Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're going to dig down, deep into
Speaker 1: the bones of the Earth. Okay, we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: call to mind a quote from J. R. Tolkien's The
Speaker 1: Fellowship of the Ring Maria Maria, Wonder of the Northern World.
Speaker 1: Too deep we delved there and woke the nameless fear. Okay,
Speaker 1: So is this an episode about the ball Rog? No,
Speaker 1: I mean not directly. I mean we might ponder, as
Speaker 1: we uh we read here what the metaphorical ball rog
Speaker 1: might be in all of this. But but it is
Speaker 1: gonna be an episode about about digging in the earth,
Speaker 1: about about about mining down, digging down, and just how
Speaker 1: deep we've gotten. And then what do we do in
Speaker 1: the earth? What's what is what? What? What is Homo
Speaker 1: sapiens business beneath the surface of the earth? After all?
Speaker 1: You know what? I just recently went to the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Zoo and I hadn't been there since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: And first of all, it's fantastic. Atlanta Zoo is wonderful.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that struck me the most
Speaker 1: was when I went into the little area where they
Speaker 1: have the places where you can view the naked mole
Speaker 1: rep Yon, where there is this The smell is overwhelming. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's this odd odor. But just looking at them, they
Speaker 1: are one of the strangest looking creatures on Earth. There
Speaker 1: these naked, wrinkly, uh, kind of rosy pink things with
Speaker 1: long teeth, lying in puddles, appearing to have some kind
Speaker 1: of high mind and and frequently, at least when I
Speaker 1: was looking at them, chewing on each other, just gnawing
Speaker 1: on one another beneath the ground. And these are true
Speaker 1: like subterranean creatures. You're not that we're designed to live
Speaker 1: on the surface, but we do a lot more underground
Speaker 1: venturing than most other permanent surface dwellers do. Absolutely. And
Speaker 1: on the subject of of underground true underground evolution and
Speaker 1: the evolution of burrowing species, I would like to come
Speaker 1: back to that because we actually have um an author
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area wrote a book about the evolution
Speaker 1: of burrowing creatures and uh, and I keep meaning to
Speaker 1: to reach out and see about having him on the
Speaker 1: show to chat with us about it. He's the one.
Speaker 1: He actually mentions tremors the movie in the book, so
Speaker 1: you know, you know that he's our people. But speaking
Speaker 1: of of our people and speaking of of underground creatures,
Speaker 1: one thing I was thinking about two is how if
Speaker 1: you look to the fictional world of subterranean humanoids, we
Speaker 1: see there's always there's pretty strict dichotomy. Right on one hand,
Speaker 1: you have the debased underworld dwellers. You have the moment
Speaker 1: the crawlers from the descent, the more locks for the
Speaker 1: time machine you have or one of my other favorites
Speaker 1: in terms of just cave dwelling creatures. Two gargoyles. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Oh, it's terrible, some wonderful gargoyle costumes come
Speaker 1: creatures coming out of the deserts and the desert caves
Speaker 1: and kidnapping people that sort of thing. Well, I usually
Speaker 1: think of gargoyles as as flying. Yeah, but they live
Speaker 1: in caves in this particular movie, somewhere where they gonna
Speaker 1: live in the middle of the desert on a skyscraper.
Speaker 1: I guess bats live in caves and they fly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're basically It's more it would have made more sense
Speaker 1: if they were bat people. Instead of gargoyles. But um hey,
Speaker 1: I invite everyone to to see this film for them
Speaker 1: for theirselves. The the ideal way to see this film
Speaker 1: I think was probably at three pm on a Sunday
Speaker 1: on TBS back in the day. But you can watch
Speaker 1: it through modern means as well. Oh, I just looked
Speaker 1: it up. These are some striking images. The gargoyle is
Speaker 1: almost cramp us looking it is now. Of course. The
Speaker 1: more Locks though, are really more of the iconic underground
Speaker 1: dweller though from HD Wells The time Machine. Yeah. Though,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about them, so you're saying that there
Speaker 1: are some uh, some fantasy and sci fi works where
Speaker 1: underground human oid type creatures are presented as like, in
Speaker 1: some way like a horrible deviant version of us, where
Speaker 1: the more Locks are the sort of the villains of
Speaker 1: the time Machine, but they're also it's funny. In the novel,
Speaker 1: the more Locks are like the intelligent creatures that use technology,
Speaker 1: and it's the the gentle surface dwelling eloi who are
Speaker 1: like kind of ye, they're flacid and in curious and
Speaker 1: sort of bovine. But then we also have works where
Speaker 1: the creatures who live underground are the more refined humanoids.
Speaker 1: So um, we could of course looked in the Middle
Speaker 1: Earth and the Dwarf Lords in their Halls of Stone.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not elevated to the same level as
Speaker 1: the elves, but but still they're an advanced civilization that
Speaker 1: that seemed to to to love a good underground uh empire.
Speaker 1: Then you have things that you have, and you have
Speaker 1: other groups like the drought in Dungeons and Dragons, the
Speaker 1: non men and our Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse socca. The
Speaker 1: mutants in beneath the Planet of the Eights. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they worship a giant bomb. Yeah, they're great and they
Speaker 1: have psychic powers, and yet we have not seen them
Speaker 1: in any of these recent Planet of the Apes movies.
Speaker 1: Also in the Fallout games, you have the Vault Dwellers.
