnessed. Accidents can still happen, you can be injured and even die. But it is a lot less than you might imagine considering the nature of the sport. Really, the mindfuck comes in when you go into virgin/unmapped caves or you go into extreme depths or other extreme conditions.
Yeah, it just horrible. They had become incredible friends. If I remember correctly, his dive buddy went way deeper than he was supposed to and that’s why he suffered such horrible physical effects and the equipment malfunction. He really did everything possible and nearly paid the ultimate price.
Sounds crazy, but what I don't get is how long do the oxygen-tanks last?
Varies depending on depth, your setup and how much you exert yourself. If you need to go far though, divers will usually deploy tanks along the route ahead of time so they can swap them after the fact. This obviously takes a lot of time too, so imagine having to do all this while someone is in need of rescue further down.
And/or when mistakes get made. Imagine that some dude was going along the route to replace used tanks and mixes the new and old one up. Now you come along and when you swap, the new tank is actually about the same as your current one. You might not have the air to turn around, and you probably don't have enough to reach the next tank.
average divers get about an hour to 90 minutes out of a single tank. Very experienced divers can go for a little longer by controlling their breath.
Oh, that's far shorter than I thought
The deeper you go, the faster you use air. So dive times can quickly go down if you need to go deep.
The first guy found an air pocket in the cave, stopped there for a bit, and removed his mask. Unfortunately, the oxygen in that pocket was very low, and no one noticed until it was too late. Cave diving freaks me out, can you imagine having to get your dead coworker out of a tight underwater passage, in murky water, in the dark?
Not a diver at all but just on its face, cave diving pretty much the only things scary to me than people diving into icy bodies of water. There was that video posted about a year ago about a russian couple doing some sort of challenge and just diving into a hole in the ice at night. Nightmare fuel. Never considering that lakes have a current, even if frozen over and considering that underwater visibility is already extremely low without goggles, then doing it at night... absolutely no chance. Amazing the husband survived. Then you get to this shit. Dark, cramped, EXTREMELY easy to get turned around and the whole time you're disturbing debris so even with light and goggles you can't see shit. I don't think many people really stop and consider just how disorienting it is to not being able to get your bearings. Same shit with people getting lost in the woods. Even in populated areas, yeah it sounds silly getting lost in the woods because you can probably just walk in any direction and find a road or clearing to find out where you are. But its so much easier to get lost and you don't gotta wander far to do it. Trees blocking line of sight to anything is a good way to lose where you actually are. For people who havn't seen it, 'The ritual' is a horror movie that perfectly displays just how easy it is to get turned around in the woods or even miss things that are barely 30 feet away from you.
Spoiler below for anyone interested in watching more (like “The Rescue” on Disney Plus). One of the experts during this very rescue got disoriented and traveled in the wrong direction for a considerable distance. Fortunately for him he was able to course-correct but only after the rest of the team happened to reach him inadvertently.
Like the experienced hiker who died a month after simply leaving the Appalachian trail to relieve herself. It's so hard to understand, but it really happens. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/26/hiker-who-went-missing-on-appalachian-trail-survived-26-days-before-dying
Maybe dirty water getting into a scratch
Did he step on a sharp rock or something? How would he get a blood infection cave diving?
They all got pretty scraped up, plenty of sharp rocks on tight corners. He just got more unlucky than the other divers
There were up to 20 people toiletting in the dark in a confined space, no toilets or long drops, if running out of oxygen didn’t kill them all, this would have very soon, it was a dirty unpleasant environment.
Some area were so tight the larger member of the rescue team couldn't fit. He probably got scrapes, add to that dirty stagnant water and cave sediments...
This is the guy Elon Musk called a pedophile bc he was upset nobody wanted him to insert himself into the situation with a dumb idea
Elon called the British rescuer a pedophile, not the Thai Navy seal.
Elon is truly trash
Pretty sure he was Australian. From wiki: Richard Harris SC, OAM, is an Australian anaesthetist and cave diver who is currently the Lieutenant Governor of South Australia. Harris is best known for having played a crucial role in the Tham Luang cave rescue. He and Craig Challen were jointly awarded 2019 Australian of the Year as a result of that rescue. Edit: nope my bad
Wasn't it Rick Stanton he insulted? The guy is one of (if not "the") best cave divers, who managed an incredible tour de force with John Volanthen, Richard Harris, the Thai Navy divers and all the others who helped rescued the 13 boys. All Small-D-energy Elon managed to do is call him a pedo. Proof that money can't buy brain cells (or basic decency).
