Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This is our episode on Subterranes.
Speaker 1: It originally aired June four. I say, let's dig right in.
Speaker 1: I recall as it were, but yesterday, the night of
Speaker 1: that momentous occasion upon which we were to test the
Speaker 1: practicality of that wondrous invention. It was near midnight when
Speaker 1: we repaired to the lofty tower in which Perry had
Speaker 1: constructed his iron mold, as he was wont to call
Speaker 1: the thing, the great nose rested upon the bare earth
Speaker 1: of the floor. We passed through the doors into the
Speaker 1: outer jacket and secured them, and then passing on into
Speaker 1: the cabin, which contained the controlling mechanism within the inner tube,
Speaker 1: switched on the electric lights. Perry looked to his generator,
Speaker 1: to the great tanks that held the life giving chemicals
Speaker 1: with which he was to manufacture fresh air to a
Speaker 1: place that which we consumed and breathing, to his instruments
Speaker 1: for recording temperature, speed, distance, and for examining the materials
Speaker 1: through which we were to pass. He tested his steering device,
Speaker 1: and overlooked the mighty cogs which transmitted its marvelous velocity
Speaker 1: to the giant drill at the nose of his strange craft.
Speaker 1: Our seats into which we strapped ourselves were so arranged
Speaker 1: upon transverse bars that we would be upright whether the
Speaker 1: craft were plowing her way downward into the bowels of
Speaker 1: the Earth, or running horizontally along some great seam of coal,
Speaker 1: or rising vertically toward the surface. Again. At length, all
Speaker 1: was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer. For a
Speaker 1: moment we were silent, and then the old man's hand
Speaker 1: grasped the starting lever. There was a frightful roaring beneath us.
Speaker 1: The giant frame trembled and vibrated. There was a rush
Speaker 1: of sound as the loose earth passed up through the
Speaker 1: hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be
Speaker 1: deposited in our wake, and we were off. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your mind production of my Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was that
Speaker 1: little coal. Reading there was from at the Earth's Core
Speaker 1: by Edgar Rice Burrows published in nineteen Fourteen's that the
Speaker 1: one where Tarzan goes to the center of the Earth. No,
Speaker 1: and I know you're joking, but Tarzan does go to
Speaker 1: the center of the Earth in a follow up novel
Speaker 1: to this particular novel. Because this was this this kick
Speaker 1: started a series that dealt with essentially like an inner world,
Speaker 1: a hollow Earth environment. This was the the Pellucidar series. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Tarzan, I think, goes to Pellucidar and a follow
Speaker 1: up and we'll we'll talk more about Pellucidar here in
Speaker 1: in a few minutes. But the reason that we're we're
Speaker 1: kicked off with this reading is that this is this
Speaker 1: is pivotal. This is uh, this is what is being
Speaker 1: described here. The iron Mole is a subterarine, right, So
Speaker 1: that was not a mistake. You weren't trying to say submarine.
Speaker 1: That is a subterin as in beneath the earth, as
Speaker 1: in the same way that a submarine is beneath the ocean.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about today is a submarine for
Speaker 1: the ground. Yes, like submarines, but underground some sort of vehicle,
Speaker 1: uh that has some sort of drilling or melting apparatus.
Speaker 1: Um on its front end, or perhaps on the rear
Speaker 1: end as well, then enables it to travel through the
Speaker 1: earth to so to burrow through even solid rock, as
Speaker 1: if it were some sort of giant worm making its
Speaker 1: way through the ground. Now, you might not have heard
Speaker 1: of a subdarine before, but I bet you have seen
Speaker 1: one in science fiction. Uh So, before we dive into
Speaker 1: the science and the actual and in some cases alleged
Speaker 1: technological history of the subterarine, I thought we might run
Speaker 1: through some fun examples from film and TV, and then
Speaker 1: we'll also come back around to Edgar Rice Burrows again
Speaker 1: before we venture into the real world. Now, Robert, right
Speaker 1: when I jumped in the video chat today, you and
Speaker 1: Seth we're talking about the like seventy thousand episodes of
Speaker 1: the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated TV series, And immediately
Speaker 1: it came to mind, like, oh, yes, didn't Shredder or
Speaker 1: was it Shredder or was it Krang one of the
Speaker 1: villains rides around in a giant underground drill in that show? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was chatting with Seth about this because
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was the first time I
Speaker 1: saw a sci fi vision of a subterarine, but I
Speaker 1: have a very clear memory of those, um, but believe
Speaker 1: it was the especially the arcade Beat Him Up teena
Speaker 1: teenage muting Ninja Turtles game. I think it was a
Speaker 1: good week Economy, right, maybe it was Konami maybe. Anyway,
Speaker 1: remember the arcade version was a lot better than the
Speaker 1: port to the nes Oh yeah, Yeah. The arcade version
Speaker 1: was really kind of beautiful, and I've seen some more
Speaker 1: recent ports of it, uh that that you know, really
Speaker 1: really felt all right, you know, I mean it was
Speaker 1: a total quarter guzzler. It was just how many how
Speaker 1: many quarters can you put into this machine at your
Speaker 1: local pizza hut in order to beat it? But it
Speaker 1: was it was so much fun and uh. And one
Speaker 1: of the things was that frequently the boss at the
Speaker 1: end of the level would arrive via a transport module
Speaker 1: this thing that looked like a rocket, except the cone
Speaker 1: of the rocket is a big drill and it comes
Speaker 1: burrowing up through the earth and then it opens up
Speaker 1: and here's the bad guy for you to fight. Here's
Speaker 1: Bebop the punk bore yeah or yeah, or it's Shredder
Speaker 1: or it's Kran himself and they're coming up. The idea
Speaker 1: is that. Of course, Krang's layer is the subterranean techno dome,
Speaker 1: this big, uh you know, domed vehicle base that is
Speaker 1: often like in the molten core of the Earth, and
Speaker 1: they have to send up their their murmid and there
Speaker 1: their foot soldiers up to the surface in these specialized subterranes.
Speaker 1: And is that the techno dome or the techno drome.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was like the like videodrome. We
Speaker 1: have just received an update from Seth. It is in
Speaker 1: fact techno drome um, which can be a little confused.
Speaker 1: I think I trans figured into my head because it
Speaker 1: is a a like is spherical looking structure it had
Speaker 1: It looks kind of like a dome. It is a
Speaker 1: technodrome whatever that is actually supposed to be. You would
Speaker 1: imagine that the interior has a domed ceiling, perhaps painted
Speaker 1: by michel Angelo or something. Is. Yes, it's a picture
Speaker 1: of of crying and shredder about to have this divine
Speaker 1: type yeah, crying reaching out. Yeah. So there's the series,
Speaker 1: which which certainly Seth can attest to and I have
Speaker 1: memories of. It was a lot of fun and had
Speaker 1: these vehicles in there as well. There was even a
Speaker 1: toy version of it. I included a picture of this
Speaker 1: for you, Joe. I don't know if you remember this
Speaker 1: or not from your the toys of your childhood, but
Speaker 1: it is a more ornate version of the subterarine from
Speaker 1: the cartoon. I remember it, but I didn't have it
Speaker 1: that this was an object of coveting for me. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I I remember for me personally teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
Speaker 1: the cartoon, and just the overall like sensation of the
Speaker 1: toys and all. It came around at this weird time
Speaker 1: where I still very much. I certainly watched all these
Speaker 1: shows and I wanted to have the figures. I wanted
Speaker 1: to have these action figures, especially Shredder and Crying. But
Speaker 1: there was this kind of feeling at that point that
Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to have toys anymore, like you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to enjoy this stuff, which is total b s.
