So you want to build a tunnel

[poszlem]

When my wife was diagnosed with cancer and eventually went into remission, I didn’t really process what was happening at first. I was completely focused on getting her through it. The grief hit me later.

What helped me more than anything was going out into the garden and digging. I made sure to do it safely, since I know it can be risky, so I dug wide and with wooden supports, but there was something about just digging and digging down that let me work through all the darkness that had built up in my head. It gave those feelings somewhere to go.

This is unrelated, but I wonder if I did actually hit on something primal in myself.

[devmor]

I think the “primal urge” to dig is just really seeking the endorphins of manual labor. Digging like that is especially attractive because there’s little planning (unless you’re making a tunnel like the subject here) and no material investment but the earth beneath your feet.

[downut]

I figure if Seymore Cray thought digging was useful for mental hygiene it's probably ok:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

[pcrh]

Winston Churchill famously used to build brick walls to deal with the "black dog" of depression.

[abelitoo]

Best digging I ever did was in a torrential downpour for 4 hours. Mud and grass was flying everywhere, my shoes were squeaking as they drove down the shovel. I was soaked to the bone and my heavy, cotton clothes slapped freely against my skin with each shovel full I tossed to the side. That was some of my favorite digging ever.

[pengaru]

You found your chew toy.

Joking aside, I too have spent many days digging with a shovel and pickaxe on my desert property. There's something to it, even Jim Keller (of DEC, AMD, Tenstorrent...) has discussed digging trenches in some of his podcast interviews.

[titanomachy]

How much did you excavate?

[hi_hi]

You can't talk about hobby tunnels without mentioning the Moleman of Hackney :-)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lyttle

- The house was later brought back to life in an amazing way https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/sue-webst...

[Nursie]

That is fascinating!

But I feel he was an amateur compared to Joseph Williamson :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Tunnels

[elihu]

Also worth mentioning Baldassare Forestiere, who spent about 40 years digging an extensive network of tunnels in Fresno, CA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens

[jacquesm]

I haven't seen the Public Image Ltd logo in a very long time.

[ngvrnd]

Seymour Cray down in the tunnels, communing with the Machine Elves.

[soupfordummies]

I thought you were just riffing around but wow:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/v15u0t/sey...

[gjkood]

First person I thought about when I read the title.

If you haven't already, I would highly recommend this book[1] on Seymour Cray. An amazing read.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...

[King-Aaron]

There's a lady on Instagram that goes by the handle 'engineerkala', who's been building a tunnel/mine below her home and learning the process along the way. I'm pretty sure one day the account will go dark when she's entombed herself a hundred metres below her living room, but until that comes it's a fascinating and extremely entertaining page to watch.

[nektro]

she's mentioned in the second sentence of the post

[dyauspitr]

I don’t know how Colin Furze hasn’t come up in this thread yet. He has built a sprawling series of tunnels and rooms under his home and not in some cursory, lip service way like Kala.

[moron4hire]

She is clearly autistic. And she is relatively intelligent. But she's not as smart as she seems to think she is. Some of the things she shows in her videos, complaining about code enforcement cracking down on her... yeah, no, she's going to be the object lesson on why the code exists.

[fitsumbelay]

I'm probably not the only person who thought this was about ssh and possibly handrolling something

that said, I've been latently fascinated by this kind of project. I've seen a couple of how-things-work/maker/dare-me-to-do-it type shows from UK and US where folks single handedly do stuff like this, though they're all hairy dudes unlike Kala, whose channel looks pretty cool

This is a very cool frontier for a homeowner, to not just have dominion over your terranean space by growing edible veg and habitat for animals but also use your below ground asset for who knows -- domicile extension or DIY geothermal or ...?

Gemini tells me in the US, land ownership theoretically extends to the Earth's core

[isubkhankulov]

Great content for the upcoming drone wars and the inevitable tunnels that will be built for troop and matériel movements

[consumer451]

What makes you think a tunnel would be safe? Just need to re-purpose this little guy:

https://blog.sintef.com/digital-en/inachus-project-robot-sea...

[mschuster91]

Israel and the US have shown in Iran you need to dig extremely deep, otherwise you stand no chance against modern bombs.

[taurusnoises]

My wife and I have an excavator on our property that we use for making trails, trenching, digging up stumps, etc. All of it is exhilarating. But, nothing beats simply digging. Something about breaking through the top layer and getting a big scoop of earth that just feels real good.

[rogerrogerr]

I’ve sometimes wondered about getting a big plot of land, some cheap old heavy machinery, and letting people pay to play with it.