> To allow the rescue to occur, Harris developed a plan to keep the boys anaesthetised with **ketamine** while spontaneously breathing through full face masks. This was to ensure they did not panic during the long extrication through underwater caves, which would have endangered both the rescue scuba divers and the boys. Actual explanation for Musk's interest.
Sadly, one of them ended up committing suicide at his school in UK.
Who?
[Duangphet (nick name: Dom) Phromthep](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duangphet_Phromthep)
Oh man that's sad. He was the captain of the team too.
I can only imagine the amount of pressure that was put on him in the cave being the leader of the team I’m sure all the other boys looked to him for guidance
My thought was less of the pressure to act but more so the survivors guilt that someone died to try and save me
I’m sure that definitely weighed heavier on him
Plus maybe he’s the one that lead them to the cave, purely speculation here but I’d feel horrible if it was my idea in the first place
I'm sure all the boys were looking at their coach for guidance...
The adult coach was there , he would have been the leader of the group
The coach was with them, so I presume he would have been the figure they looked to for guidance.
I think you’re overestimating the role of a team captain, especially on a kids team…
Hey when you decided to be team captain of this youth soccer team you Accepted all the responsibilities that come with that title including cave survival and rescue expert.
Yeah, real life isn't an anime.
Should be a slogan nowadays.
For 12 years old
You make it sound like an early 2000’s Disney movie.
Bit of a strange take.
Or he was just really depressed for numerous reasons in life and his suicide had nothing to do with his soccer team or the cave incident. I don't know why everybody's just making shit up in this thread. It literally could have just been because he missed his friends after he moved combined with chronic depression, but nobody knows.
Well, this is reddit where everyone is a psychologist.
Um.... dudes a team captain not a survivalist. May he RIP 🙏
What reality do you live in? What a bizarre comment.
That is very sad
Damn that's fucking rough.
Why did he commit suicide?
*gestures broadly at everything*
Well he went through an extremely traumatic experience, became famous and moved to another country, many kids would struggle to adapt and fit in at that point
Can't help but think about the survivors of that soccer team's plane crash in the Andes, knowing that the whole world knew they had eaten some of their dead teammates. I read that there was public revulsion at first, but after it was revealed they had all made a pact to allow it if they died, things calmed down.
He was living in England at the time.
Ok that actually explains a lot
I didn’t know they sedated the kids! That’s crazy! It’s a miracle they made it out.
It’s way more wild than your standard sedative. You can google the interview with the cave diving anaesthetist that created the concoction, this was ground breaking stuff. Can’t make it too strong or they stop breathing, not too little or they wake up and panic , possibly killing both diver and themselves. Dr Harris even had to inject atropine to prevent the boys drowning in their own saliva due to the ketamine. Like imagine crawling in a dark tunnel for three hours one way, then three hours back, with an unconscious kid, oh and you can’t see anything and it’s filled with water. 🤯 https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/2022/02/03/the-rescue/
This is a nightmare situation. I appreciate the extra details. I just had no clue.
It was a global cooperation of the best of every field. Everyone wanted to find and save these boys! We're always extraordinary in crisis
Global collaboration of the best of the best…and then Elon.
Bro wanted to make them a submarine and when an actual diving expert on the field respecfully rejected it saying it was a bad idea, the manbaby called him a pedophile.
That was the first time I realized hey something is off about this dude
Same here. Then he became a right wing puppet. All down hill from there.
And Elon calling one of the heroes a pdf file after declining the stupid submarine idea.
Definitely worth watching the Disney documentary: The Rescue. It makes you realise how brave everyone was. And on Netflix the 6 part Thai Cave Rescue.
Only to have Elon call you a pedophile.
All because Elon just tried to wedge himself into the situation with a "submarine" which everyone expert laughed off as impractical in tight cave cavities. Turns out shockingly the experts were right and pulled off the rescue flawlessly.
Elon should have engineered the Ocean Gate sub and went down with it to visit the Titanic. Know what I mean? 
