r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/KRankin93 • 7h ago
Video A person stuck in tunnel after the flash flood getting rescued after 9 days
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u/babubaichung 6h ago
The trauma must be unimaginable
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u/near_the_nexus 6h ago
I canāt imagine how terrifying that must have been. Every time I try, I have to stop. Poor guy.
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u/FIFofNovember 6h ago
Sealed in a pitch black tube while a slurry of rock and mud wash over you at 20 mph, burring you ever deeper and deeper.....
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u/Original-Weekend-866 6h ago
Yeah I'd probably rather be dead at the moment. I broke after 15m in the MRI tube. They took me out to put the injection in me and I couldn't go back in. Lucky they got a clean scan so didn't need the dye
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u/LemonFizz56 5h ago
He's definitely going to spend the rest of his life waking up in the middle of the night in darkness having panic attacks, poor guy
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u/Meal__Team__Six 4h ago
He can just sleep with the lights on though. And after that, who wouldnāt?
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u/WholesomeMetaphor 5h ago
People can't even make it out in a lit room not knowing the time with nothing to do more than 2-3 days before going nuts. In pitch blackness for 9 days with all that going on, not knowing if you'll survive or not, drinking contaminated water is beyond insane. Really happy he survived but goddamn the hell he lived through is something I can't even comprehend. Hope he gets taken well care of for a good while
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u/hammertime2009 5h ago
My god I didnāt even think about the darkness. That makes it all 1000% worse in my book. Stuff of nightmares. I hope some had a cell phone for some light they could use for short periods until it died.
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u/hillswalker87 39m ago
probably no sound either. just cold, wet, dark, quiet. for 9 days. I wonder if his phone worked or if he just had no idea if help was even coming.
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u/driftking428 6h ago
Yup he's still alive, but he's not the same.
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u/GarGonDie 3h ago
Depending on the trauma, another way to look at it is that he really died, the one who came out of there is another person with the same body.
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u/LemonFizz56 5h ago
And to think that there could actually still be people stuck down there right now, after all this time
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u/DroidLord 1h ago
9 days is unfathomably long when you're stuck in a cramped space with nothing to do. It must have felt like a month had passed from his perspective.
When you have no outside reference of time your brain gets messed up. Not to mention the total lack of human contact and persistent fear.
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u/TetraNotTetris 4h ago
Yeah. I wish him the best recovery possible. That whole region will need it.
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u/Gandalftron 6h ago
Incredible. Surviving for 9 days in those conditions is a miracle.Ā
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u/UsedDimension7373 6h ago
I hope he mentally recovers. That had to have been absolutely terrifying.
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u/f_n_a_ 6h ago
That was my first thought, that kind of trauma is unimaginableā¦ nine fucking days. It must have felt like a thousand years
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u/Bunnyboi23 6h ago
Not to mention basically everyone he knows is gone if heās from that area.
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u/FIFofNovember 6h ago
imagine the sound of the water above him during the flood.......and then coming out of that tube and seeing everything just fucking gone, holy shit.
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u/goose_gladwell 6h ago
Like being buried alive, not knowing that anyone would come. I would lose hope so fast
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u/whutchamacallit 3h ago
Any medical professionals care to tell me what this mans recovery is going to look like? I have to imagine he is not out of the woods yet -- that's a long time without (presumably) food or clean drinking water.
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u/MelangeBot 2h ago
This is not true, plenty of populated villages and towns had a warning and where able to escape in to the hills. I believe about 25% of the population there is missing or found dead.
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u/Somalar 6h ago
Youād never fully get over it, 9 days is a long time to be trapped. Hopefully he was out of it most of those days
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u/Fast_Situation4509 6h ago
9 days during which, slowly, painfully slowly, youre hope you get rescued dwindles by the minute. Hour after hour. Days. It has to break someone, i imagine.
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u/nf5 4h ago
I'm going to hope for this guy that he was feeling a little delirious from malnourishment and the 9 days only felt like 2-3 days...Ā
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u/TheFireNationAttakt 3h ago
9 days would typically not be enough for that kind of malnourishment; but maybe from dehydration. More likely it made it feel longerā¦
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u/FCalleja 4h ago
Just reading your comment almost broke me.
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u/Ardbert_The_Fallen 3h ago
Same. I feel like mental claustrophobia or something horrifyingly similar.
