The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Panic

A veteran富有經驗的，老手cave diver explains the unique risks—and rewards—of his deadly pursuit.

你可以做的最糟糕的事情是恐慌

一位經驗豐富的洞穴潛水員解釋了他致命追求的獨特風險和回報。

「Rescues are actually pretty rare.」

What Robert Laird, the co-founder of ounder of International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery, means is this: When cave divers get in serious trouble, they usually die. There is no one to rescue, just a body to recover.

「救援實際上非常罕見。」

國際水下洞穴救援和恢復的聯合創始人羅伯特萊爾德的意思是：當洞穴潛水員陷入嚴重困境時，他們通常會死亡。沒有要救援的人，只是回首一具屍體。

In Thailand, an extraordinary rescue effort played out this week for 12 boys and their soccer coach, who managed to find high ground when floodwater trapped them in a cave. To get out, these boys had to dive through those same floodwaters.

在泰國，本周為12名男孩和他們的足球教練進行了非凡的救援工作，當洪水將他們困在一個山洞裡時，他們設法找到了高地。為了離開，這些男孩不得不潛入同樣的洪水。

It』s aperilous危險的journey even for experienced divers, asunderscored強調by the death of a Thai Navy SEAL in the cave last week. Cave diving is a different beast from diving in the open waters. The water can be so muddy that divers have to feel their way out. The passage can be so narrow that you have to take off your oxygen tank. And you cannot simply swim up to safety. By Tuesday morning, divers hadmiraculously奇蹟般地guided all 12 of the boys and their coach out of the cave under these conditions.

對於經驗豐富的潛水員來說，這是一次危險的旅程，正如上周泰國海軍海豹突擊隊在洞穴中死亡所強調的那樣。洞穴潛水是在開闊水域潛水的另一種野獸。水可能是如此泥濘，以至於潛水員必須感受到它們的出路。通道可能很窄，你必須脫掉你的氧氣罐。而且你不能簡單地游到安全的地方。到周二早上，在這些條件下，潛水員奇蹟般地將所有12名男孩和他們的教練帶出洞穴。

I spoke to Laird on Monday about underwater rescues and the unique dangers (as well as the rewards) of cave diving. Our conversation had been condensed and edited for clarity.

星期一我和Laird談到了水下救援以及洞穴潛水的獨特危險（以及回報）。為清楚起見，我們的會話已經濃縮和編輯過了。

Sarah Zhang: What makes cave diving so dangerous?

Robert Laird: The one thing that kills divers more than anything else is panic. It can start with a small thing, like suddenly you see bubbles coming off a hose. That seems so trivial and minor but that can immediately put doubt in a mind because you』re in a cave. There』s no escape. There』s no quick way up. It tends to cascade.

羅伯特萊爾德：殺死潛水員的一件事就是恐慌。它可以從一個小東西開始，就像突然你看到氣泡從軟管上掉下來一樣。這似乎是微不足道和輕微的，但是因為你在一個山洞裡，這可以馬上引起懷疑。沒有逃脫。沒有快速的方法。它傾向於串聯。

When you』re panicked, there』s absolutely no logic. There』s no reasoning. There』s no logical method of thinking. I』ve seen panicked people underwater, and they do not behave normally. You can even point the way out to them and they look at you like you』re crazy, and they』ve convinced themselves another way is the correct way. They may swim into the cave, rather out of the cave to safety.

當你感到恐慌時，絕對沒有邏輯。沒有推理。沒有合乎邏輯的思維方法。我見過水下恐慌的人，他們的行為並不正常。你甚至可以指出他們的方式，他們看著你就像你瘋了一樣，他們說服自己另一種方式是正確的方式。他們可能會游到洞穴里，而不是從洞穴里游來安全。

Zhang: What do you have to do differently when diving in a cave?

張：在洞穴里潛水時，你有什麼不同的做法？

Laird: I would say the most important thing is being able to maintain absolute neutral buoyancy, so you don』t drift up into the cave ceiling and you don』t drift down into a very, very silty bottom. If you hit the silt, you can end up in a 「silt out,」 which means that silt fills the room that you』re in. You put your head underwater and you look and you can』t see anything. You can put your light against your mask and you can see your light, and that』s about it.

萊爾德：我想說最重要的是能夠保持絕對的中性浮力，所以你不要漂到洞穴天花板上，也不要漂到一個非常非常粉質的底部。如果你遇到了淤泥，你可能最終陷入「淤泥」，這意味著淤泥會填滿你所在的空間。你把頭放在水下，你看不到任何東西。你可以把你的光線對著你的面具，你可以看到你的光，這就是它。

Typically in a large cave with known visibility that』s fairly good, the chances of a complete silt out that you can』t wait out are fairly small. The area that』s really bad is sump diving, which is where you have a dry cave that has tunnels that sometimes go underwater and sometimes come up and through air again.