Speaker 1: They're not permanent to underground dwellers, but they have dwelt
Speaker 1: underground for a long period of time and they have
Speaker 1: internal and you know, emerging into the surface world to
Speaker 1: retake it. Well, yeah, I think clearly in a lot
Speaker 1: of these like science fiction works, the underground humanoids it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be something symbolic. It shows like a sort
Speaker 1: of like retreat into some kind of other nature. It
Speaker 1: is a physical sign that something has changed. And I
Speaker 1: think another out of the appeal is that the living
Speaker 1: below ground or in caves or vault is something that
Speaker 1: seems like it should be rather removed from the sort
Speaker 1: of homes that most of us keep. And yet one
Speaker 1: of the curious things is that underground dwellings are also
Speaker 1: a part of our past. Uh. They're they're part of
Speaker 1: our present, and depending on where we go in this
Speaker 1: solar system, uh, they may be a part an important
Speaker 1: part of our future. Yeah. So let's take a minute
Speaker 1: just to to talk about humanity's history in the depths
Speaker 1: of the earth. Okay, So limestone caves provided shelter for
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals of the Ice Age, and early humans too
Speaker 1: made use of caves for shelter but also for burial
Speaker 1: and for sacred rights. Yeah, I was looking at examples
Speaker 1: of this. One example of I think the religious significance
Speaker 1: of deep cave dwellings, especially by Neanderthals, is to be
Speaker 1: found in the Brunkel Cave of southwestern France. Uh So,
Speaker 1: to decide a journal article, We've got one in Nature
Speaker 1: here from twenty sixteen called early Neandertal constructions deep in
Speaker 1: in Brunickel Cave in southwestern France by joe Bert at
Speaker 1: All And in this study, archaeologists reported the discovery of
Speaker 1: ring shaped patterns of broken still agmites made from about
Speaker 1: four hundred pieces of still agmite that are that were
Speaker 1: found deep in the cave. And we don't know what
Speaker 1: these ring shaped structures were for, but it's clear they're
Speaker 1: artificial in origin. They were made by by humans and
Speaker 1: they were the site of ancient fires, where like there
Speaker 1: are some sections that are burned and charred, and there
Speaker 1: are also pieces of burned bone mixed in with them.
Speaker 1: And a uranium dating series combined with some other methods
Speaker 1: gives the structure an approximate age of a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six point five thousand years old, one of the
Speaker 1: oldest known human structures. And this was pretty deep down
Speaker 1: to oh extremely yeah. This was found three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty six meters down from the entrance of the cave.
Speaker 1: That's over eleven hundred feet down, showing that the Neanderthals
Speaker 1: who made these rings had master deep underground environments. Like
Speaker 1: to go this far down is not something an animal
Speaker 1: would do lightly. You'd need to have an artificial light
Speaker 1: source to take with you. You You probably need a plan
Speaker 1: in a way of organizing and understanding your spatial environment
Speaker 1: so you don't get stuck down there. And the big
Speaker 1: question is what were the rings for? We had these
Speaker 1: rings over a thousand feet down underground. A common explanation
Speaker 1: would be, well, it's maybe religious in nature. Somebody's burning
Speaker 1: fires with rings of stone down in the dark over
Speaker 1: a thousand feet underground, right, must be for some kind
Speaker 1: of ritual. We don't really know, but it's fascinating question,
Speaker 1: and I think the most common answer is probably that
Speaker 1: it had something to do with with an with a
Speaker 1: loss to history, unknown neandertal religion. So there yet, so
Speaker 1: there was a sacred reason to go down into the
Speaker 1: depths presumably, or maybe there's just some other reason that
Speaker 1: we don't understand. It doesn't it's not clear. Is it's
Speaker 1: not easy to determine that these this like circle would
Speaker 1: serve a practical purpose. I'm not sure what you'd use
Speaker 1: it for as a tool or anything like that, or
Speaker 1: why I would need to be so far down if
Speaker 1: you did it. Almost it really asks for a kind
Speaker 1: of symbolic interpretation. Yeah, Now in terms of more readily
Speaker 1: accessed portions of a cave. Stuff close to the surface.
Speaker 1: It's easier. It's easy for us to to think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, these are the kind of early primitive shelters
Speaker 1: one might use, and then you would quickly evolve beyond that.
Speaker 1: You would reach the point where it just makes more
Speaker 1: sense to depend on tents and buildings for your shelter
Speaker 1: um and then you would would maybe only stick to
Speaker 1: the depths for you know, things that are religious in nature,
Speaker 1: like catacombs or or perhaps bomb shelters in some cases,
Speaker 1: or basements. I mean, it's, uh, it's easy to think
Speaker 1: that there would just come a time where nobody lives
Speaker 1: underground anymore unless you absolutely have to. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: there'd be several reasons for this. I mean, one would
Speaker 1: be the advent of settled civilization, because it's not that
Speaker 1: there are no sub old civilizations that involve caves. Some
Speaker 1: of them do involve caves, but generally there's a limited
Speaker 1: number of caves out there, so you can't just like
Speaker 1: keep filling up caves. You need to like build your
Speaker 1: own structures to support and expanding population, and caves are
Speaker 1: not necessarily near where you can do your agriculture, right.
Speaker 1: And then if you're expanding on caves or or setting
Speaker 1: out to build your own caves in the form of
Speaker 1: artificial tunnels, it takes a fair amount of of effort.
Speaker 1: You have to have considerable resources, technological know how, and
Speaker 1: you have to depend on the rock that you're working
Speaker 1: with being the right temperament for what you're trying to build. However,
Speaker 1: we do see all of these things line up, uh
Speaker 1: in really to a fascinating degree with some of these
Speaker 1: caves cities in modern day Turkey. Um and I was
Speaker 1: was not really all that familiar with these prior to
Speaker 1: researching for this episode, but they are, They're amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: One in particular is the city of Daring, who you
Speaker 1: h This is a complex of hand dug tunnels that
Speaker 1: dive down sixty meters or two hundred feet um beneath
Speaker 1: that's as roughly eighteen stories beneath the surface and would
Speaker 1: have housed and estimated twenty thousand people during its heyday.
Speaker 1: It contained homes, schools, even a winery, and it's likely
Speaker 1: that these tunnels were begun around seven b C. And
Speaker 1: while it eventually seems to be a functional, fully functional city,
Speaker 1: it continued to serve as a place of refuge well
Speaker 1: into modern times, the place that surface dwellers knew they
Speaker 1: could they could flee to and hide in. You have
Speaker 1: surface tensions, we were too problematic. Yeah, it seems to
Speaker 1: be worth noting that this is what the majority of
Speaker 1: these Turkish underground UH dwellings were primarily used for. It
Speaker 1: kind of calls to mind to go back to the
Speaker 1: Lord of the rings, like Helm's Deep, right, it's a
Speaker 1: place where if your civilization is attacked, you can retreat
Speaker 1: down below the surface and we're in seal up the
Speaker 1: walls with stone until the war passes on or the
Speaker 1: danger is gone, and then you re emerge. Which makes
Speaker 1: me wonder about the Neanderthal a mystery from earlier, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent was that a way to survive uh,
Speaker 1: the new people, you know, the inheritors, to to to
Speaker 1: flee down into depths that that other uh certainly surface predators,
Speaker 1: but maybe even uh these newer hommaid species would not
Speaker 1: bother with. Now that'd be a good plot for a novel,
Speaker 1: but I think it is the case that Homo sapiens
Speaker 1: are not believed to have been in the area at
Speaker 1: this point. Oh no, no, for purely Hollywood reasons, it
Speaker 1: could be like a reverse descent instead of it being uh,
Speaker 1: poor hapless humanoids dealing with underground monsters are underground monsters
Speaker 1: of the heroes. There you go do for the descent three,
Speaker 1: That would be actually a pretty good uh way to
Speaker 1: frame it. So again, this is just one of of
Speaker 1: several underground cities that you find in this region. There's
Speaker 1: also the Kaimak the Underground City, the Oscanic Underground City,
Speaker 1: there's the Mazy Underground City. And there are some interesting
Speaker 1: illustrations of these online that really just drive home what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. We're not talking about like just a
Speaker 1: few chambers. We're talking about like multiple stories of underground habitat.
