Thai boys soccer team found safe after 9 days in cave. Edit: All out safely.

[Cool Hand Luke]

"I would have charged right in the cave". - *Donald Trump

*Mark Wahlberg

 

[is normal]

They didn't adopt this "informal" nickname until after the SEALs helped set up their task force. We taught them, not the other way around.

Oh man, I didn't know you were a SEAL.

 

[is normal]

I totally know. Boobs ate like a wet bag if sand and V is Appleton. Come at me bro

Cousin Larry Appleton, to be specific.

 

[Fedorgasm]

Man first Cormier becomes the double champ and now the entire team gets rescued. It's been a great couple of days.

 

[sub_thug]

Many people take signs like that as a challenge. Intelligence has limits but stupidity knows no bounds.

My brother in law is one of them. He has no cave training and regularly goes cave diving by himself (and plenty of other things he isn't trained to do). I won't dive with him anymore due to his recklessness. We were diving together in a quarry once in water that was 50' deep. Not a big deal, and I've worked with students there on many occasions, so I knew the area pretty well. We stopped at a sunken Blackhawk, and he swam into the cargo hold area of the helicopter, poking around, and when he came back out, I asked him how air pressure he had left in his tanks. He had close to 300 PSI, and we started the dive with 3000. I was furious with him, as I still had a little over 1000 in my tank. That is critically low on air, and we needed to do a 3-minute safety stop at 15' because we had been down there for a while. I was watching him and his gauge the entire time, waiting any second for him to give the "out of air" signal. I talked to him about it at the surface as we did the quarter-mile surface swim back to shore, and he didn't see any problem with what he had done. Since then, I haven't dove with him again, worried that he will do something dangerous that will result in my death. This is EXTREMELY reckless behavior, and he's lucky that nothing happened to him.

 

[KnightTemplar]

This man is amazing, but of course there's no need to hound Thai naval officers in the same fashion who aren't literal abusers of "stolen valor":
Retired 'Navy SEAL' praising Trump on Fox News was a fake

They didn't adopt this "informal" nickname until after the SEALs helped set up their task force. We taught them, not the other way around.

They just saved nine kids and their coach from certain death, in one of the most dangerous and physically challenging places a successful rescue operation has ever been mounted. And they lost a brave man doing it.

They can call themselves The Avengers if they want to

 

[minute bull]

You know that means there was a Happy Ending

That was the coach's plan from the beginning.

 

[KnightTemplar]

 

[The_Renaissance]

Absolute legends, every single person involved in getting them out. Feelgood story of 2018, and probably a lot further back to be honest. Respect.

 

[Fawlty]

When I started cave diving and tec diving (really deep stuff), they pretty much told us that if we were going to die, we'd know it ahead of time. You might wave goodbye to your dive buddy, and then he swims away while you do what you need to do to prepare for your own death. I do not recommend this type of diving to anyone who isn't prepared to make their peace with whatever god they believe in on any given day. It's like people who do BASE wingsuit jumps, big wave surfers (60+ foot waves), or people who free solo rock climb. This stuff can absolutely kill you in horrendous ways, even if you do everything right.

I could write for days about those ideas because it's so fascinating, though I don't know anything about cave diving. More than anything else you listed, the cave diving seems like the sort of activity for the old salt who can calmly deal with his own death. It seems the most hazardous to the young buck or novice who is trying to find meaning up there, or down there. Realizing that you're pushing it too much is escapable in surfing and climbing and even sometimes in BASE/wingsuiting by athleticism, luck, and youth. There doesn't seem to be much of a role for those things in diving. It's rare that somebody dies in surfing or climbing from a single error, it's usually two or more (even for free solo climbers). Diving seems to have lots of single point failures and unfamiliar objective hazards (life works differently underwater and also in caves, things move and grow differently, the knowledge of individual tolerance to the physics and chemistry is discovered differently, etc).

 

[Madmick]

They just saved nine kids and their coach from certain death, in one of the most dangerous and physically challenging places a successful rescue operation has ever been mounted. And they lost a brave man doing it.

They can call themselves The Avengers if they want to

I don't care if they call themselves The Avengers, but (and because) I would be equally indignant if Tony Stark tried to call himself a US Navy SEAL.

I praise their remarkable achievement and courage. That isn't the source of my mild grievance I seek to discourage. People need to understand the difference, and read this thread. They clearly didn't until I played the Grinch.

I value education enough that I don't mind it.

 

[Deleted member 220895]

Elon Musk is an unreliable evil scientist. Frankenstein at least finished his monster in time to terrorize the villiage.

 

[sub_thug]

I could write for days about those ideas because it's so fascinating, though I don't knwo anything about cave diving. More than anything else you listed, the cave diving seems like the sort of activity for the old salt who can calmly deal with his own death. It seems the most hazardous to the young buck or novice who is trying to find meaning up there, or down there. Realizing that you're pushing it too much is escapable in surfing and climbing and even sometimes in BASE/wingsuiting by athleticism, luck, and youth. There doesn't seem to be much of a role for those things in diving. It's rare that somebody dies in surfing or climbing from a single error, it's usually two or more (even for free solo climbers). Diving seems to have lots of single point failures and unfamiliar objective hazards (life works differently underwater and also in caves, things move and grow differently, the knowledge of individual tolerance to the physics and chemistry is discovered differently, etc).

