"So, what is the best chance to get the trapped people out?
Find a back entrance to the cave. “A cave as large as the one they’re in is bound to have a back entrance,” Wilson said. “There would be no problem if they found one. They could put harnesses on the kids and pull them out.”
But finding that back cave entrance in such heavy jungle is extremely difficult. The entrance would likely be a simple hole in the ground, commonly called a “chimney” that would hopefully go straight down to a cavern near where the boys are. But the entrance hole for such a chimney would be hard to spot because of the forest. “There are people walking all over that jungle right now trying to find it,” Wilson said."
I’m reminded of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” about the Everest mountaineers who got into serious trouble at the summit when a storm moved in.
Krakauer describes the dire situation & the degree of difficulty re: rescue as something along the lines of the climbers might as well have been on the Moon.
A while back, I mentioned a story about Finnish divers who went back to retrieve the bodies of two fallen friends from a narrow underwater cave 130 meters below the sea level… their documentary is available on Netflix.
Well wouldn’t that be something if it worked. At least he’s trying! And those boys are probably a little smaller than American sized kids, which may work to their advantage. Apparently they’re also trying to find a chimney into it, which apparently is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Not sure how a sub would work since they need to get in and out of the water and squeeze through some very tight spaces. For a good video recap of the challenges by a group of cave divers google “Blue World Academy, Thai soccer team’.
One of the issues they point out is that the most challenging section of diving is right at the beginning so the kids wouldn’t have a chance to get comfortable with a couple of easy sections before tackling the more difficult stuff.
The sub is just big enough to house a kid. Musk verified that it is small enough to get through the choke points. You only need these for the underwater parts of the extraction. Position a sub at each part, kid gets in and is shuttled to the next “land” where he gets out and walks to the next underwater section. It’s my understanding that most of the cave is breathable (either walking on land or wading in water).
Interesting idea. It sound less like a sub than a self-contained pod with an air supply. I can see that being a reasonable alternative to all the training required for these kids to do the dive even tethered to a rescuer. I do wonder about the time and effort it would take, beyond design and manufacture, to get these to the kids. One diver has already died staging air. Anything that necessitates more trips and makes them more strenuous will make it more dangerous for the divers and there is a finite supply of divers qualified to do this kind of work. As I understand it it takes 11 hours for the professional divers to do one round trip. Hauling the kids will make each return trip much longer. Unfortunately they’re battling time.
I think it’s gotten beyond just having to worry about the boys and their coach at this point. One rescuer has already died and there have been other injuries. The rescuers, engineers, officials and journalists on the scene all need our good thoughts. I read they are starting to evacuate journalists and non essential people as bad weather may be coming . They seem to be setting up for an attempt to bring everyone out soon.
I have been checking for updates on this all day. I hope I will wake up in the morning to news that they have been rescued. I can’t imagine how their parents must feel.
I believe Musk’s tweet said the “sub” is a component of his SpaceX rocket program, so the main structure should already be available and they’d just need to McGyver on the oxygen tanks and vents.
I wonder how the rescuers will control claustrophobia in that sub. I am not a particularly claustrophobic person, but I recently had an MRI where I was shoved head first into the magnet, and it triggered a mild panic-like attack of rapid heartbeat and sweaty palms. I was not expecting this reaction from my body. I calmed down quickly, but a kid entombed in a pod with no way of communication with the rescuers is a different story. Sedation is not an option, as many said.
They’ve started. Will take 12 hours per boy, so it will be several days until they can all get out. They are worried about the boys panicking, but I think they are the perfect age to stay calm, follow directions. They are also exhausted, so hope they just let the rescuers do all the work.
