Thirteen Lives

[halocline]

It's quite an amazing story, it would be hard to screw up a movie about it too much, and I think they did a good job with it. I don't have high expectations for accuracy in dive scenes in commercial movies; divers represent a tiny portion of the audience and the director's job is to tell the story.

The two things that raised my eyebrows were the Thai divers using single tanks, did they really do that? and the fact that these were 7-8 hour dives and where were all the extra tanks? I'll have to watch The Rescue, I suppose there's more detailed diving information in that.

 

[Marie13]

It's quite an amazing story, it would be hard to screw up a movie about it too much, and I think they did a good job with it. I don't have high expectations for accuracy in dive scenes in commercial movies; divers represent a tiny portion of the audience and the director's job is to tell the story.

The two things that raised my eyebrows were the Thai divers using single tanks, did they really do that? and the fact that these were 7-8 hour dives and where were all the extra tanks? I'll have to watch The Rescue, I suppose there's more detailed diving information in that.

Read Stanton’s book. It answers so many questions people have. The Rescue has footage from the Thai military and you see them with single tanks.

 

[Manatee Diver]

The two things that raised my eyebrows were the Thai divers using single tanks, did they really do that? and the fact that these were 7-8 hour dives and where were all the extra tanks? I'll have to watch The Rescue, I suppose there's more detailed diving information in that.

It likely wasn't very deep being a dry cave that turned into sump.

I'm not surprised at all that the Thai Navy divers went in with single tanks. They likely didn't know better, and they were mission focused.

 

[Angelo Farina]

It likely wasn't very deep being a dry cave that turned into sump.

I'm not surprised at all that the Thai Navy divers went in with single tanks. They likely didn't know better, and they were mission focused.

Aren't Navy Seals mostly using CC pure-oxygen rebreathers? Or is this common only for the Seals of some countries? I have no info on Thai Navy Seals, nor on their standard equipment and training...

 

[Russoft]

I can't imagine a situation where an elite dive team wouldn't be rather unwelcoming to a bunch of outsiders who upstage them. Pride is a common flaw among those (including myself) who are high achievers. Rivalry is human and the 'drama' made the characters more believable. I haven't read or watched anything else about this event, but the movie rang true. I'm no cave or technical diver, but I tend to know enough about a variety of fields to pick apart movies incessantly. Any flaws in this film didn't distract from the story. I assume they didn't get bogged down in all the logistics around air management for the sake of storytelling. I'll certainly be checking out more about Stanton.

 

[dflaher]

It likely wasn't very deep being a dry cave that turned into sump.

That is my sense as well. Perhaps I missed it while reading Stanton's book, but he didn't mention the depths in the cave.

However, when developing the plan for getting the boys out, they decided to use 100% oxygen in the canisters attached to the boys' FFMs. This was to ensure that in the event of an air leak in the mask, or if the boys' breathing slowed way down, they would be getting a maximum amount of oxygen during the trip. Just prior to starting the rescue the oxygen percentage was reduced to 75%. I don't believe such a high level of oxygen would have been used if the sumps were deep.

 

[loosenit2]

I can't imagine a situation where an elite dive team wouldn't be rather unwelcoming to a bunch of outsiders who upstage them. Pride is a common flaw among those (including myself) who are high achievers. Rivalry is human and the 'drama' made the characters more believable. I haven't read or watched anything else about this event, but the movie rang true. I'm no cave or technical diver, but I tend to know enough about a variety of fields to pick apart movies incessantly. Any flaws in this film didn't distract from the story. I assume they didn't get bogged down in all the logistics around air management for the sake of storytelling. I'll certainly be checking out more about Stanton.

i think it would be incorrect to classify them as an elite dive team. They are an elite combat unit that sometimes uses diving as a tool to ingress and egress from areas of operations. Their primary skill set is in small unit warfare and special operations. Never worked with Thai seal before, but I have worked with a wide variety of us SOF, I have never found them anything but humble, driven, and dedicated and possessing a strong desire to leverage every tool they could, including outside expertise. Not all are the same of course, I find the larger the size of an organization, I.e. Rangers, MARFOR Raiders, other traits take presidence and the swagger and turf protection become more prominent.

 

[dflaher]

Just recently finished the book (Aquanaut) and the movie. Both were excellent. My expectations for the movie, being a Hollywood creation, were low but I thought it really captured the essence of the rescue fairly and accurately. I felt a little sorry for Chris Jewell's losing of the cave line and breaking down toward the end, as he's a very accomplished cave diver.

Maybe I missed it, but neither the book nor the film addressed any dehydration risk faced by the boys. I guess we assume that they were able to drink the water from the sump and/or rain water seeping in?

 

[CaptainChris]

Not sure if I got this right but it looked to me like when the Navy Seal got stuck and removed kit to untangle and replace his octo was stuck in a crack, then got pulled off and air was free flowing from the hose. The next shot was of him carrying on and the octo hose trailing with no reg attached and not free flowing. His gas pressure was 60 bar afterwards and he then ran out of air. I'm wondering how the damaged octo hose stopped free flowing as using "standard" 1st stage with reg and octo there is no isolation valve.
Or did I fall asleep and dream this scenario?

I really enjoyed the movie and have tremendous admiration and respect for the courage shown by everyone involved.

 

[Thrasherg]

I guess I am doing something wrong, we tried watching this, but we cannot get any english (watched first 45 minutes or so) and no subtitles! Sure its a good film, but not having a clue about what is being said is very dissapointing, is this normal or are others seeing subtitles in English or having english language dubbed over?