Ketamine really was a miracle drug in this situation.
It's one of the few anaesthetics that doesn't cause respiratory depression, overdosing is practically impossible, and it's also injected intra-muscularly, rather than intravenously, making it easy to apply in the dark and underwater by an untrained person.
These factors are also why it was used extensively in the Vietnam war for battlefield surgery.
Interesting that, as usual, the media has labelled it as "horse tranquilliser". It's used more extensively on humans than on animals, and is used on all different mammals, not just horses.
It's also used on dogs, but mentioning that it works on horses is more impressive since horses are known as very large strong animals. I think that's the reason it's often called a "horse tranquilizer", to emphasize that it's serious stuff.
I mean, the article makes clear that Dr. Harry is an anesthesiologist and that anesthesiology is a very serious discipline, so I don't think the author meant to suggest they were carelessly administering medication meant for animals instead of humans.
I don't like how this was articulated because giving someone enough drugs to 'knock them out' is extremely dangerous in any circumstance.
There are so many things that could have gone wrong during that time, my god man ... random diver dudes (i.e. non medical) giving needles putting people out - this was as dangerous as anything else.
It's not for nothing that it's not the WHO list of essential drugs. It's a miracle drug in more ways that one, with it now also being used with success against depression in treatment resistant patients, to treat alcoholism etc. And of course nothing beats a good old k-hole experience.
Incredible story. Richard "Harry" Harris and Craig Challen were jointly awarded Australian of the Year on the weekend for their efforts in the cave rescue. Absolutely deserved.
In a post-award interview, Richard Harris described what he wanted to do as Australian of the Year...
"I really want to try and inspire kids to get out and about, get them off their screens... ...and get outside and build up a bit of confidence and resilience that comes with adventuring and taking a few risks."
As long as said risks don't involve getting stuck in an underwater cave and triggering an international search and rescue mission!
Can someone else explain the story with "Ben"? Did he offend someone and thus get kicked off the rescue squad? I couldn't follow the reason why he was stuck sitting in a chair outside the cave.
From searching online the answer isn’t clear. Ben Reymenants gave interviews during the run-up to the rescue that may have pissed someone off; on the other hand, it was never clear that the signage was legitimate.
Basically the entire rescue operation sounds like it was conducted under a fog of war. No one was ever officially in charge, no one was legally authorized to do what they did (such as the medication of the boys).
I found it a bit odd that the author differentiated between Britons and Europeans. Britons are Europeans!
I wonder why Europeans were so well represented. I wouldn't have necessarily imagined that would be the case. Is it simply because most European countries are relatively wealthy?
Definitely an odd wording. However, I have some speculation as to why it is this way.
Maclean's is a Canadian publication and I think many Canadians have a special interest in the UK, and I think the demographics of Maclean's readership likely reinforces this.
Additionally, I would guess that this is some semantic ambiguity introduced via morphological clipping where the author is using European as a shortened form of Continental/Mainland European. It's a fairly common device used to remove excess verbiage especially when reusing the same terms over and over. Pragmatically, when in context being contrasted against Briton, it becomes more clear that the author means Europeans other than Brits.
A similar example could be "all squares have equal sides whereas rectangles do not". It is pragmatically more likely that I mean _non-square_ rectangles even though my wording is ambiguous or straight up incorrect taken at face value.
So I'd guess it's attributable to the psychological primacy of the UK amongst the readership of this publication, semantically confused via a common morphological device, and ultimately disambiguated by the pragmatics of contrasting a part with its whole.
I've heard this usage in Australia; I can't find a free Australian dictionary so no citation. Australian English maintains more British-isms than American English. I imagine Canadian English may be the same.
It’s pretty common in British English, and so I guess Canadian English as well, to say European and to mean continental Europe. That’s not any kind of political statement, something recent, or anything to do with Brexit, it’s just a shorthand of speech.
Id say it comes down to the way cave diving in Briton is largely different from that of mainland Europe. So even on site the British cave divers would see the approach as different to the Europeans
In Briton cave diving is largely done to move between flooded sections of dry cave, so most cave divers are dry cavers first, and diving is just used to bypass sumps.
Also most British cave diving is done solo (so without a buddy that most systems recommend.) in quite tight conditions.
Caves in mainland Europe tend to be larger and the diving philosophy is different. There you will find team diving prevalent.
The distinction between UK/EU was obviously made among the teams themselves.
There happened to be a UK crew, and then another crew of Europeans, so 'team UK' 'team Europe' makes sense. If they were event eating/living apart, then the distinction was made on the ground, not by the author.
If there were a bunch of Swedes (Thailand is a disproportionately popular destination for Swedes) it might have been 'Team Sweden' / 'Team Europe' as well.