Speaker 1: It's a luxury mine. We should also point out that
Speaker 1: cave dwellings continue to this day in parts of the world,
Speaker 1: such as with Waddox, a southern Spanish region containing around
Speaker 1: two thousand caves that have been used as homes for generations.
Speaker 1: And you look at pictures of these and there's really
Speaker 1: quite uh. The design is very interesting to look at
Speaker 1: because in many cases, like the walls are painted, they
Speaker 1: look like rooms in in home. You know that they
Speaker 1: don't don't look like cave dwellers. They look like relatively
Speaker 1: modern people living in a shelter that just happens to
Speaker 1: be part of a naturally occurring cave. Well. They're also
Speaker 1: still underground homes in Tunisia. In fact, some of these
Speaker 1: underground homes make an appearance in the first Star Wars movie.
Speaker 1: So Luke's house in the first Star Wars is you
Speaker 1: know Uncle Owan and Aunt Brew where they live. That's
Speaker 1: sort of modeled after a type of Tunisian dwelling where
Speaker 1: there is a central crater type structure. It's like a
Speaker 1: big pit in the ground, and then around the ring
Speaker 1: of the crater there are dugout rooms that you can
Speaker 1: go into. Very interesting. I didn't realize that. I always
Speaker 1: thought it was just an elaborate set, I guess, or
Speaker 1: an actual space house. I didn't think about the idea
Speaker 1: that this would be an actual home or based upon
Speaker 1: an actual home design from that region. There's a cool
Speaker 1: photo gallery on on the Atlantic website that that documents
Speaker 1: some of what these houses look like in more recent decades. Cool,
Speaker 1: and there, of course other plenty of other examples we
Speaker 1: can point to of sporadic underground dwellings they're parts of
Speaker 1: Australia where you still see a fair number of underground dwellings.
Speaker 1: And then I feel like, at least when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, there were at least a couple of underground
Speaker 1: houses in the county where I lived, because there were
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tornatic activity in the region, and
Speaker 1: there was at least one house where It's like somebody
Speaker 1: was like, screw it, I'm not putting up with this
Speaker 1: fear of tornadoes anymore. I'm living under the ground. And
Speaker 1: then they did it. Wow. Yeah. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: I knew somebody who lived in an underground house in
Speaker 1: southern Middle Tennessee. It's all basement. It's all basement. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that has certain advantages. It probably a certain
Speaker 1: disadvantages too, I would I would think, for example, the
Speaker 1: lack of exposure to sunlight would eventually psychologically get to you.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, And that's a that's of course, that's a
Speaker 1: whole other side of the equation when you start imagining
Speaker 1: permanent dwelling underground and what that does to our circadian rhythms.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, we're thinking about creatures that are going
Speaker 1: to come back out again with with with regularity to
Speaker 1: obtain the resources they need. You would kind of have
Speaker 1: to write because I mean you mentioned that, for example,
Speaker 1: the city uh in an ancient Turkey, this underground city.
Speaker 1: It had like a winery, but it couldn't have a
Speaker 1: vineyard under the ground, right, and then they weren't making
Speaker 1: mushroom wine, um likely. So you know, we mentioned the Descent.
Speaker 1: Even the monsters in the Descent were leaving their caves
Speaker 1: to pray, because there's the whole scene where their bones
Speaker 1: piled up. They have this uh this is these midden
Speaker 1: heaps of the things that they've been eating, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's shown that they've been eating deer like they're
Speaker 1: going to the surfaced hunt, presumably at night. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we have plenty of underground to have it as today.
Speaker 1: And also certainly if you go to a major modern city,
Speaker 1: you go to New York City, you're gonna find plenty
Speaker 1: of people living in basements. You know that there there
Speaker 1: there's there's still an underground too many um surface dwellings
Speaker 1: that rise into the sky. And then we have plenty
Speaker 1: of underground complexes that can sometimes be repurposed as a shelter.
Speaker 1: For instance, we did uh an episode talking about mosquitoes
Speaker 1: in the London underground and their evolution, and we in
Speaker 1: that we discussed how during the Second World War the
Speaker 1: London underground, the subway system there was used as a
Speaker 1: bomb shelter. And then we have cases of homeless individuals
Speaker 1: living and abandoned subways, railroads, flood sewage tunnels, heating shafts
Speaker 1: in various metropolitan areas around the world. Uh. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen the two thousand your two thousand documentary Dark Days, Uh,
Speaker 1: that documentary looks at people living in Freedom Tunnel in
Speaker 1: New York City during the mid nineteen nineties. So thus
Speaker 1: far we've looked at religious reasons, survival reasons, um, infrastructure reasons,
Speaker 1: even a little bit to dig tunnels under the earth.
