Bittersweet Infamy - #96 - All 33 of Us Are Safe in the Shelter

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

Taylor tells Josie about the 2010 San José mine cave-in in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó, Chile, and the 33 miners whose rescue captivated viewers around the world. Plus: the fatal 2009 accident at Utah's Nutty Putty Cave.

Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Freedom. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

So recently I hosted a little poker night. Very nice. Yeah! That looks so fun! It was a lot of fun. I won't kiss and tell except to say that I won one single hand. I got a full house, but after that I just kinda shot the bed and I lost my money. But it was only a $20 buy in total, so it was fine. But before I went to this poker event, I decided that I was gonna swap out the photo in my bathroom for the photo of you, me, and Mitchell that we took at that

Mexican restaurant on your engagement party or pre-wedding party. And so I had one of those that my mom had very kindly printed out for me. So I cut that and I put it in a square frame and it is made to look like a five cent stamp. Oh yeah, I know that one. So I was cleaning that because you know it had been forever in my bathroom with another picture in it so I was just kind of cleaning it and I sliced right into my knuckle with the glass part and it was bleeding and bleeding everywhere. Ugh, Taylor. Yeah, and specifically I was making signage

for the poker thing because it was a lot of new players. So I was making signage like here's the winning hands, you know, this sort of thing. Yeah, that's such a cute idea. Thank you. I really like that. They went off great. I had to use some replacement pieces of paper

because I bled all over the pieces of paper. I was like trying to pick out the size, bled all over everything. But that's my story. The photo is in the bathroom. It looks great. I didn't get any blood on the photo. And eventually, although it took a while

because your knuckle bends and as such, it keeps spewing blood, I learned. But I kept it still. And now it is not spewing blood. And that's my story. Poker Night was great. Wow. Thanks for asking.

Wow. Wait, did the frame break? No, it was just a really sharp edge. They don't let your kids frame those photos, folks. I'm gonna tell you about a dream that I had this morning actually. Okay. Do you like hearing people's dreams?

Yeah. Or does it bother you? No, god no, I enjoy it. I mean, wouldn't I be a shithead if I said no after you already started the line of conversation? But I feel like I've done that before so I might be a shithead. Yeah, well, you know, I asked you and I want an honest answer. My answer is I do enjoy hearing other people's dreams, so shoot from the hip. Okay.

So the dreams that I remember the most are the ones that are like my alarm has gone off and then I go back to bed. Right. Which is what I did this morning. I had this dream where I'm on my way to go to the gym so I could shower so I could go to work and there's a waterslide that's open. Okay. And there's this long line of little kids who are waiting to go on the waterslide.

And I'm like, well, I'm going to get on the waterslide. Like, I'm just going to wait in this long line. And even though I'm like going to be late for work, I'm just going to get on this waterslide. So I wait and I'm like twice as tall as everybody else in line because they're all little kiddos. The worst. The worst when you have to go back to third grade and you can't fit in the desk. The worst. And then I went in and like went down this very cool slide that was like limestone. So for the record, my dream maker, my dream engine would never let me get to the slide. That would be an entire dream of line. That's the early morning dream for me. So it's a cool cave, it's like stone and, you know, kind of like taupe, beigey stone with like holes in it and like that's like the roof of it and I'm going

down and it's like a little janky but I'm like this is cool. Whatever. Yeah, I don't want to go to work. And so I like it dumps me out into this beautiful pool and it has like all this tiling up above and it's gorgeous. And then there's like an exit that you have to go through. And it's another like it has another roof, like a tunnel with a roof. And then I keep going down this tunnel and I realize like it's becoming much more rock oriented than it is like roof and tunnel. It's more like I kind of have to maneuver between these rocks, but like there was an exit. So I had a clear indication that like this was the way out and I finally get to a point where I'm like, I can't move anymore.

But above me where I could see the roof had opened up and there was a walkway. So I got someone's attention and I said, can you please get an attendant? I need help. And this woman, she like knelt down and I saw her and she was like, okay, I'll go do that. But you try and get yourself out. Like you need to be careful. So I was trying to back out and I realized I couldn't back out. So you're stuck. I was totally and completely stuck. And then I like started to kind of panic and be like, holy shit, holy shit.

And then that's of course when I woke up and had to start my Thursday. Right, right. And so what do you take away from that experience overall? I think you need to be careful what you read as you are going to bed. So is that what you think it was? Or what you scroll as you go to bed in this case. What were you scrolling? So, I'm gonna tell you the story.

I always wonder, Josie, I always wonder, is there a fucking point to this nonsense she's saying? And to your credit, the answer is always yes. So this story, it's, I don't know, it's not the typical bittersweet flair because it's low on sweet. It's a bitter story. It's a bit- It's a bitter. It's kind of an aspartame.

Oh, that's worse, that's the worst kind. Ooh. Well, you know, and I was thinking like maybe not, but then I had this dream and I was just like, it was just like in my head and like in my body in this weird way. And I was like, I think I got to do it. So you kind of hoping to maybe expel it in some way. Yes. Yes.

By recording it and sharing it with others, recording it in perpetuity. No, you're joking, but I'm serious. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. it and sharing it with others, recording it in perpetuity. Yes! No, you're joking but I'm serious. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Then you never need to think about it again because if you ever need to think about it again you can just listen to it instead of internalizing it. So this is the story of the Nutty Putty Cake. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I know and you're not gonna like it cuz it's it's getting stuck in a cave

Why would you pick that? That's so upsetting Okay, I told you it's like it's not a normal pick for me, but it's just like It's in my head of my body. I don't know man. It's in there. Okay Spell it Oh Trigger warning if you don't like cave stories, you won't like this one. Yeah, that's true. Like, this is the worst cave story I've ever heard. You haven't even heard it? No, I've heard it.

Oh, you know it! I know the gist of it. It's not nice. So yes, I think a trigger warning is helpful because this is a stuck-in-a-cave story that ends with... has a fatal ending. Yeah. Yes. So if you need to skip on ahead, just like tap your screen, you know, 10 times and whatever, and it like moves you forward and boom, and we're there. So the Nutty Putty Cave is outside of

Salt Lake City in the state of Utah, and it was discovered in the 1960s. And it's a really interesting type of cave. It's called a hypogenic cave. So it's a limestone system and limestone, it can be eroded really easily. So typical cave systems made out of limestone, the water kind of seeps in from a harder rock above and then hits the limestone and erodes the limestone and then you have this like pocket right and which becomes the cave. But a hypogenic cave is formed when there's superheated water that's forced upward. So instead of going down onto the limestone, it's up into the limestone,

and the minerals in the water are what are responsible for eating away the rock and creating this pocket. Dale Green was the man who discovered the cave in 1960, and he called it the Nutty Putty Cave, which is like the original product name for Silly Putty. Yep. And I didn't realize it was called Nutty Putty. Yeah. I guess Nutty meaning like kind of crazy. And I would say a better name than Silly Putty to me. Because it really because it rhymes. I guess it stigmatizes the mentally ill.

Yeah. And also people are allergic to nuts. Maybe there's a few reasons they changed it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway. That aside. Yeah, yeah. Well anyway.

That aside. This cave has this interesting feature where there's a clay that is expanded over the limestone and it looks like Silly Putty. It looks like Nutty Putty. And it's actually a really apt name for it because like, do you know with Silly Putty when you're like smushing it around it's really like flexible and moves a lot. And then if you pull it really hard, it stretches and breaks. It becomes more brittle. It gets kind of hard. Yeah, it loses its elasticity. So that's the same with this clay. And so that's where I get stuck on the rock like

that. But and it's also like the special clay filled with cilia that it's like even sensitive to sound. If you make a big like shout or a big sound next to it, it'll ripple a bit. Yeah, it'll ripple a bit. Cool. Which is wild. Sound active is what they call that. Magic school bus. This whole cave system, Nutty Putty, it was known for being relatively beginner friendly. A lot of teens would show up to kind of explore through it. A lot of Boy Scout troops. It was like a pretty regular thing in that area. You'd get your little like cave patch because you'd been into the nutty putty cave system.

And according to a speleological society historian Richard Downey, it was a crawly little cave. There were also some larger passages. It was believed to be really easy and that's why all of our Boy Scouts and locals went in with flashlights and sandals and things. You had to work hard to get in trouble. So it had this, I guess, connotation of being like a cool day trip, something to do with little kiddos or, you know, like, pre-teens, you know, it was kind of this cool system with this special rock. It was formed a special way. It had some really big caverns in it. These rooms where you could stand up, right? You crawled for just a little bit and then you're in this big space where you could fill it with

a lot of people, plenty of air to breathe, blah, blah, blah. Right. Have a book launch there. Yeah, exactly. Why not? Wine tasting. Yeah, exactly. Why not? Wine tasting. Yeah. Yeah. Gender reveal. There were some issues with the Nutty Petty Cave though, because it has these big rooms, but it also has these very narrow areas where you do have to crawl. No, no, that's the part that I don't like. From 1999 to 2004, six different people, six different occasions had become stuck. This is not a fun beginner cave anymore to me.

No. And in all of these cases, they had to get Search and Rescue out to come and help remove these people and it's a big operation. So Utah Search and Rescue was like, you know what, listen, this is too much. We're getting called with too much frequency. We can't be doing this. You have to shut this cave down or somehow put more restrictions on it. It can't just be this free-for-all. The cave is on private land and so it's owned by a certain person. Search and Rescue was talking with this landowner, and a spelunking society volunteered to be responsible for managing the cave.

