
Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued - wallflower
https://www.theguardian.com/news/live/2018/jul/10/thai-cave-rescue-third-mission-planned-to-bring-out-remaining-boys-and-coach-live-updates
======
LastZactionHero
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.

~~~
chrisper
>There's no one to be mad at.

Except at the soccer coach who thought it was a good idea to endanger 12
children by going into a cave during monsoon season which also led to the
death of an innocent person?

~~~
thieving_magpie
The monsoon season starts in July. They went in at the end of June. All
warning signs in front of the cave are about July through October. There's a
risk there sure but you're giving out bad information here needlessly.

------
bdz
"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or
three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many
volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our
folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that
when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It
might be the unique strength that wins us a Galaxy."

(Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein)

~~~
abandonliberty
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.

~~~
mikec3010
> who die of malnutrition

Do they die of malnutrition or governmental corruption? I thought it was
proven in the 1980's that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's the
degenerate political systems blocking aid from reaching those who are dying.
At least that's the prevailing narrative on reddit.

~~~
Maken
There is also the issue that food is not free and people starving can't pay
for it.

~~~
mikec3010
Which fuels corruption. Charity imports tons of food for the poor, only to be
intercepted by someone in the government and resold for profit. I admit that's
a generalisation and I have no idea what actually happens. I've only read that
the food has a very hard time making it to those who need it most. Which is
why I applaud Gates' charity for rethinking it and trying to get to the root
of the problem.

------
epx
It was a near tragedy, a man died in the process, but someway it is comforting
to see everybody concentrated on a problem like this, trying to help fellow
people, than waging war etc.

~~~
StavrosK
"Near" tragedy? A man died.

~~~
philip1209
I suggest reading the book "Shadow Divers" for a look at some of the
professional diving culture. It's super interesting. This death is definitely
horrible. However, reading Shadow Divers also made me think that any cave
divers take on high risk every time they swim, and that this death - while
tragic - is a risk this person confronted long before the incident.

~~~
rixrax
Just wanted to point out that diving culture as described in 'Shadow Divers'
is pretty much as far from professional as it gets. What the book does
describe is east coast deep wreck diving community of the early 1990s. In
which I suspect it does a good job at. And how they pushed the limits before
mixed gas diving / non-open circuit scuba equipment was well understood or
widely available outside military and possibly some commercial outfits.

That said, the book is great read. Especially if you're into diving. It's just
that it should not be read as a role model for anything but reckless regard of
ones life.

Not to drift completely off-topic, here is a link to a long thread about
Thailand cave rescue from the cave diving forums[1].

[1]
[http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/35242-Football...](http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/35242-Football-
team-trapped-in-Thai-cave-complex)

------
jefe_
This story has been a captivating lesson in the power of constraints. We have
powerful drills and pumps, but adding the constraints of portability and time,
we find fewer options. We have great mapping and tracking capabilities, but
put them underground and everything changes. We have talented cave divers, but
they aren't doctors or vice versa. When you start looking at all of the
resources and all of the requirements, and then the thin slice of
compatibility that was actually effective in locating, sustaining, and
rescuing the team, it really was incredible.

------
armenarmen
I don’t get this attitude that I’m seeing in here. So many commenters “who
cares about 13 when millions of kids are starving” JESUS be happy for once.

“Oh it’s a lovely day outside” “easy for you to say but don’t you know it’s
raining at someone’s wedding in Omaha”

------
elvirs
RIP hero Saman Kunan who gave his life for them.

------
bitcharmer
I was so glad to learn about it. This was such an unlikely rescue mission and
amazingly heroic effort from everyone involved. If I was religious I'd say
this was a miracle. Just very happy every one is ok.

~~~
sametmax
The amazing part to me is that it was 12 kids and one adult. Between the fear
and the biological needs, I wonder what kept them alive for so long.

First, the first time I fasted I was quited stressed about it, and it was in
controlled, cozy environment.

Second, they didn't know if anybody would come. Not even if somebody could
come. For 9 days without eating and living in their own shit in the dark, they
wondered.

I'm awaiting for the unavoidable book/movie, hoping they don't try to make it
epic and get into real details about this.

~~~
sillysaurus3
The coach.

He shared what little rations they had, and his condition was visibly worse
than the children by the time they were found.

He also helped them by teaching them meditation, so as not to focus on their
hunger.

