Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 569 posts

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#521

Post by pbhjpbhj »

celticninja wrote: post #520
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story I read indicated it was a planned "expedition", so presumably they had torches and such? You can't go far in pitch black in a cave and not injure yourself. It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.

What doesn't add up? Why is the death of the diver strange?

It's strange to me. I've only dived at a novice level and never in a cave:

An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.

I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.

Maybe it's denial on my part.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#523

Post by exolymph »

jamaicahest wrote: post #522

I'm grateful they were rescued, but how is this Hacker News material? I can go to Reddit if I want generic news articles.

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#524

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #15

Can anyone explain how the heck they found the children in the first place? Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it. The kids were stranded 2.5 miles inside the cave. All anyone knew was that the kids didn't return form their hike. How does that lead to "Hey, let's dive into the cave and maybe we'll find live children"? I guess they were expecting the worst, but still.

[deleted]

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#525

Post by nojvek »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #521
celticninja wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesn't add up? Why is the death of the diver strange?

It's strange to me. I've only dived at a novice level and never in a cave: An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely. I just assu…

I’ve done both caving and cave diving. Other than free diving (single breath), cave diving is the second most dangerous form of diving. Cave diving is really technical. As you’ve said, there’s a 1000 things that can easily go wrong.

Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.

There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.

There is so much that is an element of luck.

This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.

I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#526

Post by nojvek »

chongli wrote: post #321
abandonliberty wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Billionaires like Bill Gates. Countless volunteer aid workers with organizations such as MSF. Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year. [1] This was posted quite recently here on HN. Perhaps you missed it. At the end of the day, the problem of child poverty and the death and suffering i…

I’d say Bill & Melinda gates foundation + charities that fight preventable diseases have saved more lives than super heroes.

It’s so easy to forget how nasty Spanish flu, small pox and polio was. My grandfather has stories where they would burn people’s houses/huts with the people alive inside if they had contracted the disease. It was brutal. A curse that would wipe an entire enpire.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#527

Post by spreiti »

A personal anecdote from me and my wife.

The weekend before they found them my wife told me that a monk who was praying for them at the cave said that a ghost[1] was hiding them from the eyes of the divers until Monday[2]. They shouldn't be worried about the children and their coach as the ghost would take care of them. To my surprise they found them on that Monday.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/27/world/asia/ap-as... [2] I don't have a source as my wife was just scrolling through her Facebook feed

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#528

Post by dang »

kadenshep wrote: post #515
sabertoothed wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I found his answer appropriate.

You think it's okay to debase the chief of the rescue operation, ignore the advice he took from multiple teams, and cherry pick a personal email correspondence with one guy that basically just says "keep trying" just so Musk can dance around, yet again, people pointing out a potential PR stunt? I don't know what level of social ineptness is required to ignore not only the blatant insult against the chief, but Musk's…

This flamewar was ridiculous all around, but your account stands out as among the worst that made it so bad. This is the kind of thing HN exists to avoid, not perpetuate, so would you please not use HN this way in the future?

As I posted elsewhere, all this angry arguing about Musk, pro or con, is as meaningful as angry arguing about Spider-Man. Since you're on the con side, I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore, by giving it your attention and attracting others into doing the same. Go for it if that's what you want—but please not here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#529

Post by anon12345690 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #454
anon12345690 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them. ICE also saves the most lives on the border

> Many are not separated from parents but from strangers. These aren't the ones that the uproar is about. The uproar is about the children who have been separated from their parents, not the children being held in foster care or holding facilities in general. The 3000 separated from parents is a number from HHS Secretary Azar. The Trump administration updated that number to 2342 children separated from 2206 parents.

the parents have committed a crime and the kids will be reunited later if they are real family

it happens to families everyday that are citizens too

not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before, no reason for the uproar

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#530

Post by hndamien »

_sbxe wrote: post #245

I feel like we all really needed this story. For once, there's nothing political or divisive. There's no one to be mad at. It's not "us or them". The world's top experts came together, volunteered for a dangerous mission, sacrificed, and pulled it off. Ra! Ra! Humanity! Feels like a brief moment of redemption.

Some people still decided to get mad at Elon.
Post reply on HN