I always have the urge to go home bec I miss my dog. Intelligence turns me on. I live for the simple things. l'd rather be kind than be right. I'm a kid inside.
Each boy received oral alprazolam, then intramuscular atropine and ketamine. Wrists were cable-tied behind the back so they could not claw at the gear if they woke.
“It could be like I’m euthanizing these boys.”
Australian anesthetist Richard Harris said that before approving the rescue plan. What came next was not heroics by children. It was a medical extraction run through a drowned mountain.
In June 2018, twelve school footballers and their coach entered Tham Luang in northern Thailand after practice. Heavy rain closed the way out and trapped them inside the cave for nine days. Later, British cave divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton reached Chamber 9 and found all thirteen still alive.
The clip of that moment went viral and created hope. Inside the rock, it solved nothing. The way out was an hours-long underwater drag through slits of stone and floodwater the color of coffee. A trained former Thai Navy SEAL, Saman Kunan, had already collapsed on a tank run and died. Officials feared a conscious boy would rip the mask, flood his airway and take the diver down with him.
British cave divers asked Thai officials to summon Richard Harris, an Adelaide anesthetist and experienced cave diver. Upon arrival and after studying the situation, he designed a ketamine protocol so the boys would stay unconscious but keep breathing on the way out.
The chemistry was precise. Harris chose ketamine because it can drop a child into unconsciousness while leaving spontaneous breathing intact. Alprazolam (Xanax) went first. Atropine dried saliva that could choke them. Preloaded syringes rode with the lead divers. When a body twitched in the dark, another shot went through the wetsuit.
Harris thought the first child might emerge dead. He would still have to go back in for the others. Thai officials granted Harris legal protection if a child did not survive the passage.
Then they executed the plan. The first boy came out alive. Then another. Over three days in July 2018, all twelve boys and their coach were brought out.
The public story is often told as a miracle. The medical plan was narrower. Twelve healthy minors were put under in a cave, bound and moved like cargo because fear itself was the deadliest part of the route.
The reason millennials are so nostalgic is that they got a brief taste of a world that wasn’t entirely controlled by the stupidest people who’ve ever lived.