On June twenty-third, two thousand and eighteen, twelve boys from the Wild Boars football team and their assistant coach entered Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand and were cut off by rising floodwater. For nine days, nobody knew if they were alive. The cave system flooded. Visibility for divers dropped to almost nothing. British cave divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen finally found them alive on a muddy ledge five kilometres from the entrance — thin, weak, sitting in the dark, but breathing.

In this episode of 5 Minute Strange, we cover the full Thai cave rescue — the flooded passages so narrow that even expert cave divers found them terrifying, the death of retired Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan who lost consciousness underwater while delivering supplies, the decision to sedate the boys and bring them out one at a time through hours of black water, and the three-day operation across July eighth to tenth that brought all thirteen people back to the surface alive. It remains one of the only cave rescue stories where everyone came home.

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In September two thousand and twenty-three, experienced American caver Mark Dickey began vomiting blood more than one thousand metres underground in Morca Cave in southern Turkey. He was too weak to move. A fit caver could take fifteen hours just to reach the surface from where he lay. Dickey was not fit — he was losing blood in one of the deepest cave systems in Turkey, with no way out under his own power. Before rescue could begin, doctors had to descend into the cave and stabilise him underground, including administering a blood transfusion by headlamp using bags warmed over a camp stove.

In this episode of 5 Minute Strange, we cover the fifty-seven-hour rescue operation that brought Mark Dickey back to the surface — the multinational team from ten countries who descended in shifts, the sections of cave that had to be widened for the stretcher, the moments when his condition worsened again mid-rescue, and the early hours of September twelfth when he finally emerged under the night sky. He had gone underground healthy. He came back out alive.

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In June two thousand and fourteen, German cave researcher Johann Westhauser was struck by falling rock more than one thousand metres underground in the Riesending cave system in the Bavarian Alps — Germany's deepest cave. He suffered serious head and chest injuries and could not climb out. Before rescue could even begin, one of his companions had to spend over ten hours climbing to the surface just to raise the alarm. What followed was one of the most technically complex cave rescues in European history.

In this episode of 5 Minute Strange, we cover the eleven-day operation that brought Westhauser back to the surface — the hundreds of rescuers from across Europe who descended in shifts, the underground bivouacs where teams handed over the stretcher in the dark, the narrow passages and vertical climbs that had to be navigated with an injured man who could not move freely, and the moment on June nineteenth when daylight finally reached him again after nearly twelve days underground.

Subscribe to 5 Minute Strange for a new true story every weekday. One mystery. Five minutes. No explanation.

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