Tempanogos Grotto is this local branch of the National Speleology Society. And it's run by people who are experienced cavers, who know a lot about this, who have studied it, blah blah blah. And so they volunteered like, hey listen, this is a great cave, it's really accessible, we're gonna take it and we'll manage it. We'll create an online system where you have to create a reservation, only a certain amount of people can be in there, we'll have all their contact information, emergency contact information, if something were to go wrong. And these people are not going to get stuck anymore. We're going to do, it's going to be a better job.

So it shuts down for a few months and it opens up in May, 2009. That November is when our guy John Jones enters the cave. John Jones is 26 years old. He's from Utah. He's Mormon. He's got five brothers, two sisters. The Utah dream. Yeah and he's not totally an amateur. He has experience being in caves. His dad would take him and his brothers in caves a lot when they were younger. So he feels very comfortable in this environment, but he's never been to Nutty Putty Cave and he hasn't been in any cave spanking for a while. Probably due to the fact that he got married, he has a kid, his wife is pregnant, and he's

studying to be a pediatric cardiologist. So he's in med school, very busy. But it is November 24th, which is like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving. So he's with his whole family and a big group of people and they decide, hey, this will be a fun like holiday activity to do. They register online, they arrive on the 24th and there's 11 of them which is a pretty big group to all kind of come together into the cave but they're all gonna kind of do some different stuff so they get there towards the afternoon and it doesn't quite matter if it's dark outside for

spelunking because it's always going to be dark in the cave. So there's not so much of a concern that they're there when it's night. And they enter the cave and they do the big slide where the whole group is and it's really wonderful. And then John and his brother Josh, they decide that they're gonna shoot for this really well-known part of the cave called the Birth Canal. Uh... where? Where? It's called the Birth Canal. Can you imagine why, Taylor? Oh, because it's like being birthed by a big big old cave a nutty putty and how long and skinny and crochey and narrow it is.

Yeah yeah that's it. There's some other names for these narrow shoots. Yeah, death traps, uh fucking don't go there's, uh haven't you seen the descents? They've got a lot of names. Yeah, yeah. Scout Eater. Oh my God, I thought I was joking, but that was worse than my joke ones.

Yeah. The Aorta Crawl. Terrible. The Maze. Is that like with an I, like corn or? No. Terrible. The helmet eater? Well, where do you start eating the scope, right?

You started the helmet. I guess so, yeah. So these are like very, very narrow, essentially like tubes that have been mapped and been documented as being able to be passed. Like you can go through them. And of course, something that you would have to think about is like, can you turn around? So all of these that are on the map have space at the end where there's a turnaround. It like opens up into a bigger, you know, cave. And so these are very carefully mapped and John and his brother and another

friend, they decide that they're gonna go for the birth canal. I can't relate. I know. I can't relate. I know. I can't relate. I think if it were me, I'd be like, okay, I'll go in and do a big room. I'll do a big room. And then I'm good. Yeah. I'll do the book launch. I'll do a gender reveal in there. That's what I'm saying. Take me into the conversation pit. Wine tasting. Where's the silent auction? Yeah. Let's make this happen. Right. But once we get to the birth canal, no thank you. Open mic in the way back. I'm ready for that. Josie, if you'd had your wedding in an area only possible via the birth canal, I might have to sit

out front with like aunt Murr and chat, you know? I don't know if I could have made it in. Yeah. I think it's important to note that like this cave still has the whole system has this kind of like friendly like bring your boy scout troop. The Nutty Putty Cave. You know a fun yeah yeah the name Nutty Putty Cave and John feels comfortable enough in a cave he's like this will be a fun kind of thing to do. The problem is he either either... it's hard to tell because he went first of the three of them, and they're not sure if he missed the entrance to the birth canal and kind of like overshot or if he kind of undershot. But where he thought he was... He went in the wrong hole.

He went in the wrong hole. That's what it's like. Without trying to make light of it. That's terrible. That's why I wouldn't do it. That's why I wouldn't do it. That's why I wouldn't. I'm so distressed. He goes into this other section that's called Ed's Push. Oh, Ed. And he thinks he's in the Birth Canal, which has this like a very clear turnaround space and he's heading down into a section of The caves that are not mapped because they're too small to be mapped he thinks he sees

The end of this section with a turnaround and he hesitates for a little bit But he thinks you know what I just need to keep my cool. I know where I am and he hesitates for a little bit but he thinks, you know what, I just need to keep my cool, I know where I am, this is fine. And he gets himself stuck in this passageway. The size of this is about 10 to 18 inches wide, which if you imagine like a front load washer, it's about the size of that. But it's not perfectly circular, it's irregular with all these little juddy bits. The thing that is so unfortunate about Jon's situation is, when he's stuck, that's bad, but the way that he's stuck is such that he's at a 70 degree angle, which essentially puts him upside down. His brother figures that something is wrong

because he hasn't seen him. So he finds John and all he can see are his feet because his head and most of his body is down in this crevice essentially. And he tries to pull him up, but he can't quite leverage it. And they realize pretty soon, like, okay, this is above your capabilities

of trying to back out because you're fighting against gravity, his arm is pinned under him. His arms aren't in front of him, his arms are one, you know, underneath him and one to his side. And so his brother and him pray And then his brother shoots out of that cave and they call emergency services by 1230 AM. So that midnight rescuer has arrived and she sees the situation and she tries also to pull him up with having somebody at her feet, pulling her back for more leverage, it's still not working, especially because the way that John is in this crevice, if he can't back out, pulling him isn't really gonna work because there's essentially the roof of the cave right above his feet. So he

could enter because he could like get the top of his head down and his body could essentially kind of fall down the slope. But coming back up, he can't, especially rescuers who are out here trying to get him out of this tube, they essentially need to pull him straight up to make it work. There's no way to get leverage to pull him. And there's not enough room for him to him to even if you could pull him there's not enough room for him really to extend out exactly yeah where is he gonna go so she's down there trying to do her best talking calmly and John does a really wonderful job of just saying like thank you for being here i would really like to get out. He's extremely calm. I can't imagine. It's so insane. I can't imagine. More people arrive to help. They set up a pulley system, which is kind of the typical thing that they would do at this stage. Yep, that was my first thought.

Manual labor. Let's get some pulleys. Let's evade some angles. Let's see if we can pull somewhere we can get some leverage. They anchor this pulley into the rock that's above John's feet. They have a cord, a rope that goes down and they tie it around his waist so it's at the most secure part. And there's a whole pack of people that are pulling on this rope through the pulley and getting him out. And they make some progress. They're getting him inched up and inched up. It's painful. It's a painful process for John. So they're taking it kind of slow. You know, it's a very tight corridor for all of them. There's a lot of people trying to help, but there's only one person who can actually access John because that's how narrow even, how narrow the

opening is to get to him. They're pulling and they're pulling and it seems to be working until the anchor that is holding the pulley breaks out of the rock. In fact, the person who was holding the rope, the the rescuer at the front of that lineup, got hit in the head with a falling rock at the front of that lineup got hit in the head with a falling rock and was knocked unconscious. He quickly woke up this rescuer and through the dust realized that John had fallen even further down. They try and do a little bit more work getting him up and getting him up. Up to that point he had been responsive and like you know I would like to get out of here. They send a radio down for him. So he's talking to his wife, who's at the, um, who's up above on ground. And after the pulley system was no longer a viable

option and they couldn't re anchor it either because it was just the nature of this rock. It wasn't, it's not stable rock. It's not stable rock. And they risked not only his life But all these other people all these other rescuers too. They got a doctor to come down and To check in on John after the pulley system break and after he'd become non-responsive they could hear his Breathing become more and more labored right because you can't you can't be upside down indefinitely Yeah, your heart has to work extra hard to essentially push the blood away from your brain.

He said that before he was non-responsive, he said his legs were killing him, probably because they were losing all this blood. When the doctor arrived, he was able to determine that John had passed away. My love, I'm RIP. How awful, that poor young man. A 27-hour ordeal with 137 volunteers attempting to try and save his life. And exactly right, Taylor, you called it. It was this position of being upside down and the heart having to work so hard. they determined that he most likely had a heart attack. Oh.

Wasn't getting enough oxygen to with the panic of the situation. Oh, how... Right. You hate to hear it. You hate to see it. How awful and how sad for his family and friends. Totally. And how just like absolutely terrifying to be like,, let's go out and like have a good Thanksgiving. Yeah, you never know, dude, you never know. You never know. One day, an ordinary day turns into your last day so quickly. There were quite a few of the volunteer rescuers who were traumatized by the situation and have not been in a cave since. It was clear that they were not going to be able to remove John's remains from the cave without risking the lives of other rescuers.

So the landowner and the family spoke and they decided that they would seal up the entire cave. The Landover was just like, we're done. We don't need this to happen again. We were already concerned about this and this is never going to happen again. And so what they've done is like a small explosion over the mouth of the cave, like the main entrance, and then cemented that in so that you couldn't move the rubble. But in that cement is a really beautiful memorial plaque that the family

has put there. And it has John's picture and a little bit about him, the years of his life, and this really lovely sweet note about what a good person he was and his faith. Yeah. The Mormon temple is like also in the background of the of the of the when in salt lake city when in salt exactly the folks who um like the big cavers of that community wanted to try and keep it open and wanted there to just be more education around it fuck off but i kind of agree with the idea to just go ahead and seal off the cave and i think that's also a better education. That it's like some caves are not meant to be explored. Yeah. Just leave it alone.