Speaker 1: But another major reason to go digging around and crawling
Speaker 1: around under the earth like you're some mener of worm,
Speaker 1: is of course, to mine precious resources, find that pot
Speaker 1: of gold exactly. In fact, we just talked recently in
Speaker 1: an episode of Invention the role that copper mining might
Speaker 1: have played in the origins of wheel technology. That's right,
Speaker 1: So humans figured out that these were press as resources
Speaker 1: that we could do things with them that give us
Speaker 1: a very important advantages over our fellow humans, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, we quickly ate up all the the easily
Speaker 1: acquired deposits of these materials. So instead we just started
Speaker 1: digging a tunnel. There's more down there, right, and then
Speaker 1: you need you need things like like wheels to remove
Speaker 1: them from those tunnels. So we do find plenty of
Speaker 1: examples of pretty old minds in human history. The oldest
Speaker 1: mine in the world is thought to be the the
Speaker 1: Church Silica mine at Naslette Sabaja in in Egypt, and
Speaker 1: it's estimated to have been in use around a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. That's crazy old. That's long before like
Speaker 1: settled civilization, long before agriculture. And it's in mining that
Speaker 1: we find some of the most incredible feats of tunneling, uh,
Speaker 1: even before the twentieth century. So in Kimberly South Africa
Speaker 1: and South Africa is a region where we see some
Speaker 1: some pretty incredible, slash terrifying feats in mining. Um between
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy and nineteen forty, fifty thousand laborers moved twenty
Speaker 1: two million tons of earth and reached the depth of
Speaker 1: seven hundred nine ft or two hundred forty in search
Speaker 1: of diamonds. And this is uh, this is a dig
Speaker 1: that's currently not known today as the Big Hole, and
Speaker 1: it is considered the largest hand dug pit in the
Speaker 1: world hand dug yes, well that yeah, so not using
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of mechanical aid. Less impressive certainly
Speaker 1: from the air, but still pretty impressive in its depth.
Speaker 1: Is uh is woodingden Well in the UK. It's an
Speaker 1: impressive hand dug well that reaches h one thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty five ft or three hundred ninety into
Speaker 1: the earth. And uh BBC's the deepest holes dug by
Speaker 1: hand points out that it's as deep as the Empire
Speaker 1: State Building is tall. And that's just well, that's the
Speaker 1: hand dug well. Well, I think they did well. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's say on that note, Yes, let's definitely take a break, folks.
Speaker 1: You should know I just said that and then I
Speaker 1: said we could cut it, and then I said it again,
Speaker 1: So it's got to be time for a break. Thank
Speaker 1: Thank Alright, we're back. So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the modern day marvels of digging in the dirt. Uh.
Speaker 1: Modern minds are even more impressive because, of course, we
Speaker 1: have enhanced tunneling machinery that allows us to be dig deeper,
Speaker 1: dig harder, if you will. And also, of course we
Speaker 1: have just better ability to blow up the rock and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that actually achieves our goals
Speaker 1: of digging deeper. And uh and we mentioned South Africa earlier,
Speaker 1: and our most impressive mining operations are to be found
Speaker 1: in South Africa, specifically the Tawtona and Opponent mines, which
Speaker 1: have broken through around uh four kilometers or two point
Speaker 1: four five two point five miles of rock. So we're
Speaker 1: talking mines that are so deep that it takes an
Speaker 1: hour to elevator down to the bottom. And you have
Speaker 1: to have a powerful, just an extremely powerful air conditioning
Speaker 1: system essentially like shoveling um ice down to the depths,
Speaker 1: because you have to balance out the hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight degree fahrenheit fifty nine degrees celsius temperatures in the
Speaker 1: surrounding rocks. Wow. So that's weird because I normally think
Speaker 1: of going down into a cave is uh something that
Speaker 1: that makes you nice and cool? I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: unless it's like cold outside. I mean, one great thing
Speaker 1: about an underground environment is that it tends to have
Speaker 1: a pretty regulated temperature if you're at a certain depth. Right,
Speaker 1: this is the wine seller um uh situation. It's a
Speaker 1: place where you can keep a standard temperature for whatever
Speaker 1: you're storingly, but basement a wine seller is probably not
Speaker 1: going to go two and a half miles down into
Speaker 1: the earth. Uh. By the way, with these minds, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about trying to balance out the temperatures, the
Speaker 1: air conditioning systems usually get temperatures uh back down to
Speaker 1: a more reasonable eighty two degrees fahrenheit twenty eight degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: So it's still hot. Yes, it's hot. Uh. These your
Speaker 1: dangerous places. The taw tone of mine today has some
Speaker 1: I read four miles or eight hundred kilometers of tunnels,
Speaker 1: and it employs some fifty six thousand miners. And there
Speaker 1: are some whole books have been written about just the
Speaker 1: scale of these mining operations and the like. The type
Speaker 1: of the technological details alone are pretty incredible, but then
Speaker 1: also the cultural asides about ghost miners, people who like
Speaker 1: sneak into the mines and what percentage of say gold,
Speaker 1: for for instance, is is pilfered, But then also how
Speaker 1: relatively little gold they have to actually mine out of
Speaker 1: the Earth to get a profit, because even though most
Speaker 1: of the gold on Earth we mostly don't do much
Speaker 1: with it. It's it's it's extremely useful in in various electronics,
Speaker 1: but we're only using a fraction of that gold for
Speaker 1: those electronics. Per This is the rest we're wearing and
Speaker 1: looking at and and thing, oh isn't that sparkly and
Speaker 1: putting in a vault. Well, I'm interested in the idea
Speaker 1: of so that gold is down there where it's really hot,
Speaker 1: and you've got to pump in ice or air conditioning
Speaker 1: or something to keep you keep yourself from overheating while
Speaker 1: you're trying to mind whatever the stuff is. And the
Speaker 1: question is why why does it get so hot when
Speaker 1: you go deep underground? I mean, we all know that
Speaker 1: it does get hot as you go towards the center
Speaker 1: of the earth, But why does that happen? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I should point out to that we've known about this
Speaker 1: for a while. It was known even in medieval times.
Speaker 1: Uh as mining efforts made it obvious that that, you know,
Speaker 1: they weren't going quite that deep, but they were still
Speaker 1: going deep enough to tell that things were getting warmer.
Speaker 1: And so, first of all, there's an incorrect answer to
Speaker 1: this question, and that is because you're getting closer and
Speaker 1: closer to Hell, and Hell is really hot, right, Well
Speaker 1: not if you're Dante. Right. Well, well that's true because
Speaker 1: well I guess there were hot parts and cold parts, yes,
Speaker 1: but the very center was cold. When you get down
Speaker 1: to the lake local Itis, it is frozen solid for sure.
