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Bob_Church

Good news and bad news for kids in cave

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I was listening to BBC radio last night:

Good news: The first thing they plan to bring the kids is food.:)
Bad new: Enough to last 4 months.[:/]

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

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ryoder

I was listening to BBC radio last night:

Good news: The first thing they plan to bring the kids is food.:)
Bad new: Enough to last 4 months.[:/]



It's got to be getting really rough in there. Thirteen people in a bubble of air for eleven days now and no end in sight.
And each option they come up with, like diving, sounds ok at first then someone just has to point out little details, like they'd probably die in the process.

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ryoder

I was listening to BBC radio last night:

Good news: The first thing they plan to bring the kids is food.:)
Bad new: Enough to last 4 months.[:/]



And what are the odds of a dozen children spending weeks, even months, on a rock in a damp cave without developing medical emergencies?

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Kudos to those cave divers. You'd have to have balls of steel to do that. Made of special stuff those guys.

Makes skydiving, and the dangers associated with it, look like a Sunday school picnic.
My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

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billvon

>The bad news, how to get them out?

Well, at least now they have time. Getting them out could be as simple as drilling a shaft from the tunnel into a location that will drain the water.



Wouldn't the simplest way to do this be to send a team of divers in and extricate one child at a time? It may take days or weeks to do this, but one expert and one child? or two divers and one child?

I know nothing about diving, however.
lisa
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Cave diving is kind of like the proximity BASE jumping of skydiving, from what I understand. A little slower, but still the dangerous outer edge.

Wendy P.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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wmw999

Cave diving is kind of like the proximity BASE jumping of skydiving, from what I understand. A little slower, but still the dangerous outer edge.

Wendy P.



Exactly... it's at the extreme edge of dangerous.
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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BillyVance

***Cave diving is kind of like the proximity BASE jumping of skydiving, from what I understand. A little slower, but still the dangerous outer edge.

Wendy P.



Exactly... it's at the extreme edge of dangerous.


And aside from the serious danger there are the "other" problems.
You'd need a stun gun and a roll of duct tape to get me in there. These kids somehow got themselves back in there but pulling themselves out through cracks with strong currents and zero visibility could easily send a person over the edge.

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They are more than 4 kms inside the cave. It took 6 hours to reach them.

One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99% of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

These kids are weak and stressed. They can't even swim and are afraid of the water. Trying to get them out with scuba gear will kill them.

With monsoon rain on the way till October, their outlook is grim, to say the least.
My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

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obelixtim

***They need to get the Isrealis to stop the rain.



WTF is that supposed to mean?

Do you think that this is some sort of joke?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-general-israel-water-shortage-stealing-cloud-rain-drought-gholam-ridha-jalali-t-a8431426.html

Posted in BF in Billy's "You can't make this up" thread.
"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

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>Cave diving is kind of like the proximity BASE jumping of skydiving, from what I understand.
>A little slower, but still the dangerous outer edge.

Yep. I've gone wreck diving a fair amount, and a 5 meter deep penetration where you stir up sediment can go bad quickly. It's one of those things that seem pretty easy; after all, you have a penetration line that you can just follow back out.

But it's easy to lose track of where things are when you can't see anything, and penetration lines get snagged on things (including you.) And underwater you don't have hearing or smell to orient you, either. You basically have touch and your own sense of direction.

5 meters in was pretty hairy on one dive I was on, and I knew that I was only 5 meters from clear water, and I had a line to follow out. I can't imagine 750 meters of those conditions.

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>One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts
>by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99%
>of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

And to this point, one of the divers (a former Thai Navy SEAL) just died trying to make his way out of the cave.

Looks like they will need an alternative.

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billvon

>One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts
>by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99%
>of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

And to this point, one of the divers (a former Thai Navy SEAL) just died trying to make his way out of the cave.

Looks like they will need an alternative.



I really hated reading that. Rescue people do incredible things for us.

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billvon

>One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts
>by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99%
>of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

And to this point, one of the divers (a former Thai Navy SEAL) just died trying to make his way out of the cave.

Looks like they will need an alternative.



Best I can think of is to drill a shaft down from the ground, if they can figure out the location of the trapped kids, and not come down right on top of them.
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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BillyVance

***>One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts
>by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99%
>of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

And to this point, one of the divers (a former Thai Navy SEAL) just died trying to make his way out of the cave.

Looks like they will need an alternative.



Best I can think of is to drill a shaft down from the ground, if they can figure out the location of the trapped kids, and not come down right on top of them.

I think they are 800 - 1000 metres below the surface. The Chilean miners were trapped for 60 odd days before they were able to drill a shaft down to them.