Put it to you this way too. It's one of those rare ones where I don't know if it's that it specifically proliferated as like a haunting internet story or something like that, but it instantly jumped to mind when you said the name of, oh, I know this one, it's awful. And so at that point to a degree it's worth kind of closing it off when you have this incident that has become so infamous and is so depressing and frightening and unnerving and fatal. Yeah, totally. And I think that's also why it like stuck with me and like became a dream because it's really terrifying.

Well, did you find that at the very least that you're expressing this story has expressed this vibe for me, this bad vibe, this bad omen, this bad dream? I think so. I think so. My mom always told me to tell your bad dreams, share your bad dreams before breakfast, and then they won't come true. It's what? It's 11.36 p.m. so... It's Tim's 60th anniversary and roll up to win is back! Win big with the daily $10,000 jackpot sponsored by Tim's Financial. Earn an entry with every roll.

Play now on the Tim's app. Rules apply, Canada only, no purchase necessary. Visit the Tim's app for details. Hey, this is Josie of Josie and Taylor of the Bittersweet Infamy Podcast. Are you itching for more bittersweetness? Visit our Ko-fi page and become a monthly subscriber to get full access to bittersweet exclusives, including the Bittersweet Film Club. In this month's Bittersweet Film Club, we are joined by Mitchell Collins to discuss the film about Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Dick. With a lot of love for the scandal of it all and what it said. It's astute about its subject.

If you're a public school teacher and you guys have a standardized test coming up for one of those days where, you know, you don't know. Think about putting this on. Drag out the old VHS, Goldie TV, and get a copy of Dick. Pop it in. See what the kids think. Yeah, yeah. Come and have history. Give the kids some dick. Today's story takes us to the Atacama desert in northern Chile. Oh, okay. A remote and beautiful but very desolate spot.

What's what you're doing? You're doing facial acrobatics. Is this the Chilean miners? It's the Chilean miners. Josie, what do you know about the Chilean miners? Oh my god, how are this? Okay, okay. I didn't guess what this was gonna be, obviously. The psychic link surprises surprises yet again. Perhaps this was the source of your dream. Maybe, maybe. Oh shit. What do you know? what do you remember about the story of the Chilean miners?

It was like 20... Let's see if she can get it. 17? No, 2010. Oh, wow. That far back. Okay, and it was like 40 miners? 33 miners.

Oh, okay. I'm just a little off. You're adding seven to everything. Just a seven's going up. And it was kind of a long feat to extract them from part of this mine that had collapsed. Yep, absolutely.

Every day you kind of checked in with the news and was like, well, what's the news with the 30th and 20th miners? Yeah, how are the miners, what's the miners up to? You could turn on CNN and see the miners. And again, truly, I'm in Canada, you're in the US. Can you remember, other than, I guess, very recently when Pinera died in that helicopter crash, can you remember really any news from Chile

making it all the way up to North America in a really sustained way? Certainly not like the miners. No. Because it really did become a global effort, the rescue of these miners. What do you remember of the ending of the Chilean miner saga in the sense that,

what do you remember about fatalities, injuries, anything like this? I feel like some people survived. Everybody survived. Everybody survived, okay, okay, okay. It gets a lot of discussion in a religious context because you've got this symbolic number of 33. Jesus Cristo murió a los 33, right? You've got... Jesus died when he was 33 for non-Spanish speakers.

You have a lot of like... pretty much everyone involved in this story at any level is a spiritual person in some degree and speaks of their rescue in terms of God and their survival in terms of God and occasionally the devil and stuff like that. So it gets a lot of play in that capacity too. And a lot of that is because miraculously, like truly nuts against all odds shit, all of these men end up surviving. Right, right. So to answer your question-

I was just like hedging my back, so I was like- Some of them, at least, I remember at least one man seemed happy to get out of the mine. Yeah. When you said before, like, if you have claustrophobia and cavephobia, you should skip ahead, I was like, no you shouldn't. You should just turn this one off, honestly.

At Acoma Desert, we're back. Northern Chile, very remote and beautiful, very desolate spot. If you need a frame of reference, NASA uses it to simulate Mars for experiments. And if you look at pictures of it too, it's got this very like red soil and these very endless bright blue skies and the night sky is supposed to really be something to behold from out here. Oh wow. The nearest city to our story's action is Copiapo.

It's a city of about 150,000 that has endured a series of booms and busts in the local mining industry to include copper, gold, silver. The occupation of mining is very enmeshed with Chilean identity and the country's national story, which is why this will become such a rich PR image for the politicians in the country when it begins to look more and more likely that these miners will survive, right? Yeah, yeah. And true to that, the site of today's story is the San Jose Mine. It's about 40 minutes outside the city of Copiapó. It was built in 1889, meaning that by August 5th, 2010, when our story begins, it has been in use for 121 years.

It is a mine that is locally well known for its good pay and very poor conditions. Those tend to go hand in hand when one justifies the other. Yeah. In 2007, the mine closed after geologist Manuel Villagran was killed by an explosion. It was reopened on a promise that safety measures would be updated. They weren't. And a shrine with candles was erected where he died. In the mine? Yes. And there's also a site in the mine where someone has recently had a limb severed as

well. So workplace accidents are not uncommon at the San Jose. The mine, the San Jose, has a life of its own, in more ways than one. It has its own ecosystem, typically a very hot, very humid one, as in 98 degrees Celsius, 140 Fahrenheit in places. Bam! You can't survive in that. Hellish, you can't survive in that.

Hellish, you might say. And it has its own lore, local myth has it, that the devil lives in every gold mine, which San Jose certainly is. Oh, it's gold, it's gold, okay. It's a few different minerals, one of which is gold. Okay, yeah, and totally, totally the devil lives in gold. Why else would it be so hot? Cause that's his climate.

He keeps his thermostat up. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. Oh, don't make that joke to these 33 folks ever. The mine also has its own moods. When the mountain creaks or groans or pops or bangs, as it has been all day today and in the days leading up, it is said that the mine is crying. La mina está llorando.

San Jose Mine consists of a long road called La Ramba, the ramp, at a 10 degree downward incline, spiraling around a yawning central pit, El Rajo. Oh, hell no. So if you imagine a big screw shape with a hollow pit middle. Oh, hell no. Wait, what's the middle pit called?

El rajo. R-A-J-O. What does that mean? The slit. Ew. Ew, worse, ew! The mine itself extends downward about 700 meters or 2300 feet. Oh my god. It's carved out of soft rock surrounded by what's called good rock, diorite. And it's called good rock because it's hard and will hold its shape even if you dig into it to find loads of softer ore-bearing rock, which is how the structural integrity of the mine is maintained. I see. Okay.

In order to allow air to the mine, diagonal chimneys have been carved down from the top of the mountain. There are supposed to be ladders up through those chimneys to facilitate escape in case of potential disaster, but again, the San Esteban Mining Company is known for running this place fast and loose despite repeated pleas from employees. Alas, the company, $2 million in debt to a government-owned or processing company, can afford to make the required updates and still turn a profit. Oh, this is this is why unions are important, everybody eat an onion. They're very important. Good vitamins. For the miner's safety, a secure

room, el refugio or the shelter has been established. It's an enclosed space the size of a classroom carved out of the rock and level 90 of the mine, pumped with fresh air from the surface, and stocked with what should be enough food to last a shift a considerable amount of time. Instead, it includes, among other things, 93 packets of cookies, but only 10 bottles of water. Oh. In fact, a mining higher up, Carlos B. Nia, has been down in the mine today examining reports of finger-wide cracks appearing in the mine using a flashlight so large it worries the miners. He looks increasingly concerned and then vanishes to the surface. Ooh. Ooh-hoo-hoo.

At this moment, there are 34 miners in the mine. They're all men. It's a very macho, masculine culture. A lot of ball busting, a lot of, you know, casually racist name calling, et cetera, to the one Bolivian guy, Carlos Mamani. 33 Chilean, one Bolivian. Poor guy. They range in age from teenagers to mid-50s.

They include expecting fathers like Ariel Ticona, grandfathers like 56-year-old Jorge Galleguillos. Franklin Lobos is known for his previous life on the Chilean national football team as the Magic Mortar. Nowadays, he's a faded and grouchy 53 year old whose drinks are no longer on the house at local bars. Mario Sepulveda nearly didn't show up to work today after missing the bus, but by chance he was spotted by a minibus and luckily was able to catch a ride to work and clock in late. His nickname is

Berry as in Berry-to for his dog-like heart. Okay, I haven't heard that description but I- How nice! I can imagine- how nice, yeah. Tiring, tiresome. Don't know if I would want to be stuck in a mountain with you, but how nice. Okay, yes, yeah. Uh huh, yeah. Yoni Barrios has a complicated relationship situation with both a wife and a mistress competing for his time and the money he's earning today at San Jose.

Edison Pena is an anxious and moody 34 year old who broods on death every time he enters the mine. Same bitch. Sorry, his name was Taylor Bassett? Was that it? Have I met you? I didn't hear that. Well, unlike me, he can ride a bike. He is known for zipping around on his bicycle Vanessa, named after a favorite porn star.

Alright, those are moves. Okay. That's like a nice combination of me, you, and porn, I think. Yeah, that's beautiful. Look at that. Look at that. Luis Ursua's white hat denotes him as the shift supervisor, the man officially in charge whose duty it is to ensure every one of these men gets out safely at the end of their shift. Okay. Big responsibility.