~~~
sametmax
> He also helped them by teaching them meditation, so as not to focus on their
> hunger.

Learning meditation is hard. Learning meditation when you are scared, hungry
and in such a bad situation is extra hard.

So if the guy pulled it off with 12 terrorized famished kids for 9 days, he
deserves his own temple.

~~~
bad_user
People in general are able of amazing deeds under the threat of death.

Unfortunately it's why we are able to wage war. Was watching a documentary on
the Vietnam war the other day and one guy was describing how he felt like an
automaton that was focusing only on survival, which kept him from going
insane, while another guy was describing how he felt no pain from his bullet
injuries while trying to stay alive alone in the jungle for 3 days, only
feeling pain after he was rescued.

But yeah, this coach is a hero for sure, I'm so glad they made it out.

~~~
jvzr
The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns?

Watched that episode with the South Vietnam veteran recalling that episode
where he was left for dead (literally, by his own allies AND adversaries),
crawled through the jungle for 3 days and only then felt the pain and smelled
the nasty odor of the rotting flesh.

------
mancerayder
It's very odd that this somehow made it to all the media headlines. Sure, a
happy ending and so forth, but in a world of ~7.5B, including indescribable
tragedies on a daily basis, it makes you wonder how they knew the daily drama
would lead to such ad dollars.

~~~
InclinedPlane
How do we save x million children from poverty, disease, etc? Well, we need to
mobilize huge trans-national organizations, we need to drive systemic changes,
we need multi-year disease intervention programs, etc.

How do we save a dozen kids trapped in a cave? If we put together some
resources we can save all their lives within a week or so.

Also, starving kids have traditionally motivated enormous outpourings of
effort, so your hypothetical straw man comparison isn't very accurate.

~~~
mancerayder
Rescue effort comparisons and news story priority comparisons aren't the same.
I'm referring to the latter, while you're suggesting I'm doing the former. I
gave a perfect example in the Japan floods. And sorry, now that you bring it
up, rescue efforts aren't worth mobilizing for transnationally? Even for aid?

------
throwawayqdhd
Story of the year for me. Just goes to show what we can accomplish together.

Hopefully it will go as a +1 in our ledger if the fate of our species is ever
decided

------
factsaresacred
Great thread covering all of the volunteers here:
[https://twitter.com/duduang2/status/1016301667380224000](https://twitter.com/duduang2/status/1016301667380224000)

Highlight:

> "This man...drove more than 200 km just to give ice-cream to the rescue
> team"

While this level of selflessness and generosity can be found almost anywhere,
the Thais are truly some of the most gracious people you'll meet. That country
is a gem.

The society is currently torn apart politically (similar, but different, to
the polarization in the US) so good to see something unite the nation. And
with such a happy ending, too.

------
kev6168
Man vs. nature, we are still bugs.

What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years
would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group
of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome,
people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.

~~~
RugnirViking
I cannot imagine how robots could be used for this kind of rescue in the near
future. Each situation like this is too unique to allow for a generic 'life-
saving robot'. Even if we were to really try to develop a state-of-the-art
cave diving rescue robot, what would we use it for in this case? We still
would have to have people working crisis psycology and sitting with the kids
as they were extracted, and some way to get the status of the robot as it is
kilometers underground with no signal and no easy way we can have a 2km cable.
We would still have to figure out how to get the people actually out, which
was only really accomplished in this case by getting the best of the best to
teach the kids to get themselves out. A robot would not be able to help a
child fit through a tiny hole underwater in the dark

~~~
kev6168
I agree with you taking care of people psycologically is probably the weak
point of a robot task force. But in terms of pure technology advancement, I
'll just throw some random possibilities here for discussion.

Remember even as of today AI can compete on a high level of huge video games,
face recognition, natural language processing, playing Go/Chess game, etc.
Imagine in 30 years, all the robots, armed with AI and made of materials a few
times stronger than whatever we have today, should be able to scan, learn,
adapt and go. Another minor point, the robots can probably carry some heavy
machines (or laser guns) and just pound hard on the cave's narrow sections to
make the passage wider. Etc.

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

------
agumonkey
minus one diver, don't forget that

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

~~~
exolymph
> 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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
sdiq
Been following the Guardian and their Thai based journalist, Michael Safi.
But, was their any other non-TV English language media house that was covering
the event minute by minute?

