14 ms·

British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

276 points by curtis 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
I'm pleasantly surprised to see that they've been able to survive this long without access to food and possibly clean water. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be stuck in a cave for nine days and then suddenly see two divers show up as part of the rescue effort!
- singularity2001 8y ago
  you can survive over a month without food, but they must have found some water. update: they are surrounded by water which gets contaminated by their excrements. not good.
  - doikor 8y ago
    They were stuck in a cave that was flooding. Plenty of water to go around. Probably not the cleanest but will do in an emergency.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Diarrhea will make you die a lot faster, your attitude is a bit blasè for water that is potentially contaminated with feces.
      - varjag 8y ago
        Why would there be feces? They aren't in sewers. And even if there was a chance of diarrhoea, what would be your alternative?
        maxerickson 8y ago
        In flood waters? Because there is a little bit of everything in flood waters. Apparently there is water seeping into the space they are in. I'd drink that before I'd drink the inundation water.
        varjag 8y ago
        But that's exactly what the GP said.. they are being flooded.
        lawlessone 8y ago
        >Why would there be feces? Because they have to go too.
        varjag 8y ago
        They are being flooded, fresh water goes in.. most likely along the walls too.
      - dillondoyle 8y ago
        It's not like someone from the US who has only drank clean processed water
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Yes, I'd like to know where they found water clean enough to drink, or a way to make it clean. Floodwater runoff is probably not the best thing to ingest…
    - kabes 8y ago
      Can't find the link, but saw a video of someone of the rescue team explaining there is drinkable mineral water streaming off the walls in the cave.
    - onetimemanytime 8y ago
      Note everyone is used to having chlorinated and flouride(d) water so their bodies might have been used to relatively dirty water. Of course, I could wrong in their case...don't know their background
      - trashtester 8y ago
        How prejudiced of you :) Most places in Thailand have access to purified water for drinking. Here is an article from Cambodia, where they are some years behind: https://medium.com/make-a-difference/bringing-clean-water-to-rural-cambodia-791dbb493fd2 https://medium.com/make-a-difference/bringing-clean-water-to...
        onetimemanytime 8y ago
        ha! They down-voted me apparently. To those that down-voted me: Not everyone can turn the tap on and get clean water. Even if Thailand has it today, they probably didn't have it yesterday. When you drink from dubious sources, unless you die as a child, you gain some sort of immunity. A techie from SF can get sick and even die, but a local can drink from the same source and nothing happens to him /her.
        apatters 8y ago
        Thais mostly drink bottled water, which is clean. They aren't drinking river water or something. Most of Thailand lacks drinkable tap water. Food hygiene standards are more lax than in the West though.
- Angostura 8y ago
  They are now expected to have to survive in the cave for several months more, before rescue :(
- isostatic 8y ago
  > rescuers have said they may have to wait several weeks for the water to subside before they can be taken out. Ouch > Trying to take non-divers through a cave is one of the most dangerous situations possible, even if the dives are relatively easy. That also begets the question: if the dives are difficult then supply will be difficult, but the risk of trying to dive them out is also exponentially greater
  - cr1895 8y ago
    >have to wait several weeks A BBC article said it could be months, much less weeks. It's the beginning of the rainy season. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813
    - jaggederest 8y ago
      It's interesting, I wonder what the pros and cons are for drilling to retrieve them or send supplies. In the mine collapse situations that I'm aware of, there was already infrastructure on hand for heavy equipment and drilling. I have to imagine that the dangers of cave diving are multiplicative - you don't get enough skill-based improvement from any given trip into/out to make repeated trips a safe option.
      - hvidgaard 8y ago
        I'm sure I don't understand the scale of this. I would however think that you can bring huge industrial pumps and do some plumbing to a suitable place to dump the water and turn them on. Holland once send 7 million ton a day of pumping capacity to England to help them out. Could that not make a serious impact on the water levels in the cave?
        cr1895 8y ago
        My suspicion is that it isn't so much pumping capacity that's the issue but complexity.
        8y ago
belorn 8y ago
Earlier reports was that the water in the cave is like cold coffee and it is easily one of the worst environment to try get non-divers through several km of cave diving. The technical details will be interesting to see once they hopefully solve the problem of getting everyone out.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Sounds like they aren't going to try and solve that problem. It's going to be wait for several months or possibly learn rudimentary diving skills https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44692813