Yeah, no pressure. Foreman Florencio Avalos is his hearty 31-year-old second in command. That's not all of the 33. The group includes people whose entire families have been miners and people whose own fathers have been killed in mining accidents. They include drinkers and depressives, a diabetic, people who've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or attempted suicide, and they include Raul Villegas, the lucky 34th miner, who will be fortunate enough to make it to the surface before the mine lets out its final sob, and a piece of diorite 550 feet tall and twice

as heavy as the Empire State Building, lances into the ramp at level 190. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay. Before it happens, Jorge Galleguillos, who is nearby, sees what is most likely a spark from quartz, but what he describes as a white butterfly. Then, right where he saw the butterfly, the ramp explodes, with all the noise and flying rock and dust and quaking of the earth you would expect from a sudden explosion hundreds of feet underground, as in like brand newly visible to the human eye, clean in a cloud of dust, clean sparkling rock appears before them as if from out of nowhere the 33 remaining men of the A-Shift are trapped in the boiling hot bowels of the San Jose mine and so begins a 70-day odyssey that will come to captivate the entire world. 70 days.

Geez Louise. I think it's actually 69 days, but I've chosen to round up and give them credit for an extra day. It probably felt like 70. Okay. So basically what you're looking at is a long screw shaped roadway and all of a sudden a big piece of Diorite which is the good rock that's supposed to be holding this mountain together

Falls and it busts 10 meters of this ramp and it effectively at the site of the explosion There's a wall of rock. It's really a piece of diorite 550 feet tall that has lanced into this ramp. It's destroyed 10 meters of it Luis Ursuah describes it as like the stone they put over Jesus's tomb Another miner describes it as being like a guillotine of stone But basically they are able to calculate that it's completely blocked their exit. It's brand new stone. It's gigantic It's heavy. There's no getting around it. And now they're stuck in the bottom part of the mine behind this big piece of rock that has fallen and covered the entrance. For now, everyone gathers in El Refugio, the shelter, and we figure out that

there are 33 of us with several miners having spotted Viegas going up to the surface. So they imagine that he has escaped, and later actually, when we're able to establish contact with the miners, one of the first things they do is ask about Viegast and find out that he has made it out safe. Oh. Yeah, very noble, very noble. That's really sweet. Yeah. The miners make some haphazard escape attempts through the chimneys, but without ladders there, like they're supposed to be, nothing doing, it seems that they are stuck. Oh gosh.

It's not until five hours after the collapse of the mine that San Esteban officially takes action, by which time word of the disaster has made it back to Copiapo and the miners' families, muddy and riddled with errors via alarming TV and radio news bulletins. It's made it back to Susana Valenzuela, Yoni Barrios' mistress, who goes and tells Yoni's wife, Marta, and the two of them and their prickly relationship head out to get to the bottom of things together. Luis Ursuas' wife Carmen is on her way home to prepare dinner for him when she hears the news on the bus radio underscored by cheerful mariachi music.

Meanwhile, down in the hole, her husband Luis, a placid man, is surrendering his symbolic on the bus radio underscored by cheerful mariachi music. Oh. Meanwhile, down in the hole, her husband Luis, a placid man, is surrendering his symbolic white hat of leadership and proposing instead direct democracy. With 33 votes, 17 passes a motion. Okay, interesting. This gesture receives a mixed response with some feeling it cowardly on Ursua's part

to relinquish authority in a time of crisis, but the motion passes. So that's like one of the first things they do within the first day. Well it's sort of something that Luis does because otherwise they would- I'm given to understand that in a mining work site, hierarchy is quite important. Right, because you have to have- well in a lot of workplaces, right? But I would imagine where safety is really a concern, right? You would need to be held accountable to certain, yeah. Right. And it's sort of like seen, like, I think in a time of crisis, it's seen as a mark of character to assume competent leadership. And so some folks kind of thought less of Ursua for declining that role. But then like you say,

it's very egalitarian. If you're going to step down at least rather than to appoint someone else, then you propose an alternate solution that keeps everyone's best interests in mind. Like that's a leadership of a sort. Oh interesting, what an interesting move to be like, we're all gonna do this. We're all gonna be decision makers in this process. The sense of solidarity amongst the miners and of collective decision-making ends up being pretty important to the myth that grows around the miners in this story. And so as part of their collective decision-making, the miners decided that they were all only going to cooperate with one writer. The main source that I'm using for this episode was a book called Deep Down Dark,

The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set Them Free. And for this episode was a book called Deep Down Dark, the untold stories of 33 men buried in a Chilean mine and the miracle that set them free. And so this is the book that was made with the input of all 33 miners with Hector Tobar, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer at the Los Angeles Times. Yeah, I recognize that name.

That's wild. So he's the one who they ended up choosing to be like, this is the guy that we're gonna give all of our accounts to. So this is the guy that we're gonna give all of our accounts to So this is a the story that he wrote and I listened to it on audiobook via a subscription If you if you have a participating library card, you can listen to it on hoopla HOOPLA I didn't have a participating library card, but I know a boy who has one I have a boy for everything. I have a boy for has one. I have a boy for everything. I have a boy for every

subscription. I have a peacock boy. I have a hoopla boy now. I had for a long time I had a good HBO Max boy. Oh. Always keep you bat your eyes and they give you their passwords. It's a great system. Point being I highly- this book was fantastic. Yeah. It was so richly written, so interesting, goes into a lot of the finer details that I'm not gonna be Able to have time to hear Really really good good audio book Captivating ten out of ten if you are at all interested in this read this book So the next big thing to happen is that Victor Samora a tattooed outsider from a broken family

So the next big thing to happen is that Victor Samora, a tattooed outsider from a broken family, busts into the food box in the shelter. Beautiful. Well, not such a beautiful action, very divisive actually, and those taking advantage of this are forced to chew their cookies, their ill-gotten cookies, privately in the dark in shame. To be fair, I was saying cool good to a tattooed individual from a broken family, not that he busted into the food supply that seems yeah not as cool Florencio the Foreman reprimands the the the box munchers as it were I just came up with that on the fly that was thank you that they just ate three days worth of food but right now they have no concept that they're gonna be underground for nearly ten more weeks.

Right. No. No, no, no, no, no. This is going to be, we're going to be done in an hour. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to sleep my own bed tonight kind of thing. Spoon my wife, spoon my mistress, you know, good times. Yeah. By the time they count the rations in the now opened kit, they find a can of salmon, one of peaches, one of peas, 18 cans of tuna, 24 liters of condensed milk, 8 of which have spoiled, 93 packages of cookies including those eaten, some expired medicine, 240 plastic spoons and forks, and 10 bottles of water.

That's it. That's the rations. 33 people. Well, thankfully we needn't fear dehydration. We have thousands of liters of clouded industrial water to drink out of the tanks of all of this mining equipment. That will slowly kill you. Yummy! Yummy! Delicious runoff water. Affluent water. Effluent water.

Not affluent water. That's like fancy water. I know that water's rich! We're not getting the affluent water, we're getting the effluent water. The miners discover that they've lost all communication with the surface. Obviamente no I cell reception aquí. But one of the cell phones still has video capability, so Mario Sepulveda, Petty, the heart of a dog, he starts documenting everything, narrating bombastically as though speaking

directly to his son and invoking their shared hero, Corazon Valiente, Braveheart Mel Gibson. Oh shit dog. I love Braveheart and Mel Gibson being invoked down in this mine, mine shaft. Well, speaking of Bravehearts, more Bravehearts on the outside. Maria Segovia, the sister of miner Dario Segovia. She sells empanadas in Antofocasta.

And she knows in her heart that all the miners are still alive and they need their families to fight for them. Alex Vega's entire family, including his 70 year old father, are former miners. They drive up to the San Jose to go in and drag him out personally using their accumulated years of mining experience. Oh my heart. I know. Next to arrive is Lawrence Goldborn, Chile's Minister of Mining. He's an appointee of the recently elected right wing strongman, President Sebastian Piñera, known for his love of deep sea diving and flying around in helicopters.

Goldborn, he is there when the first rescue attempt fails, the one where it's just all the people kind of storming in like, let's get him out! That ends in like a rock fall, no good. Oh God, yeah. He tells gathered reporters, quote, "'Hopes have to be realistic. "'We can't transmit an optimism that doesn't exist.'"

And he like kind of, his voice catches as he's saying that. And of course, again, this is a culture where strong leadership in the face of tribulation is really respected. So you can kind of get the people from the families being like, don't say that. You have to be a leader right now. You have to like rally people right now. You can't say, oh we have to be realistic. They're already dead, basically. Right, yeah. And so, not content with this attitude, Maria Segovia finds a CNN Chile reporter to communicate her outrage and calls upon the government and other countries to provide help. In the days to come, she and other relatives will be key figures of protest, setting up an on-site camp called Campamento Esperanza, Camp Hope.

Maria, who will come to be known as La Alcaldeza, the mayor of Camp Hope, pledges that the families will stay there hasta las ultimas consecuencias, until the very end. And they are there until the day these miners get extracted from this mine. I love this lady. I'm in. Back in the mine, we are enjoying our one shitty teaspoon of watered down tuna broth and two cookies per day mixed with Mario Sepulveda sweat as he hands it all out.

