Hawke's Bay Today senior reporter Doug Laing. Photo / File
Hawke's Bay Today senior reporter Doug Laing. Photo / File
As miracles have it we who have slept overnight will wake this morning to news that the 12 Wild Boars and their coach have made it through their toughest game, and all got out of the cave alive.
It's been about 17 days of absolute drama, and sadly some tragedy,without the intervention of Hollywood.
But thankfully, there's been the intervention of some of the best resources which could have been summoned internationally for this rescue, requiring huge degrees of expertise and planning for something which some might say needed none of the above, for it would never happen.
This is not to say Thailand could not have succeeded on its own, but the way countries have responded is reassuring unity for those who ponder the future of a globe with fear that humankind will eventually pull it to pieces.
It goes much further than the 90 divers assembled, more than half not from Thailand, for plenty have had an input, right through to the absurd, as just about everyone on the planet seemed to think they had an answer to what for much of the time seemed impossible.
Politics and egos — national and individual — have disappeared to the side (even Donald Trump couldn't find any glamour amid the clamour, although World Cup football endures), and the people who needed to got on with the job with a great degree of focus and patience.
It highlights the planning which must have been going on with military precision, even while most of us were starting to doubt whether the boys and their trainer would ever be found, let alone rescued. It took account of every possibility that might unfold, rewriting the manuals on how to save people, as will be told in documentary after documentary, and moviemakers' inevitable rewriting of history.
It will define that survival, such as that of the 16 who survived 72 days in the Andes after a plane crash in October 1972, is one thing. But rescue, like this and that of Tasmanian miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell trapped underground for 14 days in 2006, is another.
