I wonder how many screenplays are on early drafts right now?
Authorities haven’t been clear if there’s a chance the cave flooding could get significantly worse?
Is the team’s area reasonably secure? Is there higher ground they could retreat too?
That makes a big difference whether they can safely wait until after monsoon season for rescue.
Monsoon season brings several months more rain. I’m concerned there won’t be a safe place in that cave.
No, they have made it very clear it’s definitely going to get worse–this is just the start of the monsoon (rainy) season–which will last through September/October.
They don’t seem to know (or as least haven’t said) how safe this ledge is from being covered with water.
Caves can be very easy to navigate. But then again you need to have some knowledge of where you’re going and the potential dangers. And entering an active (with flowing water) cave system during rain season seems like a stupid idea without even knowing more about the specific cave.
I was uncredulous that they had managed to survive for so long until I read in this thread that the temperature in these caves is vastly higher than the usual. I understand better now.
I’ve done scuba and I’m not a claustrophobe, but after watching that video - OK, I am a claustrophobe now. :eek:
I wonder if they have a plan for that. For example, are they going to bring some inflatable rafts in or something?
Thai ex-Seal diver dies taking supplies into the cave. 
When these kids get out, are they going to be, like, fucked up forever because of the mental trauma of having to go through this? The miners in Chile were at least grown adults who were experienced working in mines, understood what could happen, and so on. These boys have been thrust into a horrific scenario and they are going to have to spend a hell of a lot of time uncertain as to whether they will live or die. I assume that some of them will come out of it stronger and more resilient, but some might suffer emotional trauma for the remainder of their lives.
A volunteer no less. Had left active service and came to help of his own accord.
Most of the miners in Chile were severely traumatized and have had ongoing psychological/addiction issues since the rescue. So even being an adult and a professional miner doesn’t help much with that kind of trauma.
I’ve read and watched pretty much everything available about the Chilean mine disaster, plus at least a dozen books on wreck and cave diving, but I still couldn’t watch more than a minute of that cave diving video. I really wish the best for those kids and their coach, but this scenario is truly terrifying.
I read* Shadow Divers* by Robert A. Kurson. Tells the story of John Chatterton and other divers discovery of U-869. They dived it many times before identifying the WWII German sub. Three divers died in that sub.
The book mentions several times that exertion uses up air quicker. They were pulling stuff apart in the sub and air supply was a constant problem.
The deceased Thai diver delivered air tanks for a possible rescue. That effort may have used more air than expected.
The BBC article on his death says that the oxygen level in the air has dropped from 21% to 15%.
And air has a relatively low capacity for retaining heat. If there is a lot of cold water around, the air would be cold too.
Groundwater temperature is often high. If it’s not high, it’s flowing through from outside. (Which we think was the case here). If it’s flowing through from outside, how is pumping expected to help?
They’re not in a foreign country. The soccer players and their coach are all from Thailand and supposedly this was not their first time in this cave.
This isn’t really gonna end well I’m afraid. Man that is bad. Poor guy.
Alas that indicates there is not good air exchange with the outside world, possibly an indication that there are not natural openings to be found.
And the large number of rescuers staging supplies in the cave system are using oxygen. They may need to limit the number of rescuers in the command post to limit any depletion of oxygen in the air space.
I suspect the biggest part of the problem with diving on the wreck of U-869 was the depth, 240 feet. The deeper you go, the higher the pressure, and so the faster you use up your air supply because the air you are breathing is more dense: at 240 feet, you burn through your air about twice as fast as you would at ~100 feet (and having done some SCUBA diving before, I can tell you that you burn through your air pretty damn fast at 100 feet). You also need to plan for decompression stops during your ascent; I can well imagine that it would be easy to accidentally use up too much of your air at the wreck, not leaving enough for a safe ascent.
The kids are far into the cave, something like a mile, but it’s unclear how much of the route is submerged, or how deep the water is. I haven’t yet read about how this unfortunate diver died, but there are all kinds of things that can go wrong with cave diving. The renderings of the cave (and the fact that a one-way trip takes 5-6 hours) seem to suggest that the submerged parts are intermittent, i.e. if his tank really did run out of air, he could have waited in an air pocket, and another rescuer would have eventually gone in after him. OTOH, if he was stuck in a spot where he couldn’t get his entire body out of the water, he may have developed hypothermia while waiting, and then fallen in and drowned. Or maybe a rock loosened by flowing water fell on him.
The map in Quartz’s BBC article indicates that there are several areas of flooding in the cave, which means there are spots in between where these kids would have to walk (or more likely, climb) with their diving gear. If you’ve never done SCUBA before, that shit is HEAVY and awkward. a SCUBA tank weighs about thirty pounds. If they’re wearing wetsuits (for warmth), then that will increase their buoyancy, which means they’ll need weight belts (otherwise they won’t be able to descend underwater), so add another 15-20 pounds. If you’re trying to walk/climb across a dry portage with all of that, and you’re a prepubescent kid who hasn’t had anything to eat for ten days, that’s a tall order, even before you get to thinking about a technical cave dive with strong currents, murky water, and narrow passages that require taking your tank off of your back.
I don’t know for Thailand, but over here, pretty much any cave of any significance has been mapped as much as possible, so for a cave network large enough and easily accessible enough that a bunch of kids in shorts can explore it for kilometers, maps would definitely exist. That said, these maps are made by spelunkers, so if this activity is really uncommon in a country, I guess that even a big network might stay unmapped. Doesn’t seem to be the case here, however.
But such maps aren’t usually to the standards you could expect from, say, a map of the area where you’re living, some might even be quite amateurish, and they might include mistakes or might be not accurate enough to, for instance, figure out exactly where to drill from the outside to reach a specific spot kilometers away from the entrance.
Thai and French spelunkers mapped this particular cave complex in 1986. This BBC graphic was made based on that mapping, though I have not seen the original.
Saw this hiccup which doesn’t help matters.
:smack: