In the timeframe that he was alive? Yes. You’re talking about drilling a hole 100 feet down, probably through bedrock, in the middle of the woods (no way to easily move equipment), and have to do it carefully enough that you don’t hurt the man, and have a hole big enough to retrieve him.
He effectively intentionally crawled about as far away from rescue as he could possibly get while exploring. I hate to speak I’ll of the dead, but this is definitely a case of play stupid games win stupid prizes.
intentionally
He was trying to go down a different, wider branch (which went down the already-narrow, evocatively-named “Birth Canal”), made a wrong turn, and wound up in an increasingly-narrow, unmapped section. He’d presumably have thought that there was a narrow bit, but that then things would widen out, not dead-end in an extremely narrow crevice pointed down. Him winding up in the part that killed him wasn’t intentional.
I mean, he intentionally entered the cave in the first place, and spelunking is always going to have some attendant risks. But he thought that he was heading down a different, known branch that should have been safe to traverse.
Because of the pressure put on the cave system by drills and whatnot, I wonder if it would have been different if they bored down and then lateral, and came up under him? Still likely would have killed him faster, if they could even get to him before he expired off natural causes/pressure.
Star Trek transporter technology might have gotten him out, but that’s fictional tech.
Also: imagine if armchair quarterbacks came up with a solution that would have worked then. Imagine how the rescuers would feel. His kids as well.
Also: imagine if armchair quarterbacks came up with a solution that would have worked then. Imagine how the rescuers would feel. His kids as well.
They call this “pulling an Elon”
I don’t think such drill even exists. The ones that drill vertically straight down that are used for drilling wells for example only have like a 150mm diameter shaft. A tunnel boring machine on the other hand drills a hole that’s like 8 meters wide but it’s extremely slow and needs a whole inftrastructure around it to work as it’s basicallly like a slow moving train. Obviously none of this takes into consideration the simple fact that his exact location would’ve been extremely difficult to pinpoint and if you don’t strop drilling at the exact right moment you’re just going to grind him into dust.
Alternatively, could they not have just had a bunch of enthusiastic people with hammers and chisels going to town on the rock around the cave? 50/60 people could make short work of it, assuming the vibrations didn’t cause a cave in.
I watched a video a while back from one of the rescuers who used a video game that VR-simulates the cave to demonstrate the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tyk1DUqlvI
It really illustrates how little space they had to work with. You could get one person with very little space to work with or maneuver tools near the victim.
The victim was upside down and surrounded by rock.
The guy says that they tried a jackhammer, and it took them IIRC hours to get through about two inches.
EDIT: The victim also died from cardiac arrest from being in that position before too long:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutty_Putty_Cave
After around 27 hours of being stuck and extensive rescue efforts, Jones was pronounced dead at 11:56 pm on November 25.[8][9]
A medic verified that Jones had ultimately suffered cardiac arrest and died due to the strain placed upon his body over many hours by his inverted, compressed position.
That places some hard time constraints on them.
I don’t really know how they could have cleared out that much rock that quickly with the limited access and without doing anything that would kill the victim more quickly.
Honestly, I’m not sure that it would have been practical to have jackhammered the guy out even if the time constraints were relaxed. Like, I assume that they were putting some amount of dust into the air and rubble into the cavity. At some point, the guy isn’t going to be able to breathe under that. Maybe if you could squeeze some kind of shop-vac hose down by his head or something, and if he stayed conscious and could tell you where it was to help you operate it…
This is not John Edward Jones
Saddam?
Saddam
Impossible in the time frame it would have taken to save him, yes. It would have taken days.
Okay, okay… different idea! What if we preemptively drug emergent shafts for the caves most likely to collapse?
I’m also wondering if metal detectors are any good to figure out where someone is underground or under rubble? I imagine dogs are better because they use scent, but they can’t sleep through solid layers of rock/ground, could they?
Metal detectors don’t for work much deeper than a meter, and less if there are more minerals in the rock/soil. Smell lingers, so dogs may be able to smell people if they’ve been there hours before and if there’s a small opening the scent can penetrate a collapsed section.
Could maybe use ground-penetrating radar.
searches
Predicting GPR Performance for Buried Victim Search & Rescue
Apparently that’s a thing.
Rescue teams are presumably already using the most-viable option, though, and I generally hear about dogs for hunting under rubble.
What if we preemptively drug emergent shafts for the caves most likely to collapse?
Then people would climb in different caves. The danger of getting stuck/lost/hurt/dying is part of the attraction to these people
The cave did not collapse.
Whar would be the limiting factor? Getting the drilling equipment there?
Yes, that was one of the main factors. Also the depth and structure of the cave. He was around 100ft/30m below the ground underneath a steep hill. And they’d be drilling into a cave system, not solid ground, meaning there would be a very high risk of a sinkhole/collapse or rock slide. They didn’t just have Jones’s safety to consider, but the safety of rescuers too.
and also causing a cave in too.
The thing is you don’t know the precise coordinates inside the earth that you’re trying to drill to. So you’re gonna miss. Same thing with the Thailand cave incident.