~~~
stephen_g
ABC (Australia) have had a live blog going the whole time -
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/thailand-cave-
rescue-l...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/thailand-cave-rescue-live-
blog-operation-continues/9962796)

------
why-el
If they recover in time would be cool to see them at the World Cup final.

------
damontal
is there some way to have a diving mask that can see in murky water? something
like night vision - only it identifies solid objects and maps them for the
diver?

------
msvan
It turns out that if your suffering is spectacular enough, people will come
save you. Maybe if we throw all the poor children of the world into caves
people will start caring about them.

~~~
macintux
12 kids and 1 adult trapped in a cave is a discrete, solvable problem.
Millions of kids in poverty much less so.

We're much better at dealing with time-bounded, localizable problems.

Stalin's quote about tragedies and statistics comes to mind.

~~~
stared
Still, the question is: for a given amount of resources (time, money, people)
how many quality-life-years can be added?

If this quality is order of magnitude lower than other less exciting solutions
(e.g. access to medicine and education for kids from poor families), then we
should be aware that what we pay for is not lives saved, but an emotional
entertainment show.

~~~
macintux
I'm reminded of a fellow in, IIRC, St. Louis. He expends tremendous amounts of
energy, time, and money rescuing stray dogs, to the point where he doesn't
have much of a social life. It's all about the dogs.

Someone asked him why he didn't instead pour that energy into helping homeless
people. His response was something to the effect that there were plenty of
others helping people; his passion was the dogs. I believe he also turned the
question around: what are you doing to help the homeless?

A few dozen cave divers can't do much to help the millions of impoverished
children, but they used their skills to perform heroic and deadly feats to
help 12 children and their coach, and inspired many around the world to ask
themselves these types of questions.

Reducing that to a cost-benefit analysis vs some vague "but can't we spend
that effort on the other lost kids?" question is both impossible and missing
the point.

------
supergirl
thanks elon

------
ryanmercer
Awesome!

I love how the global diving community came together to rescue them, it's
unfortunate that Petty Officer Saman Gunan died after doing a run of oxygen
tanks to the caves though.

I even liked how Musk came out of left field "grab that tube, we're making a
rescue pod!" and then hopped on a plane with it when it was tested and ready.
While it didn't really matter I like that sort of thinking outside of the box
and how he just dropped everything he was doing and set people to work on it
and then took it over anyway in the event it will ever been needed in the
future, I really wish more people had that go-the-extra-mile attitude.

~~~
bmmayer1
Musk had no business being involved. Really, 'inventing' a MVP prototype of a
submarine which he 'tested' in a swimming pool and then intended to test for
real on live children, when an existing rescue effort underway was working?

This was egoism at its finest, taking public credit for 'helping' with a
rescue he wasn't invited or asked to help with. And the media ate it up hook,
line and sinker.

~~~
ryanmercer
>and then intended to test for real on live children, when an existing rescue
effort underway was working?

It was a good alternative to telling them to hold their breath and dragging
them through dark and claustrophobic submerged spaces...

They tested it to make sure it was water-tight and easy to maneuver. Worst
case you throw an oxygen tank in it and put a full-face regulator on each kid
in the event it would have filled with water (which I'm imagining they did in
the water anyway). Much easier to control a panicking child in a tube where he
can't get at your hoses or slam his head into a rock.

~~~
computerex
Given that the rescue was a resounding success, I think diving them out turned
out to be the best option?

~~~
ryanmercer
They'd already rescued multiple children before Musk even got there, no sense
changing what is working. They didn't seem to mind him leaving it behind for
future rescues though. _shrugs_

~~~
JustSomeNobody
They were being polite. Narongsak Osatanakorn said it was not practical for
the mission.

------
sillysaurus3
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.

~~~
eagsalazar2
I was surprised to hear that there were long stretches of dry walking between
their location in the cave and the cave entrance. In particular there were dry
stretches prior to the very nasty tiny hole they all squeezed through. I guess
they were panicked and ran further than they needed to just to be extra sure?

~~~
eagsalazar2
Also looking at the side-view diagrams of the cave, if they were running away
from the entrance because it was starting to fill up, I'm surprised that very
tight hole they crawled through wasn't also underwater at the time since it
looks like it is as low or lower than the cave entrance itself. They
_descended_ to below the entrance altitude after having gained a lot of
altitude. I know there are probably no answers but from the calm, adult,
safety of my office I can't wrap my head around the decisions they made at
all. Seems like they were running like panicked deer and then stopped
because...? They couldn't run any further?

~~~
muriithi
Also the fact that they kept together.

Would be interesting to know if at some point they were separated and if not,
how they kept together in the dark.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

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

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

~~~
nojvek
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.