We're enjoying the marinating fragrance of unwashed miners in a hundred degree heat. We're turning increasingly to prayer led by one of the most religious miners, evangelical Christian Jose Enriquez, with fewer and fewer mining headlamps visible at each prayer session as they die one by one. Oh my god. And these prayer sessions gradually become apology sessions. It becomes a real space of like, I'm sorry that I busted into the ration box, right? That kind of thing. Oh right, yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry I said that thing to my brother when I was 12. I'm sorry that I cheated on that test. No, but specifically sorry to each other. Specifically, I'm sorry that if you're Samuel Avalos, whose nickname is CD because he sells bootleg CDs, you might say, I'm sorry I stole and drank that bag of saline solution, you know? These sorts of things.

Side note, wonderful nicknames. Like, really well done. Way to go 33 Chellian Mines. In many respects, yes. I can't say enough about how well this book does about drawing each character and reminding you who each character is as the story goes on. A lot of care, it's a fantastic book. A lot of care is really, really, he was the right, Tovar was the right guy for the job. And the thing is too with these prayer sessions too, you need to remember, these guys don't know

that they're being rescued necessarily. They think that they might be dying. So we're really like getting, we're trying to be as good as we can. We're trying to square up, right? So a top the mountain a drill bit with a camera has been deployed Experts estimate it'll take about six days to reach the mine only interior minister Rodolfo Bada is permitted to see the video feed in case all it shows is corpses, right? These guys might all be dead

Yeah, that's very wise kind kind wise optimism is on the wane so much so that Carlos Mamani His family in Bolivia report seeing people who look like him at night and in aimada culture if your spirit is walking at night That means that death is close Well death is close chapter fucking mine So it goes the miners attempt to keep death away with makeshift games of checkers and dominoes made out of like Imagine everything I'm telling you about is made out of like a gasket or a filter from like a you know a

Steamer whatever the hell these people have the the the front load driller or whatever the hell these people do. I Read one book. Don't don't hold it against me This safety room that they're in. You read the official book though. That's true. I did read it. It was a damn good book. Yeah. Is this room this like you said it's the size of like a classroom? The Refugio. Yeah. Refugio. Is it like does it have flooring and like walls? Yeah, it's like a room. It feels like a room. Okay. There's like a door. Yes, there's a door, but the door is blown off, actually, in the initial.

Oh, impact. In the initial impact of the mining collapse, that blast blew the door open. So the door technically exists, but it's been blown off. Okay, okay, fair, fair, fair. All right, okay, so I was like, are they in the black dust of the rock, or are they like in a room?

Some of them are in the refugio, some of them just sleep together up the ramp. And so you kind of get a little bit of like us versus them, you get tribal dynamics. Well, yeah. The older dudes in the mechanics are all kind of tending to sleep up on the ramp. The young bucks with more energy than sense, they stay down in the refugio. Like Super Mario, Mario Sepulveda, he'll come

to be known as Super Mario. He's staying in the refugio. Again, the nicknames! Chef's kiss. You can play as much checkers and dominoes and tell as many stories as you want. It's not gonna keep everyone sane. For example, our emo bicyclist friend Edison Pena, he's very aware that he's trapped in a metaphor right now and he's not enjoying it. He hears the others honking horns, they're like car horns into the abyss to prove their aliveness and he thinks, how naive. There's a moment where Edison is like literally just laying there and saying to himself, I'm dying. I'm dying. And then Mario to like make fun of him goes like, I'm dying, I'm dying. And then Mario to like make fun of him goes like, I'm dying, I'm dying.

And then that just becomes their fun little joke that those two have together. I'm dying, you know, fun mining jokes, fun 33 miners jokes that we have with each other. Ha ha, I'm dying, lol, me too, oh, I'm dying too. Which they are. Yeah, which they are. Trauma bonding! Yeah, yeah, totally.

I was like, wow, that really sounds like me and my coworker. But we're not trapped in a mine. Weird. You and Amandou Ortiz have busted out, I'm dying, I'm dying before, huh? Yeah, yeah, once or twice. It's come out, yeah. And then later Mario threatens to eat Mamani, the Bolivian guy, like as a joke. He's like, well, if you die, we're gonna eat you first.

And everyone's like, that's fucked up because like that is a legitimate question. I'm sure that many of these men are considering, right? It's like, well, we need to cannibalize one another. If someone dies, what do we do? Oh my God. So that like Mario keeps making these kind of like uncomfy jokes that don't really go over well.

He'll go, I have a knife in my pocket and everyone will be like, fucking shut up. Read the room. Read the mind, bro. Read the collapsed mind. Read this giant hellish room that smells like shit. Where are they shitting? There is a shitting area, but like the ability to shit goes away pretty quick.

It turns into weird little pellets pretty quick. So there's not that much to clean out. But later when they are kind of able to get more substantial food in the mine, when the kind of the rescue starts more earnestly, they start taking regular man dumps and uh, like sanitation and cleaning like kind of becomes an issue. I cut that part of out of my script but since you asked there was a place where they went and shot if you must know. Mitchell says every everybody asked that like where do astronauts shit?

It's like the first question. It's the first question. Yeah, all the time. By August 19th, the group has spent 15 days underground with no contact. Their bodily functions are beginning to fail. They're becoming gaunt and blacking out when they stand, says Victor Segovia writing in his diary. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a black hand up above that doesn't want us to get out.

There is hope though. They hear the rattle and roar of drills above them, near them, beneath them. In anticipation, Jose Ojeda, one of the miners, has prepared a note with three key pieces of info. The number of men, their status, and their location. He basically like remembered his old SOS training. He's like, this is what you need. How many are there? Where are they? How are they doing? And so this note that he makes, it says,

estamos bien en el refugio los 33. All 33 of us are safe in the shelter. So unfortunately due to the mining companies inaccurate blueprints. Oh my God. The drill is having a hard time to the mining company's inaccurate blueprints, Oh my God. The drill is having a hard time finding the mining tunnel to the tune of a dozen plus failed attempts.

Oh my God. So they drilled a dozen plus holes to nothing until they finally got one right. Okay, and there's still no contact? Not yet. Okay. But everybody above ground is like, we gotta find either

33 alive miners or 33 dead miners or any combination of that? Yes. Yes. Okay, and And the miners families are really agitating for this to go on Pinata behind the scene some of Pinata's guys are like Do you really want to be like such a visible figure in this in case you find 33 dead bodies? But this is like this polls really well The pretend he's making, you know, big changes. Yeah. And every time he shows up at that stupid mining hole, his numbers go up five points or whatever. Is you know what I mean? Yeah, so he's like, we'll keep the drills going. That hole didn't work, do another one.

Exactly. Yeah. By August 22nd, so reminder, August 5th is when this whole, this whole shabu, as you might put it, would kicked off. Daily meal is half a cookie in a single peach slice divided 33 ways jesus the older guys have started to buckle consumed by their various health problems members of the group have lost 30 35 pounds a piece i'm sorry is the one peach slice being sliced 33 yeah like like or every hint of peach, notion of peach, gesture of peach on the tip of your tongue.

Yes. Oh my god. Not only is it being divided 33 ways, but like, every one of these 33 men is eyeballing it to make sure that those 33 slices are exactly even. Yes, yeah. Oh god. The minors start writing farewell letters to their families, you know, in case that their bodies are ever found. Yeah. When the rumble and the emergence of a pipe and a drill bit at level 94.

The men gather around it and embrace says Carlos Mamani. It felt like a hand had punched through the rock and reached out to us. It felt like a hand had punched through the rock and reached out to us. The miners begin banging on the drill bit as Omar Regada says, like little boys pounding a pinata. They quickly reinforce the area and secure various notes to the drill bit. They also mark the bit with red paint. So rescuers will instantly be able to know that somebody alive had encountered it and marked it with paint.

Right. Red paint interesting move might- Oh sorry, do you want them to call up home hardware? I'm just- I'm just saying- Oh, sorry, excuse me. Like, a fucking sure and mire can we mix? Like a tasteful charcoal- What the fuck are you talking about? Yes, it's whatever's there! We are trapped in a mine! And whatever's probably brightest and most visible too. Yeah, that's true. That is true, yeah.

Among the notes that survived the trip to the surface is Jose Ojeda's note, which will go on to become an iconic symbol of the whole ordeal. Estamos bien en el refugio de los 33. That will become a very famous, that will become the famous piece of iconography from this event. It's beautifully written.

Concise. Seven words, baby. To the point. Yeah. Love it. Now there are church bells ringing in Copiapo and a smiling beanera thrusting himself into the center of every frame. Okay.

The thrusting was that, yeah, my brain went somewhere else. You wanted to see him fuck a watermelon. He was humping everywhere. No, no, no. So contact is established with the workers, the miners, and they're able to send down packages called palomas, doves, containing whatever the miners need. At first, this is mostly a glucose gel to get the miners' bodies used to receiving food. Okay, so this comes down in the,

like the drill recedes back up. The crazy like mole looking drill with all of its metal teeth. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, goes back up. Yeah, and notes attached to it. Yeah, and notes attached to it. And apparently actually like those notes

were tied on with tubing. And one of the drillers was gonna grab the tubing as a souvenir and that's where the note, the estamos bien, fell out of. Oh, whoa. Cause he was just like, oh, this is for my kids. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is momentous. And of course, there's this great shot of, of, Pinera with his bullhorn announcing, Estamos bien en el refugio los 33. And everyone who's been like, are all of our loved ones dead. Right. This is a miracle, right?