"I wonder why Europeans were so well represented."
Because Europe is considerably more advanced in many ways than a place like Thailand - and also bigger and richer. The 'talent pool' for these things is going to be massively larger'.
To compare: Thailand is 70M people with 7K GPD per capita. It's kind of poor, not 'technically developed' is my nice way of saying they don't have all of the civic, academic, social, industrial foundations that other, richer countries do. And so a lot people in villages do not create the surpluses that say, a European IT consultant has to adventure in their spare time. I think also, that 'different sports for different cultures' - it might just be that 'caving is not a thing' in Thailand or he region.
Even though the Elon's submarine idea wasn't used, at least one little known piece of American engineering was used in the rescue - the "Sked". It's a stretcher that can rolled up for storage and transportation, then unrolled for loading, and then partially rolled up again to protect the patient on every side.
Speaking of Elon, did we ever get to the bottom of his pedophile claims? I don't see many people talking about it so i assumed he apologised and gave them a free model 3?
I really liked the story, and it's well worth telling it, and highlighting the heroes (and anyone who was there is a hero in my book). But the writing style was kinda hard to follow. It reads more like a stream-of-thought piece rather than an organized story.
Jumping back-and-forth in time, repeating side stories again and again, introducing new characters, and then re-introducing them, skipping major parts in the middle, only to come back to them later (or not).
All in all, it's a story well worth a good Atlantic article, or even a movie script - but I'dthink long and hard before putting time in the future to reading an "article" by this "journalist".
Interesting how I missed the sedation part till now. The way I rembembered it, they trained the boys to dive, right in the cave. But that must have been a plan that was later abandoned but stuck with me.
A friend of mine is an engineer at Lockheed, and used to work for NASA some 17 years long. He explained to me the whole thing was more of a photo-op and ability to over-engineer to show who's got the bigger balls, than actually to quickly rescue people.
He basically told me one of many training astronauts have is in a long dark corridor that is submerged underwater of course to simulate low gravity. However the whole thing inside is wrapped in a plastic bag, for lack of better explanation. Just imagine huge condom big enough to fit people in it. When the shit goes down, you push emergency button and whole thing fills in with air in less than 90 seconds. Since its inside cave/corridor, air has no way to push the condom outside/up, so whole water is flushed out quickly.
He told me all they had to do is put a thick foil underwater, glue 2 sides together, making long sealed condom, and then pump the air in, making a way for kids to crawl through, with no need to dive or know how to swim, almost like they have those tubes on children's playgrounds. That's all.
Let's hope it turns out better than the movie that was made of the Chilean miner rescue ("The 33")! Following the very successful award winning book it had an all-star cast... and it sucked. It had all the drama of watching paint dry.
Interesting how the parents and neighbours didn't blame the coach. I mean in the US, he would have been sued to death the moment people learned he had survived.
There's a saying that pets look like their masters and I think the same is true for entrepreneurs and their cities. Musk is the perfect embodiment of LA flim-flam.
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|7 years ago|reply
It's one of the few anaesthetics that doesn't cause respiratory depression, overdosing is practically impossible, and it's also injected intra-muscularly, rather than intravenously, making it easy to apply in the dark and underwater by an untrained person.
These factors are also why it was used extensively in the Vietnam war for battlefield surgery.
Interesting that, as usual, the media has labelled it as "horse tranquilliser". It's used more extensively on humans than on animals, and is used on all different mammals, not just horses.
[+] [-] darkpuma|7 years ago|reply
I mean, the article makes clear that Dr. Harry is an anesthesiologist and that anesthesiology is a very serious discipline, so I don't think the author meant to suggest they were carelessly administering medication meant for animals instead of humans.
[+] [-] brian-armstrong|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|7 years ago|reply
Apparently that’s less common in kids.
I would have thought they’d go with a benzodiazepine instead. It has all those benefits you mention without the post-emergence delirium.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
There are so many things that could have gone wrong during that time, my god man ... random diver dudes (i.e. non medical) giving needles putting people out - this was as dangerous as anything else.
[+] [-] stef25|7 years ago|reply
The horse tranquilliser thing needs to stop.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gravelc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmcslim|7 years ago|reply
"I really want to try and inspire kids to get out and about, get them off their screens... ...and get outside and build up a bit of confidence and resilience that comes with adventuring and taking a few risks."
As long as said risks don't involve getting stuck in an underwater cave and triggering an international search and rescue mission!
[+] [-] brandnewlow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|7 years ago|reply
Basically the entire rescue operation sounds like it was conducted under a fog of war. No one was ever officially in charge, no one was legally authorized to do what they did (such as the medication of the boys).