Speaker 1: And I'm thankfully snapped out of that and have spent
Speaker 1: the rest of my adult life, you know, realizing that
Speaker 1: action figures are awesome and and I should buy them
Speaker 1: for myself or my child. It's it's that horrible middle period.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like with movies too, It's like
Speaker 1: how Roger Ebert talks about how you know, when you
Speaker 1: were little kid, Gammera is great because it's a rocket
Speaker 1: powered turtle. And then you get older and more mature,
Speaker 1: and you think this is stupid because it's not realistic.
Speaker 1: And then you get even more mature than that, and
Speaker 1: then you realize Gammera is great again. Yes, and Gamera
Speaker 1: is great. Um and and and I and I will
Speaker 1: say that you look back at Teenage Ninja Turtles that
Speaker 1: had so many crazy, just gonzo elements in it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was fabulous. I mean you had this armored Ninja
Speaker 1: and he's with there with an alien brain that's in
Speaker 1: this giant android body, and they're sending Ninja's up to
Speaker 1: the surface in these crazy drill submarines to fight. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know obviously teenage mutant Ninja Turtles, which is in
Speaker 1: itself such a strange concept. So that was one subterarine
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people probably remember. Older
Speaker 1: viewers or certainly viewers who caught this show like on
Speaker 1: Sci Fi Channel in reruns, might remember the Thunderbirds, you know,
Speaker 1: like Thunderbirds or go, Well, this was the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: puppet show with these very signature looking characters. Um that
Speaker 1: I understand. I was reading that they were partially inspiration
Speaker 1: for the animation style on the long running Star Wars
Speaker 1: clone Word War series that I'm watching now with my
Speaker 1: son Um. But in this ES show, the characters had
Speaker 1: these crazy vehicles and one of them was the Thunderbird too,
Speaker 1: and it featured all these different pods and one of
Speaker 1: them was called the Mole, and it was a drill
Speaker 1: headed vehicle then enabled the team to venture into the Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: this establishes a theme that's going to continue throughout the episode,
Speaker 1: which is that there is a lack of imagination among
Speaker 1: the people who create under underground drilling machines for science
Speaker 1: fiction because it's always a mole. It's always a darn mole. Like,
Speaker 1: why can't you think of some kind of other burrowing creature.
Speaker 1: Why isn't it a sicilian or or something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, come on, how many moles can
Speaker 1: there be? Or even the naked mole rat that's close enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many other ways to go, but everyone
Speaker 1: comes back to the mole. And and that also includes
Speaker 1: picks are because I know a number of certainly, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're too young to remember a teenage Mt Ninja,
Speaker 1: Turtles or certainly Thunderbirds, then perhaps you remember The Incredibles.
Speaker 1: At the very end of this film, we're introduced to
Speaker 1: a new supervillain called the under Miner, who arrives in
Speaker 1: an epic u uh, an epic subterine with a drill
Speaker 1: this time on either end. Uh. It's a fun scene,
Speaker 1: just kind of like a way to close out the film. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a bigger character in the sequel. Have seen I
Speaker 1: have seen the sequel. Uh. Yeah, he plays a larger
Speaker 1: role in that. But he's also mole themed. Clearly, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: clearly mole themed. Um, let's see. Oh and and this
Speaker 1: is so weird. We were we kind of decided to
Speaker 1: do this episode and I had it in my mind,
Speaker 1: and then I happened to check out, Uh, this new
Speaker 1: series on Hulu titled Solar Opposites. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: new show from Rick and Morty co creator Justin Royland
Speaker 1: along with Mike McMahon, who also worked on that show. Uh.
Speaker 1: They dropped the entire first season on Hulu, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of fun. It's it's definitely for
Speaker 1: grown ups. But it's the know, a similar vibe to
Speaker 1: Rick and Morty, but perhaps a little less meta and um,
Speaker 1: with characters that are a little more likable. Um. But
Speaker 1: I've started watching it in BAM. Right there in the
Speaker 1: opening of the first episode, there's this vehicle called the
Speaker 1: Earth Drill that's used by the character Corvo to obtain
Speaker 1: nickel alloy from the Earth's core in order to try
Speaker 1: and fix his spaceship. And there's this great sequence where
Speaker 1: a Corvo fires it up and starts drilling into the
Speaker 1: Earth to go get the nickel, and it started immediately
Speaker 1: causes earthquakes in like China and London, and there's a
Speaker 1: big tidal wave somewhere else in the world due to
Speaker 1: the seismic disruption of the thing. I like that the
Speaker 1: design is a little bit trown shaped, is a little
Speaker 1: bit light cycle kind of in profile at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really cool design, Like they didn't just you know,
Speaker 1: slap together something that looked like the like the transport
Speaker 1: module all over again. It has has some really cool wheels.
Speaker 1: But anyway, these are just a few examples. You'll find
Speaker 1: submarines all over the place in science fiction. If you
Speaker 1: really start looking for them like it'll just turn up eventually,
Speaker 1: I think in any kind of science fiction scenario. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's one in Fallout seventy six, the current Fallout game.
Speaker 1: I looked around. I was like, there's gotta be one
Speaker 1: in Star Wars somewhere, and it looks like there is
Speaker 1: a combat drill in the Darth Vader comic books, like
Speaker 1: Darth Vader rides one into battle at some point, like
Speaker 1: a T drill. Ty Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: at drill T. I like that, um yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I figured Star Wars University's room for there's certainly room
Speaker 1: for a subdarine. There's some rocky planet somewhere where there's
Speaker 1: a battle between uh you know, the the Empire and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some hapless species of subterranean creature. But I
Speaker 1: feel like we got to bring it back to the
Speaker 1: Edgar Ice Burrows because I will admit so I have
Speaker 1: never read this book. At Earth's Core his novel about
Speaker 1: the drill that goes down, and uh, I don't know, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess timing wise, this would be coming after Jules
Speaker 1: Verne's journey at the Center of the Earth, So I
Speaker 1: don't know how derivative of it it is. Um, but
Speaker 1: I did manage to watch about the first twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventy six film adaptation of this book
Speaker 1: Last Night, starring our old friend Doug McClure. You know
Speaker 1: the man. Hi, I'm Doug McClure. You might remember me
Speaker 1: from such films as that one with the Fish People.