Probably liability insurance makes it impractical, which is a shame. There really is nothing like playing with a big excavator. Very fortunate that it was one of my formative experiences.

[dyauspitr]

I can’t wait till world models are good enough that you can ask robots to work autonomously to geo transform spaces.

[bluGill]

You more or less can if you can afford the robots. Technically you need a dozen people or so to run the machines, but if you can afford the machine and costs to run it the costs of the people isn't going to phase you.

Now if the robots were affordable to someone on a minimum wage income that would be a big deal.

[AtlasBarfed]

Claude, please destroy nature.

[gostsamo]

Completely offtopic, but my first reaction was this song.

Enjoy for those who would enjoy such things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU

[ineedasername]

How far down does a person own, on their property? I mean, keeping things (relatively) simple-- and residential-- and assuming you respect the water table, utilities, etc?

[rogerrogerr]

In most cases, you own to the center of the earth. But you may not own the rights to extract those minerals.

Also, it’s often moot because some part of the government will require you to pull permits to kick a rock in your backyard.

[gyudin]

At this point we have too much free time on our hands x_x

[quinnjh]

google ai estimates that 4.7 billion hours have been spent in minecraft. At least these are real :)

[dangoodmanUT]

Was hoping this was about network tunnels…

[soupfordummies]

Was hoping this was about earthen tunnels and was pleasantly SURPRISED considering the website we are on :)

[colbyn]

My thoughts exactly. I’ve been using them for exposing local services to the public internet from my home network. Super convenient for initial proof of concept work…

[cucumber3732842]

This article/video really rubs me the wrong way. These strawmen who are being torn down for the most part aren't building "tunnels". They're building glorified 8-10ft foundations and basements with dirt over the top instead of structures, 1970s hippie "underground homes" basically. They're calling them tunnels and bunkers for clicks and views.

To then take that naming at face value and pontificate about code and engineering is very much a two slights of hand not making a right situation. Furthermore, a civil engineer doing so is deep into "man won't understand what his salary depends on him not understanding" territory.

I know that the many HNers from the seismically active portions of the US will have no frame of reference for this but there are portions of the world where for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years basements were built with less than scant engineering. The sort of "just barely below dirt" construction most of these amateurs are engaging in is on that order of complexity. Based on my observations via Youtube, these amateurs should be more scared of their own temporary construction rigging and material handling solutions than the forces their structures must hold back.

The primary practical engineering challenge and hazard these structures face is that there's nothing stopping someone from driving a point load of undefined size over the top and that has serious implications for roof strength.

[Hasz]

As they say, the rules are written in blood. I don't think we should be disqualifying projects because they are not Mponeng-scale or complexity.

I am not a civil engineer, but I did spend a bunch of time looking into building an underground range. Way more relaxed life safety reqs, smaller bore, etc. However, when you start reading, it is clear that much of the work is empirical, heavily localized and based on a great deal on the experience of the builder. I found very little in the way of solid theoretical modeling, but lots of measure, adjust, etc.

I think Grady does a reasonable job highlighting the dangers and risks.

[greggsy]

Article really needs some sub headings or images - just anything to help situate where you are in case you navigate away from where you were reading.

[gwbas1c]

The article is a transcript of the video at the top of the page.

Grady's videos are quite impressive to watch.

[mac3n]

house gotta have sipapu

[MagicMoonlight]

I don’t like these posts because they’re just transcripts of a video. It’s a form of slop which predates AI.

[jamincan]

There's a lot of value in transcripts of videos being provided next to the original content. It improves accessibility for a lot of people and helps out those of us who might be searching content or not in a place where they can watch a video but can read. Why would it be considered slop?

[btbuildem]

Obligatory shoutout to Engineer Kala

[kleiba]

Colin Furze ftw!

[shagie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray

> Cray avoided publicity. There are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work, termed "Rollwagenisms", from then-CEO of Cray Research, John A. Rollwagen. Cray enjoyed skiing, windsurfing, tennis, and other sports. Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."

[KGC3D]

i thought for a second this referred to building a tunnel for openclaw haha. I need to get off Twitter

[pstuart]

Brings to mind this woman's efforts -- very impressive indeed:

https://www.youtube.com/@engineerkala/

Edit: reading is hard -- I only skimmed and did not realize she was mentioned.

[quinnjh]

We love engineer Kala. She decided to do a thing, while marking progress on her "technology tree" of skills gained by (very arguable) necessity. Dealing with permits and city beuaracracy seems like one of the hardest parts!

[advisedwang]

He explicitly mentions her in the video.