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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This is our episode on Subterranes.

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Speaker 1: It originally aired June four. I say, let's dig right in.

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Speaker 1: I recall as it were, but yesterday, the night of

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Speaker 1: that momentous occasion upon which we were to test the

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Speaker 1: practicality of that wondrous invention. It was near midnight when

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Speaker 1: we repaired to the lofty tower in which Perry had

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Speaker 1: constructed his iron mold, as he was wont to call

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Speaker 1: the thing, the great nose rested upon the bare earth

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Speaker 1: of the floor. We passed through the doors into the

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Speaker 1: outer jacket and secured them, and then passing on into

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Speaker 1: the cabin, which contained the controlling mechanism within the inner tube,

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Speaker 1: switched on the electric lights. Perry looked to his generator,

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Speaker 1: to the great tanks that held the life giving chemicals

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Speaker 1: with which he was to manufacture fresh air to a

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Speaker 1: place that which we consumed and breathing, to his instruments

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Speaker 1: for recording temperature, speed, distance, and for examining the materials

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Speaker 1: through which we were to pass. He tested his steering device,

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Speaker 1: and overlooked the mighty cogs which transmitted its marvelous velocity

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Speaker 1: to the giant drill at the nose of his strange craft.

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Speaker 1: Our seats into which we strapped ourselves were so arranged

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Speaker 1: upon transverse bars that we would be upright whether the

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Speaker 1: craft were plowing her way downward into the bowels of

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Speaker 1: the Earth, or running horizontally along some great seam of coal,

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Speaker 1: or rising vertically toward the surface. Again. At length, all

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Speaker 1: was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer. For a

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Speaker 1: moment we were silent, and then the old man's hand

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Speaker 1: grasped the starting lever. There was a frightful roaring beneath us.

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Speaker 1: The giant frame trembled and vibrated. There was a rush

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Speaker 1: of sound as the loose earth passed up through the

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Speaker 1: hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be

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Speaker 1: deposited in our wake, and we were off. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your mind production of my Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was that

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Speaker 1: little coal. Reading there was from at the Earth's Core

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Speaker 1: by Edgar Rice Burrows published in nineteen Fourteen's that the

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Speaker 1: one where Tarzan goes to the center of the Earth. No,

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Speaker 1: and I know you're joking, but Tarzan does go to

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Speaker 1: the center of the Earth in a follow up novel

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Speaker 1: to this particular novel. Because this was this this kick

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Speaker 1: started a series that dealt with essentially like an inner world,

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Speaker 1: a hollow Earth environment. This was the the Pellucidar series. Uh. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so Tarzan, I think, goes to Pellucidar and a follow

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Speaker 1: up and we'll we'll talk more about Pellucidar here in

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Speaker 1: in a few minutes. But the reason that we're we're

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Speaker 1: kicked off with this reading is that this is this

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Speaker 1: is pivotal. This is uh, this is what is being

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Speaker 1: described here. The iron Mole is a subterarine, right, So

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Speaker 1: that was not a mistake. You weren't trying to say submarine.

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Speaker 1: That is a subterin as in beneath the earth, as

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Speaker 1: in the same way that a submarine is beneath the ocean.

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Speaker 1: So what we're talking about today is a submarine for

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Speaker 1: the ground. Yes, like submarines, but underground some sort of vehicle,

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Speaker 1: uh that has some sort of drilling or melting apparatus.

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Speaker 1: Um on its front end, or perhaps on the rear

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Speaker 1: end as well, then enables it to travel through the

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Speaker 1: earth to so to burrow through even solid rock, as

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Speaker 1: if it were some sort of giant worm making its

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Speaker 1: way through the ground. Now, you might not have heard

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Speaker 1: of a subdarine before, but I bet you have seen

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Speaker 1: one in science fiction. Uh So, before we dive into

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Speaker 1: the science and the actual and in some cases alleged

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Speaker 1: technological history of the subterarine, I thought we might run

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Speaker 1: through some fun examples from film and TV, and then

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Speaker 1: we'll also come back around to Edgar Rice Burrows again

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Speaker 1: before we venture into the real world. Now, Robert, right

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Speaker 1: when I jumped in the video chat today, you and

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Speaker 1: Seth we're talking about the like seventy thousand episodes of

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Speaker 1: the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated TV series, And immediately

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Speaker 1: it came to mind, like, oh, yes, didn't Shredder or

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Speaker 1: was it Shredder or was it Krang one of the

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Speaker 1: villains rides around in a giant underground drill in that show? Oh? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was. I was chatting with Seth about this because

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was the first time I

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Speaker 1: saw a sci fi vision of a subterarine, but I

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Speaker 1: have a very clear memory of those, um, but believe

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Speaker 1: it was the especially the arcade Beat Him Up teena

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Speaker 1: teenage muting Ninja Turtles game. I think it was a

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Speaker 1: good week Economy, right, maybe it was Konami maybe. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: remember the arcade version was a lot better than the

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Speaker 1: port to the nes Oh yeah, Yeah. The arcade version

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Speaker 1: was really kind of beautiful, and I've seen some more

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Speaker 1: recent ports of it, uh that that you know, really

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Speaker 1: really felt all right, you know, I mean it was

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Speaker 1: a total quarter guzzler. It was just how many how

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Speaker 1: many quarters can you put into this machine at your

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Speaker 1: local pizza hut in order to beat it? But it

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Speaker 1: was it was so much fun and uh. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things was that frequently the boss at the

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Speaker 1: end of the level would arrive via a transport module

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Speaker 1: this thing that looked like a rocket, except the cone

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Speaker 1: of the rocket is a big drill and it comes

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Speaker 1: burrowing up through the earth and then it opens up

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Speaker 1: and here's the bad guy for you to fight. Here's

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Speaker 1: Bebop the punk bore yeah or yeah, or it's Shredder

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Speaker 1: or it's Kran himself and they're coming up. The idea

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Speaker 1: is that. Of course, Krang's layer is the subterranean techno dome,

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Speaker 1: this big, uh you know, domed vehicle base that is

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Speaker 1: often like in the molten core of the Earth, and

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Speaker 1: they have to send up their their murmid and there

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Speaker 1: their foot soldiers up to the surface in these specialized subterranes.

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Speaker 1: And is that the techno dome or the techno drome.

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Speaker 1: I always thought it was like the like videodrome. We

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Speaker 1: have just received an update from Seth. It is in

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Speaker 1: fact techno drome um, which can be a little confused.

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Speaker 1: I think I trans figured into my head because it

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Speaker 1: is a a like is spherical looking structure it had

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Speaker 1: It looks kind of like a dome. It is a

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Speaker 1: technodrome whatever that is actually supposed to be. You would

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Speaker 1: imagine that the interior has a domed ceiling, perhaps painted

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Speaker 1: by michel Angelo or something. Is. Yes, it's a picture

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Speaker 1: of of crying and shredder about to have this divine

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Speaker 1: type yeah, crying reaching out. Yeah. So there's the series,

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Speaker 1: which which certainly Seth can attest to and I have

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Speaker 1: memories of. It was a lot of fun and had

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Speaker 1: these vehicles in there as well. There was even a

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Speaker 1: toy version of it. I included a picture of this

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Speaker 1: for you, Joe. I don't know if you remember this

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Speaker 1: or not from your the toys of your childhood, but

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Speaker 1: it is a more ornate version of the subterarine from

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Speaker 1: the cartoon. I remember it, but I didn't have it

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Speaker 1: that this was an object of coveting for me. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I remember for me personally teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

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Speaker 1: the cartoon, and just the overall like sensation of the

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Speaker 1: toys and all. It came around at this weird time

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Speaker 1: where I still very much. I certainly watched all these

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Speaker 1: shows and I wanted to have the figures. I wanted

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Speaker 1: to have these action figures, especially Shredder and Crying. But

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Speaker 1: there was this kind of feeling at that point that

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Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to have toys anymore, like you weren't

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Speaker 1: supposed to enjoy this stuff, which is total b s.

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Speaker 1: And I'm thankfully snapped out of that and have spent

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Speaker 1: the rest of my adult life, you know, realizing that

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Speaker 1: action figures are awesome and and I should buy them

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Speaker 1: for myself or my child. It's it's that horrible middle period.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like with movies too, It's like

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Speaker 1: how Roger Ebert talks about how you know, when you

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Speaker 1: were little kid, Gammera is great because it's a rocket

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Speaker 1: powered turtle. And then you get older and more mature,

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Speaker 1: and you think this is stupid because it's not realistic.

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Speaker 1: And then you get even more mature than that, and

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Speaker 1: then you realize Gammera is great again. Yes, and Gamera

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Speaker 1: is great. Um and and and I and I will

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Speaker 1: say that you look back at Teenage Ninja Turtles that

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Speaker 1: had so many crazy, just gonzo elements in it. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it was fabulous. I mean you had this armored Ninja

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Speaker 1: and he's with there with an alien brain that's in

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Speaker 1: this giant android body, and they're sending Ninja's up to

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Speaker 1: the surface in these crazy drill submarines to fight. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You know obviously teenage mutant Ninja Turtles, which is in

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Speaker 1: itself such a strange concept. So that was one subterarine

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Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people probably remember. Older

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Speaker 1: viewers or certainly viewers who caught this show like on

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Speaker 1: Sci Fi Channel in reruns, might remember the Thunderbirds, you know,

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Speaker 1: like Thunderbirds or go, Well, this was the nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: puppet show with these very signature looking characters. Um that

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Speaker 1: I understand. I was reading that they were partially inspiration

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Speaker 1: for the animation style on the long running Star Wars

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Speaker 1: clone Word War series that I'm watching now with my

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Speaker 1: son Um. But in this ES show, the characters had

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Speaker 1: these crazy vehicles and one of them was the Thunderbird too,

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Speaker 1: and it featured all these different pods and one of

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Speaker 1: them was called the Mole, and it was a drill

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Speaker 1: headed vehicle then enabled the team to venture into the Earth. Now,

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Speaker 1: this establishes a theme that's going to continue throughout the episode,

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Speaker 1: which is that there is a lack of imagination among

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Speaker 1: the people who create under underground drilling machines for science

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Speaker 1: fiction because it's always a mole. It's always a darn mole. Like,

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Speaker 1: why can't you think of some kind of other burrowing creature.

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Speaker 1: Why isn't it a sicilian or or something like that,

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Speaker 1: you know, I mean, come on, how many moles can

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Speaker 1: there be? Or even the naked mole rat that's close enough. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's there's so many other ways to go, but everyone

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Speaker 1: comes back to the mole. And and that also includes

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Speaker 1: picks are because I know a number of certainly, if

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Speaker 1: you're if you're too young to remember a teenage Mt Ninja,

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Speaker 1: Turtles or certainly Thunderbirds, then perhaps you remember The Incredibles.

