Not just a thought experiment. This is about something a school kid did to try to simulate what thirty three trapped Chilean miners are living with and have been since August 5th.

Related articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/rescue-capsule-c...

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/trapped-chilean-mi...

What I learned from the article: Keeping the trapped miners mentally inspired is at least as important as providing food and health care

They can communicate with their families and talk to the outside world. They know efforts are underway to rescue them. I think those make a huge difference in keeping them hopeful, compared to someone trapped that has no idea if anyone is even looking for them.

I read that they haven't told them how long it will be until the rescue shaft will be ready. I'm not sure whether it's better to think that you will be rescued "any day now" or that you are going to have to tough it out for three months with 33 sweaty men.

It would also avoid having to send a "sorry guys, we've had some delays, it'll take an extra six weeks" message.

I read that they told them to hope for Christmas.

Another thing I read was that the company that operated the mine has declared bankruptcy and can't pay anyone. That must be a downer.

Fortunately, various companies have made around 1000 job offers for these people when they get out. A nice way to keep the motivated about the future.

You know what I would want. A jailbroken iPhone and WiFi connection. Fire up ssh, and do some programming. It would be the most gimmicky startup ever. Hopefully by the time I get out, I would be Y-funded.

This situation is terrible, and god bless those people and their families, but that's exactly what I would demand if I was down there. (given that the government actually gave a shit about me at that point)

I don't think 802.11 can penetrate 2300 meters of rock, vinhboy.

Can't they put a cat5 down there, and like a mini router? Or run an antenna down?

802.3 distance limitation: 100 meters. Only about 2200 meters short!

This is actually a bit of a fascinating question. Even if you found an appropriate technology, I would think mist cable would break under it's weight (I don't know if it would hanging straight down). Even if you got a cable sown, what would they hook it to? And I'm not sure I'd want to have a cable stuck in the only hole I have that's gotta serve for anything else that I would want to get down there.

It says there are three holes, so I'm guessing at least one is dedicated to hoses.

Easy. Dialup. A twisted single-pair phone cable can be/is extremely light, and I'm pretty sure they can transmit that far.

Of course, the engineer in me wants to know how well sound waves propagate down the holes, and wants to implement dialup or DSL with actual sound waves

They have optical cable.

You apparently haven't heard of my neutrino-powered wifi transmitter.

Treatment in fiction: _The Space Eater_ (David Langford). Only it was 1.8cm in his story.

It does. They're called my mouth and nostrils ;-)

I was thinking about my brain emerging through the birth canal.

A related historical event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpbalZ5DUbE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springhill_mining_disaster