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u/Monstramatica 5h ago
I am more concerned about his physical health. I doubt I can even survive 3 days without food. Let alone 9 days.
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u/Boring_Intern_6394 5h ago
You can survive 9 days without food. Water is the issue. Being sedentary would have helped him, but surviving 9 days without water is still unlikely. Maybe there was a source near him
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u/rcknmrty4evr 4h ago
You can survive a shockingly long amount of time without food as long as you have water. Water is the important one. Youāre basically dead after 3 days with zero water.
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u/Armadylio 4h ago
There was a clip of an Indian colonel helping with the search and rescue in Nepal and he said time is of the essence because after 24 hours in the dark you start to lose your senses and become disorientated. After 48 hours the hallucinations begin. I canāt even imagine what these people have went through in the last 9 days
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u/BoxersOrCaseBriefs 6h ago
A friend and his wife were there on a pilgrimage. The hotel they were staying in for just that one night is completely gone, and no one from their tour group has been seen. The chances are vanishingly small, but seeing this is a reminder that there's a chance, however tiny.
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u/New_Forester4630 5h ago
My sister was also in the area. Living a hotel as well. I pray she's OK.
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u/concept12345 6h ago
How did he survive that. He must've drank mud water.
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u/bijouxself 6h ago
He was inside the power station that was being built, underground there is a football field sized room. There was water, but everything was pitch black.
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u/salamipope 6h ago edited 4h ago
BTW! if you are ever trapped in complete darkness for multiple days, just close ur eyes. Some people have a condition which can trigger in prolonged total darkness, usually referred to as cave blindness. Ur brain is like "damn why the fuck is it so dark. Hmmm. maybe something is attacking my eyes and has made me blind? Better SEVER THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE EYES AND THE BRAIN to protect myself!! 99% chance ill be blinded for life but small price to pay!!" If u keep ur eyes closed then ur brain goes "damn why the fuck is it so dark. ohhhhhh my eyes are closed. cool" and then ur good lol. well besides all the trouble that comes with being trapped in complete darkness for days. at least u wont be blind
E: ALRIGHT, HOLD YOUR HORSES. Im getting a lot of hate from this comment. Lets explain a few things. I am not a neuroscientist, but i work in a cave, i have received one degree for biology and am currently working on another one entirely unrelated to opthamology. I, coincidentally, know quite a few opthamologists, but they are chronically busy people and weve lost touch. My background is in ecology and evolution. a few years ago a neurosurgeon was on my tour and we got to talking about cave blindness. youll see me mention this in the thread.
THIS IS A RARE CONDITION. I cant remember what the scientific name he said was, but its onky ever been called cave blindness to me outside of the conversation i had with that doctor. Im also going to copypaste some info i put in another comment, if youre curious.
While it is absolutely true that the vast majority of people will not experience permanent blindness from prolonged exposure to total darkness, some people may have a condition which can trigger it. Hallucinations are far more likely, i have experienced them many times, most people tend to get those. And yes, most people in [prolonged] total darkness will experience temporary visual idling.
Sensory deprivation has affects on the brain that can affect things like your ability to tell what time it is and how to judge space around you. Areas of the brain once designated for work that helps you interpret data like visual input are instead delegated toward other senses. "Not all neuroplastic changes are beneficial. There is the possibility of maladaptive consequences, particularly in the context of rehabilitation and the restoration of lost sensory function." (Source 1 below). I wish i could for the life of me remember the name of this goddamn condition but i heard the scientific name from a neurosurgeon who took my tour, and that was many years ago. Its only ever been called "cave blindness" any time its been brought up since.
Thing is, its kinda hard to study this, because youd have to be in sensory deprivation for a LONG fucking time for it to happen, [more than just a few days, certainly past at least 6 days, 6 days was just what i was told] youd have to be one of the people this can happen to, and scientists would have to find people willing to risk blindness. which is to say. not a lot of participants. [or people this has happened to outside of trials.] Im not terribly surprised there isnt much published work on this, but I did find articles about the plasticity of the brain and affects on cross modal functions after prolonged sensory deprivation. there is certainly possibility for this to happen to someone.
