British divers make contact with missing Thai football team • Hacker News Board

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#51

Post by cm2187 » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #14

cr1895 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

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.

Stupid question. If you manage to drill down to the cave, don't you pierce the air bubble that prevents the water from rising and flooding the cave?

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#52

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 12:53 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #50

icebraining wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that the route is mapped, I wonder if you could get robots to do the supply trips instead.

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 a…

By robot I meant remote controlled, not self-driving. But fair point - adding another obstacle would be tragic, yes.

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#53

Post by geomark » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

fabricexpert wrote: post #32

SagelyGuru wrote: post #20

"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?

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…

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.

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#54

Post by trashtester » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

onetimemanytime wrote: post #21

saagarjha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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...

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#55

Post by A_Person » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #41

arethuza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not afraid of small enclosed spaces (e.g. in a building) - I'm afraid of caves :-)

I'm no psychologist but I think claustrophobia can express itself in different ways in different people - if it's the enclosed spaces in caves that make you fearful/anxious, it's a claustrophobic reaction. You wouldn't necessarily also have to have the same reaction in e.g. an elevator.

> claustrophobia can express itself in different ways

Too right. I'm a reasonably experienced cave diver, and regularly dive in a system of 11km of intersecting fully-underwater tunnels, with the single entry/exit being a small pond, a few feet across, in a small, underground air-filled cave. I'd typically go 700-800 meters out, with a dozen navigational decisions along the way (left? right? straight ahead?), then have to reverse all that to get back out. But a few years ago I had an MRI, where you're wheeled into a narrow metal tube, on your back, with your arms pinned to your sides, with the tube an inch away from your face. Result: GET ME OUT!! GET ME OUT!! I had to be wheeled back out & take a break, before I could grit my teeth and try again. I absolutely hated it. I told them I was an active cave diver, but I don't think they believed me :-)

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#56

Post by jdietrich » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

hug wrote: post #47

jdietrich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's skill rather than bravery. Rick Stanton and John Volanthen were the divers who first made contact with the missing boys. They are both hugely experienced cave divers and cave rescue divers; as a team, they have broken multiple records in depth and distance. This was a difficult and complex diving operation, but that's business as usual for divers of this calibre. Bravery is fundamentally incompatible with cave d…

Bravery is not fundamentally incompatible with cave diving: it’s a hard requirement. People who simply aren’t brave just don’t go cave diving. That’s not to say that skill and consideration aren’t very important, but those guys are still both brave.

Bravery is over-rated. It's a poor substitute for skill, experience and professionalism. I say this not to diminish the efforts of these divers, but to praise them fully.

Rock climbers drag themselves up a rock face with their bare hands, using a rope to catch them if they fall. Cavers drag themselves up a rope, because avoiding a fall is better than arresting a fall. That's the fundamental difference in culture and attitude between cavers and participants in "extreme sports".

Cavers go into a hazardous environment, but they mitigate those hazards through meticulous planning and preparation. They don't see their activities as inherently dangerous, but technically demanding. If you're taking risks in a cave, you're foolish rather than brave - you're working beyond the limits of your skill and experience.

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#57

Post by braythwayt » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #44

jacquesm wrote: post #11

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.

It's skill rather than bravery. Rick Stanton and John Volanthen were the divers who first made contact with the missing boys. They are both hugely experienced cave divers and cave rescue divers; as a team, they have broken multiple records in depth and distance. This was a difficult and complex diving operation, but that's business as usual for divers of this calibre. Bravery is fundamentally incompatible with cave d…

I fundamentally agree with where you are going, but like another responder, I think that we have different understandings of the word "bravery." Hollywood's idea of "bravery" is really recklessness. And that is absolutely incompatible with cave diving, as it is with racing automobiles, fast and light alpine climbing, and other activities where training and judgment keep you alive.

But as this is not a Hollywood movie, we can use the proper definition:

  > Courage (also called bravery or valour) is the choice and willingness
  > to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.
  > Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship,
  > death or threat of death, while moral courage is the ability to act
  > rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal,
  > discouragement, or personal loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courage

Cave divers are absolutely courageous. And brave. They just aren't reckless. Or foolhardy. To borrow a phrase from mountaineering:

"There are old cave divers. And bold cave divers. But no old and bold cave divers."

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#58

Post by A_Person » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #11

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.

That's really not so. Cave diving has well established protocols for safe navigation, gas reserves, entanglement management, and so on. There's no way they'd have gone significantly outside those protocols. Those brits are highly experienced expedition cave divers, and undoubtedly pushed it further than a weekend warrior like me would do. But they really wouldn't have been dicing with death, as it were.

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#59

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #56

hug wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravery is not fundamentally incompatible with cave diving: it’s a hard requirement. People who simply aren’t brave just don’t go cave diving. That’s not to say that skill and consideration aren’t very important, but those guys are still both brave.

Bravery is over-rated. It's a poor substitute for skill, experience and professionalism. I say this not to diminish the efforts of these divers, but to praise them fully. Rock climbers drag themselves up a rock face with their bare hands, using a rope to catch them if they fall. Cavers drag themselves up a rope, because avoiding a fall is better than arresting a fall. That's the fundamental difference in culture and…

[deleted]

Re: British divers make contact with missing Thai football team

#60

Post by JshWright » Tue, Jul 03, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #52

chmod775 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

By robot I meant remote controlled, not self-driving. But fair point - adding another obstacle would be tragic, yes.

The situational awareness of an ROV operator (who can only get visual feedback (in very low visibility conditions) is far lower than a diver (Who can feel their way along). Way too easy for an ROV (which has to tow along a tether) to get itself tangled somewhere.