------
throwawayqdhd
You really have to love Wikipedia. It's barely a week old and you already have
a page with so many references and detailed information. Thank you, all the
anonymous contributors.

~~~
typon
Wikipedia is the best website for following:

1\. Current events.

2\. Sports tournaments.

The information entropy level is quite high, with basically no ads, extremely
good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased.

This doesn't even mention the benefit of getting simple background information
on the subjects with just a simple click (or even a hover these days)

It's really a treasure.

~~~
nickysielicki
I strongly disagree about current events. The Merrick Garland wikipedia page
was a mess immediately after he was nominated, and I've just checked and the
word "unprecedented" appears 7 times, in spite of the fact that it is by-no-
means unprecedented for the senate to not consider a nomination [1]. There are
a lot of partisan editors that wish to astroturf for their own political
convictions, and because Wikipedia articles are generally so nonpartisan after
they've had some time to mature, I think it's especially problematic because
readers don't realize that a fast-moving article is nowhere near up to
standards.

[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig
Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard
Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three
candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The
Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third
withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of
Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the
other was simply tabled." from [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2016/03/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2016/03/16/does-the-senate-have-a-constitutional-responsibility-to-
consider-a-supreme-court-nomination/?utm_term=.767303c1094b)

~~~
blondie9x
Unprecedented in recent history. There really should be a law that the Senate
needs to start holding hearings within X days. Otherwise partisanship will
creep up on either side or multiple sides if we ever move beyond two parties.

~~~
koolba
> Unprecedented in recent history. There really should be a law that the
> Senate needs to start holding hearings within X days. Otherwise partisanship
> will creep up on either side or multiple sides if we ever move beyond two
> parties.

Similar to a pocket veto, not acting upon a nomination _is_ a form of action.
It's an indirect mechanism to reject a nominee.

I'm pretty sure changing this to mandate a hearing within a fixed number of
days would require a constitutional amendment, not just a regular law, so is
essentially impossible.

~~~
joshuamorton
A pocket veto has a built in time limit. So it's not at all similar.

------
davidw
I wonder if it'd be possible to use some of the momentum and talent from this
to mount a rescue attempt to save the children trapped in cages in the United
States.

~~~
leetcrew
you are being somewhat flippant, but you are getting at something I often
wonder about. why is it considered reasonable to spend so much money (and a
life) to occasionally rescue a small number of people in a weird predicament?
Elon musk was ready to drop about a million dollars on this problem;
similarly, I often read about the US Navy retasking entire warships to respond
to small maritime emergencies at an hourly cost I can't fathom.

is it callous to ask whether there isn't a more efficient (from the
perspective of actually helping a significant number of people) way to
allocate these resources? there are a lot of lives that could be changed for
way less.

~~~
beaconstudios
it's not callous, and there is certainly an element of group hysteria to well-
publicised threats to life like this and the Chliean miner rescue - we do not
as a general rule attempt the same urgent response to greater threats to life
such as malaria, starvation etc. But the difference I believe is that these
incidents are short-term and can be saved by a burst of coordinated effort,
whereas other causes of greater death are often structural and hard to impact
without a charity's organisational efforts - for example, reducing malaria
deaths is a complex web of fundraising, acquisition, distribution, education,
and probably many other factors I am not aware of. A million dollars can save
13 lives now, or maybe-hopefully make an impact when added the existing pool
of resources dedicated to reducing the impact of hunger or disease.

------
merpnderp
I do my part in promoting captialism, which has done more to pull children out
of poverty than any other program or charity in the world. Free market reforms
in China and India have done just brain blistering amounts of good in reducing
human suffering, from child malnutrition, suicide rates, longevity, and access
to healthcare.

~~~
c22
How do you tease apart the effects of capitalism and industrialism? Or are
they inextricably linked in your world view?

~~~
dnautics
Look at the noncapitalistic countries that industrialized and compare
outcomes.