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Speaker 1: At the very end of this film, we're introduced to

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Speaker 1: a new supervillain called the under Miner, who arrives in

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Speaker 1: an epic u uh, an epic subterine with a drill

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Speaker 1: this time on either end. Uh. It's a fun scene,

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Speaker 1: just kind of like a way to close out the film. Well,

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Speaker 1: he's a bigger character in the sequel. Have seen I

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Speaker 1: have seen the sequel. Uh. Yeah, he plays a larger

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Speaker 1: role in that. But he's also mole themed. Clearly, Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: clearly mole themed. Um, let's see. Oh and and this

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Speaker 1: is so weird. We were we kind of decided to

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Speaker 1: do this episode and I had it in my mind,

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Speaker 1: and then I happened to check out, Uh, this new

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Speaker 1: series on Hulu titled Solar Opposites. It's a it's a

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Speaker 1: new show from Rick and Morty co creator Justin Royland

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Speaker 1: along with Mike McMahon, who also worked on that show. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They dropped the entire first season on Hulu, and it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of fun. It's it's definitely for

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Speaker 1: grown ups. But it's the know, a similar vibe to

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Speaker 1: Rick and Morty, but perhaps a little less meta and um,

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Speaker 1: with characters that are a little more likable. Um. But

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Speaker 1: I've started watching it in BAM. Right there in the

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Speaker 1: opening of the first episode, there's this vehicle called the

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Speaker 1: Earth Drill that's used by the character Corvo to obtain

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Speaker 1: nickel alloy from the Earth's core in order to try

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Speaker 1: and fix his spaceship. And there's this great sequence where

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Speaker 1: a Corvo fires it up and starts drilling into the

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Speaker 1: Earth to go get the nickel, and it started immediately

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Speaker 1: causes earthquakes in like China and London, and there's a

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Speaker 1: big tidal wave somewhere else in the world due to

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Speaker 1: the seismic disruption of the thing. I like that the

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Speaker 1: design is a little bit trown shaped, is a little

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Speaker 1: bit light cycle kind of in profile at least. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a really cool design, Like they didn't just you know,

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Speaker 1: slap together something that looked like the like the transport

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Speaker 1: module all over again. It has has some really cool wheels.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, these are just a few examples. You'll find

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Speaker 1: submarines all over the place in science fiction. If you

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Speaker 1: really start looking for them like it'll just turn up eventually,

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Speaker 1: I think in any kind of science fiction scenario. For instance,

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Speaker 1: there's one in Fallout seventy six, the current Fallout game.

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Speaker 1: I looked around. I was like, there's gotta be one

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Speaker 1: in Star Wars somewhere, and it looks like there is

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Speaker 1: a combat drill in the Darth Vader comic books, like

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Speaker 1: Darth Vader rides one into battle at some point, like

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Speaker 1: a T drill. Ty Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be

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Speaker 1: at drill T. I like that, um yeah, yeah, because

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Speaker 1: I figured Star Wars University's room for there's certainly room

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Speaker 1: for a subdarine. There's some rocky planet somewhere where there's

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Speaker 1: a battle between uh you know, the the Empire and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, some hapless species of subterranean creature. But I

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Speaker 1: feel like we got to bring it back to the

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Speaker 1: Edgar Ice Burrows because I will admit so I have

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Speaker 1: never read this book. At Earth's Core his novel about

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Speaker 1: the drill that goes down, and uh, I don't know, actually,

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Speaker 1: I guess timing wise, this would be coming after Jules

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Speaker 1: Verne's journey at the Center of the Earth, So I

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Speaker 1: don't know how derivative of it it is. Um, but

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Speaker 1: I did manage to watch about the first twenty minutes

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Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventy six film adaptation of this book

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Speaker 1: Last Night, starring our old friend Doug McClure. You know

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Speaker 1: the man. Hi, I'm Doug McClure. You might remember me

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Speaker 1: from such films as that one with the Fish People.

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Speaker 1: And then it also had Peter Cushing in probably definitely

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Speaker 1: not even no doubt at all, the gooberyest role I've

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Speaker 1: ever seen Peter Cushing in, where he is just like

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Speaker 1: a bumbling du fust with a high pitched, uh cartoon

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Speaker 1: professor voice. Yeah, this was This was the nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: six adaptation, directed by Kevin Conner, And um yeah, you

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Speaker 1: might expect, like Doug, with Doug McClure and Peter Cushing,

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Speaker 1: you might think, Okay, Doug's gonna play kind of the

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Speaker 1: meaty du fist, which he did so well. Doug McClure

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Speaker 1: is awesome, He's a he's a treat. When you see

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Speaker 1: his names pop up in one of these older films,

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Speaker 1: you know you're you've got a nice film my head

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Speaker 1: if you but Peter Cushing, you think especially all right,

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Speaker 1: we think in seventy six. We're thinking Star Wars is

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Speaker 1: just after this practically, and you know, you think the

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Speaker 1: dignified Stuart Peter Cushing, he's gonna play this dignified scientist

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Speaker 1: who invince this thing, but no, he plays this goofy

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Speaker 1: Dufais character as well. Uh. And it's great. I mean

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Speaker 1: Cushing is is wonderful. He has he has ranged, so

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Speaker 1: I guess in a way, it's it's nice to see

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Speaker 1: him flex his his acting muscles in another direction. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's an unfamiliar setup. Normally, I think you'd have more like,

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Speaker 1: you know, the dufas in The straight Man, but it's

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Speaker 1: like a dual dufus lead. Yeah. Yeah. And then you

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Speaker 1: have Carolyn Monroe in there as well, a screen legend

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Speaker 1: in her own right. Yeah. She played still a star

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Speaker 1: in Star Crash. Yeah, she was in I think she

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Speaker 1: was in a James Bond film, yeah yeah, yeah, and

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Speaker 1: in numerous so she was very very much an icon

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Speaker 1: of of the day. Hi, I'm Doug McClure and I

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Speaker 1: didn't get a haircut before filming this. Oh yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: pretty shaggy in this. Yeah, it looks and it doesn't

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Speaker 1: even look like it's inten should all. It looks like

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Speaker 1: he just, you know, it was meaning to get it

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Speaker 1: trimmed and he didn't. Yeah. Uh, now a lot of

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Speaker 1: people where I think we're reintroduced to the summer, introduced

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Speaker 1: to it to the for the first time the most

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Speaker 1: recent season of Mystery Science Theater three thousand that aired

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Speaker 1: on Netflix, because this is one of the films that

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Speaker 1: they riff and it's I remembered as being one of

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Speaker 1: the best episodes of the the MST three K revival.

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Speaker 1: But the film in and of itself, it's just is

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Speaker 1: tons of fun. It's colorful, It's it's weird and wacky,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's I feel like, even though I

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Speaker 1: haven't read this particularly Edgar Rice Burrows novel, it does

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Speaker 1: feel true to the spirit of them because they're they're

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Speaker 1: there are a number of cool things going on in

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Speaker 1: here in this First of all, we do have the

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Speaker 1: Iron Mole. We have a drill headed subterine vehicle that

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Speaker 1: takes our characters deep into the earth and it takes

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Speaker 1: us to this hollow earth realm called Pellucidar and uh

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Speaker 1: and here we have a number of crazy elements taking

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Speaker 1: place as well, because we have a species of telepathic

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Speaker 1: terra Saar is called the Mahars that rule over stone

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Speaker 1: age humans that are also there. There's also like a

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Speaker 1: giant bipedal bird Trannosaurus rex thing. It's kind of like

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Speaker 1: Sam the Eagle and it runs around chasing Doug and

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Speaker 1: Peter Cushing in this giant underground corn field. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if that's in the book. Yeah, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from someone who who's who's read

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Speaker 1: this one, because I've read a couple of Burrows books

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Speaker 1: um back in the day, and I remember them as

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Speaker 1: being pretty fun. You know. He gets into a little

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Speaker 1: bit of scientific speculation while also getting into lots of

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Speaker 1: you know, swashbuckling style action, but then occasionally like some

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Speaker 1: really atmospheric you know, almost kind of like pulp horror

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Speaker 1: moments as well. Uh So, Yeah, and of course he

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Speaker 1: wrote a ton of books. This was this one just

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Speaker 1: kicked off a mini series that he did dealing with

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Speaker 1: this inner world he created. Uh and he was he

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Speaker 1: was a highly influential fiction writer at the time. So

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Speaker 1: it seems to me it's possible that he might be

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Speaker 1: the origin genator of our popular culture, and to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent, scientific obsession with subterines in especially in the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century. So I was looking around to see if

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Speaker 1: there were any hard bio biographical details on where Burrows

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Speaker 1: got the idea for the iron mole um, because it

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Speaker 1: seems like he might have been the first. I don't

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Speaker 1: know for sure. It's you know, it's very possible that

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Speaker 1: there are some other short stories from the time period,

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Speaker 1: or some book I'm missing in which a character introduces

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Speaker 1: the idea of a of the subterine. But I wasn't

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Speaker 1: able to come across it myself. Let me know if

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Speaker 1: you if you have an answer to that now. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth came

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Speaker 1: out earlier in eighteen sixty four. But this book does

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Speaker 1: not feature a fantastic drilling vehicle. No, they just they

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Speaker 1: just find a hole in the earth and just kind

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Speaker 1: of walk all the way down. It's more of a

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Speaker 1: spelunking adventure. They traveled down via lava tubes, I think.

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Speaker 1: So I ended up consulting I think three different Burrows

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Speaker 1: biographies in search of any answers on you know, where

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Speaker 1: he got his ideas, Just a little nugget of like, hey,

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Speaker 1: he was reading in Popular Mechanics or something, you know,

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Speaker 1: but nothing turned up. So it seems entirely possible that

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Speaker 1: Burrows might have invented the sci Fi subterine as we

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Speaker 1: know it, and in doing so, as is often the

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Speaker 1: nature with sci Fi, influenced scientific minds all of that

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Speaker 1: century to investigate the idea further. Um. However, even if

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Speaker 1: he invented the sci Fi subterine in his own right,

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Speaker 1: he was definitely inspired by technological achievements in tunneling and

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Speaker 1: burrowing that had taken they were taking place at the time,

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Speaker 1: and had taken place towards the end of the previous century. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when

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Speaker 1: we come back we can talk about some of the

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Speaker 1: real science and technology of burrowing vehicles. Alright, we're back. So,

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Speaker 1: like I was I was saying here earlier, Burrows I

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Speaker 1: think would have definitely been inspired by the real life

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Speaker 1: advances and tunnel boring machine during the nineteenth century. UH

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Speaker 1: tunneling shield technology came first successfully used for the first

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Speaker 1: time to excavate UH the Thim's tunnel, beginning in eighteen five.

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Speaker 1: But this is just as the name implies a protective

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Speaker 1: structure that allows human excavators to work underground. It's not

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Speaker 1: even a machine, right, So describe briefly the tunneling shield.