jacquesm 8y ago
Those divers are super brave. This was done under extremely difficult circumstances, they risked their lives with a reasonably high chance of at least one of them not making it back.
- abhiminator 8y ago
  What's astounding is that they barely managed to scrape by with the amount of ration that was left, and the first thing the boys asked for after contact was for food and fresh water -- cannot imagine how ravenous those young lads must've been. [0] Also, just a reminder -- they're still not out yet. Thailand's armed forces are still at work trying to figure out a way to get the boys out, given how deep inside the cave they're stuck (more than a kilometer inside). News reports suggest the team and its coach would be getting months' worth of supplies and diving lesson in case water level rises. Very dramatic. [0] [0] https://www.dw.com/en/thailand-boys-soccer-team-lost-in-cave-found-alive/a-44494040 https://www.dw.com/en/thailand-boys-soccer-team-lost-in-cave... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/02/twelve-children-football-coach-found-alive-going-missing-thai/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/02/twelve-children-...
  - poe876 8y ago
    >Very dramatic. Indeed. Reminds me of the Chilean mining incident 8 years ago which had many parallels to the one in Thailand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiap%C3%B3_mining_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiap%C3%B3_mining_acc...
- arethuza 8y ago
  I have a weird phobia where I'm afraid of caves - the very idea of caving in small caves where people wriggle through has always terrified me and as for cave diving.... I could not do what they have done - not if my life depended on it.... Personally, I think they deserve the very highest honours we can give them as a country.
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
cimmanom 8y ago
Assuming the divers will have to shuttle supplies to the trapped team: is there a way to make repeated dives less risky, such as stringing a guide line that divers can follow?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bo0tzz 8y ago
  Narongsak explained that the divers had fixed rope lines along the passageway and distributed oxygen tanks along their route, allowing them to advance through the exceptionally narrow passageway unencumbered by bulky equipment. Other teams worked to pump out floodwater and divert groundwater, he said. It seems like they have something like this in place already. From what I understand the passageway is quite narrow, which would make it risky to take anything bulky through.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Now that the route is mapped, I wonder if you could get robots to do the supply trips instead.
    - chmod775 8y ago
      It can be hard enough for a human to not get stuck somewhere in a cave. There's little chance you'll figure out how to get a robot to do the trip before the whole situation is resolved anyways. In such situations it's best to go with the simplest solution you know will work and people are trained for, instead of trying to get fancy and possibly endanger the whole undertaking (imagine a robot getting stuck somewhere and blocking the way for everyone...).
      - icebraining 8y ago
        By robot I meant remote controlled, not self-driving. But fair point - adding another obstacle would be tragic, yes.
mehrdadn 8y ago
How does cave oxygen supply work? Would they not run out of oxygen by the time they can get out? Also, one detail that CNN got that I didn't see in this article: it seems the cave is one kilometer underground! [1] EDIT 1: The CNN article partially answers my first question: "Rescuers will also pump air into the cave to improve conditions." EDIT 2: Another important bit here [2]: "It won't be anything like diving that most people recognize. It will be diving in what is effectively muddy water, possibly fast flowing, with no sense of direction," Moret said. "You can't tell what's up, down, sideways." [1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/asia/thai-cave-rescue-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/asia/thai-cave-rescue-intl/in... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/03/asia/thai-rescue-next-phase-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/03/asia/thai-rescue-next-phase-i...
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>"It won't be anything like diving that most people recognize. It will be diving in what is effectively muddy water, possibly fast flowing, with no sense of direction," Moret said. "You can't tell what's up, down, sideways." Me: Just drop me a gun...I'm claustrophobic and I'd rather die once. Was there a worldwide competition for the worst place to put these kids, or what?
- unklefolk 8y ago
  This article about Harrison Okene whose boat sank is interesting in terms of surviving in an air bubble underwater (and seems somewhat analogous to the cave situation). http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/harrison_okene_s_shipwreck_air_bubble_how_could_he_survive_underwater_for.html?via=gdpr-consent http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