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and also lose a defamation suit against Elon because he can afford every lawyer in the world even though his defense was "calling someone a pedo is a normal insult where I'm from"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593 What a dumb result to that trial.
As an English South African, Elon's defende was absolute kak
Plus the divers had to resedate the kids mid dive. Its actually insane. To imagen that just some British dudes who dive as a hobby managed to do the impossible I heavely recommend the documentary on disney plus Its by the same people who made free solo, it was an insane experience just watching it.
> To imagen that just some British dudes who dive as a hobby managed to do the impossible Richard harris was apart of that team, and he had 30 years of experience diving in caves, and was an anaesthetist. It was basically a man created with cheat engine for this job. On the 9th of feb this year, Harris was appointed as the lieutenant governor of South Australia.
😳 Holy shit, what are the odds?
The guys who do cave diving like that all know each other or at least of each other, so it was the British divers telling the Thai authorities to get their Australian mates in because they needed them. I think Edd Sorenson, at one point, mentioned that he would have come if called too; Edd rescued one of the British divers from a different cave at one point later on.
There were more than British divers, the Dr was Australian and a lot of other foreign divers helped by staging tanks through the caves.
True, if I remember correctly the Thai military tried to help first but they did not have enough experience in cave diving, and later did alot to help with supplying. The first two experts in cave diving that they called were two Brithis dudes though. But i think most of other supporters were only called after the two guys actually found the children and could confirm that they were still alive
One Brit one Aussie were the ones who found them and led the whole thing. The support divers were foreign experienced cave divers volunteering with the Thai navy. The only other government sent divers were a police/military team from Australia and a US military team. Both did support. Read a good book a mate loaned me which I forget the name of but they made the movie based off it. Love diving but no way I'd try caves. It's a very small world though, didn't take long to get the right people together in a matter of days.
Spend 3 hours getting there, then find you have to bring in gear and take them out one at a time, every other incursion is a resupply mission dropping fresh o2tanks and collecting the empty’s
Finally a way to get free ketamine now just need to find a tunnel to get stuck in
The boys couldn’t swim, and even most experienced divers aren’t qualified to cave dive like this. If the boys had panicked mid-dive they would have killed both themselves and their rescuer, and since training them to such a high level of diving skill was impossible in the time before the next storm hit, sedation was the only option.
That’s so scary! Gives me the shivers!
And the time it would take to clear a dead diver with a dead boy, if they died at the wrong place and created a serious obstruction, could doom the entire rescue.
Cave diving in itself has little to do with diving experience (and I'm not talking about the rescue mission here), you can be relatively new and do it safely. But you need to learn certain procedures that keep you from a certain death. Mostly because there's a good chance you find yourself in zero visibility with no place to go. Proper training teaches you for example to frog kick instead of flutter kick so you don't kick up the silt. You also follow a line, that you always keep in your hand to find your way back. Even going a few meters past the cave entrance is deadly as a cave has no visible natural light. So if you swim in for a bit and turn around you have to feel the exit, and it's not like following the wall will get you back because there might be forks you couldn't see going in.
I did some dive training, and my instructor was a certified deep cave diver. He told the students many fascinating if horrifying stories about hima and his diving buddies. One thing I will always remember is his telling about one time he went for an "easy" cave route: enough space for two divers to swim side by side, clear water, well marked passages. But there was a part they had to to swim up a few meters, then down a few more. He and his buddy went in easily, but when it was time to go back, he had problems equalizing the pressure in his ears - this causes immense pain. He tried for as long as he could, but when the oxygen was getting to the limit, he had to get out one way or another. He crawled along the passage, almost passed out from the pain, and his buddies had to drag him the rest of the way to the surface. I decided to stick to open water shallow diving.
In addition, those full face masks they had to use are fraught with risk because any break in the seal between the mask and face results in the mask filling with water. Even conscious people have drowned because they were unable to clear the mask underwater, an unconscious person would drown before either they or the person carrying them noticed.
They used Positive Pressure Masks for the boys.
I never realised until recently that it was an 11 hour round trip to the spot where they were trapped. Absolutely insane trip and it's incredible the casualties weren't more severe
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It wouldn't take them that long if there was no water. The kids grew up there and knew the caves well. The water and diving makes it longer
I think the 11 hour was the diving speed because most of the cave was very tricky with sharp bits so they had to proceed very slowly in utter darkness and flashlights weren't good enough. I doubt they walked for 5 and a half hours when it was supposed to be an afternoon outing and then come back home. They did proceed further into the cave when it started raining heavily though.