Cave diving is definitely a thinking man's endeavor. You don't need to be the fittest person in the world to dive, although physical fitness definitely can help. What you do need is perfect technique, years of experience, commitment to your routines, and a well thought-out dive plan. It's absolutely incredible though, and it's probably my favorite kind of diving that I do.

When I'm rock climbing, I will not free solo (open to deep water soloing though). Alex Honnold can keep it for himself, especially with all the risk he takes (when he was climbing in Africa, he was on-sighting really chossy sandstone routes that he soloed). Fortunately for him, he's got years and years of experience, so he can read the lines and know when he's going to hit a dead end so that he doesn't have to downclimb. But if he were to keep pushing his limits past lines like Freerider, he could easily meet his end due to bad conditions, loose rock, or making an unrecoverable mistake.

I was actually involved in a really bad accident while parachuting at night. I ended up breaking my back, and now, a few of my vertebrae are fused together. I can tell you that stuff just happens, especially when you are landing on a drop zone that you don't know like the back of your hand. You always have to be mindful that you're landing on something that you don't know, moving fast. Freefall has so many variables, and that makes it so dangerous. BASE and wingsuit gives you even less time to recover, and there's a reason that 1 in 60 BASE jumpers die from the sport. I think wingsuit pilots have a higher mortality rate than that.

 

[KnightTemplar]

I don't care if they call themselves The Avengers, but (and because) I would be equally indignant if Tony Stark tried to call himself a US Navy SEAL.

I praise their remarkable achievement and courage. That isn't the source of my mild grievance I seek to discourage. People need to understand the difference, and read this thread. They clearly didn't until I played the Grinch.

I value education enough that I don't mind it.

Were you a US Navy SEAL? Because if you weren't, you opinion on this matter is worth as much as mine. US Navy SEAL's have the right to be annoyed at another unit using the same title. No one else has. And I rather suspect that US Navy SEAL's wouldn't care that much about the Thai's cultural appropriation in this instance.

 

[minute bull]

We all know why Coach "insisted on being last."

Spoiler

Cousin Larry Appleton, to be specific.

Don't be ridiculous.

 

[laz0001]

Before this event ever happened, I'd been watching loads of youtube videos on cave diving. It's nuts.

Scuba diving requires skill.

Deep scuba diving is challenging.

Trimix is harder.

Deep rebreather is really challenging.

Doing it in a cave with NO access to the surface is insane.

Doing it in a cave where you squeeze through gaps that even DRY cavers think twice about is god-level.

 

[Madmick]

Were you a US Navy SEAL? Because if you weren't, you opinion on this matter is worth as much as mine. US Navy SEAL's have the right to be annoyed at another unit using the same title. No one else has. And I rather suspect that US Navy SEAL's wouldn't care that much about the Thai's cultural appropriation in this instance.

Wrong. One doesn't have to be a SEAL in order to cogently criticize the man in the story I cited above, for example. The reason is simple: the concept and what it represents is concrete- objective. If it wasn't, there would be no crime in "stolen valor", by definition.

 

[KnightTemplar]

Wrong. One doesn't have to be a SEAL in order to cogently criticize the man in the story I cited above, for example. The reason is simple: the concept and what it represents is concrete- objective. If it wasn't, there would be no crime in "stolen valor", by definition.

The Thais aren't stealing anyone's valour. They just carried out a rescue that will be the gold standard for such operations for years to come. I've no doubt the SEAL's have killed more bad guys. If I was being held hostage by terrorists and had to choose between the Thais and the US Navy SEAL's, I'd want the Americans to rescue me. But in terms of sheer courage, selflessness and grace under pressure, what the Thai's did today is equal to anything in the US Navy SEAL's long and illustrious history.

 

[laz0001]

This is an amazing short about the training of cave diving, and not even DEEP cave diving...



Here is a 4-part series I watched recently about the history of cave diving in the UK - it's shitty 80's quality, but really fascinating...



And here is a video about the last dive of Dave Shaw, died diving in Bushman's Hole, a 280m deep (!!!!) cave trying to retrieve the body of another diver who'd also perished there.



Cave diving is fascinating....but totally insane...

 

[Madmick]

The Thais aren't stealing anyone's valour.

At the very least someone needs to explain to the media the difference.

They just carried out a rescue that will be the gold standard for such operations for years to come. I've no doubt the SEAL's have killed more bad guys. If I was being held hostage by terrorists and had to choose between the Thais and the US Navy SEAL's, I'd want the Americans to rescue me. But in terms of sheer courage, selflessness and grace under pressure, what the Thai's did today is equal to anything in the US Navy SEAL's long and illustrious history.

Agreed.