Totally, yeah. And the fact too, because like, he gets to like, imagine if it was like, two have died or like five. Estamos bien en el refugio sin Jose el Muno. And then you've got to turn to Jose's wife and mistress who are there. Yeah, and mistress, yeah. Oh god.

Yeah, but this way it's just like everybody, like it's all, they're all good, they're all good. Yeah, and all 33, a huge amount of people, like we say, including people with health conditions, including people with serious mental health conditions. It's nearly the whole shift. Yeah, except for one dude who also survived because he was managed to get out in time. Yeah, yeah, and it's amazing that no one was hurt.

One, it's been so long as we've been documenting with how insane it is. No one was standing on the place in the ramp when the dire rate came through no one was hit in the head by a rock Exploded no one has died from the the cloud of dust that's been hanging in the air No one's died from the health issues that come from not being able to bathe. Yeah Yeah, so they sent down these bolomas. They sent down this gel Eventually, they're able to send down food palomas, they send down this gel, eventually they're able to send down food, potable water, reading materials and more. They establish another borehole for a telecommunications line and start toward establishing a third

borehole for escape. There are three plans in place involving three drills for escape, but it's plan B that will end up becoming the most relevant using specialized drilling techniques to widen an extant diagonal hole from 12 to 29 inches wide. UPS ships the drill for free from Pennsylvania and mining expert Jeff Hart takes a break from his work digging wells for US troops in Afghanistan to come around the operation.

Nice. As you can tell, help is beginning to emerge from all over a multimillionaire TV telethon host and Chile's own Leonardo Farcas commits 5 million Chilean pesos to the miners and urges the public to raise even more money for them. NASA sends down people from Houston not only to aid in the escape effort but to help prepare the miners and their families for this marathon the same way they do residents of the ISS because now that we're talking to the Miners they're asking well how long is it gonna be how long is it gonna be and we have to tell them like You guys got some more weeks down there

Yeah, it's not gonna be tomorrow and it's not gonna be the day after that and you can't even actually eat I hate to break this to you. Just yet. You like this weird gel we can send you the gel Yeah, we're not gonna send you anything else because you'll eat it and then you'll die or be really sick. And then it's 32. And then that's a bad pun. Yura was really specific that it should be all 33 come up. Yeah. We've gotten our Martian orders. We're following. And they send all kinds of people to like say things down the fucking they sent Isabella Yende they sent whoa the Uruguayan team from alive nice they're all down there like being like listen you want to you get through to the other side listen sometimes you gotta eat your homie you guys

it doesn't look like you have to we got you we got this gel for you i don't know you're okay i hope they sent down more light too yes they sent down a little bit of everything. They sent down like, they set up a TV link and so they're able to like watch TV now and they send out a projector and they send down, you know, things to bathe and these sorts of things. Yeah, yeah. They're on day 23, they get to see videos from their family, very tightly choreographed by the on-site psychologist to avoid any kind of distressing imagery or verbiage.

So like, if you start to cry, they kind of give you the hook. Jorge Galleguillos gets a message from his 26-year-old estranged son that after the initial joy, it actually kind of ends up sending Galleguillos into a depression for reasons he can't quite gain say. Maybe because he's trapped in a mine. Oh, in a mine My yeah make you depressed For the outgoing messages from the mind the video messages outgoing Mario Sepulveda becomes the talk show host

Earning the nickname Super Mario for his kinetic energy and his rousing pro-minor pro Mel Gibson's speeches. I love it! His devotion to the bit, even trapped underground for 18, 19, 23 whatever days, the commitment to the bit is genuinely remarkable and respectable. You know sometimes when you're trapped the only thing you can do is commit to the bit. You can't back out. Just the bit, the bit, the bit. In Mario's own words, heroes don't just kill Englishmen. Super. Super. Conozo valiente. And the group has realized that they're now celebrities and with that comes potential

money and so in the interest of the collective, they agree to keep a pact of silence about their first days in the mine before Contact was established because they realized that this story is a valuable resource and if any one of them Goes out and gives it away it loses value for all of them. That is so smart They agree that Victor Segovia the diarist the guy who's been keeping a diary that I've occasionally been quoting from, he's now their official scribe and that diary is now their official record, using the new pen and notebook sent down by the family in a paloma. I love it. I love how it's called a paloma. There's so much, you can see how the world became enraptured with it, right? There's so much here.

Yeah. and raptured with it right there's so much here yeah well and then now now i have this image of of life down there being like you know you wake up and you like check the tube yeah you know like do your exercises take a shit in the shit pile it's regular shit now yeah yeah you get to have a nice breakfast a nice lunch you know you play cards. Yeah, did they send any booze down? No, they didn't. They specifically said no. They considered sending a bottle of wine down for Chilean Independence Day

because that year it was the bicentennial and they were all really excited for that. That's a big one. And they thought about sending wine down, but they had reasoned that like, some of these guys had drinking problems. Right. They're now teetotal by circumstance.

Yeah, yeah. They've gotten through those DTs somehow. Let's not fuck with that by introducing alcohol to the situation anew. So that was the logic. Weed, I feel like we just send all the weed. Just smoke them out. Someone was able to sneak either marijuana or cocaine

into one of the polomas and one of the old ladies who didn't want that to happen ratted them out and that got, mm, kibosh. Yeah, because she was like, my fucking son, grandson, whoever it was, down there is an addict and someone's giving him, that's not good for him right now. Right, yeah, yeah, please do not.

Please do not, but can you imagine a joint? Oh my God. Oh, that could go either way. So, other gifts in the Belombas include Bibles, novels, MP3 players, a palm-sized Samsung projector on which to watch football games. The rescue operation is now called the San Lorenzo, and Sebastian Pinera doesn't like that it's called

Operation San Lorenzo, because that's too close to Lawrence, as in Minister Lawrence Goldburn, who's been out shining him in polls about the mining tragedy, but such is life. Oh my God, oh my God. What a like gross night. He sucks. What a schmuck.

August 29th, so we're about 28 days into this day, we're able to get calls to the surface with the family. We set up like a direct video link and who should be on one of these calls, of course, but Susana, the mistress, not the wife. Oh, she didn't technically have claim to it, but she noticed that catering was going into the area where they were doing the video calls. So she put on an apron and grabbed a fish and an onion and she walked in. Gotta grab me a fish and an onion. Let's go! You got fish in one hand, onion in the other. I told you about that onion. No one's gonna fuck with you then.

And walked right in. Yeah. Oh wow. So apparently Yoni's eight minutes of video time going forward in general They'll have these eight minute calls and they're divided four minutes wife four minutes mistress. Oh my god And even on his talks with with Susanna the mistress He's like I don't want to talk to Marta But she's saying that she's so sick and she's gonna die if I don't talk to her so I'm gonna have to talk to her. And as a result, Yoni and Susana, who by the way, I actually really like and find very endearing,

they kinda end up becoming the villains in the press of this story because, oh, poor Marta, this married woman, how embarrassing for her, and now all these, I've never heard of that. But Susana doesn't care because Yoni is safe. Quote, my happiness was so big that I didn't even feel it. He was alive and all of the stories just made me laugh. It was as if the more bad things they said about him the more alive he was.

When you're fighting against death, there's nothing that can embarrass you. Let them say whatever they want. Let them tie me up. Let them call me the lover. I was the lover. Sure. I'm the lover. I love it. But there's, but there's, there's like another, another layer of what she's saying too, because it's like, you wouldn't defame a man who was on death's door. No. He's no, and so when there's, when there's shame, like, oh, he's a saint. So if you're shitting on him, he must not be a saint. He's alive. Yeah, no, exactly. And there's something like kind of like exciting and wonderful about that. Like, yeah, he is alive.

Let's keep talking about this man. He's a shit hole. He's a shit bag. Well, the way these two apparently came together is like, Susanna came over, the way Susanna tells us, she came, and they have a whole subplot, these people, but she came over to their house to help Marta with something, some odd job.

And Marta was like, do you want my ugly old husband? Take him! He's good for nothing. And he looked over at her with these sort of like four Lauren charming eyes, and she was like, come help me fix furniture. And he went over to her house, but he didn't fix the furniture. The next hiccup for the group comes when Mario Sepulveda's letter to his family is published in La Tercera, which is, Hector Tobar notes, paradoxically the second most important newspaper in Chile. Ah, Hector. As for the contents of the letter, how about these?

And again, remember that they're getting these newspapers via Palomas down into the hole, right? Yeah, yeah, down into the hole right? Yeah, yeah down If Mario wrote something in his letter that was not very flattering It could potentially make it back to the mind now and that wouldn't be very good quote Yeah, I am the absolute leader. I Organize things give orders and as always I avoid losing my temper But the most beautiful thing is that I am respected, and nothing is done without me knowing about it.

Okay, this is Mario? It's Super Mario! Not so Super Mario! In a Super meltdown, and the group generally agrees that the fame is going to Mario's head, he apologizes, explaining that he was merely trying to seem Gibson-like to his son. Is that a direct quote? Well, that's my word, but he was basically like, I needed to impress my son, comma, like

our hero Mel Gibson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, quote on Mel Yenta, yes. Gradually, the Palomas, which bring water and food, return life to its state from before starvation set in, which means, paradoxically, that it's pricklier and more divided now that everyone is well fed. Well, cause they're not asleep for most of the time. Yeah, or like trying to make peace with God and each other and their own souls. Yeah. Now I just have like 32 shitty roommates now, and a bad view.