[+] [-] darkpuma|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RLN|7 years ago|reply
I wonder why Europeans were so well represented. I wouldn't have necessarily imagined that would be the case. Is it simply because most European countries are relatively wealthy?
[+] [-] cjhveal|7 years ago|reply
Maclean's is a Canadian publication and I think many Canadians have a special interest in the UK, and I think the demographics of Maclean's readership likely reinforces this.
Additionally, I would guess that this is some semantic ambiguity introduced via morphological clipping where the author is using European as a shortened form of Continental/Mainland European. It's a fairly common device used to remove excess verbiage especially when reusing the same terms over and over. Pragmatically, when in context being contrasted against Briton, it becomes more clear that the author means Europeans other than Brits.
A similar example could be "all squares have equal sides whereas rectangles do not". It is pragmatically more likely that I mean _non-square_ rectangles even though my wording is ambiguous or straight up incorrect taken at face value.
So I'd guess it's attributable to the psychological primacy of the UK amongst the readership of this publication, semantically confused via a common morphological device, and ultimately disambiguated by the pragmatics of contrasting a part with its whole.
[+] [-] andrewf|7 years ago|reply
I've heard this usage in Australia; I can't find a free Australian dictionary so no citation. Australian English maintains more British-isms than American English. I imagine Canadian English may be the same.
[+] [-] sjburt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|7 years ago|reply
It’s pretty common in British English, and so I guess Canadian English as well, to say European and to mean continental Europe. That’s not any kind of political statement, something recent, or anything to do with Brexit, it’s just a shorthand of speech.
[+] [-] Swifty|7 years ago|reply
In Briton cave diving is largely done to move between flooded sections of dry cave, so most cave divers are dry cavers first, and diving is just used to bypass sumps.
Also most British cave diving is done solo (so without a buddy that most systems recommend.) in quite tight conditions.
Caves in mainland Europe tend to be larger and the diving philosophy is different. There you will find team diving prevalent.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
There happened to be a UK crew, and then another crew of Europeans, so 'team UK' 'team Europe' makes sense. If they were event eating/living apart, then the distinction was made on the ground, not by the author.
If there were a bunch of Swedes (Thailand is a disproportionately popular destination for Swedes) it might have been 'Team Sweden' / 'Team Europe' as well.
"I wonder why Europeans were so well represented."
Because Europe is considerably more advanced in many ways than a place like Thailand - and also bigger and richer. The 'talent pool' for these things is going to be massively larger'.
To compare: Thailand is 70M people with 7K GPD per capita. It's kind of poor, not 'technically developed' is my nice way of saying they don't have all of the civic, academic, social, industrial foundations that other, richer countries do. And so a lot people in villages do not create the surpluses that say, a European IT consultant has to adventure in their spare time. I think also, that 'different sports for different cultures' - it might just be that 'caving is not a thing' in Thailand or he region.
[+] [-] zozbot123|7 years ago|reply
They don't want to be Europeans anymore, though - and they voted to that effect.
[+] [-] danielvf|7 years ago|reply
https://skedco.com/product/sked-basic-rescue-system-internat...
[+] [-] shard972|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TravelTechGuy|7 years ago|reply
Jumping back-and-forth in time, repeating side stories again and again, introducing new characters, and then re-introducing them, skipping major parts in the middle, only to come back to them later (or not).
All in all, it's a story well worth a good Atlantic article, or even a movie script - but I'dthink long and hard before putting time in the future to reading an "article" by this "journalist".
[+] [-] lolc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orblivion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|7 years ago|reply
He basically told me one of many training astronauts have is in a long dark corridor that is submerged underwater of course to simulate low gravity. However the whole thing inside is wrapped in a plastic bag, for lack of better explanation. Just imagine huge condom big enough to fit people in it. When the shit goes down, you push emergency button and whole thing fills in with air in less than 90 seconds. Since its inside cave/corridor, air has no way to push the condom outside/up, so whole water is flushed out quickly.
He told me all they had to do is put a thick foil underwater, glue 2 sides together, making long sealed condom, and then pump the air in, making a way for kids to crawl through, with no need to dive or know how to swim, almost like they have those tubes on children's playgrounds. That's all.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rktster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drefanzor|7 years ago|reply
As a side note: a movie based on these events is being produced.
https://variety.com/2018/film/news/thai-cave-rescue-movie-un...
[+] [-] samopus|7 years ago|reply
http://divingintotheunknown.com/en
[+] [-] canada_dry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielvf|7 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/world/asia/thailand-cave-...
[+] [-] deskamess|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kzrdude|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] zozbot123|7 years ago|reply
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