Teaching the boys to dive through the passages was discussed. The passages between the team and the outside were not simple open-water swims; they were tight, curling tunnels with no ambient light, strong currents in places, and the specific psychological demands of diving in completely enclosed, completely dark, completely unfamiliar underwater spaces. Even experienced recreational divers require substantial training before cave diving; the fatality rate among untrained people who attempt cave diving in real caves is extremely high. Training twelve boys — most of whom had never dived, some of whom could not swim — to safely navigate several kilometers of flooded cave passage in anything less than weeks or months was not a realistic proposition.
The option that emerged as the most viable — though it was considered extraordinary by the cave diving professionals who would have to execute it — was to bring each boy out individually, escorted by an experienced cave diver, in a state that would prevent them from panicking or making sudden movements that could injure them or their escort in the confined passages.
The word used to describe this state, in the accounts that emerged after the rescue, was sedated.
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## The Medical Question
The decision to sedate the boys for extraction was not made lightly, and the person most directly responsible for the medical dimension of the rescue described it afterward as one of the most difficult professional decisions of his career.
Dr. Richard Harris was an Australian anesthesiologist and cave diver — a combination of qualifications that made him uniquely suited to the problem. Harris had been contacted by the Australian Federal Police, who had mobilized specialist resources including Harris and his longtime dive partner Craig Challen to assist with the rescue operation. Harris’s expertise in anesthesia meant he could assess the medical dimensions of the extraction plan with professional authority; his experience as a cave diver meant he understood the physical demands of what was being proposed from the other side.