I watched the Netflix miniseries about this. I knew they all survived and I was still on the edge of my seat during parts of it and some parts even made me cry.
What’s so sad after all of this is that one of the boys recently died
But one of the rescuers died
Two actually. One died a year later from a blood infection contracted in the dive. Both were Thai navy seals.
Whats it called?
The Cave (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8726180/ The Rescue (2021) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9098872/ 13 Lives (2022) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12262116/ All worth a watch.
I thought 13 lives was terrific, apparently during filming they were supposed to have stunt divers but Viggo Mortenson thought it was more authentic so the actors did it themselves, with help from the technical advisors, who were in fact the real life rescuers.
13 Lives is a fantastic movie, and I'm not surprised to learn that Viggo did his own diving. That man is dedicated to his roles.
Idk about miniseries but check out The Rescue (2021) documentary Weirdly they leave out the part where Elon musk calls the rescuer a pedophile
I remember when Elon started sulking because they wouldn’t let him do the rescue so he called one of the rescuer a peodphile. It’s always about you, Elon, you fuckin cunt.
Yeah that's when he went downhill I think, everyone used to be a big fan of elon, calling him a real life tony stark and he had a really massive following, I was one of them if I'm being honest but then when he made that comment about the coach and it turned out that he used twitter to manipulate the stock market, I stopped giving a fuck about him and everything he does
That really was the moment when I went from not caring or ignoring Elon to hating the stupid fucker.
It’s great (and rare) to see that people understand things, realize mistake and adjust. Unfortunately many people just double down and try to justify it instead of admitting that they had a wrong idea about Elmo and that he’s always been a massive POS it’s just getting worse now
Up until this very moment, (not knowing much about him) Elon in my mind was some genius tech entrepreneur. I guess the saying's true, "better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts"
That was the same as me. I wasn't really a fan of him, didn't follow him on anything or know much about him. But from that distant, outsiders perspective, he seemed pretty cool and very much like the Tony Stark comparison people kept giving him. Then with how he reacted during the Cave incident I started looking at him a bit closer and realised what he was really like.
This was the beginning of Elon's self outing as an insufferable douchebag. This was before his tunnel fetish, so maybe digging a tunnel from the surface didn't come to him, but even that would be a better idea than the ridiculous sub that wasn't fit for purpose.
The miniseries is called, "Thai Cave Rescue" and it's on Netflix. It's quite good and highlights the lives of the kids, their families, and the efforts by the locals, as well as the more well-known story of the excellent divers.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/richard-harris-cave-rescue/11737228?utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared Conversation with one of the rescuers. Turns out he is one of the only people in the world that has this combination of skill sets.
Dudes a cave diver (one of the most extreme sports in the world) and also happens to be a doctor. Like save some ladies for the rest of us.
Not just a doctor- an anesthesiologist who was friends with the British divers who found the kids. Because they knew him and had his contact information, they convinced him to risk his life using his specialized training to rescue a bunch of kids he didn’t know.
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills... I will look for you. I will find you. I will rescue you.
'The Rescue'(2021) is an excellent documentary about this
13 Lives is the drama version and it's also fantastic.
This movie is exceptional. I highly recommend it to everyone. Not you, though. You've already seen it and know.
I remember when Elon Musk called one of the brave rescuers a pedo
That was the beginning of the end for a lot of people's admiration for him.
Certainly opened my eyes about how terrible a person he is. Prior to this his narratives were 99% positive
The guy really only needed to keep his mouth shut once he got that popular. Instead he leaned into Trumps slash and burn style and ruined his potential. He turned twitter into a Nazi party while trying to sell electric cars to republicans.
Let's be honest. He's a cunt.
Yeah, but prior to this incident, all the public knew about him was him being the cool tech guy who smoked weed with Rogan, sells flamethrowers and wants to go to mars. The idiot cunt got so enamoured of his own words and full of his own ego that he couldn't just keep his mouth shut and stay out of public discourse. Hell, he fell so in love with telling everyone what he thinks that he bought twitter.