Speaker 1: And then it also had Peter Cushing in probably definitely
Speaker 1: not even no doubt at all, the gooberyest role I've
Speaker 1: ever seen Peter Cushing in, where he is just like
Speaker 1: a bumbling du fust with a high pitched, uh cartoon
Speaker 1: professor voice. Yeah, this was This was the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six adaptation, directed by Kevin Conner, And um yeah, you
Speaker 1: might expect, like Doug, with Doug McClure and Peter Cushing,
Speaker 1: you might think, Okay, Doug's gonna play kind of the
Speaker 1: meaty du fist, which he did so well. Doug McClure
Speaker 1: is awesome, He's a he's a treat. When you see
Speaker 1: his names pop up in one of these older films,
Speaker 1: you know you're you've got a nice film my head
Speaker 1: if you but Peter Cushing, you think especially all right,
Speaker 1: we think in seventy six. We're thinking Star Wars is
Speaker 1: just after this practically, and you know, you think the
Speaker 1: dignified Stuart Peter Cushing, he's gonna play this dignified scientist
Speaker 1: who invince this thing, but no, he plays this goofy
Speaker 1: Dufais character as well. Uh. And it's great. I mean
Speaker 1: Cushing is is wonderful. He has he has ranged, so
Speaker 1: I guess in a way, it's it's nice to see
Speaker 1: him flex his his acting muscles in another direction. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an unfamiliar setup. Normally, I think you'd have more like,
Speaker 1: you know, the dufas in The straight Man, but it's
Speaker 1: like a dual dufus lead. Yeah. Yeah. And then you
Speaker 1: have Carolyn Monroe in there as well, a screen legend
Speaker 1: in her own right. Yeah. She played still a star
Speaker 1: in Star Crash. Yeah, she was in I think she
Speaker 1: was in a James Bond film, yeah yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: in numerous so she was very very much an icon
Speaker 1: of of the day. Hi, I'm Doug McClure and I
Speaker 1: didn't get a haircut before filming this. Oh yeah, he's
Speaker 1: pretty shaggy in this. Yeah, it looks and it doesn't
Speaker 1: even look like it's inten should all. It looks like
Speaker 1: he just, you know, it was meaning to get it
Speaker 1: trimmed and he didn't. Yeah. Uh, now a lot of
Speaker 1: people where I think we're reintroduced to the summer, introduced
Speaker 1: to it to the for the first time the most
Speaker 1: recent season of Mystery Science Theater three thousand that aired
Speaker 1: on Netflix, because this is one of the films that
Speaker 1: they riff and it's I remembered as being one of
Speaker 1: the best episodes of the the MST three K revival.
Speaker 1: But the film in and of itself, it's just is
Speaker 1: tons of fun. It's colorful, It's it's weird and wacky,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's I feel like, even though I
Speaker 1: haven't read this particularly Edgar Rice Burrows novel, it does
Speaker 1: feel true to the spirit of them because they're they're
Speaker 1: there are a number of cool things going on in
Speaker 1: here in this First of all, we do have the
Speaker 1: Iron Mole. We have a drill headed subterine vehicle that
Speaker 1: takes our characters deep into the earth and it takes
Speaker 1: us to this hollow earth realm called Pellucidar and uh
Speaker 1: and here we have a number of crazy elements taking
Speaker 1: place as well, because we have a species of telepathic
Speaker 1: terra Saar is called the Mahars that rule over stone
Speaker 1: age humans that are also there. There's also like a
Speaker 1: giant bipedal bird Trannosaurus rex thing. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Sam the Eagle and it runs around chasing Doug and
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing in this giant underground corn field. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's in the book. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from someone who who's who's read
Speaker 1: this one, because I've read a couple of Burrows books
Speaker 1: um back in the day, and I remember them as
Speaker 1: being pretty fun. You know. He gets into a little
Speaker 1: bit of scientific speculation while also getting into lots of
Speaker 1: you know, swashbuckling style action, but then occasionally like some
Speaker 1: really atmospheric you know, almost kind of like pulp horror
Speaker 1: moments as well. Uh So, Yeah, and of course he
Speaker 1: wrote a ton of books. This was this one just
Speaker 1: kicked off a mini series that he did dealing with
Speaker 1: this inner world he created. Uh and he was he
Speaker 1: was a highly influential fiction writer at the time. So
Speaker 1: it seems to me it's possible that he might be
Speaker 1: the origin genator of our popular culture, and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, scientific obsession with subterines in especially in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. So I was looking around to see if
Speaker 1: there were any hard bio biographical details on where Burrows
Speaker 1: got the idea for the iron mole um, because it
Speaker 1: seems like he might have been the first. I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. It's you know, it's very possible that
Speaker 1: there are some other short stories from the time period,
Speaker 1: or some book I'm missing in which a character introduces
Speaker 1: the idea of a of the subterine. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to come across it myself. Let me know if
Speaker 1: you if you have an answer to that now. Certainly,
Speaker 1: Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth came
Speaker 1: out earlier in eighteen sixty four. But this book does
Speaker 1: not feature a fantastic drilling vehicle. No, they just they
Speaker 1: just find a hole in the earth and just kind
Speaker 1: of walk all the way down. It's more of a
Speaker 1: spelunking adventure. They traveled down via lava tubes, I think.
Speaker 1: So I ended up consulting I think three different Burrows
Speaker 1: biographies in search of any answers on you know, where
Speaker 1: he got his ideas, Just a little nugget of like, hey,
Speaker 1: he was reading in Popular Mechanics or something, you know,
Speaker 1: but nothing turned up. So it seems entirely possible that
Speaker 1: Burrows might have invented the sci Fi subterine as we
Speaker 1: know it, and in doing so, as is often the
Speaker 1: nature with sci Fi, influenced scientific minds all of that
Speaker 1: century to investigate the idea further. Um. However, even if
Speaker 1: he invented the sci Fi subterine in his own right,
Speaker 1: he was definitely inspired by technological achievements in tunneling and
Speaker 1: burrowing that had taken they were taking place at the time,
Speaker 1: and had taken place towards the end of the previous century. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back we can talk about some of the
Speaker 1: real science and technology of burrowing vehicles. Alright, we're back. So,
Speaker 1: like I was I was saying here earlier, Burrows I
Speaker 1: think would have definitely been inspired by the real life
Speaker 1: advances and tunnel boring machine during the nineteenth century. UH
Speaker 1: tunneling shield technology came first successfully used for the first
Speaker 1: time to excavate UH the Thim's tunnel, beginning in eighteen five.
Speaker 1: But this is just as the name implies a protective
Speaker 1: structure that allows human excavators to work underground. It's not
Speaker 1: even a machine, right, So describe briefly the tunneling shield.