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Speaker 1: This is basically kind of like a movable roof shield

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Speaker 1: that you can take with you as you continually remove

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Speaker 1: new material from as the tunnel is made. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: would say combine that with the concept of say a

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Speaker 1: drilling template, and that's pretty much what you have. But

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Speaker 1: then this leads into some of the first tunnel boring

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Speaker 1: machines UH. And what is often brought up as the

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Speaker 1: first tunnel boring machine, though it's a real stretch to

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Speaker 1: call it a vehicle, came in eighteen forty five with

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Speaker 1: the Mountain Slicer. Is that really what it was called. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was called the Mountain Slicer. It was not named

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Speaker 1: It wasn't called a mole at all. Again, again, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't a vehicle really, but it was commissioned by the

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Speaker 1: King of Ardenia in to dig the French rail tunnel

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Speaker 1: between France and Italy through the Alps. And it was

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Speaker 1: the work of Belgian engineer Henry Joseph Mouse and this

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Speaker 1: was the first UH. This is often considered the first

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Speaker 1: tunnel boring machine or TBM. It consisted of more than

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Speaker 1: one percussion drills mounted at the front of a locomotive

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Speaker 1: sized machine which was mechanically power driven at the entrance

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Speaker 1: to the tunnel. So think about what kind of of

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Speaker 1: an engineering project it is to do something like this,

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Speaker 1: especially to have a single machine, because tunneling is you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not just like moving through water, which kind of

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Speaker 1: like is is easily displaced around you as you dive

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Speaker 1: through it. Of course, when you're tunneling through hard material,

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Speaker 1: one of the big problems you're gonna have is continually

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Speaker 1: removing everything that you're drilling out of place in front

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Speaker 1: of you as you go. Right. And then if we're

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Speaker 1: thinking of saying we keep talking about the mole as

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Speaker 1: the bio biological analog for all of this, Well, when

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Speaker 1: you're talking about the ocean, right, you're talking about the

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Speaker 1: ships and submarines basically doing the things that other organisms,

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Speaker 1: even large organisms, are capable of doing. But when you're

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Speaker 1: talking about you know, you're not just talking about burrowing

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Speaker 1: through loose soil. Here, we're talking about burrowing through solid rock,

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Speaker 1: which is not something that is generally considered within the

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Speaker 1: realm of certainly you know, a vertebrates capabilities, or or

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Speaker 1: any kind of you know, or organisms capabilities. This is

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Speaker 1: this is something new well certainly not at any speed

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Speaker 1: that would be useful from like a civil engineering point

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Speaker 1: of view, right, Um, So, UH, I want to talk

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Speaker 1: just a little bit more about the idea of the

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Speaker 1: tunnel boring machine or t b M. There there's tons

400
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Speaker 1: of information out there written about t p m s

401
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Speaker 1: because this is a this is a huge area of engineering,

402
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Speaker 1: right figuring out how to improve these machines for the

403
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Speaker 1: production of tunnels. UH. One particular definition I came across

404
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Speaker 1: in laboratory testing of materials for tunnel boring machine drag

405
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Speaker 1: bits by Catuchan at All UH defines a t b

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Speaker 1: M as a quote machine used to excavate tunnels with

407
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Speaker 1: a circular cross section through a variety of soil and

408
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Speaker 1: rock strata. So that's something to keep in mind too,

409
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Speaker 1: is when you're dealing with tunnels, you're dealing with boring

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Speaker 1: through not just one type of rock or soil, but

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Speaker 1: multiple Yeah, and I think it's important that it mentions

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Speaker 1: the circularity of the tunnel because this is a feature

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Speaker 1: that this will actually come up again later in the

414
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Speaker 1: episode when we talk about different methods for producing whole

415
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Speaker 1: tunnels in rock. The drill based method, which is based

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Speaker 1: on grinding and removing material, tends to be by nature circular, right,

417
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Speaker 1: just because of the limitations of the kind of machine

418
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Speaker 1: you have to use to drill and bore out. Yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: Um another source on the mountain slice or I was

420
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Speaker 1: looking at in hard Rock Tunnel Boring Machines by um

421
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Speaker 1: Metal Schmidt, and it's the authors described the mountain slicer

422
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Speaker 1: as having quote worked with hammer drills, chiseling deep annular

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Speaker 1: grooves in the stone, dividing the face into four two

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Speaker 1: by point five meter high stone blocks. Now, the interesting

425
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 1: thing here is that supposedly the Mountain Slicer successfully demonstrated

426
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:18,520
Speaker 1: it was you know, there was a successful demonstration of

427
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:22,080
Speaker 1: this technology in a test tunnel for something like two years,

428
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:25,680
Speaker 1: but it was ultimately not used for the Alpine project

429
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,879
Speaker 1: in question due to doubts about the drive equipment and

430
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,160
Speaker 1: its power requirements and its ability to sustain the wear

431
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 1: of its usage. So they ended up just using traditional

432
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,439
Speaker 1: tunneling tunnel boring techniques instead. But I think this this

433
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 1: drives home like just the real the true engineering challenge here,

434
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite a feat to even create a

435
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: what seems to be working prototype like the Mountain Slicer,

436
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: But then it's quite another to actually use it, and

437
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: use it and use it for the extended period of

438
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:57,639
Speaker 1: time required to actually complete the project. Yeah, exactly. And

439
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: we should emphasize again that when we're talking about these

440
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 1: types of boring machines like the Mountain Slicer, this would

441
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:07,639
Speaker 1: again not be a vehicle designed to just like autonomously

442
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: run around under the ground. This would be a stationary

443
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 1: like institute machine that's for a particular project, right, Yeah,

444
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:20,639
Speaker 1: and and certainly is not working in isolation. Um, so

445
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 1: this is all, like I said, you could you could

446
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: see the Mountain Slicer as a potential first for TBMs.

447
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: But a lot of people give credit to American designer

448
00:24:28,119 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: Charles Wilson, who designed a t b M in eighteen

449
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 1: fifty one, patented in eighteen fifty six. It was called

450
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 1: Wilson's patented stone cutting Machine, which doesn't I don't know,

451
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: it doesn't have as much and it doesn't sound as

452
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: a uh you know, is wagnery as that to a

453
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 1: previous one? Should I called it what Wilson's rock stabber. Yeah.

454
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:55,399
Speaker 1: So anyway, Wilson's patented stone cutting machine, and and it

455
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,719
Speaker 1: was successful. They used it to bore the Hoosic Tunnel

456
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: in northwest mass Situsetts and it had rotate a rotating

457
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: mount for the disc cutters at the front of it. Now,

458
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: there's obviously a lot more to the science and subsequent

459
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 1: development of t b ms, but I thought we might

460
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: cut to the chase here. I think we can already

461
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: see how mountain we're gonna mountain. Cut to the chase even,

462
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: I think we can already see how how even their

463
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,919
Speaker 1: early forms help inspire the idea of a subterine. But

464
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:28,320
Speaker 1: even considering the more modern forms of the TBM, you know,

465
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 1: you have to ask how close does the idea of

466
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 1: a subterarine really get to a TBM. So we have

467
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: to consider the facts. So first of all, as as

468
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: we mentioned already, generally speaking, a t b M, and

469
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: there are different varieties of TBM for different types of rock.

470
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 1: It is a tool, not a vehicle. It is, you know,

471
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:48,439
Speaker 1: a piece of equipment. It's used to make a tunnel,

472
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 1: not to simply tunnel from one place to another. I

473
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: suppose you can say it does both. But the tunnel

474
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: making is the key focus. Plus it's part of a

475
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: system and an overall project that entails workers, specialized bucks

476
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 1: to holloway the rock, etcetera. You're not gonna hijack one

477
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: of these things and bore a rogue tunnel with it. Also,

478
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: TBMs are in general neither independent nor truly mobile, and

479
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,640
Speaker 1: this is important too. They are certainly not fast. Yeah. Now,

480
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: I think another thing is that a lot of these

481
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: are going to be in some kind of way and

482
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 1: not exactly like a train but sort of on rails,

483
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: like in a way that they will have infrastructure that

484
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: is supporting the forward movement of the vehicle. And it's

485
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: not just like rolling ahead on its own, right. It

486
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: is a thing you move up or you have at

487
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: the front of your tunnel boring project. Now, one of

488
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 1: the more exciting players in the realm of of of

489
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:49,679
Speaker 1: tb ms these days is none other than Elon musk

490
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: Oki dok. Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar with

491
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: this joke, but he founded the Boring Company in I

492
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 1: was trying to read about it, but I just fell asleep.

493
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:04,680
Speaker 1: You just uh, I've ever made on the show. Let's

494
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 1: cut it. No, let's leave it. Let me deal with

495
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: the shame. Now you can laugh at elon musk jokes.

496
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: UM it's it's it's clever. They really commit to it. UM.

497
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 1: If you can look at the website and you can

498
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: see that there's a lot of tongue in cheek there,

499
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: but but it is a real project and then it

500
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,440
Speaker 1: looks like they're making a lot of exciting progress here.

501
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: So part of the whole idea of the Boring company

502
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: is that they want to UM. They want to see

503
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: tunnel usage being a huge part of our sustainable future,

504
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: Like in terms of of creating more sustainable infrastructure, it's

505
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: better to get as much of an underground as possible.

506
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: And then this has been a trend in futurism UM

507
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: for a while. This isn't in and of itself anything new,

508
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: but these are some of the reasons that they cite

509
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: for investing um UH. You know, the improvement of TBM technology.

510
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: First of all, there's no practical limit to how many

511
00:27:57,320 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 1: layers of tunnels can be built, so any level of

512
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: traffic can then be addressed through these tunnels. Tunnels or

513
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: weather proof tunnel construction and operation is ultimately silent and

514
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: invisible to anyone on the surface. And this is not

515
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,479
Speaker 1: something that I saw them touch on, but certainly as

516
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: a part of the larger sort of futurism design focus

517
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 1: of underground systems is, of course, if you put your

518
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 1: highways underground, then you can have more like trees on top.

519
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:27,919
Speaker 1: You know, you can have some sort of a return

520
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 1: to nature. You can take the you can give back

521
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: the land that are so you know, are highways and

522
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: streets have stolen. But to do all this you've got

523
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: to make tunnels. And the thing is tunnels are expensive

524
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: to bore. The price that they quote in their materials

525
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:47,239
Speaker 1: is one billion dollars per mile, and and then it's

526
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: a slow process on top of that. In fact, MUSCA

527
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 1: joked that a snail travels fourteen times faster than a

528
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 1: traditional TBM, and as such, they did this whole bit

529
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: where they said they had this pet snail named Gary

530
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 1: and their goal was to beat Gary in a foot

531
00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: race with their TBM. So in order to do that,

532
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: the company stresses the importance of increasing TBM power output,

533
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: making tb ms capable of continuous tunneling without breaks for

534
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: support structure building, as is currently the norm. Also the

535
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: importance of making tb ms autonomous and also creating a

536
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: system by which the excavated rock has been made into

537
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: bricks on site or perhaps even within the TBM itself

538
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: for use in the support structure. Oh and that's another

539
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: thing I should probably describe what these t b ms

540
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: and sort of all modern t b ms look like.