- jarvist 8y ago
  There's usually plenty of air underground in a cave. They are actively being weathered / formed by little streams, which drag down air with them, forming a natural circulating draft. So even though the human-sized exit is flooded, there are likely to be multiple small inlets + cracks in the rock. The situation is very different in an (artificial) mine, which often have a single entrance/exit and no flowing water, so the air is totally stationary and quickly becomes stale. Airbells, which are small air pockets in an otherwise flooded section are relatively unusual, and from the video footage it looked like the football team had climbed up into a larger Fossil gallery overlying the current (active) flooded section. Hopefully this means they will also be well protected from any future more extreme flooding. These little stream inlets form a source of drinking water. Even when the main cave river is a turbid mess, there's normally plenty of clean little streams coming in - some of which will be fed by percolation water (seeping through rock) and therefore effectively 'mineral' water. Often when journalists describe caves in the press, 'one kilometer underground' would be better described as 'one kilometer into' the cave. Certainly the cave doesn't look very deep, most river caves form fairly horizontally. For digging into or exploring from above, what matters much more is how thick the rock is above them (or above a chamber that they can reach), and what it's made out of. Locating them on the surface (i.e. figuring out where to start digging) will also be a challenge - most caves are not surveyed with a high degree of accuracy, and doing so through a flooded, flowing, low-visibility section is extremely difficult. (One of the rescue divers, John Volanthen, has done some pretty amazing stuff with a water-proof data-logging accelerometer + flux compass in this area - the "Lazy Boy Sump Mapper".) They will probably dive a radio beacon into the cave + then use that to locate the party, combined with a (dry) survey within the cave to figure out the extent of the available space to the survivors. Radio comms should be setup quite soon - one system which may be of general interest to the Hackernews community is the cave-link: http://www.cavelink.com/cl3x_neu/index.php/en/ http://www.cavelink.com/cl3x_neu/index.php/en/ It has a lot of automation + resending / checksumming of messages to enable transmission over the very low bandwidth and noisy VLF channel through hundreds of metres of rock.
SagelyGuru 8y ago
"None of them can swim" Great idea to take them down into a flooded cave in rainy season. Even though now found, they will still be very lucky to get out alive. How? I think it is the case of learn to swim and dive right down there or die. Whatever was their coach thinking?
- sirn 8y ago
  Locals can easily be careless about weather; if the monsoon season doesn't normally started at near the end of June, then I can see the conversation being "normally it doesn't rain around this time. It should still be fine to go in." I won't argue that the coach were being careless, though. Disclaimer: my mother is from the region (Mae Chan is only few kms away from the cave, which is in Mae Sai) and she wasn't surprised with the fact that they went in.
- innocenat 8y ago
  Since the cave is off-limit during rainy season (which typically shouldn't have begun yet), I'd guess that nobody know the cave will flood
- fabricexpert 8y ago
  Personally I think the coach should be commended for keeping all those boys safe and alive in such conditions. He couldn't have known the cave was going to flood, the signs say don't go in in between July and September - they entered in June. Without a strong leader this probably would have been a very different outcome already and they'd be dealing with retrieving corpses. I actually find comments like yours really grating. Blaming people for situations largely beyond their control is not productive or helpful, especially when ended with inflammatory questioning designed to provoke.
  - geomark 8y ago
    Actually, it was irresponsible to take them on a cave tour this time of year because the rains often start in June, regardless of when the official start of rainy season is called. It's been like that as long as I've lived here, and there have been quite a few cases of cave tourists getting trapped during rainy season. So he did a good job of taking care of them once they were in trouble, but he should have not taken them in there in the first place.
dm319 8y ago
This is great news, but sadly their lives are still very much at risk. They are too deep to drill down to, there is a lot of rain to pump out (and the rain can continue), and they can't swim (even if they could, this is a hard dive for those that can). Found this from a Bill Whitehouse: Bill Whitehouse, vice-chair of the British Cave Rescue Council which is helping the rescue efforts, played down speculation the boys could be taught to dive. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he suggested they could be guided through the water in “packages”. Asked how feasible it would be to teach the children to dive, he said: “It is certainly not easy. The other alternative is that you literally bring them out in packages. In other words you fit them with diving equipment: a full face mask, instead of having a gag in your mouth like a lot of divers use; package them up; put the correct weights on them so that they are neutrally bouyant and are not going to get stuck again. It has been done before.” He also explained how the British divers reached the trapped group. They were diving upstream in the system so they were having to swim against the current, or pull themselves along the walls. Some of the cave is fairly constricted and other points aren’t. I gather the actual diving section was about 1.5km, about half of which was completely flooded and about half of which was open. They estimated that a round trip to where the party was and back again is probably about three hours. Whitehouse was sceptical about the prospects of pumping enough water out of the cave to allow the boys to walk to safety. He said: “They are trying to do that with pumping, but pumping a monsoon away is not that easy.”
- draugadrotten 8y ago
  As an experienced cave diver, I agree with Mr Whitehouse that bringing them out as "packages" should be considered an option. It would be easier than allowing them to swim by themselves in murky waters with no vision. The diving training spoken of might be getting the boys to be used to being towed under water while being packaged up, rather than about teaching them about buoyancy control like adult divers.
  - A_Person 8y ago
    You can't be serious. Taking 13 people, with an absolute maximum of Open Water level training (if that), back out through hundreds (or thousands?) of meters of low or zero visibility diving, including (apparently) tight restrictions, without risking the lives of all concerned? Aint gonna happen - unless the water level drops to the point where they can just float back out.
fgGAMI 8y ago
Could they use a long rope as a track/guide with the "packages" tethered to it? How realistic would it be to drill a more convenient entrance from above?
elil17 8y ago
I’m curious about why they aren’t using robotics to driver food - seems like it would be safer than having human divers go back and forth
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  You can't drag 1km of tough power and control cable behind a little robot, and autonomous robots aren't up to the job yet.
  - willyt 8y ago
    This thing has a 2km long fibre optic tether and is battery powered. Been in use since 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafox_drone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafox_drone
    - robotresearcher 8y ago
      Cool. But that vehicle is open underwater only. These caves are a mixture of swimming, walking and climbing. Lots of power required, and very tough to teleoperate.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  I'd imagine the psychological relief of seeing a human being rather than a robot has a lot to do with it.
  - JshWright 8y ago
    It has nothing to do with it... Robots are not an option because it's a zero visibility environment (cameras for remote operation are useless).
    - cellularmitosis 8y ago
      I'm happy to stand corrected. However, zero visual visibility doesn't seem like a limitation for a remotely piloted robot. Can't they just as easily use sonar, radar, or some other form of non-optical "vision"? Fishermen use "fish finders" which are non-optical, so I'd guess the tech is pervasive and cheap.
avar 8y ago
There's an interesting parallel here to the incident in 2013[1] where a Nigerian ship's cook survived for 60 hours in an air bubble 30 meters under the surface in a sunken capsized tugboat. That was also a case where someone with no prior experience as a diver had to be extracted from a situation otherwise requiring some fairly advanced dive training. From the article: > The rescuing divers fitted Okene with a diving helmet so he could breathe while being transferred into a closed diving bell and returned to the surface for decompression from saturation. Okene lost consciousness during the transfer. According to the BBC[2] they'll probably end up doing something similar to extract those kids. They'd need to drag them over a long distance (probably one at a time) as "dead weight", but this method wouldn't require them to learn any diving skills. > The Thai authorities have appealed for donations of full-face scuba diving masks small enough to fit the boys in order to reduce the risk of their breathing apparatus coming loose as they travel through flooded passageways. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquanaut#Accidental_aquanaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquanaut#Accidental_aquanaut 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813
- wallflower 8y ago
  The actual video shot by the rescuing divers shows how calm and control the leader of the expedition acts after they encounter Harrison alive. Starts around 5:50 https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=51e_1385934620 https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=51e_1385934620
nikkinicole 8y ago
but how did they survive the initial 10 days? That's a lot of kids to care for. Why were they in there in the first place if it had a warning sign?
- wiennat 8y ago
  They had some snacks with them when they went into the cave. Basically, there is a warning sign for cave flooding during July and October. Monsoon season is not likely to start at the end of June so they might thought it is still be fine to go into the cave.