Speaker 1: This is basically kind of like a movable roof shield
Speaker 1: that you can take with you as you continually remove
Speaker 1: new material from as the tunnel is made. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would say combine that with the concept of say a
Speaker 1: drilling template, and that's pretty much what you have. But
Speaker 1: then this leads into some of the first tunnel boring
Speaker 1: machines UH. And what is often brought up as the
Speaker 1: first tunnel boring machine, though it's a real stretch to
Speaker 1: call it a vehicle, came in eighteen forty five with
Speaker 1: the Mountain Slicer. Is that really what it was called. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was called the Mountain Slicer. It was not named
Speaker 1: It wasn't called a mole at all. Again, again, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a vehicle really, but it was commissioned by the
Speaker 1: King of Ardenia in to dig the French rail tunnel
Speaker 1: between France and Italy through the Alps. And it was
Speaker 1: the work of Belgian engineer Henry Joseph Mouse and this
Speaker 1: was the first UH. This is often considered the first
Speaker 1: tunnel boring machine or TBM. It consisted of more than
Speaker 1: one percussion drills mounted at the front of a locomotive
Speaker 1: sized machine which was mechanically power driven at the entrance
Speaker 1: to the tunnel. So think about what kind of of
Speaker 1: an engineering project it is to do something like this,
Speaker 1: especially to have a single machine, because tunneling is you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just like moving through water, which kind of
Speaker 1: like is is easily displaced around you as you dive
Speaker 1: through it. Of course, when you're tunneling through hard material,
Speaker 1: one of the big problems you're gonna have is continually
Speaker 1: removing everything that you're drilling out of place in front
Speaker 1: of you as you go. Right. And then if we're
Speaker 1: thinking of saying we keep talking about the mole as
Speaker 1: the bio biological analog for all of this, Well, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about the ocean, right, you're talking about the
Speaker 1: ships and submarines basically doing the things that other organisms,
Speaker 1: even large organisms, are capable of doing. But when you're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, you're not just talking about burrowing
Speaker 1: through loose soil. Here, we're talking about burrowing through solid rock,
Speaker 1: which is not something that is generally considered within the
Speaker 1: realm of certainly you know, a vertebrates capabilities, or or
Speaker 1: any kind of you know, or organisms capabilities. This is
Speaker 1: this is something new well certainly not at any speed
Speaker 1: that would be useful from like a civil engineering point
Speaker 1: of view, right, Um, So, UH, I want to talk
Speaker 1: just a little bit more about the idea of the
Speaker 1: tunnel boring machine or t b M. There there's tons
Speaker 1: of information out there written about t p m s
Speaker 1: because this is a this is a huge area of engineering,
Speaker 1: right figuring out how to improve these machines for the
Speaker 1: production of tunnels. UH. One particular definition I came across
Speaker 1: in laboratory testing of materials for tunnel boring machine drag
Speaker 1: bits by Catuchan at All UH defines a t b
Speaker 1: M as a quote machine used to excavate tunnels with
Speaker 1: a circular cross section through a variety of soil and
Speaker 1: rock strata. So that's something to keep in mind too,
Speaker 1: is when you're dealing with tunnels, you're dealing with boring
Speaker 1: through not just one type of rock or soil, but
Speaker 1: multiple Yeah, and I think it's important that it mentions
Speaker 1: the circularity of the tunnel because this is a feature
Speaker 1: that this will actually come up again later in the
Speaker 1: episode when we talk about different methods for producing whole
Speaker 1: tunnels in rock. The drill based method, which is based
Speaker 1: on grinding and removing material, tends to be by nature circular, right,
Speaker 1: just because of the limitations of the kind of machine
Speaker 1: you have to use to drill and bore out. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Um another source on the mountain slice or I was
Speaker 1: looking at in hard Rock Tunnel Boring Machines by um
Speaker 1: Metal Schmidt, and it's the authors described the mountain slicer
Speaker 1: as having quote worked with hammer drills, chiseling deep annular
Speaker 1: grooves in the stone, dividing the face into four two
Speaker 1: by point five meter high stone blocks. Now, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing here is that supposedly the Mountain Slicer successfully demonstrated
Speaker 1: it was you know, there was a successful demonstration of
Speaker 1: this technology in a test tunnel for something like two years,
Speaker 1: but it was ultimately not used for the Alpine project
Speaker 1: in question due to doubts about the drive equipment and
Speaker 1: its power requirements and its ability to sustain the wear
Speaker 1: of its usage. So they ended up just using traditional
Speaker 1: tunneling tunnel boring techniques instead. But I think this this
Speaker 1: drives home like just the real the true engineering challenge here,
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite a feat to even create a
Speaker 1: what seems to be working prototype like the Mountain Slicer,
Speaker 1: But then it's quite another to actually use it, and
Speaker 1: use it and use it for the extended period of
Speaker 1: time required to actually complete the project. Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: we should emphasize again that when we're talking about these
Speaker 1: types of boring machines like the Mountain Slicer, this would
Speaker 1: again not be a vehicle designed to just like autonomously
Speaker 1: run around under the ground. This would be a stationary
Speaker 1: like institute machine that's for a particular project, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and certainly is not working in isolation. Um, so
Speaker 1: this is all, like I said, you could you could
Speaker 1: see the Mountain Slicer as a potential first for TBMs.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people give credit to American designer
Speaker 1: Charles Wilson, who designed a t b M in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, patented in eighteen fifty six. It was called
Speaker 1: Wilson's patented stone cutting Machine, which doesn't I don't know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have as much and it doesn't sound as
Speaker 1: a uh you know, is wagnery as that to a
Speaker 1: previous one? Should I called it what Wilson's rock stabber. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Wilson's patented stone cutting machine, and and it
Speaker 1: was successful. They used it to bore the Hoosic Tunnel
Speaker 1: in northwest mass Situsetts and it had rotate a rotating
Speaker 1: mount for the disc cutters at the front of it. Now,
Speaker 1: there's obviously a lot more to the science and subsequent
Speaker 1: development of t b ms, but I thought we might
Speaker 1: cut to the chase here. I think we can already
Speaker 1: see how mountain we're gonna mountain. Cut to the chase even,
Speaker 1: I think we can already see how how even their
Speaker 1: early forms help inspire the idea of a subterine. But
Speaker 1: even considering the more modern forms of the TBM, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to ask how close does the idea of
Speaker 1: a subterarine really get to a TBM. So we have
Speaker 1: to consider the facts. So first of all, as as
Speaker 1: we mentioned already, generally speaking, a t b M, and
Speaker 1: there are different varieties of TBM for different types of rock.
Speaker 1: It is a tool, not a vehicle. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of equipment. It's used to make a tunnel,
Speaker 1: not to simply tunnel from one place to another. I
Speaker 1: suppose you can say it does both. But the tunnel
Speaker 1: making is the key focus. Plus it's part of a
Speaker 1: system and an overall project that entails workers, specialized bucks
Speaker 1: to holloway the rock, etcetera. You're not gonna hijack one
Speaker 1: of these things and bore a rogue tunnel with it. Also,
Speaker 1: TBMs are in general neither independent nor truly mobile, and
Speaker 1: this is important too. They are certainly not fast. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think another thing is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: are going to be in some kind of way and
Speaker 1: not exactly like a train but sort of on rails,
Speaker 1: like in a way that they will have infrastructure that
Speaker 1: is supporting the forward movement of the vehicle. And it's
Speaker 1: not just like rolling ahead on its own, right. It
Speaker 1: is a thing you move up or you have at
Speaker 1: the front of your tunnel boring project. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the more exciting players in the realm of of of
Speaker 1: tb ms these days is none other than Elon musk
Speaker 1: Oki dok. Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: this joke, but he founded the Boring Company in I
Speaker 1: was trying to read about it, but I just fell asleep.