541
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: They look like, um that they do not have a

542
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: conical drill at the front. Uh. It tends to, at

543
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: least at first glance, look a lot like flatter. It

544
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 1: looks like a cross between an east cigarette and a

545
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: tape worm. Oh. Two great things not to put in

546
00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: your mouth. Yeah. Um. The boring company also promotes the

547
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 1: idea of smaller tunnels, so instead of relying just on

548
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: like enormous tunnels through which you put like a you know,

549
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: a four lane highway, instead make a smaller tunnel with

550
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: a one way, uh one lane highway for one way

551
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: traffic as well. This also factors into the various loop

552
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 1: and hyperloop projects that Muscus involved in. So, you know,

553
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: I have to say a lot of that, especially when

554
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: you're talking about, you know, looking into the future, a

555
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: lot of that certainly sounds more like the subterarine we

556
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: know and love, though at the same time, I think

557
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 1: it all further underlines the realities of boring that tend

558
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: to limit these fictional visions. Um and and I should

559
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: also know the boring company is actually building tunnels, so

560
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: it's we're not just talking about a pure futurism project. Um.

561
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: They have I believe, three different TBMs, all of them

562
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: with with wonderful names. There's the Good, there's the line Storm,

563
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: which I believe I read is named for um Robert

564
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: Frost poem or a line in Robert Frost poem. And

565
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: then there's the proof Rock. Oh j Alfred proof Rock. Yeah,

566
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: the proof rock, which is is two words in the name.

567
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: Here is one that's still in development, but it weight

568
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: will be used soon. Why is it named the proof rock?

569
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: Is it is it lying like an patient eutherized upon

570
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: a table or is it lets? Um? I think maybe

571
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: it's just like the proof is in the right. I

572
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: don't know how deeply it is invoking the poem. It

573
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: has measured its progressing coffee spoons, well, whatever you know

574
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: we want to call them. Um. These are some of

575
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: the stats. The line Storm is said to be two

576
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: to three times faster than conventional TPMs. Proof rock is

577
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: supposed to be as much as ten times faster than

578
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: conventional machines. And I I was reading about this in

579
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: the publication Tunnel Insider, which I've never read before. I

580
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: was not I'm not a subscriber to Tunnel Insider, But

581
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: as they put it in quote, if they and by

582
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: they we mean the Boring Company, if they are able

583
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 1: to pull this one off, it will mark a quat

584
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: to leap in the history of tunnel boring technology and

585
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: catapult the Boring Company to the pinnacle of subterranean engineering.

586
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: These these particular TBMs are also electric and are claimed

587
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: to be three times more powerful than conventional tb ms. Uh.

588
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: The Boring Company is still going strong, it seems. In fact,

589
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: I was reading that they recently finished a pair of

590
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: Las Vegas tunnels ahead of a plane opening. Well, more

591
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: power to them, I mean, I I gotta say, just

592
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: from a puristetic sense, in addition to all the practical

593
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: reasons for it, I I like the idea of relegating

594
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:38,479
Speaker 1: transportation infrastructure underground. Yeah. Absolutely, it all makes sense to me. Uh.

595
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 1: And it seems like they're making progress. Um, you know,

596
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: the course, they're always questions and all of this like,

597
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:46,200
Speaker 1: you know, you have to you're wanting to push the technology,

598
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: but also it needs to be the affordable choice as well. Um,

599
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 1: but you know the future, the future remains to be seen.

600
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: But but I'm hopeful. It seems seems like this might

601
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: be the way. Okay, Robert, are you ready to talk

602
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: about a tom battle moles, yes, or as alleged atomic battles.

603
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: I think it is time because we've we've spoken about

604
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: the pure sci fi. We've spoken about the the the

605
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: the the actual technological history and and our current place

606
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: concerning TBMs. Let's start dealing with some of the murcurier

607
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 1: territory here. Okay, So here we're going to dive into

608
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: a bit of alleged Cold War crypto history, and we

609
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: will have to warn you up front the sourcing that's

610
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: available in English on this subject, I think is very

611
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: murky and there's a lot of uncertainty. Possibly even in fact,

612
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: I would say more than possibly, I think quite probably.

613
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 1: We're getting into some Edison Louis La Prince murder confession territory.

614
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: If you listen to our Invention episode on that, where

615
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: a possible hoax document or work of fiction is being

616
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: misinterpreted by later writers as a factual report and then

617
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: built upon by embellishment, but with some major aviatsa are

618
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: are you ready to dig in? Yes? I do. Want

619
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 1: to just throw in one quick nugget here. We're gonna

620
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,959
Speaker 1: be talking about about Russian UH advances, advancements or also

621
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 1: or alleged advancements, and it's worth it's worth noting that,

622
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 1: first of all, UH Edgar Rice Burrows was very influential

623
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: just around the world, but there was also a key

624
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: Russian sci fi author by the name of Grigory Adamov

625
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:28,719
Speaker 1: who wrote about subterines in Conquerors of the Underground in

626
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Oh yeah, I was reading about this, and

627
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: one of the articles that I'm going to reference in

628
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: a minute here points out a hilariously machine translated version

629
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: of that title Conquerors of the Underground, which is Winners

630
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: of the Bowels. Well that's good, okay, okay, But yeah, well,

631
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: what's what's the prompting for all this? Well, a couple

632
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: of years ago you you might have seen a number

633
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 1: of double take headlines running around the internet about the

634
00:34:55,880 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: Soviets developing a nuclear powered subterine in weapon during the

635
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: Cold War. We can I know there was an article

636
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: on like I f L Science about it. There there's

637
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 1: one we can check in with hero in our old

638
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: arch nemesis, the Daily Mail. The headline is quote revealed

639
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: the nuclear powered mold the Soviets built to burrow beneath

640
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: America and deliver atomic bombs underground undergrounds in all caps.

641
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a great headline, right. So I

642
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: was looking to trace back to the source some of

643
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: the claims in this article. So this is not the

644
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 1: main source of the of it, but I think it

645
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 1: gets to the core of some of what we're going

646
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:41,320
Speaker 1: to be looking at here. So there's an English article

647
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: from June in an online publication called Russia Beyond the

648
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: headlines Now it's just known as Russia Beyond, which is

649
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: a multi lingual arm of the major Russian state newspaper,

650
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: rosy skya Gazetta. And I'm not generally very familiar with

651
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: rosy Skya Gazetta Russia Beyond, I don't have a very

652
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: good sense of how generally reliable it is. But this

653
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: article is derived from reporting from a government funded newspaper

654
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 1: of the Russian Federation, and it doesn't actually name most

655
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 1: of its sources. So I think we have to treat

656
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: the claims in this article with an extremely heavy dose

657
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: of skepticism. That's not to say everything in it is

658
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: necessarily untrue, but I would not hang my hat on

659
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:26,759
Speaker 1: anything here, But just so we can lay it on

660
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: the table, let's at least look at what this article claims.

661
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: So it talks about how during the middle of the

662
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 1: Cold War, the Soviet Premier Nikita Krutzschev ordered the construction

663
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: of mechanized units that would be able to burrow underground

664
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: to destroy military targets. And these might be underground bunkers

665
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: or command centers or strategic missile launched sites, or to

666
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 1: destroy underground communications infrastructure. And this hypothetical tunneling weapon that

667
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,839
Speaker 1: Krutzchev's supposedly ordered the construction of would be known as

668
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 1: a battle moles. So we're back to the moles again. Now.

669
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,359
Speaker 1: One of the supposed advantages of the battle mole would

670
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: be its ability to tunnel the targets deep behind enemy

671
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 1: lines undetected and detonate charges, or even to surface and

672
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 1: deposit Soviet troops, sort of like an underground APC. So

673
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 1: was there any historical precedent for this? Well, the article

674
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: claims that the first self powered underground military vehicle was

675
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: designed by someone named Pyotr Raskasov in Moscow and nineteen

676
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: o four, but that this was just a design it

677
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: was never realized. He made some drawings, but the designs

678
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,399
Speaker 1: were lost around the outbreak of the First World War

679
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: ten years later, and then there were attempts to bring

680
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 1: the project back in the nineteen thirties under the Soviet Union. Again,

681
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 1: according to this article, the person in charge of this

682
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: effort to to revive the underground battle mole idea was

683
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,359
Speaker 1: somebody identified in this article simply as injury a near

684
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,439
Speaker 1: treble Lev, which sounds like it's It sounds like Kirk

685
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: selecting a red shirt for the landing party in Star Trek,

686
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:13,360
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but engineer Trebellev wanted to quote design

687
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: a machine which would look like a real mole. No,

688
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 1: no further explanation though. I actually I did find an

689
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 1: article from from the nineteen fifties that explains what this

690
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 1: is referring to. I'll leave that as a surprise for

691
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: a little bit later. I mean, I would hope that

692
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:31,320
Speaker 1: the translations a little off, and the ideas that it

693
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: functions like a mole and not that it just looks

694
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: like one, though that's exciting in its own right. I mean,

695
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: this is an English language article. This wasn't machine translated. Okay,

696
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 1: well maybe maybe it's just supposed to look like a mole.

697
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: Then wanted to design a machine which would look like

698
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: a real mole. But eventually, you know, whatever happened here,

699
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: the project fizzled and so then Nikita Krutzchev comes to

700
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:53,880
Speaker 1: power as the first Secretary of the Communist Party in

701
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three after the death of Joseph Stalin, and

702
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: according to this reporting, Kruschev was big into the idea

703
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:04,920
Speaker 1: of the battle mole, and he strongly supported its redevelopment.

704
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,439
Speaker 1: So you know, go out there, create the people's mole.

705
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: And uh. Supposedly there was a secret underground facility in

706
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:16,720
Speaker 1: Ukraine for developing and producing these moles, and the first

707
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: nuclear powered prototype for the battle mole was completed in

708
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Now, according to the article, this would

709
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 1: have been a tunneling vehicle powered by an internal nuclear

710
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: reactor like a nuclear submarine, which again, this would be

711
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: an ideal power source for like any kind of long

712
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 1: term stealth vehicle for the same reasons, it's useful for

713
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,320
Speaker 1: like strategic ballistic missile subs, right. Uh. You know, the

714
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: the nuclear power allows you to run silently for a

715
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 1: long period of time without having to return and get

716
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:52,400
Speaker 1: fuel somewhere, and it doesn't you know, it doesn't produce

717
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: any emissions other than heat, so you know, it's an

718
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: ideal fuel choice. Just as a note of historical comparison, Uh,

719
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 1: the first nuclear power submarines I looked this up. They

720
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: were produced by the United States and the Soviet Union

721
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: and like the mid to late fifties. I think the

722
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: US put out their first nuclear sub in then in

723
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 1: nineteen five and the USSR by night. Yeah. And and

724
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: of course there was just the overall atomic trend of

725
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 1: of looking at ways to power various types of vehicles.