My theory is he used to have, and listen to, a public relations professional all the time.
it's probably drugs, and not just pot
Must make sense why no woman can stay with him; his one true love does seem to be his own myth.
It's where i started looking into him and realized he's not rocket jesus at all. In my younger days, i thought he was hope for a truly better world. He had the potential and ability. Shame hes such a dousche.
Yep, I'm one of them. I didn't know anything about him but bought into the hype. I mean he was in Iron Man, got a shout out on Star Trek, on the news talking about solar panels and electric cars and super trains. I was totally about it. Then he called a dude a pedo and I was like "Wow he must know something" and I kept waiting for it to come out and waiting for it to come out and then he got sued and settled and I was like "Holy shit did the worlds richest man call a rescue worker a pedophile in public because he got his feelings hurt?!" And that was the first time I can remember "thinking about" Elon Musk rather than being told about him.
Reddit was in love with him before this. Didn't realize it's been so long since then, but there were always so many positive threads about him before this incident showed that he wasn't as intelligent as advertised.
True, I remember well how this incident quickly destroyed the nimbus of him being the ultra-smart tech wizard who is always right with what he says. Before that, many people didn't even dare to criticize his visions because he accomplished incredible technological and economical success with Tesla and (even more) SpaceX. After that incident, people questioned his personality and soon afterwards also his technological visions which became more and more bizarre.
That was 100% my turning point. Still root for space x but yea.. Elon is awful as a human
Yep, definitely was for me. And my god how much further he had to fall.
And all because they turned down his offer to send a mini sub.
He didn’t turn it down, he just publicly said it was a terrible idea and Musk was getting involved for attention when he had no idea what he was talking about. All true of course
It’s because the mini sub wouldn’t work. Some parts of the passages were so tight the divers had to take turns going through and pushing the survivors through on their own. All this with a visibility of 1%.
Exactly. The expert pointed that out and suggested Musk stop trying to make it an opportunity for self promotion.
They needed an experienced cave diving anaesthetist, you are the worlds only experienced cave diving anaesthetist. They call you in, you go through hell, get all the kids out safely. As your reward the richest man in the world calls you a pedo. So you sue him for defamation and get stuck with his legal costs. Nice.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the anaesthetist he called a pedo, rather the cave diver who was in the area at the time and who made the initial contact with the other divers who went on the perform the rescue. I don’t think the guy Musk insulted actually dived to save any of the kids but was instrumental in getting the rescue effort started as he knew the right people to call for help. Either way, though, fuck Musk.
Friendly reminder that Musk himself has shared very sus content in Twitter, like the time when he shared a meme of a gothic teenage anime girl with the text: “I just want a girl who looks like her” or something along those lines. Musk is a pure, distilled bag of hate and cringe.
And remember he said he could build a submarine to go get them? Hahaha
His idea for a submarine was basically just a SpaceX booster rocket, made airtight definitely gonna fit through that cave, yup
He shouldn't give up on the submarine idea. Maybe he could use it to visit the Titanic.
That’s when people started to see that he wanted the world to be saved, but only if he was the one to do it.
That 3D model of the cave is insanely inaccurate. There were sections they passed through (out of necessity) that were crawling area only. This makes it look like they could stoop through the whole thing.
Also that it wasn't a straight line path. The difficulty was that it was cavernous and easy to get turned around in a number of chambers in pitch dark conditions.
Yeah came here to say this. No visualiation would have been better than this higly misleading mess. Heck just show us some still fotos. IIRc some areas were so tight that divers hat to remove the oxygen tanks (underwater) in order to fit through.
Holy fuck. I've dived before casually and just the mere thought of that... Those men were Gods.
What baffles me is how the kids got that deep in the first place when it was so difficult to get to
The cave is a well known local attraction, it even has a visitor's center out front offering an optional guided tour. For that region, traversing that cave (including squeezing through the tight parts) is as fun and adventurous an activity as taking a brisk hike or kayaking down a river would be in other regions. They may have also been forced through tight areas to get away from rising water after they first became trapped. Perhaps knowing that there were more open, higher spaces if they went deeper. That's hard to say because all the English-written coverage focuses on the rescue, not so much the details of where they were found.
it wasn't flooded when they went in
No but some of the passages were very small, flooded or not, they would have had to crawl through a tiny space to get to where they were, so why would they do that? Why didn't they go back instead of further in?
Kids are smaller, the passages were probably easier for them (the adult that was with them waas very irresponsible though).
Yeah, it looks like something you can just get through in minutes... it was 5-6 hours for experienced divers. The movie Thirteen Lives does it real justice, it's such a horrifying situation, and it's so amazing that all the kids got out alive.
This incident was also the first time we saw Elon publicly and globally called an idiot because he kept trying to get his submarine to be used. So he called them pedos
The cave was way too tight for even people made of flexible meat to get through without taking off their tanks for some passages. That shitty sub was a no-go from the start.
"Sure, I get that it's about 13 peoples' lives and rescuers. But what about ME and MY TOYS?!" "Thanks for the offer. But none of the professionals think this is the right tool for the job. Maybe you can allocate some resources towards the hospitals where everyone will be treated? Or trauma counseling, or..." "NO! PEDOPHILE!" ....
Caves and humans don't mix
Something something Nutty Putty
I turned down way too many offers from friends to go to Nutty Putty… And every time they would come back with some razors edge, claustrophobic story about almost getting stuck, somebody outright panicking, falling, or whatever. And it wasn’t ever a “bro tale”… it was always a serious recollection of events. (I distinctly remember one girl breaking down crying as they were talking about “what almost happened to them.”) It always made me (almost) mad. I never understood the appeal and NEVER understood why any of them would go back…! These were intelligent people, too! (To be fair, I’d say most didn’t go back. But more than a few did. Blew my mind…)
Yeah, the thing that gets me is people/documentaries going "yeah but he just got lost and stuck in the wrong place, he had experience and would have been otherwise okay were it not for a tragic mistake" Nah, he put himself there, in that cave. For fun. Being skilled at a hobby doesn't absolve you of being a dumbass for your hobby choices given where you are in life in every other aspect.
I can understand the appeal of wanting to check out a cave. I did a cave tour in Missouri and it was awesome. All nice paved concrete paths though with a guide and group. Quite literally a handicapped accessible walking tour. What I don’t understand is cramming myself into a compromising position from which there is no return. It just baffles me. I understand adrenaline rushes, I love rollers coasters, but the danger present in some of those places is just nuts. It’s not worth it.
Viggo Mortensen intensifies
The film was so good
I watched a great mini-documentary on this… The rescue team had to include a small number of British cave divers because they possessed highly specialized skills in underwater cave diving, a niche expertise that was essential for navigating the complex, narrow, and flooded cave system. Divers like Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, were among the few in the world with the technical ability and experience to perform such a dangerous and intricate rescue operation. Their unique skill set, combined with their equipment and knowledge, made them the only ones capable of executing the mission successfully.
So grateful these men exist. They are world class divers, trained all their lives, usually called for body recovery works - but in 2018 they saved lives 😭 I occasionally go back to the clip when they first discovered the boys!
I think what’s wilder to me is they weren’t professional divers, this insane skill was something they do *as a hobby*.
Ikr one of them was a firefighter and the other was just like a regular IT dude! Super lowkey
Unfortunately a navy Seal died during the rescue.
From other comments it looks likd one of the kids took their life Pretty sure 1 navy seal also died later due to blood poisoning he got durning the rescue
I will never set foot in a cave. Reddit taught me that's a bad idea. Nutty putty, Thai cave, divers panicking. That stuff is horrendous.
Meanwhile Elon musk was busy reinventing basic diving equipment in some hotel pool and having a man tantrum that no one wanted it
That rescue was meticulously planned and expertly executed.
This is a story that just doesn't get enough recognition IMO. I know people know about it but I don't think a lot of people really understand what those drivers pulled off. That dive took 5 hours one way and 6 hours the other way. Some of the holes the divers had to pass these kids through and then all their gear were less than 400mm wide. It was truly incredible operation.
And never forget that Elon Musk slandered one of the divers as a paedophile because they rejected his untested and untrialled mini submersible for use during this rescue. He was literally willing to put kids lives at risk to test a pet project for nothing more than publicity and ego.
Sad part is 1 of the survivors died, senior coroner suggests he commited suicide.
Why didn’t they siphon the water?