I mention this condition not to scare the world that everyone has blindness stealthily creeping within their neurology, but because if there is 1 person on earth this horribly unlucky thing can happen to, and I can warn them, id like to. Its not like it hurts you to close ur eyes in the dark anyway, if you end up stuck in a cave, its not very fun to have a shitload of cave dust in any of ur orifaces, speaking from experience.
Merabet, L., Pascual-Leone, A. Neural reorganization following sensory loss: the opportunity of change. Nat Rev Neurosci 11, 44ā52 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2758
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u/bijouxself 6h ago
And balance. Iāve heard that the first 48hrs you get gnarly vertigo and nausea
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u/salamipope 6h ago
Ive never heard of that but thats prolly cuz i work in a cave and thats just a regular symptom ppl have of being underground sometimes. some folks walk into the cave and instantly faint.
brains r weird.
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u/Weewoo312 4h ago
You got a source for any of the nonsense you just said? Only thing I found was for the soccer team stuck in a cave after 3 weeks had some temporary vision problems, but would go back to normal after a couple of days. "Total light deprivation might cause a temporary loss of vision after a few days of being in the dark, but their vision would return to normal after a few hours of being in light," Dr. Barney says.
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u/WafflesTrufflez 5h ago edited 4h ago
This is absolutely not how the brain works.
Prolonged darkness can mess with your perception and even cause hallucinations, but it doesn't permanently blind you. Closing your eyes won't make a difference either. A simple google just disprove this
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u/Glossed-Lam 5h ago
Google searching (and I mean proper searching not just reading Gemini shit) isn't revealing anything about "cave blindness" in humans either. In fact the term seems strictly tied to evolutionary blindness, like cave fish losing eyes over generations.
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u/dojo_shlom0 3h ago
brother, are you arguing with a biologist who spoke with scientists about the subject and obviously knows quite a bit about it, respectfully more than you or I, works in the field & caves, has sources cited; while you reply saying the following:
"just trust google(me) bro"
Google is now calling Lake Ontario, the Lake of America. --Just a heads up! That's who you trust over a biologist with sources brought to the conversation?
I don't go off of what google says anymore, as they have obviously changed and i would never just blindly trust AI. read. the. sources.
I don't think you have the tools in your toolbox to tell someone they're incorrect in this conversation, respectfully.. and that's coming from someone with shlomo in their name.
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u/Louiebox 6h ago
Would wearing a blindfold trick your brain the same way?
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u/salamipope 5h ago
If you wear a blindfold then your eyes are probably closed so ur RAW EYEBALL isnt making contact w the fabric, but honestly even if u could account for that, youd have to have a damn good blindfold. Like total fucking darkness. Then again i wonder if ur brain would be like "hmmm i can feel something on my face. prolly the source of my blindness rn..." i dunno if it would respond the same way, try it for 6+ days and report back, Lieutenant! o7
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u/OkActive7470 5h ago
Where did you get the idea that the brain would blind itself? The pupil might take ages to adjust when you finally see light, but your brain doesnāt āseverā the connection where did you even get the idea?
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u/DroidLord 45m ago
I believe it. I've read somewhere that if you get blindfolded for a prolonged period of time your brain starts making more neural connections to your ears and the connections to your eyes begin to atrophy.
It's reasonable to conclude that in some cases the progression can be both rapid and permanent in a small subset of the population.
There have also been studies where the eyes of a newborn animal get sewn shut and then unsewn after some time and they never regain their vision because the brain never developed those connections.
Frankly anything to do with the eyes and how your brain processes visual stimuli is extremely weird and unsettling. They're by far the most complex organ we have after our brains and the more complex something is, the higher the chances are that something can go wrong.
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u/SpyAmongUs 6h ago
Hope they get the best healthcare humanity has to offer
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u/heyitscory 6h ago
I hope that for everyone.
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u/TitaniumDreads 1h ago
imagine if everyone on earth had access to healthcare on par w south korea/taiwan/singapore.
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u/Extreme_Egg7476 6h ago
Honestly how do rescue teams even begin this megolith of an operation?? If you can't hear or see somebody in trouble, what is the protocol?