Speaker 1: You just uh, I've ever made on the show. Let's
Speaker 1: cut it. No, let's leave it. Let me deal with
Speaker 1: the shame. Now you can laugh at elon musk jokes.
Speaker 1: UM it's it's it's clever. They really commit to it. UM.
Speaker 1: If you can look at the website and you can
Speaker 1: see that there's a lot of tongue in cheek there,
Speaker 1: but but it is a real project and then it
Speaker 1: looks like they're making a lot of exciting progress here.
Speaker 1: So part of the whole idea of the Boring company
Speaker 1: is that they want to UM. They want to see
Speaker 1: tunnel usage being a huge part of our sustainable future,
Speaker 1: Like in terms of of creating more sustainable infrastructure, it's
Speaker 1: better to get as much of an underground as possible.
Speaker 1: And then this has been a trend in futurism UM
Speaker 1: for a while. This isn't in and of itself anything new,
Speaker 1: but these are some of the reasons that they cite
Speaker 1: for investing um UH. You know, the improvement of TBM technology.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's no practical limit to how many
Speaker 1: layers of tunnels can be built, so any level of
Speaker 1: traffic can then be addressed through these tunnels. Tunnels or
Speaker 1: weather proof tunnel construction and operation is ultimately silent and
Speaker 1: invisible to anyone on the surface. And this is not
Speaker 1: something that I saw them touch on, but certainly as
Speaker 1: a part of the larger sort of futurism design focus
Speaker 1: of underground systems is, of course, if you put your
Speaker 1: highways underground, then you can have more like trees on top.
Speaker 1: You know, you can have some sort of a return
Speaker 1: to nature. You can take the you can give back
Speaker 1: the land that are so you know, are highways and
Speaker 1: streets have stolen. But to do all this you've got
Speaker 1: to make tunnels. And the thing is tunnels are expensive
Speaker 1: to bore. The price that they quote in their materials
Speaker 1: is one billion dollars per mile, and and then it's
Speaker 1: a slow process on top of that. In fact, MUSCA
Speaker 1: joked that a snail travels fourteen times faster than a
Speaker 1: traditional TBM, and as such, they did this whole bit
Speaker 1: where they said they had this pet snail named Gary
Speaker 1: and their goal was to beat Gary in a foot
Speaker 1: race with their TBM. So in order to do that,
Speaker 1: the company stresses the importance of increasing TBM power output,
Speaker 1: making tb ms capable of continuous tunneling without breaks for
Speaker 1: support structure building, as is currently the norm. Also the
Speaker 1: importance of making tb ms autonomous and also creating a
Speaker 1: system by which the excavated rock has been made into
Speaker 1: bricks on site or perhaps even within the TBM itself
Speaker 1: for use in the support structure. Oh and that's another
Speaker 1: thing I should probably describe what these t b ms
Speaker 1: and sort of all modern t b ms look like.
Speaker 1: They look like, um that they do not have a
Speaker 1: conical drill at the front. Uh. It tends to, at
Speaker 1: least at first glance, look a lot like flatter. It
Speaker 1: looks like a cross between an east cigarette and a
Speaker 1: tape worm. Oh. Two great things not to put in
Speaker 1: your mouth. Yeah. Um. The boring company also promotes the
Speaker 1: idea of smaller tunnels, so instead of relying just on
Speaker 1: like enormous tunnels through which you put like a you know,
Speaker 1: a four lane highway, instead make a smaller tunnel with
Speaker 1: a one way, uh one lane highway for one way
Speaker 1: traffic as well. This also factors into the various loop
Speaker 1: and hyperloop projects that Muscus involved in. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to say a lot of that, especially when
Speaker 1: you're talking about, you know, looking into the future, a
Speaker 1: lot of that certainly sounds more like the subterarine we
Speaker 1: know and love, though at the same time, I think
Speaker 1: it all further underlines the realities of boring that tend
Speaker 1: to limit these fictional visions. Um and and I should
Speaker 1: also know the boring company is actually building tunnels, so
Speaker 1: it's we're not just talking about a pure futurism project. Um.
Speaker 1: They have I believe, three different TBMs, all of them
Speaker 1: with with wonderful names. There's the Good, there's the line Storm,
Speaker 1: which I believe I read is named for um Robert
Speaker 1: Frost poem or a line in Robert Frost poem. And
Speaker 1: then there's the proof Rock. Oh j Alfred proof Rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the proof rock, which is is two words in the name.
Speaker 1: Here is one that's still in development, but it weight
Speaker 1: will be used soon. Why is it named the proof rock?
Speaker 1: Is it is it lying like an patient eutherized upon
Speaker 1: a table or is it lets? Um? I think maybe
Speaker 1: it's just like the proof is in the right. I
Speaker 1: don't know how deeply it is invoking the poem. It
Speaker 1: has measured its progressing coffee spoons, well, whatever you know
Speaker 1: we want to call them. Um. These are some of
Speaker 1: the stats. The line Storm is said to be two
Speaker 1: to three times faster than conventional TPMs. Proof rock is
Speaker 1: supposed to be as much as ten times faster than
Speaker 1: conventional machines. And I I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: the publication Tunnel Insider, which I've never read before. I
Speaker 1: was not I'm not a subscriber to Tunnel Insider, But
Speaker 1: as they put it in quote, if they and by
Speaker 1: they we mean the Boring Company, if they are able
Speaker 1: to pull this one off, it will mark a quat
Speaker 1: to leap in the history of tunnel boring technology and
Speaker 1: catapult the Boring Company to the pinnacle of subterranean engineering.
Speaker 1: These these particular TBMs are also electric and are claimed
Speaker 1: to be three times more powerful than conventional tb ms. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Boring Company is still going strong, it seems. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was reading that they recently finished a pair of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas tunnels ahead of a plane opening. Well, more
Speaker 1: power to them, I mean, I I gotta say, just
Speaker 1: from a puristetic sense, in addition to all the practical
Speaker 1: reasons for it, I I like the idea of relegating
Speaker 1: transportation infrastructure underground. Yeah. Absolutely, it all makes sense to me. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it seems like they're making progress. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the course, they're always questions and all of this like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to you're wanting to push the technology,
Speaker 1: but also it needs to be the affordable choice as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know the future, the future remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: But but I'm hopeful. It seems seems like this might
Speaker 1: be the way. Okay, Robert, are you ready to talk
Speaker 1: about a tom battle moles, yes, or as alleged atomic battles.
Speaker 1: I think it is time because we've we've spoken about
Speaker 1: the pure sci fi. We've spoken about the the the
Speaker 1: the the actual technological history and and our current place
Speaker 1: concerning TBMs. Let's start dealing with some of the murcurier
Speaker 1: territory here. Okay, So here we're going to dive into
Speaker 1: a bit of alleged Cold War crypto history, and we
Speaker 1: will have to warn you up front the sourcing that's
Speaker 1: available in English on this subject, I think is very
Speaker 1: murky and there's a lot of uncertainty. Possibly even in fact,
Speaker 1: I would say more than possibly, I think quite probably.
Speaker 1: We're getting into some Edison Louis La Prince murder confession territory.
