83: Buried Below pt.2: Lost Boys

Maia Warner-Langenbahn
Dec 11, 2024
5 min read

Updated: Aug 7

In this jaw-dropping follow-up series, Maia and Grant peel back the layers of two wildly different but thematically linked disasters and rescues. First, they relive the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, a blaze so fierce it incinerated an entire business district, wiped out a million rodents, and forced the city to rebuild itself from brick up, even rerouting its streets into what’s now the famed Seattle Underground. Then, in a lightning-fast pivot, they transport you to northern Thailand, where twelve youth soccer players—the “Wild Boars”, and their coach became trapped five miles inside the flooded Tham Luang cave. Over ten harrowing days, an international army of volunteer firefighters, elite Navy SEAL divers, British cave-diving experts, and local monks battled monsoon waters and near-zero visibility to locate the boys, paramedic them with ketamine, and shuttle them out one by one through underwater tunnels narrower than a toddler’s crawlspace. It’s a story of human ingenuity, selfless sacrifice (including the life of Thai diver Saman Kunan), and unbreakable community spirit, proof that sometimes the greatest rescues happen not on the surface but buried below.

Chapters/Key takeaways to listen for

[00:00:00] Catch-Up
[00:28:17] Lost Boys: How Seattle’s worst conflagration was ignited and its one-million-rodent toll
[00:33:59] Rise from the Ashes: The instant codes and brick ordinances that reshaped Seattle’s core
[00:43:38] Madam & the Money: High-end brothel bankrolls the rebuild and seeds women’s suffrage
[00:55:41] Thailand’s Wild Boars: Twelve Thai kids, an overnight cave “initiation,” and a birthday cake that led to disaster
[01:02:48] Flooded Junction: Why the cave’s spit-junction became a deathtrap
[01:19:40] Laser Mapping & Lost Thumbprints: How a hidden man-made tunnel was uncovered
[01:42:30] “Fish On!”: British cave divers at last stumble upon the boys in an air pocket after ten days of near-blind dives
[02:00:15] Operation Extraction: The daring strategy: ketamine sedation, full-face dive masks, human pulleys
[02:23:45] Fallen Seal: Honoring volunteer Thai SEAL Saman Kunan
[02:37:05] Global Village: A snapshot of how 23 countries, local farmers, monks, and laundromats united to save thirteen lives
[02:50:26] Today’s Tours & Tributes: From Pike Place vault lights to Tham Luang memorials

Photos Referenced:

*Photo of the Moo Pa ("Wild Boars") posted to Facebook just before journeying into the Tham Luang Cave - courtesy of Facebook/Nopparat Kanthawong*

Madame Lou and her Ladies - courtesy of Paul Dorpat	Madame Lou's Mansion now, currently houses the Union Gospel Mission
View of the Cave Anomaly - courtesy of National Geographic's Drain the Oceans and Commendium	Close-up view of the cave anomaly - courtesy of National Geographic's Drain the Oceans and Commedium
Peerpat "Night" Sompiangjai's SpongeBob Cake	Map of the Sumps leading from the location of the boys (indicated by the bright orange dot in the top right corner) to the location of the rescue team in Chamber 3 (far left) - courtesy of National Geographic's Drain the Oceans and Commendium
Map of the Rescue Camp layout - courtesy of the BBC	Map of the Rescue Camp layout - courtesy of the BBCDiagram of the rescue plan following a successful dive rescue - courtesy of the BBC
The actual rescue operations modeled after the photo to the left - courtesy of AFP/Royal Thai Navy	The Wild Boars at the hospital in Chiang Rai - courtesy of AFP/Getty Images
Entrance to the Tham Luang Cave - courtesy of John Borthwick	Dr. Richard Harris presented with an award for bravery from the Explorer's Club
The Wild Boars one year after the rescue (2019) - courtesy of Getty Images	Coach Ake speaking during the team's return to the Tham Luang on the 1-year anniversary on June 24, 2019 - courtesy of REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun
Statue of Saman Gunan outside of the entrance to the cave - courtesy of John Borthwick and Deborah Dickson-Smith	Adul Sam-on playing soccer for The Masters School - courtesy of Isaac Cass/The Masters School

Quotes:

"We can have this formative moment, and I want to care for you because you're a person. That's it, that's the only qualifier." - Grant Thomas
"The distance between chamber three, which is their launching point, and chamber nine, where the boys are found, is well past the point of like they're still alive." - Grant Thomas
"The greatest threat to the kids at this point is not necessarily the cave, but the mindset of the kids themselves." - Maia Warner
"There is an entire local community steps up as well, not just the volunteers that have been flown in from all over, but people who are there are volunteering ." - Maia Warner

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