Why are there so many tunnels under London?
economist.com
economist.com
To say a tunnel is capital intensive is an understatement. So you need rule of law, stable and very large financial markets, relatively low corruption.
In comparison, there are other large cities built on good tunneling dirt that are perfectly unsuitable for a tunneling project for purely human reasons.
Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tunnel thru, but finances being what they are, it also looks like swiss cheese.
I've been looking at economics as a discipline, and what it does and doesn't take into account. Three of those factors are stability (which allows complex and advanced concepts to flourish, including advanced infrastructure), risk (and who bears it), and power relationships (again, who has power over whom).
Another example would be religious catacombs -- underground structures with religious significance, notably in Rome, Paris, London, and elsewhere. Again, the Church (large, stable, wealthy) established these.
Another aspect of London's underground infrastructure is its sewerage system, constructed in the 1850s, and one of the modern world's first sanitation systems. It was constructed in the face of a massive cholera epidemic (imported from India) which was claiming millions of lives throughout Europe and tens of thousands in England, and exhibiting a mortality rate of 10-20%, often killing within 12 hours. The mechanism (oral ingestion, gut development, fecal-oral transmission) had just been posited and demonstrated by John Snow and his famous map of cases identifying the Broad Street pump, contaminated by a nearby (3 foot distant) septic tank which was leaking into it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system
There are many histories of this, one of the better ones I've encountered is James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed", episode 7, "What the Doctor Ordered". The entire programme covers the emergence of the modern medical and public health system. The portion specific to the cholera epidemic and the infrastructure effects starts at 19 minutes in:
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=wM2UZ26b1EQ
The fascinating part is that much of what's now considered to be "British nature" (cricket, stiff upper lip, jolly good) emerged as a consequence of this epidemic as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Rome#Christian_cat...
What's that about cricket, stiff upper lip, jolly good? I'm curious.
But the tunnels where actually the old Parisian quarries.. And people dug those for centuries, at times of war and peace, with rules or without. It was everything but based on a large, stable and wealthy institution. Damn, even during the Revolution people still worked in those tunnels. And miners who worked in the 16th and 17th century were pretty much free workers who lived by selling building material that they mined underground.
That's an understatement. It's solid bedrock. Great for skyscrapers. Really bad for tunnels.
South of the river, e.g. to Brixton, took a lot longer to arrive and the tunnel work was a lot harder with former rivers and earth more substantial than clay to get through.
So yes, anything is possible given money, however, geology still gets in the way.
Use of these must be worth a fortune given where they run.
There is a tunnel in Aber that was used to store valuables (Crown jewels, etc) during WWII, but it's certainly not a tunnel all the way from London.
Source: http://www.everythingaberystwyth.co.uk/aberystwyth-fact-of-t...
The bunker in question isn't on any of the lists you'll find on the Internet. The bunker is also very well hidden. I can't find the entrance on Google Maps, but I'm very sure of the location within a few kms.
When people purchased bunkers post-cold-war, they were confronted with "permanent sealed" doors that cannot be opened within the bunkers. These are welded shut and the ports on the door filled with concrete so that it filled whatever was behind. You can go and see these at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex and could previously see these at Ash Radar Station in Kent (before thebunker.net bought it). Each of these doors is closest to the "London side" of things. When they were built, people spoke of the ground vibrating for months at a time in various places along the routes apparently as well (although I can't find a source for that -it might be well just be rumor).
They would be very small tunnels (pedestrian/small vehicle) sort of like cheesy James Bond bad guy monorail sized outfits but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
Those who worked on them though are sworn to secrecy or are dead so we'll probably never know. That is until someone has the balls to fight their way through the welded and filled doors which would take weeks and be extortionately expensive due to the diamond belt saws needed I've been assured.
Since someone reading this might have similar interests, I have a question. I have recently seen a document, which I think must have been part of the Snowden leak, but I'm struggling to find it again. It s a map of all of the listening points from the Tempora program. They were all common first names, differently sized boxes on the map.
If anyone knows what I'm talking about then I'd love a copy.
^^ start here. I'm sure there are maps somewhere.
I seem to recall a graphic which showed these tunnels at various depths, but have been unable to find it via numerous searches.
There is a pretty cool spread at Gizmodo showing the East Side Access project for the LIRR though. The scale of this is simply staggering:
http://gizmodo.com/5985618/incredible-images-of-the-new-mass...
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4365970
IMO when someone posts an article that's behind a paywall, he should at least put something like [paywall] in the title.
The county I am living in currently, will be celebrating only its 42 birthday tomorrow...think about it.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Trains
It's still not hard to stand on any of the trains as long as you're not right beside the door on a Tube (unless you're extremely unusually tall, but the odds are well against that).
The first underground lines were in 1863. That's the mid 19th century. The first deep level train (what's actually the Tube) was the City & South London Railway, opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax.
> it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains
Not unless you're like 6' 6" (and thus taller than 99.5% of males). http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62018000/jpg/_62018161...
> opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax.
HN, of all communities, should be familiar with off-by-one errors. My apologies for the confusion; you are right, I was referring to the late 19th and early 20th century.
That's 30 years before Christopher Columbus was born — and Richard III; 100 years before Queen Elizabeth I was born.
It was built before chimneys were invented: one was fitted at some point, probably at the same time the upstairs floor was put in (you can't have an upstairs without a chimney). The refurbishment date is scratched into the plaster work: Feb 1722.
It's just way bigger than its ancient self, so you are less likely to find archeological sites.
Why are archaeological sites are so far underground? Are ancient cities actually getting higher in altitude as old ruins get covered up?
Why Pompeii was buried is clear. I am more curious about continuously occupied cities like Rome. How did the ruins get underground there?
The best answer I could find was this:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/813/how-come-archae...
It says that abandoned ancient cities have in fact risen in altitude over the centuries becoming "mounds". But it also says that Rome's famous ruins are at surface level, but doesn't explain ruins that have been found deep underground. So I'm left wondering if Rome and cities like it have gotten a lot higher or not.
If you ever go to Rome, you'll notice that the Colosseum, for example, is at surface level, but most of the land around it is raised up. During street work, you can see parts where they've uncovered foundations, often digging down quite a ways to get to what was the street level at the time. In a place like Rome, when they uncover new ruins, they'll generally be studied for a while and then covered back up because it's the easiest way to preserve the site because they still need the land above it to be usable.
I recently watched a TV show from a relatively old series about underground cities where they showed the underground of Istanbul. Very interesting, but I can't remember the name of the show.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodrome_of_Constantinople for instance:
"The course of the old racetrack has been indicated with paving, although the actual track is some 2 m (6.6 ft) below the present surface. The surviving monuments of the Spina (the middle barrier of the racecourse), the two obelisks and the Serpentine Column, now sit in holes in a landscaped garden."
Just for reference ...
My house was built in 1903. The college I went to was founded in 1352. The city my wife grew up in was occupied by the Romans sometime between 70 and 80 AD.
Having lived in both countries I think that's a good way of thinking about it (for the average person.)
(Obviously individuals will differ; 100 miles is a half day cycle ride for me so I don't think of it as that long a way.)
Are you suggesting that the majority of people in America think 100 years is a comparatively short time span? Probably not.
I freely acknowledge and agree that there are Americans who think 100 years is a short time, and Englanders who think 100 miles is a short distance.