276 points by curtis 8y ago

I'm pleasantly surprised to see that they've been able to survive this long without access to food and possibly clean water. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be stuck in a cave for nine days and then suddenly see two divers show up as part of the rescue effort!

singularity2001 8y ago
you can survive over a month without food, but they must have found some water. update: they are surrounded by water which gets contaminated by their excrements. not good.
- doikor 8y ago
  They were stuck in a cave that was flooding. Plenty of water to go around. Probably not the cleanest but will do in an emergency.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Diarrhea will make you die a lot faster, your attitude is a bit blasè for water that is potentially contaminated with feces.
    - varjag 8y ago
      Why would there be feces? They aren't in sewers. And even if there was a chance of diarrhoea, what would be your alternative?
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        In flood waters? Because there is a little bit of everything in flood waters. Apparently there is water seeping into the space they are in. I'd drink that before I'd drink the inundation water.
        varjag 8y ago
        But that's exactly what the GP said.. they are being flooded.
      - lawlessone 8y ago
        >Why would there be feces? Because they have to go too.
        varjag 8y ago
        They are being flooded, fresh water goes in.. most likely along the walls too.
    - dillondoyle 8y ago
      It's not like someone from the US who has only drank clean processed water
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Yes, I'd like to know where they found water clean enough to drink, or a way to make it clean. Floodwater runoff is probably not the best thing to ingest…
  - kabes 8y ago
    Can't find the link, but saw a video of someone of the rescue team explaining there is drinkable mineral water streaming off the walls in the cave.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    Note everyone is used to having chlorinated and flouride(d) water so their bodies might have been used to relatively dirty water. Of course, I could wrong in their case...don't know their background
    - trashtester 8y ago
      How prejudiced of you :) Most places in Thailand have access to purified water for drinking. Here is an article from Cambodia, where they are some years behind: https://medium.com/make-a-difference/bringing-clean-water-to-rural-cambodia-791dbb493fd2 https://medium.com/make-a-difference/bringing-clean-water-to...
      - onetimemanytime 8y ago
        ha! They down-voted me apparently. To those that down-voted me: Not everyone can turn the tap on and get clean water. Even if Thailand has it today, they probably didn't have it yesterday. When you drink from dubious sources, unless you die as a child, you gain some sort of immunity. A techie from SF can get sick and even die, but a local can drink from the same source and nothing happens to him /her.
        apatters 8y ago
        Thais mostly drink bottled water, which is clean. They aren't drinking river water or something. Most of Thailand lacks drinkable tap water. Food hygiene standards are more lax than in the West though.
Angostura 8y ago
They are now expected to have to survive in the cave for several months more, before rescue :(
isostatic 8y ago
> rescuers have said they may have to wait several weeks for the water to subside before they can be taken out. Ouch > Trying to take non-divers through a cave is one of the most dangerous situations possible, even if the dives are relatively easy. That also begets the question: if the dives are difficult then supply will be difficult, but the risk of trying to dive them out is also exponentially greater
- cr1895 8y ago
  >have to wait several weeks A BBC article said it could be months, much less weeks. It's the beginning of the rainy season. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813
  - jaggederest 8y ago
    It's interesting, I wonder what the pros and cons are for drilling to retrieve them or send supplies. In the mine collapse situations that I'm aware of, there was already infrastructure on hand for heavy equipment and drilling. I have to imagine that the dangers of cave diving are multiplicative - you don't get enough skill-based improvement from any given trip into/out to make repeated trips a safe option.
    - hvidgaard 8y ago
      I'm sure I don't understand the scale of this. I would however think that you can bring huge industrial pumps and do some plumbing to a suitable place to dump the water and turn them on. Holland once send 7 million ton a day of pumping capacity to England to help them out. Could that not make a serious impact on the water levels in the cave?
      - cr1895 8y ago
        My suspicion is that it isn't so much pumping capacity that's the issue but complexity.
      - 8y ago

belorn 8y ago

Earlier reports was that the water in the cave is like cold coffee and it is easily one of the worst environment to try get non-divers through several km of cave diving. The technical details will be interesting to see once they hopefully solve the problem of getting everyone out.