726
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: I mean there was there's the whole realm of the

727
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 1: atomic powered aircraft, but they were looking at Yeah, I

728
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: think that that's clear that we could do a whole

729
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:30,760
Speaker 1: podcast on that in the future, or certainly the ideas

730
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: of atomic powered automobiles and so forth. Um, So there

731
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: was a lot of this line of thinking back and

732
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: in the day there's a lot of enthusiasm enthusiasm for this, uh,

733
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 1: this sort of power. But to defend the idea here, like,

734
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 1: I think the idea of nuclear power does make a

735
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: whole lot of sense for for a vehicle like a

736
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 1: strategic missile sub because the whole point is that it

737
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: needs to go out there and be hidden, and uh,

738
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: you know, the strategic purpose of it is that you

739
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: don't know where it is and it's somewhere on the

740
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: Earth and it can be out there for a long

741
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: time without coming back to refuel. Right, Yeah, I mean

742
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 1: this is if we I think we've discussed this on

743
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 1: the show before. I think this is one of the

744
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,920
Speaker 1: key parts of of for instance, the United Kingdoms, uh

745
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:16,800
Speaker 1: nuclear deterrent. Yeah. But so back to this article from Russia.

746
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,720
Speaker 1: Beyond so other claims that it makes about this alleged

747
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: battle mole, it says, quote, it had a stretched titanium

748
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 1: cylindrical body with a pointed end and a powerful drill.

749
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 1: It says the size would have been between twenty five

750
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,279
Speaker 1: and thirty five meters in length and then between three

751
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: to four meters in diameter, and its speed underground as

752
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: it's tunneling, would be between seven and fifteen kilometers per hour. Now,

753
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: I am no expert on tunneling, vehicles. I admit, so

754
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: my judgment may be way off, but this is huge

755
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: red flag for me. This sounds really really fast. That

756
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: sounds much faster than a snail. To go back to

757
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: uh Elon Musk's uh snail race, right, this thing can

758
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: tunnel through the ground faster than some people can run.

759
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, okay, but the article also claims

760
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: that quote the nuclear physicist andre Sakarov was involved with

761
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 1: the creation of this machine, possibly with the development of

762
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 1: the original soil crushing and propulsion system technology. The cavitation

763
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: flow created around the battle mole's body reduced friction and

764
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: enabled it to bore through granite and basalt. Again, I

765
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: very much doubt if there's any truth to this association,

766
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 1: but for those who aren't familiar, Andrei Sakarov is absolutely

767
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: a very real and very important figure in twentieth century history.

768
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: Uh Sakarov was a Russian nuclear physicist who worked on

769
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program in the late forties

770
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 1: and the fifties. He's considered in some ways the father

771
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,799
Speaker 1: of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but he later became an activist,

772
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:01,439
Speaker 1: protesting for civil liberties and human rights within the Soviet Union,

773
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: and he received a Nobel Peace Prize in n I

774
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 1: know he was not popular with the with the Soviet

775
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: government for his activism. At some point, I know he

776
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: was sent into internal exile um. But anyway, So back

777
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: to the article. So the article claims that the battle

778
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 1: Mole took a crew of five people to operate, and

779
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: it could carry up to fifteen paratroopers on top of that,

780
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: So again it is actually being alleged that this thing

781
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: would bore in under the earth, drill up to the surface,

782
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 1: and then let out a bunch of dudes. Yeah, I mean,

783
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,200
Speaker 1: it's it's straight It sounds straight up Ninja turtles. It

784
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: sounds like I mean, it makes me think of stormtroopers

785
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: jumping out of one of these things, right right, Or

786
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 1: of course if it wasn't you know, fifteen paratroopers could

787
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 1: deliver a payload of weapons or equipment or especially an

788
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 1: explosive charge, and this payload could be of up to

789
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,439
Speaker 1: a ton. Now here's here's the part where it gets

790
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 1: really interesting. The article alleges there was a secret plan

791
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: for an underground strike on America which would be triggered.

792
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 1: It said if the United States quote deteriorated beyond the point. Uh,

793
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: no further explanation there, but I guess the idea is like,

794
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: if if the US is starting to look weak, then

795
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: like this, these things could drill in. So how would

796
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: they tunnel underneath the United States? Well, allegedly the plan

797
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: was to bring them to the United States coast inside

798
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 1: nuclear submarines, specifically to the California coast, and the California

799
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: coast is singled out for its seismic instability. And then

800
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: the moles would be released from underwater to tunnel into

801
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: California and plant nuclear explosive charges under strategic facilities and

802
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: fault lines without being noticed right at all. And also

803
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: this would this term this attack, it alleges, would be

804
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: a kind of false flag for nature where the nuclear

805
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 1: charges they'd be detonated, but it would just look like

806
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 1: naturally occurring earthquakes and tsunamis all over the place, and

807
00:44:57,719 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: it'd be like, I guess Mother Nature is just mad

808
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 1: at oh man, maybe this is There's so many sci

809
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: fi possibilities just in this, like the idea of say,

810
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: ultimately slow moving nuclear drill machines have been slowly making

811
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 1: their way from the California coast to the heartland, and

812
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 1: when they finally open up, you have all these like

813
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: hideously atomic mutated paratroopers that emerge the toxic of injur

814
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 1: now speaking Russia. So much fun to you can have

815
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 1: with this concept. But anyway, so I've I've just got

816
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: to read the conclusion here verbatim quote. According to some reports,

817
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,359
Speaker 1: test runs of the Soviet nuclear subterine were carried out

818
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: in different geological conditions in suburban Moscow's soils, in the

819
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 1: Rostov region and in the Urals. Witnesses who observed the

820
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 1: tests were most struck by the capabilities the subterine demonstrated

821
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:52,280
Speaker 1: in the Ural mountains, the battle mole easily bit into

822
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 1: hard rock and destroyed the underground target. However, a tragedy

823
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,959
Speaker 1: occurred during the repeated trials. For reasons unknown, the machine

824
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: seen exploded deep within the bowels of the Urals, killing

825
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: the entire crew. Shortly thereafter, the project was shelved. Oh man,

826
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 1: there's a whole like cool indie historic horror film concept

827
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 1: right there, This doomed subterine. It gets I don't know,

828
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:18,800
Speaker 1: eaten by Chud's or something. Right. I think this would

829
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: make a great movie, But I have serious doubts about

830
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: this report, like even if this were published by a

831
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: source that I thought to be trustworthy. Again, I don't

832
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 1: know much about the source, and it is related to

833
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:34,280
Speaker 1: like a government funded paper. Some of like my basic

834
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 1: clausibility alarms are flashing red. But anyway, so back to

835
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 1: like a lot of circulation of the story that was

836
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,720
Speaker 1: going around and you know, daily mail. In all these places,

837
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: it seems to trace back to an article in Gelopnik

838
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:51,839
Speaker 1: by senior editor Jason Torchinsky, who, to his credit, does

839
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: show skepticism about some of these claims, maybe more so

840
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: than some of the derivative articles do. Um which, but

841
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:01,239
Speaker 1: it tries to follow up on the claims by consulting

842
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,840
Speaker 1: some contemporary articles in Russian language sources, a lot of

843
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:08,759
Speaker 1: it machine translated, though um So. It was Tarcensky, by

844
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: the way, who pointed out that idea of the machine

845
00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:13,840
Speaker 1: translation of conquerors of the underground being winners of the bowels.

846
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: So he is the winner of the winner of the bowels.

847
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: But um he develops on the assertion that this this guy,

848
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:24,799
Speaker 1: remember engineer Trabellev, that he wanted it to look like

849
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: a mole. Uh. Twarcensky points out that This is supposedly

850
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: because he studied X rays of a mole skeleton in

851
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: order to design the machine. That makes a little bit

852
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: more sense. Okay uh, and it will be further developed

853
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 1: even more by another source I found. As for the

854
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: reports of this nineteen thirties model, there's all this vagueness

855
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: in the sources. It's hard to tell from what's available

856
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,880
Speaker 1: how large Trabelle's model was supposed to be, whether it

857
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: was crude, etcetera. Um Regarding the prototype built in nineteen

858
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 1: sixty four, Twarcensky turns up some more claims about how

859
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: project came to an end from the Russian reporting and

860
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: rosy Skaya Gazetta, which is apparently what that Russia Beyond

861
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: article was sort of derivative of. But here here's additional

862
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: detail machine translated, of course quote. However, during next tests

863
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, a car that penetrated the Ural

864
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:23,399
Speaker 1: mountains near Nisney Tagil for a distance of ten kilometers

865
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: for unknown reasons, exploded. Since the explosion was nuclear, the

866
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:31,360
Speaker 1: apparatus with the people in it simply evaporated and the

867
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: broken tunnel collapsed. In the press was the name of

868
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: the deceased commander of the battle Mole Colonel Semyon Budnikov.

869
00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 1: But official confirmation of this never sounded. The project was closed,

870
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: all documentary evidence of it was liquidated as if nothing

871
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 1: had ever happened. Very conveniently here right, So all physical

872
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: evidence of this experiment is completely erased from the earth.

873
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,439
Speaker 1: And then it gets even fishier and starts to get

874
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: into territory where I'm wondering who is fooling who? So

875
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: this is again from the Rosy skya Gazetta report explaining

876
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: why the explosion happened to quote or maybe another civilization

877
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 1: exists literally under our feet and the guards did not

878
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: want the Soviet mole to penetrate the forbidden limits. After all,

879
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: the technical characteristics allowed the battle mole to reach the

880
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:24,080
Speaker 1: center of the Earth. Therefore, a unique underground machine was destroyed,

881
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: and the mystery of the longstanding Soviet project is likely

882
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 1: to never be fully revealed. Okay, so the underground civilization

883
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 1: might have sabotaged it. Yeah, that doesn't sound right. So

884
00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:44,360
Speaker 1: there's definitely something wrong with this story. It doesn't necessarily

885
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: mean that all of the reports of historical Soviet battle

886
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: mole development are untrue, though here I'm getting the feeling

887
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: that a lot of these reports may be embellished, and

888
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: this report about the nineteen sixty four vehicle specifically might

889
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: be a complete or near complete fiction. So the next

890
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 1: thing I was looking to was seeing if we can

891
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 1: figure out about mid century Subterraine projects from like contemporaneous sources,

892
00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:10,840
Speaker 1: like was anything published about it at the time that

893
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: I can access in English and understand? And so I

894
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: did come across something this was this was linked through

895
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: another source I found there was a nineteen fifty six,

896
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: actually December thirteenth, nineteen fifty six article in New Scientists

897
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: called Russia's Battle Moles. Okay, now we're dealing with a

898
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: publication we can get behind, I mean to an extent,

899
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:35,240
Speaker 1: Like now, I don't necessarily trust all of the claims

900
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: in this article either, but at least it might give

901
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 1: us a better idea of not necessarily what really happened,

902
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 1: but what ideas were actually being discussed in the nineteen fifties. Uh.

903
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:48,320
Speaker 1: You know, this isn't like a you know, decades later source.

904
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: Now we can find out whether or not the idea

905
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 1: of these machines was actually in the air, regardless of

906
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: whether or not they were actually built, and I will

907
00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: note this is a very early article for new scientists.

