Thai Navy SEALs attempted to retrieve the boys, but lacked the training and equipment to successfully pull it off. On the advice of British expat Vern Unsworth, who lived in the area and was known as “the crazy foreign caver,” the government reached out to cave divers around the world to join the operation.
The documentary adds emotional texture to the tale, without diluting the narrative momentum, by providing extensive interviews with both men, as well as other volunteers, who provide insight about their passion for cave diving. Along with the expected bromides , the Brits both say that they were terrible at team sports and were frequently picked on in school. ” ‘Doesn’t play well with others’ is the phrase you’re looking for,” Volanthen jokes.
Finding them, it turns out, was the easy part. How to get them out of the submerged cave alive seemed a logistical impossibility. If grown men were barely able to move underwater for a few minutes, how would the adolescents survive an hours-long journey? The conditions were so hazardous that one volunteer, a former Thai Navy SEAL, died from the dangerously low oxygen levels in the cave’s non-submerged portions.