Thirteen lives is a film directed by Ron Howard. It tells the incredible true story of the tremendous global effort to rescue a Thai soccer team who got trapped in the Tham Luang cave during an unexpected rainstorm in 2018.
The real story
In the Tham Luang cave incident on June 23, 2018, twelve boys aged between 11 and 17 and a 25-year-old man were stranded inside Tham Luang Nang Non, a cave in Chiang Rai province, Thailand. Heavy monsoon rains partially flooded the cave during their visit. A few hours later, the missing boys - all members of a local football team - and their teacher were reported, immediately starting the search operations.
Attempts to locate the group were hampered by rising water levels, making contact with those missing impossible for over a week. Initially, Thai navy divers intervened who were unable to reach the boys stuck in the cave. As the news spread with global media coverage, two English cave divers very experienced in the exploration of submerged caves, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, arrived on the spot who had already intervened in similar rescue operations in France, Norway and Mexico in the past. The two made themselves available to the local authorities and, after being greeted with initial skepticism, were authorized to intervene.
The rescue operation escalated into a mass rescue operation. On July 2, nine days after the boys disappeared, the dive team found all of the missing still alive in a rock area of the cave, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) from the entrance. Rescue organizers debated whether to teach the boys and their teacher basic diving techniques to speed their recovery or wait months for the floodwaters to clear withdraw at the end of the rainy season. After days of pumping water out of the cave and thanks to a momentary respite from the rains, four of the twelve boys were brought to safety on 8 July, while another four were recovered on 9 July.
The rescue operations involved over 1 000 people, including so-called "Thai Navy SEALs" (members of the Naval Special Warfare Command, Royal Thai Navy), technical support teams and many volunteers from many different countries, also engaged in the resupply of food and water for the missing. Saman Gunan, a 38-year-old ex-Navy SEAL volunteer, died July 5 during an oxygen replenishment operation for the cave, losing consciousness from asphyxiation while walking back towards the cave exit. On December 27, 2019 another Navy SEAL volunteer, Beirut Pak Bara, died after contracting a blood infection.
On July 10, all twelve boys were brought to safety, while the coach remained in the cave last to await help. Later, the rescue operation ended with all the missing people being rescued.
What is real in the
film?
● The use of anesthetics: even in reality anesthetics have been used. In Ron Howard's film, the governor of the province (played by Sahajak Boonthanakit) specifies that no one should have known about the use of medicines during rescue operations, not even the boys' parents. This was also the case in reality.
In reality and in the film,
Harris administered a mix of drugs to the 13 missing: a tranquilizer; a drug to
reduce saliva production and avoid the risk of suffocation; an anesthetic,
ketamine.
Like in the movie, ketamine
has been injected into bodies multiple times, because its effect tends to wear
off after a couple of hours. The journey to the exit, on the other hand, took
about 6 hours.
●
The help of agreements The film shows that, thanks to
agreements made with local farmers, the torrential rainwater finds an outlet in
the rice fields below the Doi Nang Non mountain range, flooding the crops and,
in fact, destroying the crops.
In the end credits of the
film, it is specified that, on the rice fields, about 56 million gallons of
water (roughly 2.2 billion liters) were diverted and the farmers were
compensated by the government.
Indeed, in reality, with the
approval of local farmers, the local authorities have flooded various local
farms, to facilitate the outflow of water and the salvation of missing
children. For their sacrifice, the peasants received financial reparations.
In an interview with The
Sydney Morning Herald in 2018, a local farmer whose farm was flooded said: “I can always regrow rice, but life cannot
regrow.”
What is different?
In the film at least one protagonist is missing. In reality, however, among the hundreds of people who have helped, there is at least one other man who played an important role in resolving the Tham Luang incident which, however, the film does not stage. It is the Australian diver Craig Challen who, in reality, is Harry Harris' tight-knit cave diving partner. In 2018, Harris and Challen were the last members of the rescue team to leave the cave after their rescue. However, the film does not mention Challen's presence in Thailand, at the rescue site, or this detail.
For their role in the Tham Luang enterprise, Harris and Challen were awarded a prestigious bravery award and an Order of Australia medal in 2018.
Other films
Many have been fascinated by this story to the point that many have wanted to make a film about it. In addition to thirteen lives, a documentary film on this story was also released in 2021, The Rescue where it too tells the story of the boys' rescue businesses. In this documentary we can find the real conversation between the rescuers and the newly found boys. The original video of the find is still available online. Another film who tells about this tragic story is The Cave who was released in 2019 and directed by Tom Waller, which is the first film released about it.
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