908
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 1: It was founded New Scientist I think was founded just

909
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: a month or two before this article was published in

910
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:07,880
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. But it starts off talking about how

911
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: slow and labor intensive the process of tunneling is and

912
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,839
Speaker 1: how great it would be to have a machine that's

913
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: like a mechanical mole or an underground boat that can

914
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: speed up the process of digging tunnels. And then they

915
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: go on to report an unnamed contemporary Russian technical journal

916
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:28,800
Speaker 1: that is describing the attempts of Soviet scientists to build

917
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:32,440
Speaker 1: a machine like this um, something that would be able

918
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: to independently drive around underground boring tunnels. And they corroborate

919
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: the idea that this research is based on biomimicry, the

920
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: bio mimicry of the mammalian mole quote. The investigation of

921
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: moles technique was carried out in the Ural mountains. Local

922
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: hunters taught the Russian scientists how to catch moles. Then

923
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:55,680
Speaker 1: the lengths of the captured moles from tip to tail

924
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 1: were measured. Next, the animals were allowed to burrow and

925
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:01,840
Speaker 1: the duration of their tabsk was timed with a stop watch.

926
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: From the moment they started digging to the moment that

927
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:07,719
Speaker 1: the end of their tails disappeared into the earth. In

928
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,520
Speaker 1: this way, the speed of digging under various conditions was calculated.

929
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 1: In clay, the mole borrowed at a rate of two

930
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four ft per hour and in black

931
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: earth three hundred and sixty one ft per hour. In

932
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 1: some cases even higher speeds were attained. The second part

933
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 1: of the investigation was carried out in the laboratory. A

934
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: box measuring sixteen inches square by eight feet long was used.

935
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: The box was packed with clay soil and arranged in

936
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 1: front of an X ray machine. A mole was placed

937
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: at the front end of the box and it started

938
00:52:38,520 --> 00:52:40,880
Speaker 1: to burrow its way through the soil in the box.

939
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 1: By X ray photography, a record of the moles progress

940
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 1: was obtained, showing the movement of its muscles and skeleton. Okay,

941
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: so this is starting to become actually clear to me now, yeah,

942
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is where we're doing again.

943
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 1: We're talking about biomamicry. Here we say we're talking about uh,

944
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:02,240
Speaker 1: scientists considering a problem, an engineering problem, and in looking

945
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 1: for an answer in um the evolved biology, right so

946
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: they discovered that the mole digs by working its head

947
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: and its paws back and forth along an axis in

948
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 1: the front to to loosen the soil ahead of it,

949
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 1: and then it moves the displaced earth out of the

950
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 1: way and presses it up into the sides of the tunnel,

951
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,240
Speaker 1: sort of packing it against the edges of the tunnel

952
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 1: with its what they call its withers I guess that's

953
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 1: like the back of its neck and upper back area,

954
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: and with its shoulders, and then it continually applies forward

955
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: pressure by digging in and pushing with its hind legs.

956
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 1: And the article claims that this pressing out of the

957
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:45,440
Speaker 1: displaced earth by the strong withers and the shoulder muscles

958
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:48,959
Speaker 1: of the mole is actually the most important discovery here,

959
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 1: because again, one of the biggest problems with with drilling, tunneling, boring,

960
00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, is how to deal

961
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: with the displaced material as you go. Right. The New

962
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 1: Scientist article on quote from the lessons learned with the mole,

963
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:05,920
Speaker 1: The Russians built a mechanical model, followed by a larger

964
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 1: scale machine consisting of a cutter corresponding to the mole's head,

965
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: a worm for ramming loosened earth into the walls of

966
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: the tunnel, corresponding to the withers and propellers corresponding to

967
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:20,240
Speaker 1: the hind legs. In the front part of the body

968
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: of the machine is a powerful cutter made of hard alloy,

969
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 1: behind the four propellers, which push against the walls of

970
00:54:26,480 --> 00:54:29,240
Speaker 1: the tunnel and move the machine forward at a speed

971
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:32,360
Speaker 1: of thirty ft per hour. The cutter rotates at a

972
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 1: speed of three revolutions per minute for use in hard soils.

973
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: The cutter can also be given hammer blows as it rotates.

974
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: Uh and it says yes, this would have needed a

975
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 1: human pilot to steer it. So. The article claims that

976
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: the machine was built and tested in the Ural Mountains

977
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 1: in nineteen six, and Soviet engineers have it says, made

978
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:56,760
Speaker 1: improvements in its speed and size since then. The article

979
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: does not really even though it's called battle mole. The

980
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: article does not you mentioned military applications. Instead, it emphasizes

981
00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 1: how useful this kind of device would be for the

982
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: kind of tunneling we were talking about earlier, like for

983
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: mining or for urban engineering. One thought that comes to

984
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:15,439
Speaker 1: mind thinking about this is if well, I mean, first

985
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 1: of all, if you wanted to solve this engineering problem,

986
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: like looking to the mole is is is certainly one

987
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:23,439
Speaker 1: way to to to try and answer those questions, even

988
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:26,120
Speaker 1: if things might not scale up all the way. But

989
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:28,920
Speaker 1: in terms of a warfare scenario, it seems like this

990
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: is the sort of thing that, if you could pull

991
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 1: it off, would be very advantageous in older modes of warfare.

992
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 1: You know, like if you're dealing with with siege warfare,

993
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 1: having a battle mole could really turn the tide. Perhaps

994
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 1: even in trench warfare, you know where you have you know,

995
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 1: these hard fronts, uh, in these Noman lands. You know

996
00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 1: that I could see that being a factor. But it

997
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 1: is certainly I don't know, people may disagree with me,

998
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 1: but it seems like once you get into the World

999
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: War two era and the post for War two era,

1000
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 1: the usefulness of this kind of a device, even if

1001
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 1: you could pull it off, becomes um uh, you know,

1002
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:11,399
Speaker 1: less obvious. Yeah, it's I mean, it seems much more

1003
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,360
Speaker 1: useful in the world that doesn't already depend on air power.

1004
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:17,799
Speaker 1: You've already conquered the skies at this point. Now you

1005
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: you could say that well, maybe the maybe an underground

1006
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:26,320
Speaker 1: mole at least hypothetically could be more stealthy than air power.

1007
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we have stealth bombers and

1008
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: stuff now, but um, well, you know, it reminds me

1009
00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 1: of the super secret weapon um of the Byzantines, the

1010
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:39,279
Speaker 1: Greek Fire. We did an episode on that, and one

1011
00:56:39,280 --> 00:56:41,439
Speaker 1: of the things that came out about it was that

1012
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:44,840
Speaker 1: it was it was useful if you used it every

1013
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: once in a while under very specific circumstances. But if

1014
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:52,520
Speaker 1: people were expecting it, uh, then it lost its usefulness. Yeah,

1015
00:56:52,680 --> 00:56:54,720
Speaker 1: it's like more useful as a kind of shock weapon

1016
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: than as like a regular mainstay of how you win battles.

1017
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:01,560
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I want kind of put a bow

1018
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:05,319
Speaker 1: on this issue of the Soviet atomic battle mole. There

1019
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 1: appears to be a very good, skeptical and well sided

1020
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:12,000
Speaker 1: dive into the issue of the atomic subterine from way

1021
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,399
Speaker 1: back in twelve at the Atomic Sky's blog. And it's

1022
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: called the atomic subterine. Uh. The author of this blog,

1023
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: I think offers a very reasonable assessment of this weird

1024
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: and murky subject, in addition to a very good right

1025
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: up in general of atomic subterine ideas as they were

1026
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:30,680
Speaker 1: explored in the United States, which Robert, I know you're

1027
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: going to get into in a minute here. But the

1028
00:57:33,200 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: author here he just goes by Mark, but he acknowledges

1029
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: the claims we've talked about so far regarding the alleged

1030
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: Soviet atomic battle mole, and he concludes that there probably

1031
00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:46,880
Speaker 1: was a real Russian program in the nineteen fifties to

1032
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: develop a conventional chemical powered tunneling machine known as an

1033
00:57:51,720 --> 00:57:55,920
Speaker 1: underground boat. But that the part about the atomic battle

1034
00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 1: mole and krutz Chev's attack plan, uh you know, attack

1035
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,600
Speaker 1: the US from below, that this is not just untrue

1036
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:06,720
Speaker 1: but possibly a prank gone wrong. Uh So I'm gonna

1037
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: read from his in note here quote I strongly suspect

1038
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 1: that the supposed nuclear powered prototype was an April fools

1039
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:20,120
Speaker 1: hoax by the Russian language Popular Mechanics magazine. The first

1040
00:58:20,200 --> 00:58:22,760
Speaker 1: mention of it I can find online comes from the

1041
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: April issue of that magazine, and the diagram they include

1042
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:31,760
Speaker 1: incorporates what appeared to be mechanical tentacles. In any case, however,

1043
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: neither of these were a subterine, but rather tunnel boring machines,

1044
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: And based on everything I've read, I think he's very

1045
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:41,960
Speaker 1: possibly correct in fact, I might even say probably, and

1046
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: if so, this would be interesting because we'd be again

1047
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,680
Speaker 1: in territory I mentioned this earlier, like the territory of

1048
00:58:48,720 --> 00:58:52,080
Speaker 1: the Edison murder confession that we talked about in the

1049
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 1: Louis Le Prince episode of Invention, where something originally intended

1050
00:58:56,880 --> 00:59:00,919
Speaker 1: as what I think was a non malicious, explicit explicitly

1051
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 1: fictional document is later misinterpreted by a bunch of other

1052
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:08,919
Speaker 1: writers as a legitimate news report. And this is why

1053
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,400
Speaker 1: April Fool's articles should be exiled to Siberia forever, like

1054
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: no more of them ever. I agree. And on that note,

1055
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:18,720
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. But when we come back,

1056
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:24,200
Speaker 1: we'll discuss uh some of the US based research into

1057
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 1: the idea of a subterarine. Alright, we're back, alright. So

1058
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: we think that these reports about the Soviet atomic subterarine

1059
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 1: and the the attack America from below planned that this

1060
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: is probably not true. It's you know, it may be

1061
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: based on some actual research that took place, but the

1062
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: the overall story is not real and this thing was

1063
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:48,720
Speaker 1: never actually built or tested in the Earl Mountains, at

1064
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: least as best we can tell. Um. But that doesn't

1065
00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 1: mean that the idea of an atomic subtarine was never

1066
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:58,880
Speaker 1: seriously investigated at all. That's right, So I I too

1067
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: was looking at that Atomic Sky's blog post, and I

1068
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:07,360
Speaker 1: was also looking at a piece by Steve wentz Uh

1069
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:10,640
Speaker 1: in the National Interest that that also cites that particular

1070
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: blog post. UM. And yeah, the United States also looked

1071
01:00:14,680 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 1: into this technology, into this idea of a subterarine uh

1072
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 1: specifically UM. During the nineteen seventies, Lost Alamos National Laboratory

1073
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: explored the use of nuclear of a nuclear powered subterarine.