Speaker 1: If you listen to our Invention episode on that, where
Speaker 1: a possible hoax document or work of fiction is being
Speaker 1: misinterpreted by later writers as a factual report and then
Speaker 1: built upon by embellishment, but with some major aviatsa are
Speaker 1: are you ready to dig in? Yes? I do. Want
Speaker 1: to just throw in one quick nugget here. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about about Russian UH advances, advancements or also
Speaker 1: or alleged advancements, and it's worth it's worth noting that,
Speaker 1: first of all, UH Edgar Rice Burrows was very influential
Speaker 1: just around the world, but there was also a key
Speaker 1: Russian sci fi author by the name of Grigory Adamov
Speaker 1: who wrote about subterines in Conquerors of the Underground in
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Oh yeah, I was reading about this, and
Speaker 1: one of the articles that I'm going to reference in
Speaker 1: a minute here points out a hilariously machine translated version
Speaker 1: of that title Conquerors of the Underground, which is Winners
Speaker 1: of the Bowels. Well that's good, okay, okay, But yeah, well,
Speaker 1: what's what's the prompting for all this? Well, a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago you you might have seen a number
Speaker 1: of double take headlines running around the internet about the
Speaker 1: Soviets developing a nuclear powered subterine in weapon during the
Speaker 1: Cold War. We can I know there was an article
Speaker 1: on like I f L Science about it. There there's
Speaker 1: one we can check in with hero in our old
Speaker 1: arch nemesis, the Daily Mail. The headline is quote revealed
Speaker 1: the nuclear powered mold the Soviets built to burrow beneath
Speaker 1: America and deliver atomic bombs underground undergrounds in all caps.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a great headline, right. So I
Speaker 1: was looking to trace back to the source some of
Speaker 1: the claims in this article. So this is not the
Speaker 1: main source of the of it, but I think it
Speaker 1: gets to the core of some of what we're going
Speaker 1: to be looking at here. So there's an English article
Speaker 1: from June in an online publication called Russia Beyond the
Speaker 1: headlines Now it's just known as Russia Beyond, which is
Speaker 1: a multi lingual arm of the major Russian state newspaper,
Speaker 1: rosy skya Gazetta. And I'm not generally very familiar with
Speaker 1: rosy Skya Gazetta Russia Beyond, I don't have a very
Speaker 1: good sense of how generally reliable it is. But this
Speaker 1: article is derived from reporting from a government funded newspaper
Speaker 1: of the Russian Federation, and it doesn't actually name most
Speaker 1: of its sources. So I think we have to treat
Speaker 1: the claims in this article with an extremely heavy dose
Speaker 1: of skepticism. That's not to say everything in it is
Speaker 1: necessarily untrue, but I would not hang my hat on
Speaker 1: anything here, But just so we can lay it on
Speaker 1: the table, let's at least look at what this article claims.
Speaker 1: So it talks about how during the middle of the
Speaker 1: Cold War, the Soviet Premier Nikita Krutzschev ordered the construction
Speaker 1: of mechanized units that would be able to burrow underground
Speaker 1: to destroy military targets. And these might be underground bunkers
Speaker 1: or command centers or strategic missile launched sites, or to
Speaker 1: destroy underground communications infrastructure. And this hypothetical tunneling weapon that
Speaker 1: Krutzchev's supposedly ordered the construction of would be known as
Speaker 1: a battle moles. So we're back to the moles again. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the supposed advantages of the battle mole would
Speaker 1: be its ability to tunnel the targets deep behind enemy
Speaker 1: lines undetected and detonate charges, or even to surface and
Speaker 1: deposit Soviet troops, sort of like an underground APC. So
Speaker 1: was there any historical precedent for this? Well, the article
Speaker 1: claims that the first self powered underground military vehicle was
Speaker 1: designed by someone named Pyotr Raskasov in Moscow and nineteen
Speaker 1: o four, but that this was just a design it
Speaker 1: was never realized. He made some drawings, but the designs
Speaker 1: were lost around the outbreak of the First World War
Speaker 1: ten years later, and then there were attempts to bring
Speaker 1: the project back in the nineteen thirties under the Soviet Union. Again,
Speaker 1: according to this article, the person in charge of this
Speaker 1: effort to to revive the underground battle mole idea was
Speaker 1: somebody identified in this article simply as injury a near
Speaker 1: treble Lev, which sounds like it's It sounds like Kirk
Speaker 1: selecting a red shirt for the landing party in Star Trek,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but engineer Trebellev wanted to quote design
Speaker 1: a machine which would look like a real mole. No,
Speaker 1: no further explanation though. I actually I did find an
Speaker 1: article from from the nineteen fifties that explains what this
Speaker 1: is referring to. I'll leave that as a surprise for
Speaker 1: a little bit later. I mean, I would hope that
Speaker 1: the translations a little off, and the ideas that it
Speaker 1: functions like a mole and not that it just looks
Speaker 1: like one, though that's exciting in its own right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an English language article. This wasn't machine translated. Okay,
Speaker 1: well maybe maybe it's just supposed to look like a mole.
Speaker 1: Then wanted to design a machine which would look like
Speaker 1: a real mole. But eventually, you know, whatever happened here,
Speaker 1: the project fizzled and so then Nikita Krutzchev comes to
Speaker 1: power as the first Secretary of the Communist Party in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three after the death of Joseph Stalin, and
Speaker 1: according to this reporting, Kruschev was big into the idea
Speaker 1: of the battle mole, and he strongly supported its redevelopment.
Speaker 1: So you know, go out there, create the people's mole.
Speaker 1: And uh. Supposedly there was a secret underground facility in
Speaker 1: Ukraine for developing and producing these moles, and the first
Speaker 1: nuclear powered prototype for the battle mole was completed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Now, according to the article, this would
Speaker 1: have been a tunneling vehicle powered by an internal nuclear
Speaker 1: reactor like a nuclear submarine, which again, this would be
Speaker 1: an ideal power source for like any kind of long
Speaker 1: term stealth vehicle for the same reasons, it's useful for
Speaker 1: like strategic ballistic missile subs, right. Uh. You know, the
Speaker 1: the nuclear power allows you to run silently for a
Speaker 1: long period of time without having to return and get
Speaker 1: fuel somewhere, and it doesn't you know, it doesn't produce
Speaker 1: any emissions other than heat, so you know, it's an
Speaker 1: ideal fuel choice. Just as a note of historical comparison, Uh,
Speaker 1: the first nuclear power submarines I looked this up. They
Speaker 1: were produced by the United States and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and like the mid to late fifties. I think the
Speaker 1: US put out their first nuclear sub in then in
Speaker 1: nineteen five and the USSR by night. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: of course there was just the overall atomic trend of
Speaker 1: of looking at ways to power various types of vehicles.
