Dr Paul Allen

As a social experiment it could hardly have been devised better. Put 33 men 2300 feet underground and seal them in with limited supplies and with no guarantee that they will be rescued. Then leave them there for 69 days. What would happen? Would they divide into packs and begin to destroy one another a la  Lord of the Flies ? Would they resort to cannibalism? Would they resort to homosexuality?  These are the questions people were asking when just such an accident happened at the San Jose copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapo, Chile . 33 men were trapped when a slab of rock the size of a skyscraper came between them and the outside world . And all the world watched to see if they could be saved from their tomb. The last man was rescued from that mine on the 13th of October, 2010. On February 14, 2011  33 Men  hit store shelves, a book detailing the disaster and response. 4 months. That hardly seems like enough time to write a book, not to mention fact-check it an

Image via Wikipedia ‘The story of [ the Holocaust ] survivors,’ wrote sociologist William Helmreich, ‘is not a story of remarkable people. It is a story of just how remarkable people can be.’ The same might be said, albeit in a very different context, of the 33 hardy Chilean miners who emerged from Hades this week. It may not quite match the sheer hold-your-breath daring of, say, the Apollo 11 lunar landing , but the rescue of these Chileans – and one Bolivian – will live long in our collective memory as one of humanity’s most daring feats. Their rescue, of course, would not have been possible without their own extraordinary demonstrations of resilience and courage. Above all else this is a story about the resilience of the human spirit. In an age where we’re prone to react with a passive ‘ho-hum’ to things that would have seemed awe-inspiring a generation ago – our technology, for example – this story reminds us that our greatest resource is to be found within us and in those