1074
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 1: Engineer Bob Porter was allegedly inspired by at Earth's Core

1075
01:00:32,120 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 1: by the by the Boroughs novel after noting the three

1076
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:39,760
Speaker 1: thousand degrees integrade temperatures of a prototype reactor in the fifties,

1077
01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: and then in one experiment by Potter showed that this

1078
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:47,920
Speaker 1: sort of drilling could be possible. The resulting project was

1079
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:51,240
Speaker 1: intended to produce a vehicle quote capable of penetrating the

1080
01:00:51,240 --> 01:00:54,680
Speaker 1: Earth to depths of ten kilometers to extend geological and

1081
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:58,919
Speaker 1: geophysical exploration into the Earth's mantle. Now, the important idea

1082
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 1: here is that this sub tureen envisioned by Potter here

1083
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:05,640
Speaker 1: would not drill just through traditional boring like a you know,

1084
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: a drill bit or a bunch of drill bits that

1085
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 1: it would primarily work through melting, right, using the superheating

1086
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 1: from either a nuclear or an electrical source to to

1087
01:01:16,800 --> 01:01:20,280
Speaker 1: superheat something like some tongue sten or something that would

1088
01:01:20,280 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 1: melt the rock away and allow you to just kind

1089
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: of like go through it like a hot knife through butter. Yeah,

1090
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:28,480
Speaker 1: in a way, it would be swimming through the earth.

1091
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 1: It would be creating its own lava tube and sliding

1092
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: through it. Uh yeah, So I mean it's it's an

1093
01:01:35,120 --> 01:01:40,480
Speaker 1: ingenious solution, you know, um or potential solution. So apparently,

1094
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 1: first of all, I do want to like you, like

1095
01:01:42,840 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, I would I would encourage everyone to

1096
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 1: check out that Atomic Sky's blog posts because he also

1097
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: goes into a little more detail about this supposed it's

1098
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:54,000
Speaker 1: a scenario where they were talking about it at at

1099
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:58,080
Speaker 1: outlaw luncheon or at a diner or something. Yeah, bar

1100
01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:01,560
Speaker 1: and um, and it just kind of the idea of

1101
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 1: it was got picked up by was it a it

1102
01:02:04,840 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: was a politician this politician. Yeah, the the scientists from

1103
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,840
Speaker 1: the lab. On Friday, we're hanging out just like having

1104
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,440
Speaker 1: drinks and talking about ideas that occurred to them in

1105
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: a some politician I don't know if it was a

1106
01:02:15,720 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 1: US rap or a New Mexico reps. Some politician legislator

1107
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,960
Speaker 1: walks in and overhears them talking about this subterrane idea

1108
01:02:23,320 --> 01:02:25,720
Speaker 1: and gets really excited about it. Yeah, he's like, that

1109
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: sounds great, let's fund it. And so they did and

1110
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:33,400
Speaker 1: got funded. Um. So, apparently, in addition to mining, tunneling,

1111
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:37,200
Speaker 1: and exploration, the project also entailed this idea that the

1112
01:02:37,240 --> 01:02:40,840
Speaker 1: tech could be used to create storage cavities in the

1113
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:43,160
Speaker 1: Earth in the deep perth, not only for toxic and

1114
01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:45,919
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. And we've discussed on the show before about

1115
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,360
Speaker 1: out the the the deep geologic isolation of nuclear waste

1116
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:52,520
Speaker 1: is actually a you know, a really supported idea. But

1117
01:02:52,600 --> 01:02:55,960
Speaker 1: they also got into this idea of how putting pressurized

1118
01:02:56,040 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 1: gases in these storage cavities that could then be unleashed

1119
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:04,080
Speaker 1: to drive turbines for energy. It's an interesting idea. Yeah,

1120
01:03:04,080 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: I would not have thought of that, but yeah, that's

1121
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So um. According to again that National Interest

1122
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:16,200
Speaker 1: article and the Atomic Skuy's blog post, uh, the everything

1123
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:18,640
Speaker 1: kind of came together like this. So in the National

1124
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:21,520
Speaker 1: Science Foundation funded a full scale study of the nuclear

1125
01:03:21,520 --> 01:03:26,600
Speaker 1: Subterraine and then a small scale electrically power prototype drills

1126
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:29,280
Speaker 1: were built and one was used by the National Park

1127
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:33,600
Speaker 1: Service to drill drainage holes at Bandalier National Monument near

1128
01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 1: Los Alamos. The rock penetrator's lack of vibration this was

1129
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:43,080
Speaker 1: apparently essential to preserving an archaeological site close by while

1130
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: the holes were being drilled. Yeah, and this, uh, this

1131
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:48,720
Speaker 1: emphasizes again, like some of the advantages that you would

1132
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: have if you're just moving through rock primarily by melting

1133
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,520
Speaker 1: rather than standard grinding drilling stuff. Also, it's like you

1134
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: don't produce a lot of dust and pollutants from the process.

1135
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:02,680
Speaker 1: There are many ways that melting down into the earth

1136
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 1: is a quite elegant solution for tunneling. Yeah, I saw

1137
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:08,560
Speaker 1: this referenced in some of the other like tunneling and

1138
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:11,720
Speaker 1: boring articles. I was coming across the idea of of

1139
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: creating a tunnel in your wake that is like lined

1140
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:17,960
Speaker 1: in glass. You know, again, it's like a lava tube.

1141
01:04:18,280 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: And therefore, you know, you wouldn't necessarily have this issue

1142
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:23,880
Speaker 1: of Okay, we have all this leftover stone, what are

1143
01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:26,440
Speaker 1: we gonna do? How's the how's our subterarine, gonna then

1144
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 1: turn that into blocks to reinforce the wreckage it leaves

1145
01:04:30,520 --> 01:04:33,400
Speaker 1: in its wake. So the sources here they point out

1146
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:37,400
Speaker 1: that the according to the designs to cutting head designs

1147
01:04:37,400 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 1: were looked at one for common rock and one for

1148
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:42,760
Speaker 1: hard rock. So you had a traditional rotary cutting head

1149
01:04:43,400 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 1: with the cylindrical rock melters, and then you also had

1150
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:50,320
Speaker 1: one with dozens of nuclear powered needle pros um, which

1151
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:52,280
Speaker 1: is a pretty crazy idea, Like these are in a way,

1152
01:04:52,320 --> 01:04:54,840
Speaker 1: these are like little tentacles. Are almost like the tentacle, uh,

1153
01:04:54,880 --> 01:04:57,120
Speaker 1: you know the head of the star faced mole right

1154
01:04:57,320 --> 01:04:59,400
Speaker 1: where they kind of dig in and then but then

1155
01:04:59,440 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 1: they melt right. And this again, it wouldn't have necessarily

1156
01:05:02,920 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 1: like a conical tip. It might be more like a

1157
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:08,640
Speaker 1: flat disc type shape with the melting elements and then

1158
01:05:08,640 --> 01:05:12,160
Speaker 1: the drilling elements. Yeah, really more in line with traditional

1159
01:05:12,200 --> 01:05:15,560
Speaker 1: TBMs in that in that respect, um. And then they

1160
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: also mentioned that the probes would would would unevenly heat

1161
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:21,200
Speaker 1: the rock face, causing it to crack and crumble, so

1162
01:05:21,240 --> 01:05:24,600
Speaker 1: that would be an un aspect of it as well. Um.

1163
01:05:24,680 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I mentioned the glass walls. But so

1164
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:30,320
Speaker 1: ultimately the project transfers to the Department of Energy in

1165
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 1: five and from there it apparently mostly vanished. It would

1166
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:37,120
Speaker 1: pop up again in the nineteen eighties as a possible

1167
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:39,760
Speaker 1: way to tunnel for bases on the Moon. And this

1168
01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:43,000
Speaker 1: was apparently this has six and this was a proposal

1169
01:05:43,040 --> 01:05:45,920
Speaker 1: by one Dr John Rowley. Yeah, well and and two

1170
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:49,520
Speaker 1: other co authors. Yeah, and they published a paper about, uh,

1171
01:05:49,600 --> 01:05:51,960
Speaker 1: excavating tunnels on the surface of the Moon to shield

1172
01:05:52,000 --> 01:05:55,240
Speaker 1: colonists from the radiation that you would be exposed to

1173
01:05:55,280 --> 01:05:57,000
Speaker 1: if you were trying to create a nuclear base or

1174
01:05:57,080 --> 01:05:59,800
Speaker 1: not a nuclear gray sorry, a moon base. Uh. This

1175
01:05:59,880 --> 01:06:03,160
Speaker 1: is very common problem when people talk about making moon bases, right,

1176
01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:06,320
Speaker 1: You've basically just got to get underground somehow. And they

1177
01:06:06,360 --> 01:06:09,680
Speaker 1: called this idea not a subterine, but a sub selline

1178
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:13,760
Speaker 1: because it's yeah, well, I think that that in and

1179
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 1: of itself is a it's a pretty um elegant idea. Um.

1180
01:06:17,400 --> 01:06:21,400
Speaker 1: You know, you can certainly imagine your lander delivers uh,

1181
01:06:21,520 --> 01:06:24,840
Speaker 1: the the the subterine or subsiline vehicle and then like

1182
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:29,600
Speaker 1: that is necessary to burrow to safety. Um. Yeah. So

1183
01:06:29,880 --> 01:06:33,360
Speaker 1: in that Atomic Sky's post, Mark also touches on a

1184
01:06:33,400 --> 01:06:37,360
Speaker 1: weaponized concept that was discussed to use. The technology this

1185
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:41,000
Speaker 1: would have been the radio isotope powered thermal penetrator or

1186
01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:45,040
Speaker 1: the the rip TP, in which the machine quote would

1187
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: form a bubble of magna in hot high pressure gases

1188
01:06:48,480 --> 01:06:52,080
Speaker 1: behind itself when it nears the underground base that is,

1189
01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:54,720
Speaker 1: you know, presumably the target here, the pressure of the

1190
01:06:54,760 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: gas and magma would burst the base walls explosively destroying

1191
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: the facilities near the breach through blast and fire. WHOA.

1192
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:06,240
Speaker 1: On that blog post, he includes some black and white

1193
01:07:06,960 --> 01:07:10,000
Speaker 1: too illustrations of what these concepts would have looked like.

1194
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:13,200
Speaker 1: You get to see those u those needles at the front.

1195
01:07:13,360 --> 01:07:16,640
Speaker 1: There's also this image of a tunnel that has been

1196
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: board of what this would look like, this kind of

1197
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:21,880
Speaker 1: glass line tunnel, and it has kind of it looks

1198
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:24,760
Speaker 1: kind of like a colonosphy um makes you know it,

1199
01:07:24,760 --> 01:07:28,440
Speaker 1: it has kind of a colonic appearance. Uh Now. Another

1200
01:07:28,480 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 1: one of the advantages that that they talk about with

1201
01:07:31,960 --> 01:07:36,160
Speaker 1: respect to the rock melting versus just the traditional drill

1202
01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 1: type excavator is that a rock melting model for a

1203
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:43,960
Speaker 1: subtrain would allow you to to potentially create a tunnel

1204
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:46,520
Speaker 1: of any shape you wanted. It wouldn't have to be

1205
01:07:46,600 --> 01:07:50,280
Speaker 1: a circular tube, it could be square, it could be triangular.

