Verified by 
For the past few days I have been checking my computer for the news on the rescue of the twelve boys and their soccer coach from the flooded underground cave system in Thailand. Me and everyone else living anywhere in the free world where this is headline news.
Why is this story so compelling? Do we rush every day to hear the latest news on the situation in Yemen where it is estimated that one child under the age of five dies of preventable causes every ten minutes, nearly two million children are acutely malnourished, and in the Yemeni conflict, thousands of children have been killed or injured and the use of child soldiers is widespread? This and other long-term humanitarian crises do bring us to tears when we see graphic images of malnourished children on our TV screens, and perhaps we send off another donation, but our minds seem to be so habituated to such images, we are so removed from them, and they are so enormous that we feel helpless. The one thing we know for sure is that nothing is going to change these situations for a very long time.
But the Thailand Cave Rescue has all the elements that the biggest-selling psychological suspense and car-chase thrillers—whether these be books, movies, TV series, or games—can thank for their popular international success.
Soccer-love is at fever pitch with the World Cup taking place in Russia and on TV screens worldwide. On June 23rd, twelve boys aged 11 to 16, all members of the ‘Wild Boar’ soccer team, are out for a soccer practice and a picnic with their 25-year-old soccer coach. Boys will be boys, and the current story has it that they decided to explore an entrance to Tham Luang Nang Non cave system, one of the big cave systems in northern Thailand. It’s almost the end of the main Monsoon season but the boys are unlucky and a sudden downpour floods the cave entrance and forces them further into the cave system. Most of them can’t swim. Their disappearance sparks a massive search, with hopes of finding them alive becoming more tenuous every day. Hundreds of volunteers from Thailand and around the world flock to the scene as the weather forecast predicts further monsoon rain any day. On the ninth day the boys are found alive by British divers, crouched on a ledge, dressed in shorts, and weak with hunger. Their coach is one of the weakest; he’d given all of his picnic food to the boys. But they seem in amazingly good health and spirits, these soccer kids who’ve been sitting on a ledge in the pitch dark for nine days. The world lets out its breath. It’s a miracle and now the boys will be helped out by some of the best divers in the world.
But the real drama has a long way to go yet. The boys, now being tended and fed by Thai Navy Seals, including a doctor and nurse, are on a ledge two kilometers (1.2 miles) inside the cave, and nearly a kilometer below the surface of a remote jungle-covered, mountain. Their still-dry ledge is accessible only via a narrow, partly flooded channel, at one point only 38cms high, so narrow that the divers have to remove their scuba tanks before squeezing through. Water is pumped from the cave system at a rate of 1.6 million liters an hour in a race against more rain. Attempts to find a natural opening in the roof of the chamber closer to the boys than the entrance where they began their adventure are unsuccessful. Boring a way into the cave near them is impossible.
They are supplied with four months' worth of food, which will keep them alive until the rainy season is over and the cave dry enough to wade out of. The divers begin teaching the boys, these boys who can’t swim, how to scuba dive. Water levels have dropped but the weather forecast is for more, possibly torrential, rain soon. The experienced divers take four to five hours to get to the boys and the same time to get back again.
Then one of the divers dies. The air in the cave system is running out. But his death makes the search teams even more determined to succeed. Diving conditions are terrible: muddy water with zero visibility, strong currents, and significant technical challenges and risks. Air is pumped into the cave to improve conditions.
We wait. The boys’ mothers send them messages and they write messages back. Navy Seals brings them a feed of grilled pork and sticky rice, better for their spirits and more satisfying for their tummies than the high-protein gels they were fed at first. A phone line is set up so they can talk to their parents. They practice wearing full face mask. Anmar Mirza, national coordinator of the National Cave Rescue Commission and a rescue diver with 30 years' experience make no bones about it. “This is one of the toughest cave rescues I’ve seen,” he tells CNN. "A moment of panic or loss of the breathing regulator can be fatal for the novice diver, and may also put the cave diver escorting him in danger."
On Sunday, July 8th, much sooner than the world expected, the first four boys emerged safely from the cave. Diagrams showed us how it was done: The divers carried the boys’ air tanks and each boy was sandwiched between two divers and attached by ropes as together they waded, walked, swam, wriggled and dived through the cave system. Replacement oxygen cylinders had earlier been positioned along the route. The weakest boys were brought out first, probably because of fears that the ordeal would become even more difficult later if the rains came and more water flooded the passageways. The boys were taken to the hospital and put in isolation, unable to be hugged by their parents until cleared of bacterial and fungal infections that could have infected them via soil, water, ticks and bats and bird droppings. It is hoped that the next four boys will soon be rescued in the same way. Before that can happen there is a lot to do to prepare the route, pump more oxygen into the cave system and replace the oxygen cylinders positioned along the passages. And the divers need rest.
On Monday four more boys emerge with their buddy diving coaches and are taken to the hospital to await clearance before they can hug their parents. And now the world is holding their breath because we are told that it is safe to bring out only four at a time, and there are five still to be rescued; the coach and four boys. The youngest, the eleven-year-old, is one of them.
If this were a fictional thriller, surely they would all, in the end, come out safely? By the time you read this we might know. If the collective good thoughts of millions of people can make a difference, there will be only one life lost here, that of the brave diver who died, it seems now, a long few days ago.
Yes, this is a real live suspense story. We are riveted because because we can read about it, watch it in real time and full color; because the rescuers are brave, the journey is perilous, the stakes are sky high, and every chapter ends with a cliff hanger. So many people from so many countries are involved and all with the same wish. The only villain is mother nature. But at its heart, this suspense story is powerful because we can empathize with these parents and these boys and this coach. These boys and their families are not Yemen refugees or child soldiers. No, they could be us.
