To the 33 men trapped in a Chilean mine, recent news that they might be rescued as early as 10 October must bring great cheer. But the effects of living underground for so long still need to be carefully managed.

“As soon as the miners comes out, they will get some introduction to a family member, a quick health survey and a physical, to make sure there’s no immediate medical concerns,” says Michael Duncan, NASA’s deputy chief medical officer, whose expertise Chile sought following the disaster on 5 August.

Simply having lived in the dark for more than two months will have taken a toll.

“The miners are trapped without access to daylight and in that particular environment, circadian rhythms become important,” says sleep researcher Steven Lockley of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Without the sun as a reference, the human body’s natural circadian clocks start to run amok, he adds. To avoid symptoms that might feel like a severe case of jet lag, once the miners return to the surface they will need, at first, to keep to the same sleep-wake schedule they followed while underground.

Plans for small modular buildings to be present when the miners surface may help with this, but these will mainly be for privacy and protection against being overwhelmed by media, family, and the events, says Albert Holland, a NASA psychologist who was part of Duncan’s team.

“It will give them a little bit of quiet space before they get a medical exams,” he says.

But the longer process of rehabilitating the men to society will be an ongoing process, Holland says. “This isn’t re-adaptation to their former life; they’re going forward to something they’ve never been to before.” The miners will be celebrities in their country and around the world, he says. They will need to adapt to the fame, rejoining their families, and then adapt to the notoriety wearing off as they picking up the reins of their former lives.

While NASA has provided advice on how to best transition the men, Holland says the agency will likely not be involved in the full process from here on.

Previously: NASA thinks long term in Chile

Image: AP