Angostura 8y ago
Sounds like they aren't going to try and solve that problem. It's going to be wait for several months or possibly learn rudimentary diving skills https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44692813

jacquesm 8y ago

Those divers are super brave. This was done under extremely difficult circumstances, they risked their lives with a reasonably high chance of at least one of them not making it back.

abhiminator 8y ago
What's astounding is that they barely managed to scrape by with the amount of ration that was left, and the first thing the boys asked for after contact was for food and fresh water -- cannot imagine how ravenous those young lads must've been. [0] Also, just a reminder -- they're still not out yet. Thailand's armed forces are still at work trying to figure out a way to get the boys out, given how deep inside the cave they're stuck (more than a kilometer inside). News reports suggest the team and its coach would be getting months' worth of supplies and diving lesson in case water level rises. Very dramatic. [0] [0] https://www.dw.com/en/thailand-boys-soccer-team-lost-in-cave-found-alive/a-44494040 https://www.dw.com/en/thailand-boys-soccer-team-lost-in-cave... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/02/twelve-children-football-coach-found-alive-going-missing-thai/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/02/twelve-children-...
- poe876 8y ago
  >Very dramatic. Indeed. Reminds me of the Chilean mining incident 8 years ago which had many parallels to the one in Thailand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiap%C3%B3_mining_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiap%C3%B3_mining_acc...
arethuza 8y ago
I have a weird phobia where I'm afraid of caves - the very idea of caving in small caves where people wriggle through has always terrified me and as for cave diving.... I could not do what they have done - not if my life depended on it.... Personally, I think they deserve the very highest honours we can give them as a country.
- CloudNetworking 8y ago

cimmanom 8y ago

Assuming the divers will have to shuttle supplies to the trapped team: is there a way to make repeated dives less risky, such as stringing a guide line that divers can follow?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bo0tzz 8y ago
Narongsak explained that the divers had fixed rope lines along the passageway and distributed oxygen tanks along their route, allowing them to advance through the exceptionally narrow passageway unencumbered by bulky equipment. Other teams worked to pump out floodwater and divert groundwater, he said. It seems like they have something like this in place already. From what I understand the passageway is quite narrow, which would make it risky to take anything bulky through.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Now that the route is mapped, I wonder if you could get robots to do the supply trips instead.
  - chmod775 8y ago
    It can be hard enough for a human to not get stuck somewhere in a cave. There's little chance you'll figure out how to get a robot to do the trip before the whole situation is resolved anyways. In such situations it's best to go with the simplest solution you know will work and people are trained for, instead of trying to get fancy and possibly endanger the whole undertaking (imagine a robot getting stuck somewhere and blocking the way for everyone...).
    - icebraining 8y ago
      By robot I meant remote controlled, not self-driving. But fair point - adding another obstacle would be tragic, yes.

mehrdadn 8y ago

How does cave oxygen supply work? Would they not run out of oxygen by the time they can get out? Also, one detail that CNN got that I didn't see in this article: it seems the cave is one kilometer underground! [1] EDIT 1: The CNN article partially answers my first question: "Rescuers will also pump air into the cave to improve conditions." EDIT 2: Another important bit here [2]: "It won't be anything like diving that most people recognize. It will be diving in what is effectively muddy water, possibly fast flowing, with no sense of direction," Moret said. "You can't tell what's up, down, sideways." [1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/asia/thai-cave-rescue-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/asia/thai-cave-rescue-intl/in... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/03/asia/thai-rescue-next-phase-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/03/asia/thai-rescue-next-phase-i...

onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>"It won't be anything like diving that most people recognize. It will be diving in what is effectively muddy water, possibly fast flowing, with no sense of direction," Moret said. "You can't tell what's up, down, sideways." Me: Just drop me a gun...I'm claustrophobic and I'd rather die once. Was there a worldwide competition for the worst place to put these kids, or what?
unklefolk 8y ago
This article about Harrison Okene whose boat sank is interesting in terms of surviving in an air bubble underwater (and seems somewhat analogous to the cave situation). http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/harrison_okene_s_shipwreck_air_bubble_how_could_he_survive_underwater_for.html?via=gdpr-consent http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
jarvist 8y ago
There's usually plenty of air underground in a cave. They are actively being weathered / formed by little streams, which drag down air with them, forming a natural circulating draft. So even though the human-sized exit is flooded, there are likely to be multiple small inlets + cracks in the rock. The situation is very different in an (artificial) mine, which often have a single entrance/exit and no flowing water, so the air is totally stationary and quickly becomes stale. Airbells, which are small air pockets in an otherwise flooded section are relatively unusual, and from the video footage it looked like the football team had climbed up into a larger Fossil gallery overlying the current (active) flooded section. Hopefully this means they will also be well protected from any future more extreme flooding. These little stream inlets form a source of drinking water. Even when the main cave river is a turbid mess, there's normally plenty of clean little streams coming in - some of which will be fed by percolation water (seeping through rock) and therefore effectively 'mineral' water. Often when journalists describe caves in the press, 'one kilometer underground' would be better described as 'one kilometer into' the cave. Certainly the cave doesn't look very deep, most river caves form fairly horizontally. For digging into or exploring from above, what matters much more is how thick the rock is above them (or above a chamber that they can reach), and what it's made out of. Locating them on the surface (i.e. figuring out where to start digging) will also be a challenge - most caves are not surveyed with a high degree of accuracy, and doing so through a flooded, flowing, low-visibility section is extremely difficult. (One of the rescue divers, John Volanthen, has done some pretty amazing stuff with a water-proof data-logging accelerometer + flux compass in this area - the "Lazy Boy Sump Mapper".) They will probably dive a radio beacon into the cave + then use that to locate the party, combined with a (dry) survey within the cave to figure out the extent of the available space to the survivors. Radio comms should be setup quite soon - one system which may be of general interest to the Hackernews community is the cave-link: http://www.cavelink.com/cl3x_neu/index.php/en/ http://www.cavelink.com/cl3x_neu/index.php/en/ It has a lot of automation + resending / checksumming of messages to enable transmission over the very low bandwidth and noisy VLF channel through hundreds of metres of rock.

SagelyGuru 8y ago

"None of them can swim" Great idea to take them down into a flooded cave in rainy season. Even though now found, they will still be very lucky to get out alive. How? I think it is the case of learn to swim and dive right down there or die. Whatever was their coach thinking?

sirn 8y ago
Locals can easily be careless about weather; if the monsoon season doesn't normally started at near the end of June, then I can see the conversation being "normally it doesn't rain around this time. It should still be fine to go in." I won't argue that the coach were being careless, though. Disclaimer: my mother is from the region (Mae Chan is only few kms away from the cave, which is in Mae Sai) and she wasn't surprised with the fact that they went in.
innocenat 8y ago
Since the cave is off-limit during rainy season (which typically shouldn't have begun yet), I'd guess that nobody know the cave will flood
fabricexpert 8y ago
Personally I think the coach should be commended for keeping all those boys safe and alive in such conditions. He couldn't have known the cave was going to flood, the signs say don't go in in between July and September - they entered in June. Without a strong leader this probably would have been a very different outcome already and they'd be dealing with retrieving corpses. I actually find comments like yours really grating. Blaming people for situations largely beyond their control is not productive or helpful, especially when ended with inflammatory questioning designed to provoke.
- geomark 8y ago
  Actually, it was irresponsible to take them on a cave tour this time of year because the rains often start in June, regardless of when the official start of rainy season is called. It's been like that as long as I've lived here, and there have been quite a few cases of cave tourists getting trapped during rainy season. So he did a good job of taking care of them once they were in trouble, but he should have not taken them in there in the first place.

