India, Aug. 23 -- In November 2023, fortyone construction workers were suddenly confined beyond the collapsed section of the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand, India. For seventeen agonizing days, they survived in a damp, pitch-black void under the Himalayas, their lives tethered to a precarious four-inch steel pipe inserted through the rubble.

Thirteen years earlier, across the globe, thirtythree Chilean miners were entombed nearly 700 meters beneath the Atacama Desert for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. In both crises, the world watched breathlessly as engineers raced against time. Yet, the greatest battle being fought was not against the rubble; it was against the profound, terrifying erosion of the human mind under extreme, lo...