The technical problems and time constraints make that an impossibility.

They have very few options. I think this will end very badly.
My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

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>They have very few options. I think this will end very badly.

I don't think so - but I agree it will take a while. There's enough local and international interest that they will have the resources to support them in the cave for quite a while.

Best case they drain the cave; drilling to a lower cave may be all that's required to reroute the water. Or they keep adding pumping capacity until the rain can't keep up. Worst case they stay there until October and then come out when the dry season starts.

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billvon

>They have very few options. I think this will end very badly.

I don't think so - but I agree it will take a while. There's enough local and international interest that they will have the resources to support them in the cave for quite a while.

Best case they drain the cave; drilling to a lower cave may be all that's required to reroute the water. Or they keep adding pumping capacity until the rain can't keep up. Worst case they stay there until October and then come out when the dry season starts.



A couple of quotes I found that address some points. Its about to start raining, their cavern may quickly fill with water. There are no known "lower caves" they can drill into, even if they could get a drill in there to their location.

Remember the narrowest point on the way in is just 70 cm wide, under water, a diver can't get through there without taking his tanks off.

Quote

No amount of pumping will be able to pump out what monsoon rains bring in. You're talking 30mm + per hour, every hour, for days over a catchment area that's at least several square kilometres in area.




Quote

I’ve done a bit of rig work so I’ll have a go at this one.

I’m sure they have one on the way but it’s not a quick process.

Firstly, they need the right kind of rig.
It needs to be big enough to drill a 3 ft diameter shaft (which is a big one).
(The shaft will need to be cased with a 2 1/2 ft pipe before they can take anyone through it).
It has to be a terrestrial rig, and probably needs to be able to drill at an angle meaning it will be a very specific type of machine.
I just googled and the industry there seems to be mostly offshore so the local options are probably limited.

Mobilizing such a rig takes time, and getting it to location takes even more. It might even involve sea voyages depending on where it’s coming from.

Construction crews can knock up an access road and drilling pad fairly quickly, but they still have to drag a massive rig up a mountain in monsoon conditions. Not ideal at all.

Normally, the formation is mapped using a seismic survey, (drill a lot of holes, stick in some dynamite, explode it and read the sound waves bouncing back), in conjunction with data from any other wells that have been drilled in the area.
It builds a pretty clear picture and allows for very accurate targeting while drilling.
There are no prior wells in this location, and a seismic survey above a cave with people in it is probably out of the question, so they will essentially be drilling blind.

Drilling in rock is very, very slow.
You can’t drill dry. They will need to mix a couple of thousand m3 of mud to lubricate the bit. If they hit a pocket or another chamber ( highly likely in a mountain full of caves), the mud disappears and they either keep filling the hole until the losses stop (not an option here), or pull back, plug the shaft and redirect,

Ultimately they have to land somewhere close to the kids without causing the cave to collapse and without drowning them in drilling mud.
it really is threading the needle.

I also read somewhere that the pressure in the cave might be responsible for keeping the water level under control. It was just speculation from a few days ago, when details were scarce, but if that were to be the case then drilling a shaft could be detrimental.

Disclaimer: The things I know about drilling are massively outweighed by the things I don’t know.
These are just the issues that spring to mind.



My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

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obelixtim

******>One section is 750 metres of flooded tunnel where you can only get through some parts
>by crawling on your belly. This bit took the experienced divers 3 hours to negotiate. 99%
>of experienced divers would not be able to manage this.

And to this point, one of the divers (a former Thai Navy SEAL) just died trying to make his way out of the cave.

Looks like they will need an alternative.



Best I can think of is to drill a shaft down from the ground, if they can figure out the location of the trapped kids, and not come down right on top of them.

I think they are 800 - 1000 metres below the surface. The Chilean miners were trapped for 60 odd days before they were able to drill a shaft down to them.

The technical problems and time constraints make that an impossibility.

They have very few options. I think this will end very badly.

I agree with your assessment. And then there's pneumonia which might bypass all of the other problems.
The differences between this and the Chile rescue are staggering. As a mine site it was relatively easy to get equipment and supplies to the rescue area. Even with the substandard job done of mapping there was some logic to how the shafts were laid out. And then the fact that if they do have to bore the entire hole it's the distance of the altitude of most of my jumps. Just under 4k. And all that's supposing that the drilling doesn't open a channel of water, flooding the area or cause a cave in. Copper and gold are mined in very hard rock which is difficult to cut through but I would think it would be safer as far as the rock not fragmenting so much during the boring.
This is going to be rough.

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