People the world over sat glued to their television screens on Wednesday and into the early hours yesterday as 33 Chilean miners were extracted from the bowels of the earth, having spent some 70 days trapped in a collapsed mine shaft.

One could not have even scripted such a tale. The miners were trapped almost half a mile underground. Days after the mine shaft collapsed, they amazed the world by signaling that they were okay.

The decision was taken to drill down into the caverns and rescue the miners by means of a rescue pod. Camp Hope started to take shape as well-wishers, family members, relief workers, miners and rescuers all contributed to the rescue operation.

They were originally told that they would be rescued in time for Christmas. In the meantime, they stayed in shape in 30 degree fetid and humid heat. They organised themselves. They rationed the food and water they had until supplies could reach them. They split up into work gangs. They kept clean, busy and focused. They remained civilised. One only needs to recall the work of William Golding in narrating the breakdown of civility and discipline in Lord of the Flies to realise just how easy it would have been for their small underground community to fall into anarchy.

They are all safe and sound. All have emerged as national heroes. In the wider and more cynical sphere of things, Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera has secured re-election, Obama has gone up in the polls and South America (and to a lesser degree the world) has a welcome distraction from the drudgery of economic stagnation and recession.

In today’s world, bad news has become the only news, especially on dedicated news channels such as Sky, Fox, CNN and more. Some say that in some respects, television news has fused with reality television and entertainment to give us a hybrid end product that focuses on death, crime, rape, horror stories, economic woes and general misery, toil and strife. And up comes a story such as this. 33 men, feared dead, buried hundreds of metres underground. They survive a tunnel collapse and the rescue operation was brought to swift closure, without a hitch. Yes, miracles do sometimes happen. We just have to open our eyes and ears to see and hear them – they are often drowned out in a cacophony of ‘bad news’.