The Wild Boars soccer team. We became their public. Photo / Facebook
The Wild Boars soccer team. We became their public. Photo / Facebook
In the darkness, down the twisting stone tunnels and through the murky water, they awaited an uncertain future.
Outside, under the skies of a modern planet, cameras and bystanders and a rapt global audience of many millions looked towards the remote hills of northern Thailand, connected by cables, satellites, wireless signals and gadgets.
We have barely a hint of what the past 18 days were like for the 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach. But for the rest of us, watching from afar as an uneasy planet's media juggernaut beamed us live shots and the unknowable was revealed drip by tantalising drip, we knew one thing: It was hard to look away.
Particularly when these two words were splattered across the world's websites and apps: "WATCH LIVE."
Were they even alive at all in there after so many days? Probably not. And yet they were.
Could we get a glimpse? There they were, captured on video, waving tentatively to what had fast become their public. Could they be pulled out, through water that rose and fell and threatened to rise again? That question, drawn out for days as the clock ticked menacingly, found its answer with a resounding yes.
It was a race against time and technology helped in the form of a water-pumping effort. Photo / AP
"We really needed something to cheer for right now. We needed some positivity. We needed a good headline that could carry the day," says Daryl Van Tongeren, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan. "People started believing, like a snowball rolling down a hill: 'Maybe they WILL get out'," he said.
It was easy to conclude for several days that they'd met their end prematurely and unfairly. When they did not — when children not unlike those in our own lives had a fighting chance at being okay — many eyes locked in on the story.
At that point, the saga was also fuelled by hope, and by a possibility of a good outcome.
There are other reasons this particular story was so captivating, though. They cast light on some things about ourselves and about the strange forces that shape our lives in a modern media society.
Thai Navy Seals emerge safely from their mission. Photo / AP
● It's become cliche to compare the real world to showbiz ("It was like something out of a movie," so many witnesses to disaster say). But even bearing that in mind, it would have been impossible to craft a Hollywood treatment that felt more cinematic.
● Our world today is utterly consumed with technology but also increasingly uneasy with the way it affects our lives and landscapes. So to look at such a remote area and watch a good outcome unfold because of smart uses of technology, from the pumping effort that drained water out of the cave to the carefully calibrated oxygen tanks used in extracting the kids, illuminated the ways technology can encourage our humanity rather than whittle away at it.
● Saman Gunan, 38, a Thai Navy Seal died in the cave late last week during rescue efforts. People who die heroically trying to help others become martyrs who are seen as the best of us.
● It's pretty obvious that our media-consuming world needs some news that couldn't possibly be contentious or political. This story managed that. The enemies were nature and the ticking clock.
Family members hugged after hearing that the boys had been found. Photo / AP
Would the waters rise again? Would oxygen run out? Would rescuers beat the countdown?
In the end, it was the kind of story that we are literally conditioned through life to consume. It takes its place among similar underground sagas that entranced the planet such as the trapped Copiapó miners in Chile in 2010.
We watch, we wonder, and we hope for a happy ending. And then we move on. This time, though, in this contentious season of humanity, we can do it with a smile.
'We did something that nobody thought possible'
"Everyone is safe."
With those three words posted on Facebook the daring rescue mission to extricate 12 boys and their soccer coach from the treacherous confines of a flooded cave in Thailand was complete — an 18-day ordeal that claimed the life of diver Saman Gunan.
Thailand's Navy Seals celebrated the feat with a post that read: "All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave. We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what."
But there was a sad postscript: The last member of the rescue team to leave the cave, Australian doctor Richard Harris, discovered his father had died. The medic and three Seal divers who stayed with the trapped boys in their cramped, dry refuge after they were found were the last out.
People on the street cheered and clapped when ambulances ferrying the last boys arrived at a hospital in Chiang Rai.
Amporn Sriwichai, an aunt of rescued coach Ekkapol Chantawong, was ecstatic. "I just want to hug him and tell him that I missed him."
Each of the boys was guided out by a pair of divers in the three-day high-stakes operation.
The Wild Boars soccer team. We became their public. Photo / Facebook
The boys were given an anti-anxiety medication to help with their perilous removal. The Guardian reported that water pumps failed just hours after the last boy had been evacuated.
Thongchai Lertwilairatanapong, a public health inspector, said one member of the final group had a slight lung infection. Two of the first group had a lung infection as well.
"We did something nobody thought possible," said acting Governor Narongsak Osatanakorn, leader of the rescue effort.