I hope many more survivors can be rescued like this
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u/KRankin93 6h ago
When the flood came these Engineers were working in the Hydro Plant (Person rescued in the footage is reportedly a Mechanical Engineer) so the team knew people were in the tunnel so they began drilling for entrance and today they heard the people talking
This is all from news and not bs I made
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u/Original-Weekend-866 6h ago
How many people, 2? Or is there more
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u/mrinsane19 4h ago
The hydropower thing is huge, maybe 500-900 people were working in the vicinity at the time.
There is basically no hope for anyone that actually got swept away, however there is some chance for those trapped in tunnels for the hydro project so that's where efforts are being concentrated.
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u/Speed_Guy18 1h ago
He is a Mechanical Engineer & he was the first one to get message about the flood. He ran to people & informed everyone working in the site that a huge flood is coming from upstream.
So, some escaped uphill, some ran from flood but he couldn't escape from the flood. So, he ran towards the tunnel with 10-20 friends.
Also, his wife knew that he was inside tunnel because he had talked to his wife 15minutes before the flood hit on August 26th.
Source: BBC Nepal & his interview after the flood (2-3 hours ago).
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u/AWzdShouldKnowBetta 6h ago
He must have had some access to some (filthy) water. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to survive something like that 9 days of uncertainty and dread.
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u/KRankin93 6h ago
He was stuck in tunnel of a Hydropower project so there might be water available or smth like that
But still it's a miracle that he survived so happy for him
I hope others are rescued too
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u/Triquetrums 2h ago
Was he alone in there when the flood hit, or was he the only survivor?
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u/MelangeBot 1h ago
No there is some 50 people trapped. They have access to some water and food but have been in complete darkness for 9 days. They where in a man made structure about the size of a football field, part of a powerplant. The debris destroyed all the entrances and exits, but now that there is access and communication in the next 3 days all the trapped people in good shape will be taken out as soon as its wide enought after rescuers go in there with medical supplies and lights to threat the wounded.
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u/Plus_Conference_2395 6h ago
The real heroes don't wear capes; they wear hard hats and high-vis vests. Massive respect to the rescue team.
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u/ripped_fishnets_ 5m ago
I have been following the rescue operations and they are the real heroes, going into tight caves and endangering their lives to rescue others
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u/Soulforge411 6h ago
I would be mentally broken. God bless this guy and whoever else they may find. I hope they will be ok in time. Bless the rescue crew as well.
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u/SnooPredictions3028 6h ago
If this is the flood in Nepal/China, having seen the level of destruction and death, finding even one life seems like such an amazing thing to help spirits and for that person.
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u/OrlandoMB 6h ago
This poor guy was probably shocked he hadnāt died yet, and that was likely on just day 2. What a terrifying ordeal!
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u/topredditbot 5h ago
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You did it! Your post is officially the #1 post on Reddit. It is now forever immortalized at /r/topofreddit.
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u/jtrades69 6h ago
how they live that long? drinking whatever water comes their way?
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u/Affectionate_Mud_881 5h ago
It's possible whatever blocked the tunnel squeezed out water into the power room over days. They may have had a couple jars of drinking water too in the power room where many people work at a time. So, they only would have needed to drink mud water if there were too many people. We will know tomorrow if he's actually good, in a week or two if he only looks good in the moment of miracle.
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u/_MrBond_ 1h ago
ā ļøIf anyone wants to contribute to the Government/Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund you can find that in any Nepal subreddit and even in Google. .gov.np is the domain of Nepali government.
āBeware of the GoFundMe scams for fundraisers. Feel free to reachout if you need someone to verify or help you access them.
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u/salamipope 6h ago
Dude hell yeah!!! Im so glad that literally fucking anybody survived that. I cant imagine how hard this will be for them, but i wish them nothing but peace and prosperity. I hope they reacclimate well!
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u/BlazersMania 5h ago edited 5h ago
Holy shit. Imagine being under a landslide in complete darkness for nine days.
Edit: From what I understand, these late rescues from the flood were people who were able to get into hydroelectric tunnels that allowed them to survive because the amount of sediment and debris clogged the tunnels. They could have been 10-30 feet below daylight
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u/buddyyouhavenoidea 3h ago
imagine the joy to discover that 9 days after certain death, your loved one is actually safe. so happy for them
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u/Consistent_Amount140 2h ago
Canāt imagine the relief that guy felt when he first heard the sound of rescuers getting close to him
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u/Prudent-Aspect5085 6h ago
I hope this the first of many videos of similar rescues.