通常在一個已知能見度相當不錯的大洞穴中，你走出淤泥的可能性相當小。真正糟糕的地方是水坑潛水，這是一個乾燥的洞穴，有隧道有時會進入水下，有時會再次通過空中。

Zhang: Like the cave in Thailand?

張：像泰國的洞穴一樣？

Laird: Which is much like the Thailand case. Those sumps are typically very, very silty. You have to have some specialized experience to traverse these silts successfully—with the idea you』re not going to be able to see, you』re not going to be able to communicate.

萊爾德：這很像泰國的情況。那些水坑通常非常非常粉質。你必須有一些專業的經驗來成功地遍歷這些淤泥 - 你無法看到的，你將無法溝通。

Zhang: What mistakes can experienced open-water divers make when they start diving in caves?

張：開放式潛水員在洞穴里潛水時會遇到什麼樣的錯誤？

Laird: Experienced open-water divers, unfortunately, think that they are qualified to dive into caves, but they』re not. There have been lots of extremely experienced open-water divers that have died in caves. The main one is the rule of thirds, which is reserving the amount of air that you have left, so that you always have two-thirds of your tank available at your furthest penetration. There are lots of examples of open-water divers that dive into a cave and they dive into the halfway point of their air. Cave divers look at the situation and go, 「They』re already dead and they don』t know because they』re probably not going to make it out.」

萊爾德：不幸的是，經驗豐富的開放水域潛水員認為他們有資格潛入洞穴，但他們不是。在洞穴中已經有很多非常有經驗的露天潛水員死亡。主要的是三分法則，保留了你剩下的空氣量，這樣你就可以在你最遠的穿透力中獲得三分之二。有許多開放水域潛水員潛入洞穴的例子，他們潛入空中的一半。洞穴潛水員看著這種情況，然後說：「他們已經死了，他們不知道，因為他們可能不會成功。」

That』s because you may not be able to go out with exactly the same amount of air you went in with. All you need is 30 seconds of no air and you essentially can』t go up to the surface. Chances are you』re not going to make it.

那是因為你可能無法用完全相同的空氣量出去。你所需要的只是30秒沒有空氣，你基本上不能上升到表面。你有可能不會成功。

Zhang: Have you ever hada close call死裡逃生?

Laird: I was diving with a buddy and we were probably a mile back in the cave, and his regulator [which delivers air to the diver] started free-flowing, which basically means he was going to run out of air very quickly. This was a multi-tank dive, where we had staged bottles over a period of time to make sure we had enough air to come out safely. We were just way, way back in the cave. Having two people come out on one set of tanks and going through the multiple stages [is] extremely complex. You just can』t make any mistake.

萊爾德：我和一個夥伴一起潛水，我們可能在洞里一英里，而他的調節器[向潛水員傳送空氣]開始自由流動，這基本上意味著他將很快耗盡空氣。這是一次多氧氣罐潛水，我們在一段時間內安裝了瓶子，以確保我們有足夠的空氣安全地出來。我們只是回到山洞裡。讓兩個人出現在一組氧氣罐上並經歷多個階段[非常複雜]。你不能犯任何錯誤。

There was another time when I was doing an extremely deep dive. I picked up the wrong bottle of air. I was starting to breathe it and I was going deeper and deeper with this bottle, and I suddenly realized it was the wrong bottle. If I continued without realizing, I probably would have had a seizure and drowned. When you go deeper you have to use trimix, which is a combination of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium. If you have the wrong mixture for breathing deeply then you can get oxygen toxicity [too much oxygen]. That』s usually fatal. Even nitrogen narcosis, if there』s too much nitrogen in the mix, and you would get the equivalent of being drunk and you can make poor decisions and run the risk of drowning.

還有一次我正在深度潛水。我拿起了一瓶錯誤的空氣。我開始呼吸它，我用這個瓶子越來越深，我突然意識到這是一個錯誤的瓶子。如果我沒有意識到，我可能會癲癇發作並淹死。當你走得更深時，你必須使用trimix，它是氧氣，氮氣和氦氣的組合。如果您有錯誤的呼吸混合物，那麼您可能會產生氧氣毒性[氧氣過多]。這通常是致命的。甚至氮氣麻醉，如果混合物中含有過多的氮，你就會得到相當於喝醉的東西，你可以做出糟糕的決定並冒著溺水的風險。

Zhang: Can you tell me about some rescues your organization, IUCRR, has worked on?

張：你能告訴我你的組織IUCRR已經開展的一些救援嗎？

Laird: One the earliest ones that was remarkable was when they went to a cave expecting it to be a recovery. The cave was not known to have any airspaces. They found the person waiting on the beach, had been there two or three days by themselves. They were convinced they were dead. So when they saw the lights of the cave divers through the water, they thought the angels were coming to get them. They were brought out safely.