dm319 8y ago

This is great news, but sadly their lives are still very much at risk. They are too deep to drill down to, there is a lot of rain to pump out (and the rain can continue), and they can't swim (even if they could, this is a hard dive for those that can). Found this from a Bill Whitehouse: Bill Whitehouse, vice-chair of the British Cave Rescue Council which is helping the rescue efforts, played down speculation the boys could be taught to dive. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he suggested they could be guided through the water in “packages”. Asked how feasible it would be to teach the children to dive, he said: “It is certainly not easy. The other alternative is that you literally bring them out in packages. In other words you fit them with diving equipment: a full face mask, instead of having a gag in your mouth like a lot of divers use; package them up; put the correct weights on them so that they are neutrally bouyant and are not going to get stuck again. It has been done before.” He also explained how the British divers reached the trapped group. They were diving upstream in the system so they were having to swim against the current, or pull themselves along the walls. Some of the cave is fairly constricted and other points aren’t. I gather the actual diving section was about 1.5km, about half of which was completely flooded and about half of which was open. They estimated that a round trip to where the party was and back again is probably about three hours. Whitehouse was sceptical about the prospects of pumping enough water out of the cave to allow the boys to walk to safety. He said: “They are trying to do that with pumping, but pumping a monsoon away is not that easy.”

draugadrotten 8y ago
As an experienced cave diver, I agree with Mr Whitehouse that bringing them out as "packages" should be considered an option. It would be easier than allowing them to swim by themselves in murky waters with no vision. The diving training spoken of might be getting the boys to be used to being towed under water while being packaged up, rather than about teaching them about buoyancy control like adult divers.
- A_Person 8y ago
  You can't be serious. Taking 13 people, with an absolute maximum of Open Water level training (if that), back out through hundreds (or thousands?) of meters of low or zero visibility diving, including (apparently) tight restrictions, without risking the lives of all concerned? Aint gonna happen - unless the water level drops to the point where they can just float back out.

fgGAMI 8y ago

Could they use a long rope as a track/guide with the "packages" tethered to it? How realistic would it be to drill a more convenient entrance from above?

elil17 8y ago

I’m curious about why they aren’t using robotics to driver food - seems like it would be safer than having human divers go back and forth

robotresearcher 8y ago
You can't drag 1km of tough power and control cable behind a little robot, and autonomous robots aren't up to the job yet.
- willyt 8y ago
  This thing has a 2km long fibre optic tether and is battery powered. Been in use since 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafox_drone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafox_drone
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    Cool. But that vehicle is open underwater only. These caves are a mixture of swimming, walking and climbing. Lots of power required, and very tough to teleoperate.
cellularmitosis 8y ago
I'd imagine the psychological relief of seeing a human being rather than a robot has a lot to do with it.
- JshWright 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with it... Robots are not an option because it's a zero visibility environment (cameras for remote operation are useless).
  - cellularmitosis 8y ago
    I'm happy to stand corrected. However, zero visual visibility doesn't seem like a limitation for a remotely piloted robot. Can't they just as easily use sonar, radar, or some other form of non-optical "vision"? Fishermen use "fish finders" which are non-optical, so I'd guess the tech is pervasive and cheap.

avar 8y ago

There's an interesting parallel here to the incident in 2013[1] where a Nigerian ship's cook survived for 60 hours in an air bubble 30 meters under the surface in a sunken capsized tugboat. That was also a case where someone with no prior experience as a diver had to be extracted from a situation otherwise requiring some fairly advanced dive training. From the article: > The rescuing divers fitted Okene with a diving helmet so he could breathe while being transferred into a closed diving bell and returned to the surface for decompression from saturation. Okene lost consciousness during the transfer. According to the BBC[2] they'll probably end up doing something similar to extract those kids. They'd need to drag them over a long distance (probably one at a time) as "dead weight", but this method wouldn't require them to learn any diving skills. > The Thai authorities have appealed for donations of full-face scuba diving masks small enough to fit the boys in order to reduce the risk of their breathing apparatus coming loose as they travel through flooded passageways. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquanaut#Accidental_aquanaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquanaut#Accidental_aquanaut 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44692813

wallflower 8y ago
The actual video shot by the rescuing divers shows how calm and control the leader of the expedition acts after they encounter Harrison alive. Starts around 5:50 https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=51e_1385934620 https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=51e_1385934620

nikkinicole 8y ago

but how did they survive the initial 10 days? That's a lot of kids to care for. Why were they in there in the first place if it had a warning sign?

wiennat 8y ago
They had some snacks with them when they went into the cave. Basically, there is a warning sign for cave flooding during July and October. Monsoon season is not likely to start at the end of June so they might thought it is still be fine to go into the cave.