1206
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:52,880
Speaker 1: You know, you can do anything interesting, you know, like

1207
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:56,160
Speaker 1: especially if you're if you're trying to create a space

1208
01:07:56,240 --> 01:07:59,120
Speaker 1: for your moon base upon arriving, you know, for that,

1209
01:07:59,200 --> 01:08:03,880
Speaker 1: you might want a large cube cubical space, uh, underneath

1210
01:08:03,920 --> 01:08:06,600
Speaker 1: the lunar surface, as opposed to just a whole bunch

1211
01:08:06,640 --> 01:08:09,160
Speaker 1: of tunnels to live in. Right. So I don't know. Yeah,

1212
01:08:09,280 --> 01:08:13,160
Speaker 1: the rock melting subsilene, I'm not sure that idea is

1213
01:08:13,240 --> 01:08:15,960
Speaker 1: forever done with. Maybe that'll come back someday. Yeah, I

1214
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:17,840
Speaker 1: don't know, because we've also we've discussed on the show

1215
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 1: before how there are concepts of building such bases and

1216
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:24,720
Speaker 1: craters so you know, and naturally occurring um places to

1217
01:08:24,800 --> 01:08:28,280
Speaker 1: hide in the lunar surface. So so I don't know, Um, yeah,

1218
01:08:28,280 --> 01:08:31,320
Speaker 1: I guess it. Basically, we kind of leave this episode

1219
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:33,840
Speaker 1: with still a number of questions, you know, like what

1220
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:37,479
Speaker 1: what what is the future of boring and tunneling here

1221
01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:40,120
Speaker 1: on the Earth or even on other you know, on

1222
01:08:40,240 --> 01:08:43,000
Speaker 1: moons and planets that we might go to, and and

1223
01:08:43,040 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 1: what is that going to look like? Are we going

1224
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:47,519
Speaker 1: to actually see subterines in the future, you know, I

1225
01:08:48,680 --> 01:08:50,880
Speaker 1: it's it's it's hard to say, but it seems like

1226
01:08:51,040 --> 01:08:53,920
Speaker 1: some of the tunnel boring advances that are taking place

1227
01:08:53,960 --> 01:08:58,080
Speaker 1: today are encouraging of that. Um I don't know if

1228
01:08:58,080 --> 01:09:02,519
Speaker 1: they're gonna let um you U musque traffic nuclear reactor

1229
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:04,880
Speaker 1: to one of these things anytime soon. But well, that's

1230
01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:08,200
Speaker 1: another interesting thing to point out, which is that, um So,

1231
01:09:08,240 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 1: obviously there are lots of safety concerns whenever you have

1232
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:13,080
Speaker 1: a nuclear powered vehicle. I mean, this is the case

1233
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 1: with all of the nuclear powered submarines and everything. But fortunately,

1234
01:09:17,520 --> 01:09:21,439
Speaker 1: I would say nuclear power safety concerns are going to

1235
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:25,200
Speaker 1: be lesser with a device that's being used to tunnel

1236
01:09:25,240 --> 01:09:27,360
Speaker 1: deep underground than they would be with a lot of

1237
01:09:27,400 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 1: other kinds of vehicles, right, true. I mean it's like

1238
01:09:30,800 --> 01:09:35,599
Speaker 1: if it's if it fails, it's down there, right, you know,

1239
01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:39,439
Speaker 1: not to say that that that an accidental nuclear detonation

1240
01:09:39,439 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: even underground is ideal, but I don't you know, there

1241
01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:46,480
Speaker 1: are it's better than other places I'm saying, like relative

1242
01:09:46,520 --> 01:09:49,800
Speaker 1: to an airplane or something. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I

1243
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,160
Speaker 1: guess another thing we should quickly acknowledge is that the

1244
01:09:52,200 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 1: Internet is also full of claims that there are subterraines

1245
01:09:57,479 --> 01:10:00,240
Speaker 1: all over the place. They're making tunnels under the whole

1246
01:10:00,320 --> 01:10:02,720
Speaker 1: world as we speak, that are you know, that are

1247
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,439
Speaker 1: full of like the the Illuminati, warriors and everything like that.

1248
01:10:06,600 --> 01:10:10,639
Speaker 1: It's I would say subtrains and underground tunnels are a

1249
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:15,479
Speaker 1: very common trope of conspiracy theories. And oh yeah, I

1250
01:10:15,520 --> 01:10:19,960
Speaker 1: wonder why that is. Why is it that specifically underground

1251
01:10:20,200 --> 01:10:25,599
Speaker 1: enclosures are like such a common image in conspiracy theory

1252
01:10:25,640 --> 01:10:30,559
Speaker 1: thinking is like underground bunkers, hidden underground bases, tunnels, there's

1253
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 1: always tunnels. What why is that? Well, I mean, I

1254
01:10:33,400 --> 01:10:35,680
Speaker 1: think part of it is that, I mean, these are

1255
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:38,920
Speaker 1: really cool ideas, and I think a lot of conspiracy

1256
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 1: thinking does get into areas of taking things that are

1257
01:10:42,439 --> 01:10:45,719
Speaker 1: really cool and taking them too far, you know, taking

1258
01:10:45,760 --> 01:10:49,120
Speaker 1: them too far into an area where you you want

1259
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:51,880
Speaker 1: to believe them so badly, and then you deal with

1260
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:55,760
Speaker 1: the ramifications of believing that, you know, because it's interesting,

1261
01:10:55,840 --> 01:10:58,680
Speaker 1: it's therefore true. Yeah, Like, yeah, the idea of the

1262
01:10:58,680 --> 01:11:02,040
Speaker 1: hollow earth, that's it's a very fun concept. I I

1263
01:11:02,120 --> 01:11:06,920
Speaker 1: love reading about how Edgar Rice Burrows constructed this this world.

1264
01:11:07,479 --> 01:11:09,960
Speaker 1: But if you start buying into that concept, there's a

1265
01:11:10,000 --> 01:11:12,799
Speaker 1: whole lot of baggage that comes with it. And and likewise,

1266
01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:15,240
Speaker 1: if yeah, if you if you want to believe submarines

1267
01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:17,000
Speaker 1: are real, and you know they're out there in the

1268
01:11:17,040 --> 01:11:19,439
Speaker 1: world burrowing tunnels, and what are they doing for Whom

1269
01:11:19,439 --> 01:11:22,840
Speaker 1: are they burrowing these tunnels? And what are the results? Uh? Well,

1270
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:27,400
Speaker 1: I know the answer. It's for Lord kin Boat. Sorry

1271
01:11:27,439 --> 01:11:29,280
Speaker 1: that maybe in Next Files right, Oh, I just remember

1272
01:11:29,360 --> 01:11:31,720
Speaker 1: you're not the Next Files person. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I

1273
01:11:31,720 --> 01:11:34,320
Speaker 1: was struggling with that reference. Whose Lord kin Boat. Oh

1274
01:11:34,400 --> 01:11:36,800
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's the Lord of the Underground Realm

1275
01:11:36,840 --> 01:11:38,800
Speaker 1: from Jose Chung's from Outer Space. It's one of the

1276
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:41,080
Speaker 1: best episodes of all time. Oh yeah, you've You've reckoned.

1277
01:11:41,080 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: I need to watch that one someday. He ends up.

1278
01:11:43,560 --> 01:11:46,639
Speaker 1: Lord Kinboat reveals himself to a character who is named

1279
01:11:46,680 --> 01:11:51,360
Speaker 1: after Rocky Ericsson and who who gets a visit from

1280
01:11:51,479 --> 01:11:54,080
Speaker 1: Jesse Ventura as one of the Men in Black. It's

1281
01:11:54,120 --> 01:11:58,559
Speaker 1: just it's it's NonStop hits, all right. I need to

1282
01:11:58,640 --> 01:12:02,120
Speaker 1: check that out. Well, um, well, this has been a

1283
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:04,120
Speaker 1: fun one. I feel like there have to be some

1284
01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:07,679
Speaker 1: really cool examples of subterarines and fiction that we haven't covered,

1285
01:12:08,439 --> 01:12:11,160
Speaker 1: and you know, if anyone out there is is more

1286
01:12:11,439 --> 01:12:14,960
Speaker 1: versed in even the conspiracy theory realm of subterarines, I

1287
01:12:15,040 --> 01:12:17,280
Speaker 1: mean I'd love to hear about it. Uh, you know,

1288
01:12:17,320 --> 01:12:21,320
Speaker 1: like I say, the idea of secret underground bases and

1289
01:12:21,720 --> 01:12:25,439
Speaker 1: tunneling vehicles connecting them all like that's that's uh, it's

1290
01:12:25,479 --> 01:12:28,280
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty fun soundings, as long as it doesn't

1291
01:12:28,360 --> 01:12:32,400
Speaker 1: end up obscuring your understanding of reality. If you can't

1292
01:12:32,400 --> 01:12:34,559
Speaker 1: get him out of your mind, write a screenplay, don't

1293
01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:39,080
Speaker 1: post on the on the forums. But that being said,

1294
01:12:39,120 --> 01:12:43,240
Speaker 1: like the real the reality of like TBM technology and

1295
01:12:43,479 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 1: and the kind of work that's going on with the

1296
01:12:44,920 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 1: boring company like that, and of it's in and of

1297
01:12:47,040 --> 01:12:50,519
Speaker 1: itself is really exciting. So um yeah, there's there's plenty

1298
01:12:50,560 --> 01:12:52,559
Speaker 1: of of great stuff to go around just within the

1299
01:12:52,560 --> 01:12:55,519
Speaker 1: realm of truth here totally all right. In the meantime,

1300
01:12:55,560 --> 01:12:57,200
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to other episodes of

1301
01:12:57,200 --> 01:12:59,360
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, you know where to find

1302
01:12:59,439 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 1: us that wherever you happen to get your podcasts and

1303
01:13:02,520 --> 01:13:05,680
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just rate, review and subscribe.

1304
01:13:05,960 --> 01:13:07,599
Speaker 1: Those are just simple things you can do to help

1305
01:13:07,600 --> 01:13:10,120
Speaker 1: out the show. Huge thanks as always to our excellent

1306
01:13:10,160 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

1307
01:13:13,120 --> 01:13:15,280
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

1308
01:13:15,320 --> 01:13:17,280
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1309
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:19,559
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, you can email us at

1310
01:13:19,680 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

1311
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:32,240
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

1312
01:13:32,600 --> 01:13:34,600
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart radio, this is the

1313
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:37,600
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to

1314
01:13:37,640 --> 01:13:47,559
Speaker 1: your favorite shows