Speaker 1: So uh so yeah, I always fall back on Dante's
Speaker 1: model there, But the general idea is is Hell is
Speaker 1: hot and and so one could mistakenly think, Wow, he's
Speaker 1: gonna get hotter when you dig down to the Earth
Speaker 1: because you're getting closer to all of that. Uh that
Speaker 1: what heavy sweaty uh fiery brimstone. In fact, they're one
Speaker 1: of my favorite art Bell clips out there. Art Bell
Speaker 1: but there was a Coast to Coast the old radio
Speaker 1: show where they often talked about ideas, Yeah, like late
Speaker 1: night paranormal conspiracy radio stuff. Yeah. One of the my
Speaker 1: favorite clips was about the Sounds of Hell, where they
Speaker 1: had this recording that was allegedly made via microphone which
Speaker 1: was lowered into Hell via a hole in Siberia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got a note from a listener that, uh, he
Speaker 1: had already reported on the fact that geologists had drilled
Speaker 1: a hole to hell, and a listener got in touch
Speaker 1: with them and was like, hey, this story is true.
Speaker 1: My uncle collected videos and audio tapes to the paranormal
Speaker 1: and he had an audio tape of this and I
Speaker 1: copied it and it originally I think he said it
Speaker 1: came from the BBC or something, but that they had
Speaker 1: the evidence for hell and they were sitting on it.
Speaker 1: And this is a great hoax story. This is part
Speaker 1: of the whole Well to Hell hoax that was reported
Speaker 1: over and over by tabloids and religious publications in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and the nineties. Um, I've got a good
Speaker 1: quote here that is quoted in the Snopes article on this,
Speaker 1: on this hoax, But this quote came from a book
Speaker 1: in n Are You Ready, Robert, Let's do it? Okay.
Speaker 1: Geologists working somewhere in remote Siberia had drilled a hole
Speaker 1: some fourteen point four kilometers deep about nine miles when
Speaker 1: the drill bits suddenly began to rotate wildly. A Mr. Asakov,
Speaker 1: identified as the project's manager, was quoted as saying they
Speaker 1: decided that the center of the Earth was hollow. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: the geologists measured temperatures of over two thousand degrees in
Speaker 1: the whole. They lowered supersensitive microphones to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the well, and to their astonishment, they heard the sounds
Speaker 1: of thousands, perhaps millions, of suffering souls screaming. Uh so,
Speaker 1: according to Snopes, long before this ever appeared on The
Speaker 1: Art Bell Show, it was reported on the Christian station
Speaker 1: the known as Trinity Broadcasting Network. I think that still
Speaker 1: exists t N. I remember it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it still exists. I think it does. What it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, they featured this story on tb N.
Speaker 1: It was also in the Weekly World News in nineteen two.
Speaker 1: Is Weekly World News the one with bat Boy? I
Speaker 1: think it may have been, yes, but the Weekly World
Speaker 1: News version changed the location to Alaska and had the
Speaker 1: report ending with the claim that Satan himself came up
Speaker 1: out of the hole and the thirteen workers were killed
Speaker 1: in the incident, which, of course is basically the minds
Speaker 1: of Maria all over again. They're basically saying the dwarves
Speaker 1: got to then they do to. Yeah, but one of
Speaker 1: the workers yelled, you shall not pass. I love it
Speaker 1: this story too, though, it's it's so ridiculous because it's
Speaker 1: like like, here is an example of science proving our
Speaker 1: religious ideas, proving our supernatural model as accurate. But did
Speaker 1: those people before this story literally think that hell was
Speaker 1: physically underground? It's just like a place you could go
Speaker 1: to if you dig that deep. I don't this would
Speaker 1: be something worth exploring because I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: get that that that sense a lot from older religious
Speaker 1: writing that that Hell is is literally in the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are some like if you
Speaker 1: go like to you know, the original like mythical texts
Speaker 1: and stuff, there's stuff like that, you know that heaven
Speaker 1: is literally physically in the sky, that the underworld is
Speaker 1: literally physically under the ground. I don't. I didn't get
Speaker 1: the sense that many people believed that in the modern world,
Speaker 1: Like we're people aligned with TB and did they get
Speaker 1: this story and they're like, finally, you know, I knew
Speaker 1: there was something about this whole hell thing that didn't
Speaker 1: sit right with me. And it was like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't you know, if it's down there, we would have
Speaker 1: proof of it. Somebody would have drilled down there and
Speaker 1: recorded the sounds of the anguish. Well, people don't often
Speaker 1: drill that deep as we'll discuss in a moment. So
Speaker 1: about the sounds of Hell. I don't know should we
Speaker 1: feature should we feature this recording at all on the podcast?
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Here's a taste, just a warning. It
Speaker 1: does sound really scary. It's like a it is made
Speaker 1: to sound scary. So it's a scary sound of people screaming.
Speaker 1: Fair warning. So that sound clip, the sounds used in
Speaker 1: the Well to Hell hoax tape appear to be a
Speaker 1: Then people figured this out, a looped and reprocessed version
Speaker 1: of a clip from a movie called Barren Blood from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. I looked it up and hey, it
Speaker 1: stars Joseph Cotton. Everything comes back to Joseph Cotton on
Speaker 1: this podcast. Is there a single topic that hasn't at
Speaker 1: some point led us back to Joseph Cotton. He was
Speaker 1: in so many films from The Third Man in Citizen Kane,
Speaker 1: you know, classics of of of cinema from that era
Speaker 1: to uh stuff like Soilent Green uh and also various
Speaker 1: installments of euro horror, including one of my favorites, Screamers,
Speaker 1: The Island of the Fishmen. Uh. And yeah, just a
Speaker 1: lot of trashy like Gallo movies and and seventies junk. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Barren Blood. I haven't seen it. I was I wish
Speaker 1: I'd had time to watch it last night because it
Speaker 1: looks like some some righteous trash um. But it was
Speaker 1: directed by Mario Bava. It has that grimy Mario Bava
Speaker 1: movie kind of look. And the Snopes right up traces
Speaker 1: the origin of this whole Well to Hell hoax to
Speaker 1: a hugely embellished take on reports in Scientific American published
Speaker 1: in nineteen four about a real drilling project called the
Speaker 1: Cola Super Deep Borehole, which we'll be back to in
Speaker 1: a minute. So someone was literally like, well, they're digging
Speaker 1: that deep, they're gonna touch, they're gonna reach Hell, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna hear about it. And then someone said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and make that. I just saw
Speaker 1: this movie called Baron Blood, which, by the way, you
Speaker 1: you shared the trailer clip with me, and I'm not
Speaker 1: a mistaken. The trailer itself has that, or at least
Speaker 1: a taste of that, the sound of Hell in it, screaming, screaming,
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah. I should also add they did not
Speaker 1: in this story about the sounds from Hell. They didn't
Speaker 1: dig near deep enough to reach Hell. If Hell's at
Speaker 1: the center of the Earth, like they they didn't even
Speaker 1: maybe they reach like the outer the outskirts of a
Speaker 1: gigantic Hell. I mean, Earth would have to be so
Speaker 1: hollow for that, for like everything below like fourteen something
Speaker 1: point something kilometers down to be hollow. Yeah, and Earth
Speaker 1: would then be mostly Hell, which is ridiculous. It maybe
Speaker 1: more befitting of like of a of a theology that
Speaker 1: really embrace and cherishes the idea of Hell is a
Speaker 1: vital aspect of its of its structure, like because that's
Speaker 1: the ugly reality. Great, you have a creation that's mostly people,
Speaker 1: sort tormented throughout all eternity, the thin layer of people
Speaker 1: sort of getting along on the surface. Uh. Great creation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess if you believe pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: goes to Hell, Hell's got to be huge. But then
Speaker 1: how would how would Earth have a magnetosphere with a
Speaker 1: Hell this big? What's whereould the core dynamo effect come from?
