Attending a conference with Dr. Richard Harris, the anesthesiologist and cave diver who co-rescued the 13 Thai boys in 2018. Fascinating to hear the detailed story and anecdotes brought to life

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Local farmers, although poor, immediately offered to sacrifice their rice paddies to receive all the mud water being pumped out of the cave (millions of liters). Doctor was quite sure some kids would die but calculated it’s better to die asleep from ketamine than slowly from exposure/infection/starvation inside cave

They sedated four kids/day, then fitted them with full face masks (they only had four masks small enough for the young boys), then bound their hands and feet to keep them streamlined, and dived them out  on 80% O2 to compensate for anesthetic effects — a ~10-hour journey, repeated over 3-4 days.

Kids kept smiling throughout their ordeal, and doc says their culture and life of hardship (being part of a local ethnic group from Myanmar that isn’t sedentary) made them extraordinarily resilient. Other kids would likely have struggled esp. with spending the first 9 days in the wet/dark cave with no hope of rescue.

Incredible testament to human resilience but also ingenuity when people of all nationalities come together around a clear and single goal that everybody agrees to – saving young lives in this instance.

Tidbits: kids were 2.4 km deep inside the cave. Water visibility was on par with “chocolate milk”, so 100% chance of them panicking while being dived out. Hence the decision to sedate them. Rescue divers received a crash course on administering multiple ketamine injections along the way to avoid kids waking up