Well now, it's like the joy of like, oh my God, we have water, we have food. Like you understand it and you expect it. So that joy kind of wavers off. They start sending the bad pastries back in the Palomas. They're like, we don't like this anymore. Can you send us something better? Is that true?

Yeah. I love it. Is that true? Yeah. I love it. Yoni Barrios are a fairhaver. He becomes the de facto doctor of the group. He's nicknamed Dr. House. And he is responsible for treating things like urinary blockage and fungal infection with guidance from the surface.

Did I say fungal infection? Yes, I did. You see all of the new water from all of this drilling and all of this heat has created these silver strands of fungus that coat everything and fall into your open mining wounds when you sleep and then they become all fungusy and pussy and Yanni Barrios needs to clean them out covered in fungus oh god and continued contact with the outside world creates additional conflicts and eventually creates the feeling of a fishbowl. The Pope, Benedicto, he's no Pio, no, no,

blesses 33 crucifixes and sends them down in a paloma along with a hand-carved statue of the Virgin Mary that causes a bit of a stir when old evangelical Enriquez makes a comment about graven images during the prayer sesh, that rips the prayer group in half. Oh come on, you're in a mine. Imagine trying Pellvat to a bunch of Catholics. Bad luck. Yeah, no you're, read the room dude. Edison Pena working off the angst by singing Elvis Presley songs and running alone.

He runs a lot of miles, which you're not supposed to go alone in the mine ever and certainly running in the heat is really confusing to people but he needs to loosen up his bowels now that he's eating because shitting is like delivering a baby oh on the positive side offers of trips and products begin to emerge not only for the miners but for their relatives in Campamento Esperanza. Welcome to the stage, Campamento Esperanza. Oh yeah, there's money to be made here. BK Whopper, Burger King, Grill Grill, we love mine. Chewgee. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The relatives in Campamento Esperanza

get the same treatment. They're entertained by musicians, actors, clowns, a lingerie raffle, all of these things that they care about need. Juan Ianes, one of the miners, is given an offer to wear a certain pair of athletic shoes on the way out for the advertisement of it, which the group vetoes as per their agreement. Okay, very wise, very wise. That's when that democracy comes in handy. Ariel Ticona, he gets to view the Independence Day birth of his daughter Esperanza Hope.

The view the Independence Day birth of his daughter Esperanza Hope. The doctors along with Megavision prepare a video of the C-section but the psychs say that we're not allowed to show surgical procedures down in the line so he gets he gets like a cut a cut apart version with two minutes on a loop of shitty quality and he feels a weird muddled emotion about it That independence day the famous note estamos bien in el refugio is broadcast three stories high on La moneda in the capital The bicentennial right as the bicentennial rages on here is this like resonance symbol of Chilean tenacity and hope and God and the mining roots

of the los mineros, right? The common man. And here's Sebastian Pinera shaking hands with a baby for some, you know, these are things. Yeah. Yeah, well, and I wonder too, if having it be a bicentennial year also, like it kind of stoked their flame as well, you know?

Like it was- they're very pro Chile They're very like they themselves are very patriotic group these miners Yeah, so plans are debuted for the capsule that will help the miners in their rescue It will include an oxygen supply a roof rubber wheels and a harness to keep the subject standing up in case he loses consciousness Oh to keep the subject standing up in case he loses consciousness. Oh, very smart. The red, white, and blue pod, the colours of the Chilean flag, is dubbed Phoenix. Aw, rising from the ashes! Exatamente.

And this escape will require a bit more mining work from Shift-A, setting off a blast at the bottom of the Plan B shaft to make room for the capsule. Oh shit, a blast. Well, it's not a blast because this little piece of blasting, it is literally a blast, but it's not like an emotional blast. But not the kind you think. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Because the first and only physical altercation between the miners breaks out because again, we're just getting, the closer we get to the due date, we're getting a bit prickly. Yeah Yoni Barrios, okay, you know Yoni. He's he's Dr. Hoes. He's got two girlfriends. He's living life, right? Yeah, me and Yoni go way way back. Yoni and Yossi. Jorge Galleguios, he's the older dude who saw the butterfly, the white butterfly. Oh, right. Yeah They're working together on this,

but for whatever reason, Yoni becomes convinced that Korkei is walking, he's walking back from somewhere and he's like, is Korkei just on a walk? Even though he's walking back from like having done work, having done some task for this thing that they're doing. And so Yoni says, hey, asshole, you're goofing off. And Korkei comes up to him and his hands are all muddy from the work he's been doing. And Yoni says, hey asshole, you're goofing off. And Jorge comes up to him and his hands are all muddy from the work he's been doing.

And Yoni wears this white coat, cause he's Dr. Krauss, and Jorge wipes his muddy hands down the front of this coat and he's like, that's how much I was goofing off. And then he fucking slaps Jorge across the face and Jorge kicks his leg and they get into a scuffle and Luis Orsua kind of sees it but by the time he like is activated to do something about it, it's kind of like broken

off and it's gone about its own way. Oh my gosh. So they finish this job. Very long sh- it's been a long shift for these poor boys. Yeah, yeah, very long shift. And so in these final days, the group begins to clean up behind them, preparing the mine to be sealed off forever and maybe one day reopened for curious historians. Mario Sepulveda sets up a small shrine where he slept and gathers rocks as souvenirs.

Another miner, Raul Bustos, whips shit into the pit, writes vulgar thank-yous to the owner's mothers, and burns all his photos. Quote, I didn't want anyone to see it, to say, look, this is where Raul Bustos slept. It was very private and it was mine. And it was mine, literally it was a mine. It was mine. It was mine. A mine.

Yep. Yep. And in his diary, Victor Segovia draws a heart around the words, I love San Jose. He says, the mine was innocent. The fault was in the people who didn't know how to run the mine. Yeah, that's very true. So yeah, kind of a bittersweet goodbye to this place that's been their collective home and this very significant thing and they're being kind of birthed out into this great

unknown of are we famous now? What's going on? Is God involved? What's going on? But it's also a space that you've been trapped in and you nearly died and you thought you were so stoked to just take a shit in a toilet and not the shit pit yeah yeah yeah no that too yeah more like 98 percent that two percent the sad part to see the sky oh the sky is the best well they have to wear sunglasses all the way out because they've been dark for so long right? Oh that's so... One last meeting is held in the Refugio, the shelter where the group, amid mild dissension and tension, agree to hold on to their pact of mutual interest to not reveal individually what they suffered as a group.

Galleguillos and Johnny Barrios, they shake hands and make up for their physical altercation earlier. Happy ending for them. Juan Ianes is appointed the group's spokesperson from here on out on the surface, deeply wounding our boy Super Mario. He says it's the biggest betrayal he's suffered in 70 days. All right. I take it. 70 days? That's okay. Rescuer Manuel Gonzales emerges into the mine and after a bit of banter,

he secures foreman Francisco Avalos, chosen for his hardiness and able bodiedness in case something should go wrong to be the first to travel the newly drilled diagonal borehole. As Maria Segovia observes from Campamento Esperanza, it's like being birthed by the mountain.

Yeah. That birthing canal, right? Yeah, yeah. It goes both ways. It goes both ways. Oof. Francisco is greeted on the surface with tremendous celebration and thousands of media personnel. Unbeknownst to him, the rescue is being watched by 1.2 billion people worldwide.

More than one in every six people on the planet. Billion? Oh my gurrrrrd. Doesn't that give you chills just to think of it? There's a lot of people. Yeah! 1.2 billion people watching this man get lifted out of a hole. And now we never talk about the damn miners! They're important! Anyway. Hahahaha! Next up, Mario Sepulveda, who can be heard screaming,

Vamos 20 meters from the surface. Oh, cute. He immediately screeches and begins passing out souvenirs from his pockets. He celebrates until someone has to ask him to please take off his harness. We got to keep going. Yeah, you're holding up the line here.

There's a lot of guys down there. Stinky men! Yeah. Carlos Mamani comes up, he'll eventually be visited by Bolivian President Evo Morales in hospital. He's the one Bolivian flag in the 32-in-1. Edison Pena, the brooding man who saw death every time he entered the mine, repeats to the rescuers, thank you for believing we were alive.

Oh my god, yeah. Victor Segovia emerges triumphantly brandishing his diary. Yoni Barrios is greeted by his true love, Susana. Oh, the mistress! He had told her in their final video conference that he would ensure she, not Marta, greeted him on the surface, quote, I'll be like Tarzan, I'll speak and the animals will do my will. And they did.

And they did. For her part, Martha tells the press she's welcome to him. Yeah, if I were Martha I'd be like, I didn't like you before, I'm not gonna like you now, it's fine. Second to last from the whole is Ariel Tikoma, the new father, the man who had an awkward, chopped up two minute loop because they thought he was too mentally fragile to watch a c-section.

Yeah, of his own wife, to be fair. Yeah, well, but knowing how it ends up, it's much like this story. When you know how it ends up, it's a little bit more of a hopeful thing. Yeah. And the 33rd man to emerge from the whole is shift supervisor Luis Urzua all of the men from his work site safe and accounted for. He tells Sebastian Pinera as the jefe I hand over the shift to you. Oh shit! He gets 70 days to be thinking all that! Yeah baby! yeah baby! Oh man, these guys are so good, like the note, the nicknames. And finally Manuel Gonzalez, the rescuer, bows to the camera, projecting his image back to the surface

because he's still in the mine, having helped everyone, you know, all usher aboard the Ark, and he rides the capsule back up. On day 74, Campamento Esperanza, Camp Hope is finally shut down. Yes, yes. Like a good sister, Alcaldesa Mario Segovia gives brother Dario his space, and she actually doesn't get to see him again for a year. Because he's off on tour? Well, like the others, Dario is now a magnate, traveling the world to far-flung places like Israel to see the holy sites on invitation.