Speaker 1: I have to look kind of answers in Genesis for
Speaker 1: that one show. Um, but but wait, we were asking
Speaker 1: a question. We got sidetracks talking about the well to Hell.
Speaker 1: No that we're asking a question about so we know
Speaker 1: that Earth actually does get hotter as you go deeper
Speaker 1: down into the ground. Why does that happen. It's not
Speaker 1: because you're getting close to hell, but somehow it's getting hotter. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, the the actual answer goes along these lines.
Speaker 1: So geologists calculate that for every mile you dig down,
Speaker 1: the temperature rises fifteen degrees fahrenheit and the pressure increases
Speaker 1: at a rate of seven thousand, three hundred pounds per
Speaker 1: square inch. Roughly go down deep enough and the temperature
Speaker 1: and pressure is enough to form diamonds. Now, this is
Speaker 1: something that that learned minds noted, and uh one one
Speaker 1: in particular was Lord Kelvin, who lived through nineteen o seven,
Speaker 1: and he theorized that this was due to the cooling
Speaker 1: of the Earth and that that that he could use
Speaker 1: temperature readings to actually calculate the age of the Earth.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in our two episodes on the
Speaker 1: Edge of the Earth. We talked about Kelvin's attempts to
Speaker 1: to gauge the age of the Earth this way. His
Speaker 1: he was sort of on the right track, but his
Speaker 1: calculations were off right. And so this is just a
Speaker 1: short version of this if you want the longer version,
Speaker 1: we advise you to listen to that episode to the
Speaker 1: age of the Earth thing is the two part. It
Speaker 1: wasn't it? It was so, But basically he thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty million years seems about right. He was wrong because
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that he didn't know about radioactivity
Speaker 1: in the Earth contributing to the heating to know about
Speaker 1: convection cycles and the inner layers of the Earth. So
Speaker 1: there are actually multiple reasons that Earth gets hotter the
Speaker 1: deeper you go down, right, and none of them are
Speaker 1: hell uh. So, there are three main sources for heat
Speaker 1: in the deep Earth. There's heat from when the planet
Speaker 1: was formed and created. There's frictional heating caused by a
Speaker 1: denser core materials sinking to the center. And then there's
Speaker 1: heat from the decay of radioactive elements. And these causes
Speaker 1: are according to an Explainer article by Quentin Williams, who's
Speaker 1: a professor of Earth sciences, that you see Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1: So partially it's just always been hot since it was
Speaker 1: ever formed, and it's been cooling off ever since. Partially
Speaker 1: there's like some rubbing going on down there that's causing
Speaker 1: some heat, and partially you've got like uranium and stuff
Speaker 1: that is decaying and given and that fission causes heat.
Speaker 1: But ultimately the Earth has this has this inner heat
Speaker 1: cycle that's going on, that's that's removed from the heat
Speaker 1: that comes from the sun. But you see that, I
Speaker 1: mean like the heat that comes from the sun as well.
Speaker 1: I guess these are these are finite sources of heat, right,
Speaker 1: because if you've got some heat that's just left over
Speaker 1: from the formation of the Earth has been slowly cooling down,
Speaker 1: it will just keep cooling down until it gets colder
Speaker 1: and colder. Uh, the heat from the decay of radioactive elements.
Speaker 1: Eventually those things will pass their half life. They will
Speaker 1: just decay more and more until they reach stabile isotopes,
Speaker 1: though for some of them this will take a really
Speaker 1: long time. Right. And we should also point out that
Speaker 1: the mysteries remain about the interior of the Earth that
Speaker 1: we don't know, that we don't fully understand. One of
Speaker 1: the ways that we we hope to increase our understanding
Speaker 1: is by drilling down into it. Now certainly not like
Speaker 1: sending people down to the mantle, but certainly, but by
Speaker 1: reaching the mantle, that alone would be an important step
Speaker 1: towards better understanding the interior of the planet. Wait, are
Speaker 1: you telling me that that movie where they drill to
Speaker 1: the core is it called the Core? Is not scientifically
Speaker 1: accurate and not sending people down there pretty much. I
Speaker 1: love science fiction that has some sort of a fabulous
Speaker 1: drilling submarine that that takes people down into the depths,
Speaker 1: usually to some sort of interior hollow earth scenario. I
Speaker 1: love those films, but it's just not ultimately not realistic. Uh.
