Saturday, February 05, 2022

How Low Can We Go: An Underground Depth Comparison



This visualization of how deep underground structures go will blow your mind. As you go down as deep as Mammoth Cave, the video pauses and you think it might be over, but oh no. That's when the scale can no longer show the surface of the earth, and they switch to a graphic on the right for scale to go much, much deeper. The caves, of course, were formed by the earth itself. The manmade structures are astonishing. It's nice to know that radioactive waste is buried so deep, but the further you go, the more likely they are to be wartime facilities, and even deeper for pure profit. The newer ones were dug by machines, but the older ones were dug by human labor, maybe slave labor or Stalinist prison labor, and who are the people working at the bottom? (via Laughing Squid)

2 comments:

  1. That is pretty impressive !

    I am no troglodyte and hesitate to venture into dark earthy places, but it does help feint souls like me when you realise there is a fair bit of Mother Nature's finest rock and compressed dirt solidifying all that runs above such deep hells as subway tunnels.

    Very considerate of the animators to allow for slightly backward countries by putting the imperial measurements as well ... wait, isn't it just a country now, didn't Myanmar and Liberia go metric last year ?

    I notice that with the channel tunnel they didn't show the English Channel, so I looked it up, and it seems the channel tunnel is 75 metres below sea level, while the channel itself is 175 metres deep.
    I'll let you figure out the maths, seems wrong to me, lol.

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  2. Point to ponder ... those facilities such as the subway tunnels, the Neutrino Observatory and the mines also have to have some way to get down to them, and bring back to the surface whatever it was that they were transporting, mining or researching.

    -"BB"-

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