What if the Chilean miners had been trapped in ...

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in a British mine ...

• Rail trade union boss, Bob Crowe, would declare the rescue tunnel was part of the tube rail network and then call a strike to shutdown the rescue because of "safety ishoos" (and ask for more pay).
• Tony Blair would hog the television for days by making "They were the Peoples' Miners, who dug into our hearts .." speeches.
• Gordon Brown would blame Margaret Thatcher for the situation.
• No miners would be allowed out until an "X Factor" and "Britain's Got Talent" show had chosen which miner to rescue first.
• The miners would die anyway because a new Health and Safety directive would forbid any rescue worker from working near a disaster scene.
• Ten new QUANGOs would be created and would last for 10 years. They would be staffed by many incompetent civil servants, left-leaning academics and failed Labour politicians, on huge salaries and eye-watering, inflation-proof pensions. At the end of the 10 years, they would release 20 guideline documents, each at least 15,000 pages long.
  
  The document guidelines would ensure that:
  • The miners' human rights would not be breached.
  • The miners would have access to halal meat.
  • A diversity czar would be appointed to make sure the ethnic and other minorities are well represented in the cavern.
  • A global warming risk assessment is completed.
  • Lawyers and police are present to make sure the miners don't resort to Hate Speech.
  • Teams of care workers and psychiatrists are on hand in case the miners do resort to Hate Speech.
  • The miners must not be rescued because their CO2 would melt the glaciers.
  
  As a result, any miner who survived underground for those 10 years would be grateful to the nation for being a member of a diverse, halal-eating, green society.
• Any relative of the miners who approached the Prime Minister would be arrested, shot or beaten up by the police.
• Anyone who insisted on reading out a list of the miners' names, near Westminster and without a state permit would be arrested for breaching Britain's liberal anti-terrorist laws.

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in an EU controlled mine ...

• EU bureaucrats would prosecute the miners for spending more than eight hours on one shift.
• The EU would levy an emergency "miners' rescue" tax on all EU citizens until the miners were safe or for 100 years, whichever is the longest.
• The rescue would fail because all of the national leaders and EU bureaucrats would argue about which country sponsors the drill, which country sponsors the supplies, and so on.
• Actually, the EU rescue wouldn't even start because EU regulations state that the mining accident is not officially an accident because no EU flag was flying over the mine at the time. The marxist bureaucrat who designed that rule would later be found dead in the Chilean quarter of Brussels, with several pickaxes in his head.
• To prevent accidents like this happening again, the EU would make new directives that would force a new militarised EU police force to be deployed on all European streets. Any citizens stopped by these police who had no mining permits would be shot.
• All elections in Europe would be suspended until the EU-wide trauma caused by the mining accident had subsided to a safe democratic level (or 100 years, whichever is the longest).
• All EU bureaucrats would be granted a 200% pay rise because of the stress they endured.

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in an American mine ...

• They would name the operation "Shock and Ore", bomb the mountain until a crack appeared, pull out all of the miners' dead bodies, declare that they had succeeded in forcing democracy on them and send a bill for the bombs to the miners' widows.
• or ... American special services would be sent in, they would throw grenades into the miners' cavern and then claim Osama bin Laden had killed them with a suicide bomber.
• Wall Street bankers would create a complex hedge derivative trading instrument based on the favourite number of the first rescued miner's son and cause another mini recession.
• Obama would prevent any rescue until a new raft of legislation had been passed that required all rescuers and miners to invest in state healthcare and pay green taxes.
• Obama would make a presidential address on all TV stations describing how, if the miners are rescued, it would be entirely down to his tireless efforts and vision. However if any miners die, it would all be the fault of British Petroleum and the British Empire.
• Mysteriously, the miners find that the first person to appear in the cavern is an ambulance-chaser lawyer.

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in a North Korean mine ...

• The state media would report that Kim Jong-il's brave eldest son had single handedly rescued all of the miners ...
• ... using technology devised by his genius glorious leader of a father.
• Communications from dissidents in North Korea report that no miners survived and that thousands of peasants died trying to dig the miners out with medieval tools.

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in an Afghan mine ...

• The Taliban would suddenly appear in the cavern before anyone else.
• The Taliban would take everyone hostage, set up a heroine purification factory in the cavern, along with a terrorist training camp and an islamic school.

If the Chilean miners had been trapped in a Swiss mine ...

• It would have been over in 5 minutes because the Swiss would have built in clever rescue channels during the mining.
• All the miners would survive.
• Very few TV stations would report it because it happened so quickly and no one had ever been at risk.
• The mine would reopen the next day to resume full production.
• The miners happily go back to work the day after that.