They continue to get all sorts of donated goods and trips. Kawasaki Chile gives them all new motorbikes. Quote, these men represent hard work, sacrifice, tenacity, the ability to overcome obstacles. Qualities that are also represented by Kawasaki, one of the most important companies in Japan. Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my god.

Again, welcome to last stage capitalism. But I do agree with you, Dario, make some time to talk to your sister. Come on, man. Yeah, yeah. Or invite her on one of these trips. I was gonna say, you couldn't say, can you give my sister a seat to go see the Whaling Wall?

Like, come on. Yeah. But Josie, unfortunately, it turns out that you can't buy happiness with Kawasaki brand motorbikes. I've not heard that specifically, but I- Open up your- perk up your ears sweetheart, because it's true. All of the miners, despite their newly opened horizons, are smacked in the face on various times and various delays and various schedules to various degrees with PTSD. Edison Bania becomes a running culture ambassador because he was the runner in the cave, right? And so that becomes his trait.

And he gets to appear crooning Elvis on Letterman, but he still falls into a spiral of drinking and depression. Like many of the others, the families of the 33 broadly report that they came back quite different, Like many of the others, the families of the 33 broadly report that they came back quite different, often sadder and quieter, that they scream in their sleep or fear loud noises or confined spaces. Yeah, well yeah. Therapy can only do so much, especially when they close the doors at group therapy and trigger everyone's San Jose-induced claustrophobia. Oh no. Yeah, they were apparently all running over and opening the windows real wide. Ohhhh.

Ultimately, no one is found criminally liable for the cave-in at the San Jose mine. Lastly and most depressingly, it seems to be the case that even still the 33 miners are regarded as being far wealthier and living more affluent lifestyles now than they are, as after all of the glamorous prizes in Heroes Welcome War Off, there hasn't really been much for the most anonymous of these men other than their brief infamy and lingering trauma and watching Bienniera do a world tour promoting Chile giving rocks from the mine to the Queen. Yeah. The millions in public donations encouraged by Leo Farkas doesn't materialize because

everyone thinks and assumes that these miners are rich off their story. And all of these offers offers which isn't really true The miners do eventually come together to form like a company basically they they formalize their agreement in the form of a contract Although Mario kind of dangles it to the last minute because he gives this already kind of started to give away snippets of the story So this this even this even this agreement kind of sort of doesn't really hold, although in the end they kind of are able to get it together. Yeah. The 33 miners sell the book and movie rights their story. The book rights obviously Hector Tobar. The movie The 33 I Didn't Watch, it stars Antonio Bandera says Mario Sepulveda. He had to be happy about that. Not Mel Gibson.

Yeah. But. A shame. If we could he he wasn't picking up the Spanish quick, he said, I can do Aramaic. Yeah. But if the miners thought that they would be held aloft and supported as national heroes in Chile forever, as the sentiment at the time certainly seems to have expressed, it doesn't actually seem to have occurred for very long. And not long enough to be worth the leeches who emerge begging for money, the contempt of employers who deny them jobs simply on knowing their names and stories, for good or bad, or the suicidal ideations of someone like Edison Pena who ends up briefly institutionalized, and that's not good to be blocked in.

A monument is erected in Copiapó for the 33, a tall, chrome-skinned woman holding a dove. There's also a cross erected at the site itself, the permanently sealed San Jose Mine, a rare visit for tourists in all of its desolation. The rescue of the 33 miners was widely hailed as a miracle of the most religious sort, the most literal sort, and certainly received as such by the many spiritually inclined miners and their families and their culture, and for that reason I don't want to tilt too hard against it. But I do feel that kernel of a reminder that stories go on after their endings, and so do miracles, and I want to remind us all, I suppose, of our responsibility to our heroes, whoever they are, and that it doesn't end when the spotlights of infamy dim one by one like

dwindling headlamps. Oh, that's what you did there. Yeah, that's it. That's the Chilean miners. That's only some of the Chilean miners. There was a lot more to it than that, but that's the condensed tiny little day 19 poo pellet version of the story. Just the facts, ma'am. If you are a religiously inclined person, even a person just fond of religious symbolism, but if you are actually the type of person who believes in God and believes in miracles and stuff like that, I recommend this story.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's a fabulous story, even if you don't think that. It's really easy to see how it captivated everyone. It's got all of these different little characters, and it's got this supernatural, superhuman survival of this unthinkable situation that invites you to imagine yourself in it and then shudderingly turn away.

And as you say, it's very much something that as it was unfolding, you could kind of get a day-by-day news drip on, okay, how are the miners doing today? Are we any closer to getting those miners out? So when it came to the airhole shafts that were supposed to have ladders, why couldn't they just repurpose those

with this capsule thing and like do that faster? The route that they end up taking, I believe, is that's what they ended up doing. They used Plan B was to widen one of those existing holes and put the capsule down. I see. But they had to widen it and that was basically widening that. It sounds easier than it is, as I said. It involved drilling that had never been done, being carried out by an accomplished drill master who we had to specially call in from Afghanistan

where he was doing specialized drilling and he's like our finest mind in drilling. Even that guy Manuel Gonzalez, who was the person who was sent down, he won a competition from amongst 16 people. There was the greatest minds in the world at work on this. It stands to reason that this is probably as quick as this could have been done given

the circumstances, given the shitty blueprints, and given the fact that we're dealing with rock that can fall and equipment that can break and people, people, you know. Yeah, I guess that's the other thing. Yeah, this rock had fallen kind of unexpectedly, so, or semi-expectedly. And so who knows how fragile it was. And you didn't want to, you don't want to go too fast with a rock that has just recently sheared itself. Yeah.

The mind is very unstable and they're constantly hearing all kinds of loud noises all the time and Falling Rock, begets more Falling Rock, it's a tricky situation. Remarkable, remarkable that they were able to get all 33 of these guys out, crazy. That's insane, yeah. That's a lot of people. And I'm imagining like how they're cutting up

the peach slice into 33 slices. They're also like cutting up the movie rights into 33 careful slices. Well, really this group, we talked earlier, the mind has its own ecosystem. The mind has its own emotions. Yeah, it's on fungal situation. This group is the same way.

It has its own roiling currents and funguses and these sort of petty disputes in between the various men that I barely even scratched the surface of, but some of these men like each other very much, some of these men like each other not at all. These are grudges made in the mine. Yeah, yeah, these are grudges made underground.

And these are hotly forged and baked in the kiln of this boiling hot, hell-like mine where the devil lives, but so does God. Palomas, baby. Palomas to the surface. Also, uh, uh, Pinera died in a helicopter accident, eh? Oh god, that's right. Wow. None of the miners have died, so weirdly all of the miners, as far as I could tell, when I looked into it, I found an article from 2020 with updates and it didn't say that any of the miners had died. So all of the miners outlived Pinero,

which is probably not what Pinero is expecting at the time. No. It's very ironic. It's very bittersweet. Yeah, and a helicopter too. Yeah, the opposite of a mine. Just like the opposite rail. Yeah, God. You never know. You truly, folks, you a helicopter too. Yeah, the opposite of a mine. Just like the opposite route. Yeah, God.

Yeah. You never know. You truly, folks, you truly never know. So hold your loved ones tight and tell people that you love them and be the best version of yourself that you can. Don't go deep down into caves. Don't go high up in helicopters. And unionize.

And unionize. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it.

Stay sweet! The sources that I used for this episode's infamous included a video from YouTube posted by hashtag true stories, the nutty putty caves, a short documentary, fascinating horror. I read an article from all that is interesting.com. Nutty putty cave was a hot spot for underground explorers until one spelunker got trapped inside. Written by William DeLong, published March 11th, 2023. I read an article from cavehaven.com entitled Haven dot com entitled Nutty Putty Cave Accident. And lastly, I read an article from HowStuffWorks dot com entitled Nutty Putty Cave Before and After the 2009 Tragedy by Dave Ruse and Austin Henderson.

Published November 20th, 2023. The sources that I used for this week's episode include Deep Down Dark, the untold stories of 33 men buried in a Chilean mine, and The Miracle Does Something Free by Hector Tobar, the CNN special, 69 Days Underground, The Miraculous Rescue of 33 Miners. That was a 2015 special also called A Miner Miracle. You can find that on YouTube, posted by CNN. And I read, a decade on, Hero Chilean miners are splittered and abided.

That was published July 31st, 2020, in the Bangkok Post, that was an AFP article. If you wanna support the podcast, consider becoming a monthly subscriber over at coffee.com, that's K-O-Fi.com, slash bittersweetinfoamy. You can become a monthly subscriber just like John Mountain and Eric Joe, and nowadays I hear Lizzy D is

subscribing around these here parts. You can also get access to the Bittersweet Film Club and other extras that we are plotting, scheming, brewing just for you. Bittersweet and me, proud member of the 604 Podcast Network as always. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins. The song you're currently listening to is T Street by Bryan Steele. Thank you for listening.