Speaker 1: I like that movie. I haven't seen it. I feel
Speaker 1: like I should see it at some point because the
Speaker 1: dare you judge it without saying it? Well, the premise
Speaker 1: is so funny to me because it's like normally when
Speaker 1: you've got some kind of journey to the center of
Speaker 1: the earth that the Jewels Verne novel, that makes sense
Speaker 1: because it has incorrect ideas about what's down there under
Speaker 1: the surface. You know, there's another land and it can
Speaker 1: have creatures and all that, so there's like stuff to
Speaker 1: do down there with the Core. I assume it just
Speaker 1: has a basically accurate idea that, like the Earth is
Speaker 1: made of rock and you know, solid material, so what's
Speaker 1: down there? They're going on an adventure just drilling into
Speaker 1: solid material. But where are the monsters? What's what's there
Speaker 1: to do? Yeah? Where are the bout the ball rocks? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd be happy to be surprised, but it's
Speaker 1: so anyway that the goal has been to drill down
Speaker 1: through roughly twenty five miles of crust to reach the mantle,
Speaker 1: which makes up about the planet. One of the projects
Speaker 1: that had the same was the United States Project Mohole,
Speaker 1: which took a shot at in the late fifties and
Speaker 1: early sixties, but they lost their funding funding. They made
Speaker 1: it about five hundred and fifty seven feet down, and
Speaker 1: this was a sea floor drilling. But the more impressive one,
Speaker 1: the one that we referenced already, was the Cola Super
Speaker 1: Deep but bore hole in Russia. So this one they
Speaker 1: managed to get down forty thousand, two hundred thirty ft
Speaker 1: or twelve thousand, two hundred sixty two meters uh, it's
Speaker 1: about seven point five miles. They did this over twenty
Speaker 1: years of drilling, and ultimately we're about halfway to the
Speaker 1: mantle at this point. The effort was abandoned in the
Speaker 1: early nineties when they encountered higher temperatures than expected, though
Speaker 1: they were prepared for about two hundred and twelve degree
Speaker 1: farenheight temperature has been encountered three hundred and fifty six
Speaker 1: and uh, this is apparently still the record for how
Speaker 1: far we've successfully successfully drilled down into our planet. And
Speaker 1: again that's the one that like at least some of
Speaker 1: the debunkers seemed to think that the idea of the
Speaker 1: well to Hell came from like there were stories about this.
Speaker 1: So this was in nine four, I think or in
Speaker 1: the eighties, and then there were like articles about it
Speaker 1: in Scientific American and and I assume other publications, and
Speaker 1: that this probably got warped into the idea of the
Speaker 1: drilling and breaking through, right like if if Cola had
Speaker 1: actually hit Hell, that would mean Hell is in the
Speaker 1: crust of the Earth, is not even in the mantle. It'
Speaker 1: certainly not in the core. But you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'll leave that alone for now. Other depoles of note,
Speaker 1: there's a BPS Deepwater Horizon which when it was operational
Speaker 1: made it down what thirty thousand feet or about five miles.
Speaker 1: Japanese drill ship Cheek you reached ten thousand feet or
Speaker 1: two miles into the sea floor, and they're actually aiming
Speaker 1: to go much deeper with that particular drill project, because
Speaker 1: they want to go even deeper and they they plan
Speaker 1: to break the record by around is when they look
Speaker 1: to start drilling. So in the future we may see, uh,
Speaker 1: we may see an even higher figure on our descent.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's when we actually reach the lava men.
Speaker 1: Maybe so. But but then again, it would just be
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be us. It would be you know, the
Speaker 1: pro the sensor or something of that nature. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be us at all, not not just because humans.
Speaker 1: There's no reason for humans to go down right, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, the deepest humans have been
Speaker 1: in the Earth is probably two point five miles or
Speaker 1: four kilometers at the Opponent gold mine in South Africa.
Speaker 1: But that's deep. That's that's deep. I mean, it's still
Speaker 1: very impressive, but it's just it's such a small fraction
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the at the overall depths
Speaker 1: of the Earth. Alright, Well, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take one more break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna look to the future a little bit. Uh what
Speaker 1: else could humans do underneath the surface of this planet
Speaker 1: or another planet? Thank alright, we're back. Alright, So we're
Speaker 1: talking about underground dwelling humans making a habitat underneath the surface.
Speaker 1: And one thing I think we've sort of touched on
Speaker 1: a little bit on the podcast before is space colonization
Speaker 1: becoming a route for us to become the lava men
Speaker 1: of other planets, to to to go down under the
Speaker 1: surface of another planet with Lord kin boat and set
Speaker 1: up residents there. Now, why would we do that? So
Speaker 1: other planets do not have all of the protections that
Speaker 1: Earth has from dangerous radiation. That's the main reason. Earth
Speaker 1: has a thick atmosphere to absorb incoming radiation. It also
Speaker 1: has a magnetic field known as the magnetosphere, is created
Speaker 1: by the dynamo of its iron nickel core, and this
Speaker 1: magnetic field also repels incoming radiation. Other planets and objects
Speaker 1: in space do not have the same protective advantages. For example,
Speaker 1: the Moon and Mars. Mars does not have a core
Speaker 1: dynamo to produce a strong magnetic field to repel and
Speaker 1: coming radiation. Also, Mars has a much much thinner atmosphere
Speaker 1: than Earth, less than one percent as thick as the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere. So this just means when you're on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, there's a lot more radiation flux. The
Speaker 1: radiation is um is more variable, and you can get
Speaker 1: surges of it in different places and times, and it's
Speaker 1: just generally also much higher. So without these radiation shields,
Speaker 1: long term life on the surface of Mars for a
Speaker 1: colonist would be inconsistent. But in the net it would
Speaker 1: be a high level radiation bath. Like levels seem to
Speaker 1: be such that you could probably survive there for a
Speaker 1: short period. It's not like you would just immediately die
Speaker 1: of radiation poisoning, but it would not be a good
Speaker 1: place to live long term for say, a permanent colony.
Speaker 1: For example, to quote from a article by the space
Speaker 1: journalist Mike wall Quote, a mission consisting of a one
Speaker 1: eight day cruise to Mars, a five hundred day stay
Speaker 1: on the red planet, a one day return flight to
Speaker 1: Earth would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of
Speaker 1: about one point o one siverts measured by curiosities, radiation
Speaker 1: assessment detector or rad instrument indicate. To put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency generally limits its astronauts to a
Speaker 1: total career radiation dose of one cevert, which is associated
Speaker 1: with a five percent increase in lifetime fatal cancer risk.