萊爾德：其中最早的一個非常引人注目的是當他們去洞穴時等著回收。洞穴不知道有任何空域。他們發現那個在沙灘上等待的人已經有兩三天了。他們確信他們已經死了。因此，當他們看到洞穴潛水員在水中的燈光時，他們認為天使們正準備他們。他們被安全地帶走了。

We』ve had a few other incidents where a diver ran out of air, but was able to find an air bell. You can breath off one of those for, if you』re lucky, 15 to 20 minutes without saturating it with carbon dioxide and passing out. The rescue-recovery diver was able to get in the water very quickly and find them and saw they were in this air bell and was able go up there and talk to them and calm them down and basically give them their second regulator and swim them out.

我們還有其他一些潛水員失去空氣的事件，但能夠找到一個空氣鍾。如果你幸運的話，你可以呼吸其中一個，用15到20分鐘不用二氧化碳使其飽和並傳出去。救援恢復潛水員能夠很快進入水中並找到它們並看到它們在這個空氣鍾中並且能夠在那裡與他們交談並使他們冷靜下來並基本上給他們第二個調節器並將它們游出去。

Most of the recoveries are pretty gruesome to talk about.

大多數的回收都是非常可怕的談論。

Zhang: I can imagine, especially if the body has been in the water for a while.

張：我可以想像，特別是如果身體已經在水中待了一會兒。

Laird: Exactly. Most people don』t know the bodies expand. Sometimes they get very difficult to remove, become too buoyant.

萊爾德：沒錯。大多數人不知道身體擴張。有時他們很難移除，變得太浮力。

There』s a lot of stuff the public doesn』t really realize. Since law enforcement considers these to be crime scenes, you have to follow law-enforcement protocol. If you don』t have a camera, you have to try to remember the way the scene was to describe it later. You』re not supposed to touch their equipment unless it』s required for removing the body. You have to make sure the public is separated from the diving operations, so they don』t interfere. You have to plan for when the body comes up so the family members don』t witness that, because it』s usually very upsetting.

公眾並沒有真正意識到很多東西。由於執法部門認為這些是犯罪現場，因此您必須遵守執法協議。如果您沒有攝像頭，則必須嘗試記住場景稍後描述。除非需要移除身體，否則您不應該觸摸他們的設備。你必須確保公眾與潛水作業分開，所以他們不會幹涉。你必須計劃什麼時候身體出現，所以家庭成員沒有目擊，因為它通常非常令人沮喪。

Recovery sounds like, 「You swim in and you get a body and you swim out.」 It』s never that simple. It』s usually very complex, very arduous process, and it』s exhausting to do recovery. Not only is the physical task load enormous, but the mental and psychological tasks of dealing with a dead body—that most people probably couldn』t do. All those things add up. A lot of times you have to do multiple dives to be able to retrieve the body because of the complexity and the difficulty.

回收聽起來像，「你游泳，你得到一個身體，你游出來。」它從來沒有那麼簡單。這通常是非常複雜，非常艱巨的過程，並且很難恢復。不僅物理任務負擔巨大，而且處理屍體的心理和心理任務 - 大多數人可能無法做到。所有這些都加起來了。很多時候，由於複雜性和難度，你必須做多次潛水才能找回身體。

Zhang: We』ve been talking about the dangers of cave diving. So why do it all? What』s the appeal for you?

張：我們一直在談論洞穴潛水的危險。為什麼要這麼做呢？對你有什麼吸引力？

Laird: It』s a technical challenge. Usually, people that get into cave diving are already very capable open-water scuba divers and they』re looking for something more challenging. My particular reason is I want to see stuff. I take cameras along everywhere I go and I take pictures of things that I do.

萊爾德：這是一項技術挑戰。通常，進入洞穴潛水的人已經是非常有能力的開放水域潛水員，他們正在尋找更具挑戰性的東西。我特別的原因是我想看東西。我隨身攜帶攝像機，並拍攝我所做的事情。

And some people like to explore. The easy stuff, the low hanging fruit』s probably been done. So that means more and more technical challenges in exploring these caves. There』s plenty of places where you can go into a cave nobody has ever been into before. You think, 「Well, more people have been to the moon than have been in this cave.」 There』s still plenty of cave to explore. There』s enough caves in just the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico for all the cave divers in the world.

有些人喜歡探索。簡單的東西，低懸的果實可能已經完成。因此，這對探索這些洞穴意味著越來越多的技術挑戰。在很多地方你可以進入一個以前沒有人進過的洞穴。你想，「嗯，有更多的人去過月球而不是在這個洞里。」還有很多洞要探索。在墨西哥的尤卡坦半島，世界上所有的洞穴潛水者都有足夠的洞穴。

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