Speaker 1: I mean there was there's the whole realm of the
Speaker 1: atomic powered aircraft, but they were looking at Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that that's clear that we could do a whole
Speaker 1: podcast on that in the future, or certainly the ideas
Speaker 1: of atomic powered automobiles and so forth. Um, So there
Speaker 1: was a lot of this line of thinking back and
Speaker 1: in the day there's a lot of enthusiasm enthusiasm for this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of power. But to defend the idea here, like,
Speaker 1: I think the idea of nuclear power does make a
Speaker 1: whole lot of sense for for a vehicle like a
Speaker 1: strategic missile sub because the whole point is that it
Speaker 1: needs to go out there and be hidden, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the strategic purpose of it is that you
Speaker 1: don't know where it is and it's somewhere on the
Speaker 1: Earth and it can be out there for a long
Speaker 1: time without coming back to refuel. Right, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is if we I think we've discussed this on
Speaker 1: the show before. I think this is one of the
Speaker 1: key parts of of for instance, the United Kingdoms, uh
Speaker 1: nuclear deterrent. Yeah. But so back to this article from Russia.
Speaker 1: Beyond so other claims that it makes about this alleged
Speaker 1: battle mole, it says, quote, it had a stretched titanium
Speaker 1: cylindrical body with a pointed end and a powerful drill.
Speaker 1: It says the size would have been between twenty five
Speaker 1: and thirty five meters in length and then between three
Speaker 1: to four meters in diameter, and its speed underground as
Speaker 1: it's tunneling, would be between seven and fifteen kilometers per hour. Now,
Speaker 1: I am no expert on tunneling, vehicles. I admit, so
Speaker 1: my judgment may be way off, but this is huge
Speaker 1: red flag for me. This sounds really really fast. That
Speaker 1: sounds much faster than a snail. To go back to
Speaker 1: uh Elon Musk's uh snail race, right, this thing can
Speaker 1: tunnel through the ground faster than some people can run.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, okay, but the article also claims
Speaker 1: that quote the nuclear physicist andre Sakarov was involved with
Speaker 1: the creation of this machine, possibly with the development of
Speaker 1: the original soil crushing and propulsion system technology. The cavitation
Speaker 1: flow created around the battle mole's body reduced friction and
Speaker 1: enabled it to bore through granite and basalt. Again, I
Speaker 1: very much doubt if there's any truth to this association,
Speaker 1: but for those who aren't familiar, Andrei Sakarov is absolutely
Speaker 1: a very real and very important figure in twentieth century history.
Speaker 1: Uh Sakarov was a Russian nuclear physicist who worked on
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program in the late forties
Speaker 1: and the fifties. He's considered in some ways the father
Speaker 1: of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but he later became an activist,
Speaker 1: protesting for civil liberties and human rights within the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and he received a Nobel Peace Prize in n I
Speaker 1: know he was not popular with the with the Soviet
Speaker 1: government for his activism. At some point, I know he
Speaker 1: was sent into internal exile um. But anyway, So back
Speaker 1: to the article. So the article claims that the battle
Speaker 1: Mole took a crew of five people to operate, and
Speaker 1: it could carry up to fifteen paratroopers on top of that,
Speaker 1: So again it is actually being alleged that this thing
Speaker 1: would bore in under the earth, drill up to the surface,
Speaker 1: and then let out a bunch of dudes. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's straight It sounds straight up Ninja turtles. It
Speaker 1: sounds like I mean, it makes me think of stormtroopers
Speaker 1: jumping out of one of these things, right right, Or
Speaker 1: of course if it wasn't you know, fifteen paratroopers could
Speaker 1: deliver a payload of weapons or equipment or especially an
Speaker 1: explosive charge, and this payload could be of up to
Speaker 1: a ton. Now here's here's the part where it gets
Speaker 1: really interesting. The article alleges there was a secret plan
Speaker 1: for an underground strike on America which would be triggered.
Speaker 1: It said if the United States quote deteriorated beyond the point. Uh,
Speaker 1: no further explanation there, but I guess the idea is like,
Speaker 1: if if the US is starting to look weak, then
Speaker 1: like this, these things could drill in. So how would
Speaker 1: they tunnel underneath the United States? Well, allegedly the plan
Speaker 1: was to bring them to the United States coast inside
Speaker 1: nuclear submarines, specifically to the California coast, and the California
Speaker 1: coast is singled out for its seismic instability. And then
Speaker 1: the moles would be released from underwater to tunnel into
Speaker 1: California and plant nuclear explosive charges under strategic facilities and
Speaker 1: fault lines without being noticed right at all. And also
Speaker 1: this would this term this attack, it alleges, would be
Speaker 1: a kind of false flag for nature where the nuclear
Speaker 1: charges they'd be detonated, but it would just look like
Speaker 1: naturally occurring earthquakes and tsunamis all over the place, and
Speaker 1: it'd be like, I guess Mother Nature is just mad
Speaker 1: at oh man, maybe this is There's so many sci
Speaker 1: fi possibilities just in this, like the idea of say,
Speaker 1: ultimately slow moving nuclear drill machines have been slowly making
Speaker 1: their way from the California coast to the heartland, and
Speaker 1: when they finally open up, you have all these like
Speaker 1: hideously atomic mutated paratroopers that emerge the toxic of injur
Speaker 1: now speaking Russia. So much fun to you can have
Speaker 1: with this concept. But anyway, so I've I've just got
Speaker 1: to read the conclusion here verbatim quote. According to some reports,
Speaker 1: test runs of the Soviet nuclear subterine were carried out
Speaker 1: in different geological conditions in suburban Moscow's soils, in the
Speaker 1: Rostov region and in the Urals. Witnesses who observed the
Speaker 1: tests were most struck by the capabilities the subterine demonstrated
Speaker 1: in the Ural mountains, the battle mole easily bit into
Speaker 1: hard rock and destroyed the underground target. However, a tragedy
Speaker 1: occurred during the repeated trials. For reasons unknown, the machine
Speaker 1: seen exploded deep within the bowels of the Urals, killing
Speaker 1: the entire crew. Shortly thereafter, the project was shelved. Oh man,
Speaker 1: there's a whole like cool indie historic horror film concept
Speaker 1: right there, This doomed subterine. It gets I don't know,
Speaker 1: eaten by Chud's or something. Right. I think this would
Speaker 1: make a great movie, But I have serious doubts about
Speaker 1: this report, like even if this were published by a
Speaker 1: source that I thought to be trustworthy. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: know much about the source, and it is related to
Speaker 1: like a government funded paper. Some of like my basic
Speaker 1: clausibility alarms are flashing red. But anyway, so back to
Speaker 1: like a lot of circulation of the story that was
Speaker 1: going around and you know, daily mail. In all these places,
Speaker 1: it seems to trace back to an article in Gelopnik
Speaker 1: by senior editor Jason Torchinsky, who, to his credit, does
Speaker 1: show skepticism about some of these claims, maybe more so
Speaker 1: than some of the derivative articles do. Um which, but
Speaker 1: it tries to follow up on the claims by consulting
Speaker 1: some contemporary articles in Russian language sources, a lot of
Speaker 1: it machine translated, though um So. It was Tarcensky, by
Speaker 1: the way, who pointed out that idea of the machine
Speaker 1: translation of conquerors of the underground being winners of the bowels.
Speaker 1: So he is the winner of the winner of the bowels.