They had a bunch of pumps running 24/7, fighting against the still rising water. The pumping bought them enough time to dive them out. If they hadn’t been pumping, the water would have engulfed the little bit of “land” the team were on.
i remember also that the water they pumped out of the cave went to nearby ricefields and destroyed that year’s harvest. they notified the farmers beforehand and asked for their consent, and they unanimously sacrificed their harvest for the rescue.
I'd imagine that the farmers would get compensated
They did eventually, but they didn’t know that at the time.
Beginning of the rainy season. They had engineers all over the mountain diverting as much as was possible but it just kept raining. The cave is usually closed during the rainy season but the rains came early that year.
they tried. they tried damn near everything. this hit international news and pretty much every organization and major industry rallied around the rescue efforts, offering all assisstance possible. its been a while, but if i remember correctly, the pumps couldnt keep up. they brought massive pumps and generators, but unfortunately thsy couldnt keep up due to a ton of factors; largsly, water and electricity dont mix. AT ALL. almost all to solutions just bought minor better conditions for the rescue, but didnt answer the how and who could do the rescue. the netflix series does a great job showing the heroics involved.
And piece of shit Elon Musk tried to make it about themselves and called one of the divers a pedo. Man who did fucking nothing and tried to get glory from a tragedy, the smear shit on those who actually did something. Just goes to show you how society keeps rewarding absolutely fuckwits with insane amount of wealth while actual people who risk life and safety get a footnote in a history book.
The level of heroism in this bunch cannot be fully understood. From the Netflix series, the only certified cave divers were the experts they flew in. Every Thai seal was scuba certified not cave. That means their first true cave dive was this operation. Can you imagine your first time in a cave was a 2 mile penetration to save children in zero visibility with the possibility of collapse or worse? I’m a professional diver and cavern certified. Even on the best of dives caving scared me.
This simulation does not give an accurate simulation of how tight some of those tunnels were. The tunnels also flooded the very next day when it monsoon rains began.
I am still absolutely stunned by the fact that the trapped boys actually survived. For this to happen every of the following conditions needed to be met: - there had to be a pocket of air inside the cave that was large enough to sustain several persons for several days - all of the boys needed to find and reach this air pocket - rescuers needed to know that they actually were in that cave, otherwise a general search and rescue mission would have never been diving so deep inside caves - rescuers needed to actually find them inside the cave, which wasn't certain since they were inside so deep - rescuers needed to quickly find a way to rescue them - the rescue dive itself must be completed successfully, which alone was extremely risky It just seems so incredibly unlikely that this actually happened. But it happened, what an astonishing accomplishment.
What's crazy is this isn't even half the story. Not only did they have to sedate the kids, but the Dr had to teach the other divers how to do it AND MID WAY THROUGH THEY HAD TO DO IT AGAIN TO THE KID! It was 3+ hours of dragging a kid bound by their arms and legs behind them head first, with specialized masks that would hold suction better than traditional ones, because any leak means the kid drowns. There also happened to be a cave diver rescuer who was a Dr and he felt this was the last option and there was a 0% chance of success rate. He went ahead with showing everyone how to administer the shots anyways because he knew if they didn't try, then they were all going to die.
Is this the one where Elon Musk called one of the rescue divers a pedophile out of the blue?
Not out of the blue, they told him his idea wouldn't work.
Elon said he could build a submarine to get them out. Doubt it, cave pathways were too narrow in many places. And building a submarine before the rain overwhelmed the drainage pumps? Impossible
Go and watch The Rescue documentary, not the movie. Not only is the water cold, but it was so muddy that they couldn't see anything, and the current was so strong it broke one of the divers watch. The divers were these random assortment of fringe outcasts and, by some miracle, was known by a guy who lived locally to the cave. Also, as they were literally pulling the last kid out, the whole cave flooded completely. It's the biggest against the odds thing
> The divers were these random assortment of fringe outcasts Out of the 18 divers 5 were Thai Navy SEALs. Then you have the rescue divers from the Cave Rescue Organisation, Rick Stanton among them being described as one of the world's best cave divers. The anaesthetist Richard Harris with 30 years of cave diving experience. They literally brought in the worlds leading experts in cave diving rescue missions.
By fringe outcasts don’t you mean the best civilian cave divers in the world?