Recently I was watching a video on thalassophobia (the one by Solar Sands) and it included a segment on the USS West Virginia.

Basically, 3 men were trapped in an underwater section of a partially sunken ship, and even though they were still alive and people knew they were there, they could not be saved - cutting into the boat would cause water to rush in and drown the men, using a blowtorch would ignite the gas in the compartment and cause an explosion that would kill the men.

I read up on a lot of real-life tragedies, and there have been other incidents like this, where rescue is impossible due to efforts being likely to kill the person being rescued - incidents like mine shaft collapses and cave explorers becoming trapped.

And while they aren't a rescue of a living person, there are the recovery efforts for cave diving corpses, which so often lead to the death of the rescuer that the bodies are usually left where they are.

What if the Saki girls were experiencing something similar? Where it wasn't a matter of not being found, or of not having anyone who wanted to help rescue them, but that a rescue was simply not possible, and the girls were reacting to this?