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 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.
The thing in that scenario 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.
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.
and also causing a cave in too.
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.
The cave did not collapse.
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
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.