~~~
dpc59
Russia made gigantic leaps from 1917 to 1956. They went from absolute
backwards shithole to contending world power in 39 years (even less
considering ww2 was over 10 years before that).

~~~
metiscus
They did so at tremendous human cost.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9322)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%93...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%9347)

~~~
NeutronStar
You're talking like they didn't get invaded by the germans and lost 20M
comrades vs the "atrocious war crimes against the jews" that totalled 6M...
Russia took a beating and basically stop the german progress for the WEST to
be able to regroup and refight way later.

~~~
metiscus
Please understand that I'm not trying to be argumentative; I believe this is a
widely misunderstood era of Soviet history. The Holodomor and the 1921 famine
predate the Barbarossa invasion significantly. The Holodomor was a product of
the dekulakization efforts undertaken as part of the forced farm
collectivization. The farm collectivization was driven in part by Stalin's
ideology (he disliked the NEP for various reasons) and partly by the need to
maintain hard currency levels to purchase machine tools etc from foreign
states to maintain its industrialization push. The main exports of the USSR
were grain and therefore the quotas were enforced by the NKVD at the expense
of the lives of a large number of people. In certain areas, Stalin was
persuaded to lower the quotas but in the geographical confines of the
Holodomor (largely Ukraine SSR) the quotas were largely maintained. Historians
still debate whether the Holodomor was an intentional act of genocide (because
Stalin wanted to crush any independence movement within Ukraine SSR) or simply
depraved indifference. Conservative estimates of the cost of the Holodomor
vary from 3.3-6+ million dead.

You implicitly posed an interesting moral question. Can history justify the
deaths of 3.3-6+ million (Holodomor), 4+million (dekulakization), 5 million
(1921 famine, admittedly coincident with the civil war) when compared to the
planned atrocities of the Nazis if we credit those deaths with greatly
contributing towards the defeat of the Hitler and the NSDAP?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan)

------
XalvinX
wow, some actual good news for a change

------
tiatia123
And Musk hat to brag about building a submarine. Don't want to call him an
idiot, but as a start explore the caves of Sagada in the Philippines. Then
talk about escaping in such a flooded cave with a tiny submarine.
[https://wikitravel.org/en/Sagada](https://wikitravel.org/en/Sagada)

Diving in caves is dangerous as f.. and requires a special training. Not sure
that cave diving is part of a Navy Seal training. I read the dive out of the
cave takes five hours. Hands of to the SEALS and kids for pulling it off.

~~~
tiatia123
I have to assume that everybody who downvoted this post has never ever made a
real cave tour. A tour that involves hours of climbing up and down, diving and
walking over tons of bat shit. Submarine my ass.

------
dekhn
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is jumping up and down saying "pay attention to me! Pay
attention to me!"

~~~
the_spacebyte
And what did you do to help? He was asked if he could do anything and tried.

~~~
dekhn
I didn't do anything to help- I don't think saving 12 people in a Thailand
cave means a lot, globally speaking. Why do you say he was asked to do
something? He offered to help. More realistically, however, he should have
chosen to stay out of the way- he didn't get his device to the site until the
rescue operation was already half completed. It wouldn't have worked anyway-
it wasn't fit for the purpose. Getting a bunch of PR for somethign that wasn't
really asked for and doesn't work seems pointless attention getting.

~~~
codeulike
Tweet from Elon Musk in response to BBC article:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785)

It shows correspondance with one of the dive team, urging Musk to continue
with the sub.

Other teams from other organisations were also working on similar things:
[https://twitter.com/Jiradett/status/1016690284619599873](https://twitter.com/Jiradett/status/1016690284619599873)

~~~
dekhn
wow, he really is a jerk on twitter.

~~~
sabertoothed
Why? I found his answer appropriate.

~~~
kadenshep
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 presumably unintentional insult
to the rest of the team that informed the chief what they thought about Musk's
idea to carry a 300lb tube through volatile currents in a tight, murky cave
system.