Speaker 1: So that's just for a five hundred days stay on
Speaker 1: the surface. Now, of course, a lot of that radiation
Speaker 1: in that calculation there's coming from the trip to and
Speaker 1: from Mars. Where you're in space, you're gonna be getting
Speaker 1: the most. Then once you get to Mars, there's some
Speaker 1: reduction because you've got the planet behind you. That helps,
Speaker 1: you know, but you're still getting a lot bombarded from space,
Speaker 1: way more than you would get protected on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth. So one solution here once you get
Speaker 1: to Mars is to go underground, where the soil and
Speaker 1: rock above will help protect the colonists from radiation if
Speaker 1: they're gonna be staying a long time. But you can
Speaker 1: think about this in a few Number one is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you want to dig a deep hole. That
Speaker 1: would be kind of difficult because it's you know, you're
Speaker 1: on Mars. That's a lot of work to do. You
Speaker 1: have to bring literally everything with you. You have to
Speaker 1: bring your habitat, you have to bring your food, your air. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that you're talking about having
Speaker 1: to bring the equipment to dig tunnels in the Martian
Speaker 1: surface and create a space for all this stuff to
Speaker 1: go and for you to live. Yeah, like an excavator
Speaker 1: or something like that. I mean that that's that's rough.
Speaker 1: So one proposed work around here is to establish colonist
Speaker 1: habitats in lava tubes. This has been proposed for Mars
Speaker 1: and for the Moon. Uh So, I put in a
Speaker 1: selection of images taken from satellite photos of things that
Speaker 1: look like openings to lava tubes on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: But I've got a really cool one. That's a photo
Speaker 1: from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or high Rise camera,
Speaker 1: which is on board the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. I love
Speaker 1: this photo. It's very haunting. I believe this is taken
Speaker 1: from Pavonis Mons. But it's a crater, and then in
Speaker 1: the middle of the crater there's clearly just a hole
Speaker 1: where you can see the shadow and the light falling
Speaker 1: across an inner cavity down below, and you can even
Speaker 1: see what we're like, the sand from the crater is
Speaker 1: falling down into the hole. So these lava tubes would
Speaker 1: have been created because, of course Mars and the Moon
Speaker 1: had periods of vulcanism in their past. The biggest volcano
Speaker 1: in the Solar System actually is not on Earth. It's
Speaker 1: not even on the yellow volcano hell World of Io,
Speaker 1: the moon of Jupiter. It's on Mars. Olympus Mons is
Speaker 1: the biggest volcano in the Solar System. It's a volcano
Speaker 1: more than twice as tall as Mount Everest. And so
Speaker 1: you can find these lava tubes on on Mars and
Speaker 1: the Moon, and they could be not only somewhat suitable
Speaker 1: to house uh colonies, they can they can in some
Speaker 1: cases be huge. One example I found is that studies
Speaker 1: have shown the possible size of lava tubes on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon to be just enormous, like lunar
Speaker 1: lava tubes tend to be bigger than lava tubes on Earth.
Speaker 1: Based on leads and data from the Selene spacecraft and
Speaker 1: the Grail mission, researchers at Perdue University were able to
Speaker 1: predict that at least one lava tube near a group
Speaker 1: of volcanic domes on the Moon called the Marius Hills
Speaker 1: was at least large enough to to hold the entire
Speaker 1: city of Philadelphia inside it. So space Philadelphia, We're space
Speaker 1: Rocky jogs this and maybe this is where the their
Speaker 1: their sports mascot is from. Was their sports mask. I
Speaker 1: don't think have any sports mascot. The frightening red one
Speaker 1: with no face. Oh yeah, the googly eyed pervert thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I think that's their their icon. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a moon man. Yeah, but no, this is this isn't
Speaker 1: incredible The idea that these these are essentially just large
Speaker 1: caverns uh in in the planet or in this case,
Speaker 1: that the lunar surface. Yeah, and I think this is
Speaker 1: it's because they are is because of the gravity of
Speaker 1: the Moon being different. I think that they can tend
Speaker 1: to be larger on the Moon than they usually are
Speaker 1: on Earth. This is comforting to anybody out there who
Speaker 1: is running Dungeons and Dragons campaign in the under dark,
Speaker 1: where you continually having adventures encounter large caverns with cities
Speaker 1: in them. You can just look to the lunar examples.
Speaker 1: They will see here's here's how it might work. But
Speaker 1: so anyway, I like to think that our our future
Speaker 1: astronaut descendants who go out to colonize other objects in
Speaker 1: the Solar System, the ones who live on the Moon
Speaker 1: or live on live on Mars, might end up somehow
Speaker 1: being maybe culturally having some of the same environmental influences
Speaker 1: as the Neanderthals who made the rings of stalagmites deep
Speaker 1: down in the dark in southwestern France. Oh wow, that
Speaker 1: is fascinating to think about. Like, what are the so
Speaker 1: you know, some of the underground religions are often referred
Speaker 1: to as like the idea of cathonic cults, you know,
Speaker 1: the cults of the underworld. Are are there certain ways
Speaker 1: that being in subterranean environments, are going into caves or
Speaker 1: into catacombs or whatever, tends to cause people to come
Speaker 1: up with certain cultural beliefs and religions. What are the
Speaker 1: religions of the lava tube dwellers look like? Who I love?
Speaker 1: I love that idea? Um, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: remissing all of this if we didn't mention total recall though,
Speaker 1: because of course total recall, the original total recall, the
Speaker 1: Arnold total Recall in total, Yes, the the the Michael
Speaker 1: Ironside Total Recall. See you at the party rector exactly
Speaker 1: this one. This film features underground habitats, and it's revealed
Speaker 1: that the early stages of those underground habitats for early
Speaker 1: colonists to Mars. They were essentially just caves that the
Speaker 1: people lived in um and and and that's and one
Speaker 1: of the curious things is that lines up with human
Speaker 1: history and also some of these models regarding what colonizing
Speaker 1: an off world habitat would consist of, and also teaches
Speaker 1: us not to put trust in caring for the resources
Speaker 1: of one of these off world colonies in the hands
Speaker 1: of a greedy, evil corporation. Overlord, give the people to air. Indeed,
Speaker 1: give the people the air. Uh. Well, well, hopefully this
Speaker 1: is a good, you know, first installment. I want to
Speaker 1: think of this as a first installment on some perhaps
Speaker 1: deeper Earth and deeper life studies. Like I said, I'd
Speaker 1: like to come back and talk about the evolution of
Speaker 1: burrowing creatures, even if part of that is just a
Speaker 1: reason to talk about trimmers a little more. Uh, we
Speaker 1: could definitely have some more fun with the idea of
Speaker 1: of deep Earth religions and the idea and religious ideas
Speaker 1: of the deep Earth. Yeah, there's a lot to explore here. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: if you would like to dig deeper into stuff to
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