Talk about domain specialization.

~~~
dang
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
kadenshep
Please elaborate? I presented an actual perspective. You have gone around
these threads and insulted and demeaned people with a different opinion than
the majority and then even equivocated these criticisms to a debate about a
fictional character ("You guys might as well be bickering about Spider-Man.").
That's not only incredibly dishonest, you really should be ashamed to stoop to
such a level publicly. Intentionally framing a debate as not important or just
a "flame war" is exactly how you get mindless echo chambers. Musk is a public
figure who has had substantial investment in his companies via U.S. tax
dollars. He's not a Marvel character, you doughnut.

Not once have you called out people hurling personal insults towards people
that have a minority opinion on this board, you've done the exact opposite.

You have implied my statements violate some aspect of HN, but you're going to
need to specifically point out which statements do that. Dissent is not
violation. You might not be interested in the dissent or critique but you
can't use your position as moderator to quell it.

And if you're actually willing to be honest with yourself, or even devote some
amount of diligent effort to pretend you're here to upload intellectual
standards (despite discouraging dissenting opinions), you need to explain why
blatant personal attacks are being allowed in threads you are most definitely
reading.

> I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR
> you deplore,

Dang, that's a unsubstantiated view point and you know it. I'm honestly in
shock you think that's a valid point to make (I'm not). Please explain how
someone who gets public attention as a status quo is somehow actually being
fueled by his critics. This talking point comes in up various contexts and is
always meant to dismiss critique or even worse, victim blame. What the actual
fuck are you on?

To recap since you most definitely again will side step any critique of
moderating actions:

* What rules am I violating and where. A simple quote of my statement and the rule will suffice.

* Why are you framing the debate as if it's about a fictional character, when it's the CEO of a company who receives significant funding from U.S. tax payer dollars.

* How does critiquing a public figure's positive media coverage in a small thread somehow get the news to continue positive coverage?

~~~
dang
It's simple: all this fever about GoodMusk vs. BadMusk has become bone-
crushingly tedious. When that happens with anything, nothing can redeem it and
it's off topic on Hacker News.

I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally. Dozens of HN users have
been filling the threads with this lately and it needs to stop. We literally
can't moderate it all, and the Elonian Provocation is large enough to be
capable of swamping this site entirely.

~~~
dekhn
Hmm. I don't agree. I think we're on the turn of the tide where the hacker
community and the media will stop fawning over him if we repeatedly and
politely point out that he's an attention-seeking person but that doesn't mean
he needs to have news coverage.

~~~
dang
I can think of at least two problems with that. One is that people don't
really change their minds this way; all they do is dig their heels in and
object harder. The other is that HN could be smothered under the weight of
this material even while opinion is working itself to convergence. The Muskian
Market can stay wrong longer than this site can stay solvent.

------
thewizardofaus
Awesome news. But how long until Hollywood capitalizes on this event and makes
a movie? "... Based on a true story, starring _insert big name actor here_..."

~~~
ryanmercer
They already are [http://www.newsweek.com/hollywood-producers-head-thai-
cave-r...](http://www.newsweek.com/hollywood-producers-head-thai-cave-rescue-
site-plan-blockbuster-movie-1015501)

~~~
los_angeles
Actual quote from the source article, literally by Michael Scott:

>Pure Flix films managing partner Michael Scott told AAP in Chiang Rai, “I see
this as a major Hollywood film with A-list stars”.

------
67_45
Why is this here?

------
67_45
People literally have stepped over a homeless person to get a closer look at
the shop window tv covering this story. It represents the worst of humanity --
TV news swarming the cave site because it's going to get them lots of money.
People pretending to care about the welfare of others when it's really a
morbid reality television show to them -- entertainment.

------
laurent123456
That's good news, but I don't see how it's relevant to HN. The FAQ even says
it: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

~~~
astura
Pulling off a successful cave rescue takes tremendous skill and planning and
involves the world's domain knowledge experts - its not an idle task.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

>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.

>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam
or off-topic, flag it.

------
tgb
Why wasn't the death of Saman Gunan more widely publicized? I barely heard
about it - in the NYT article on this it's a single sentence 2/3rds of the way
through the article. I'd have thought that the concept of someone sacrificing
themselves for the recovery of 12 children would have been a major story. The
Guardian's liveblog (or whatever this is) doesn't mention it in the first
couple pages, nor do the responses of any of the world leaders and celebrities
quoted mention it. Elon Musk's participation is cute but has gotten way
disproportionate response compared to the lack of acknowledgement that I see
this guy getting.

~~~
dgritsko
It was all over Reddit when it happened (which is where I heard about it).

~~~
datburg
Unfair life. I am glad the children are out of the nightmare. I feel crushed
because a young man (navy seal) with bravery focused on helping as much as
possible without thinking twice. RIP our hero.

God, if those children were doing an initiation endangering themselves.
Remember the newborns dying in Syria, Africa and other places.

I wish the 13 well.