Speaker 1: But um he develops on the assertion that this this guy,
Speaker 1: remember engineer Trabellev, that he wanted it to look like
Speaker 1: a mole. Uh. Twarcensky points out that This is supposedly
Speaker 1: because he studied X rays of a mole skeleton in
Speaker 1: order to design the machine. That makes a little bit
Speaker 1: more sense. Okay uh, and it will be further developed
Speaker 1: even more by another source I found. As for the
Speaker 1: reports of this nineteen thirties model, there's all this vagueness
Speaker 1: in the sources. It's hard to tell from what's available
Speaker 1: how large Trabelle's model was supposed to be, whether it
Speaker 1: was crude, etcetera. Um Regarding the prototype built in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, Twarcensky turns up some more claims about how
Speaker 1: project came to an end from the Russian reporting and
Speaker 1: rosy Skaya Gazetta, which is apparently what that Russia Beyond
Speaker 1: article was sort of derivative of. But here here's additional
Speaker 1: detail machine translated, of course quote. However, during next tests
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, a car that penetrated the Ural
Speaker 1: mountains near Nisney Tagil for a distance of ten kilometers
Speaker 1: for unknown reasons, exploded. Since the explosion was nuclear, the
Speaker 1: apparatus with the people in it simply evaporated and the
Speaker 1: broken tunnel collapsed. In the press was the name of
Speaker 1: the deceased commander of the battle Mole Colonel Semyon Budnikov.
Speaker 1: But official confirmation of this never sounded. The project was closed,
Speaker 1: all documentary evidence of it was liquidated as if nothing
Speaker 1: had ever happened. Very conveniently here right, So all physical
Speaker 1: evidence of this experiment is completely erased from the earth.
Speaker 1: And then it gets even fishier and starts to get
Speaker 1: into territory where I'm wondering who is fooling who? So
Speaker 1: this is again from the Rosy skya Gazetta report explaining
Speaker 1: why the explosion happened to quote or maybe another civilization
Speaker 1: exists literally under our feet and the guards did not
Speaker 1: want the Soviet mole to penetrate the forbidden limits. After all,
Speaker 1: the technical characteristics allowed the battle mole to reach the
Speaker 1: center of the Earth. Therefore, a unique underground machine was destroyed,
Speaker 1: and the mystery of the longstanding Soviet project is likely
Speaker 1: to never be fully revealed. Okay, so the underground civilization
Speaker 1: might have sabotaged it. Yeah, that doesn't sound right. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely something wrong with this story. It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that all of the reports of historical Soviet battle
Speaker 1: mole development are untrue, though here I'm getting the feeling
Speaker 1: that a lot of these reports may be embellished, and
Speaker 1: this report about the nineteen sixty four vehicle specifically might
Speaker 1: be a complete or near complete fiction. So the next
Speaker 1: thing I was looking to was seeing if we can
Speaker 1: figure out about mid century Subterraine projects from like contemporaneous sources,
Speaker 1: like was anything published about it at the time that
Speaker 1: I can access in English and understand? And so I
Speaker 1: did come across something this was this was linked through
Speaker 1: another source I found there was a nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: actually December thirteenth, nineteen fifty six article in New Scientists
Speaker 1: called Russia's Battle Moles. Okay, now we're dealing with a
Speaker 1: publication we can get behind, I mean to an extent,
Speaker 1: Like now, I don't necessarily trust all of the claims
Speaker 1: in this article either, but at least it might give
Speaker 1: us a better idea of not necessarily what really happened,
Speaker 1: but what ideas were actually being discussed in the nineteen fifties. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, this isn't like a you know, decades later source.
Speaker 1: Now we can find out whether or not the idea
Speaker 1: of these machines was actually in the air, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether or not they were actually built, and I will
Speaker 1: note this is a very early article for new scientists.
Speaker 1: It was founded New Scientist I think was founded just
Speaker 1: a month or two before this article was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. But it starts off talking about how
Speaker 1: slow and labor intensive the process of tunneling is and
Speaker 1: how great it would be to have a machine that's
Speaker 1: like a mechanical mole or an underground boat that can
Speaker 1: speed up the process of digging tunnels. And then they
Speaker 1: go on to report an unnamed contemporary Russian technical journal
Speaker 1: that is describing the attempts of Soviet scientists to build
Speaker 1: a machine like this um, something that would be able
Speaker 1: to independently drive around underground boring tunnels. And they corroborate
Speaker 1: the idea that this research is based on biomimicry, the
Speaker 1: bio mimicry of the mammalian mole quote. The investigation of
Speaker 1: moles technique was carried out in the Ural mountains. Local
Speaker 1: hunters taught the Russian scientists how to catch moles. Then
Speaker 1: the lengths of the captured moles from tip to tail
Speaker 1: were measured. Next, the animals were allowed to burrow and
Speaker 1: the duration of their tabsk was timed with a stop watch.
Speaker 1: From the moment they started digging to the moment that
Speaker 1: the end of their tails disappeared into the earth. In
Speaker 1: this way, the speed of digging under various conditions was calculated.
Speaker 1: In clay, the mole borrowed at a rate of two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four ft per hour and in black
Speaker 1: earth three hundred and sixty one ft per hour. In
Speaker 1: some cases even higher speeds were attained. The second part
Speaker 1: of the investigation was carried out in the laboratory. A
Speaker 1: box measuring sixteen inches square by eight feet long was used.
Speaker 1: The box was packed with clay soil and arranged in
Speaker 1: front of an X ray machine. A mole was placed
Speaker 1: at the front end of the box and it started
Speaker 1: to burrow its way through the soil in the box.
Speaker 1: By X ray photography, a record of the moles progress
Speaker 1: was obtained, showing the movement of its muscles and skeleton. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is starting to become actually clear to me now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is where we're doing again.
Speaker 1: We're talking about biomamicry. Here we say we're talking about uh,
Speaker 1: scientists considering a problem, an engineering problem, and in looking
Speaker 1: for an answer in um the evolved biology, right so
Speaker 1: they discovered that the mole digs by working its head
Speaker 1: and its paws back and forth along an axis in
Speaker 1: the front to to loosen the soil ahead of it,
Speaker 1: and then it moves the displaced earth out of the
Speaker 1: way and presses it up into the sides of the tunnel,
Speaker 1: sort of packing it against the edges of the tunnel
Speaker 1: with its what they call its withers I guess that's
Speaker 1: like the back of its neck and upper back area,
Speaker 1: and with its shoulders, and then it continually applies forward
Speaker 1: pressure by digging in and pushing with its hind legs.
Speaker 1: And the article claims that this pressing out of the
Speaker 1: displaced earth by the strong withers and the shoulder muscles
Speaker 1: of the mole is actually the most important discovery here,
Speaker 1: because again, one of the biggest problems with with drilling, tunneling, boring,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, is how to deal
Speaker 1: with the displaced material as you go. Right. The New
Speaker 1: Scientist article on quote from the lessons learned with the mole,
Speaker 1: The Russians built a mechanical model, followed by a larger
Speaker 1: scale machine consisting of a cutter corresponding to the mole's head,
Speaker 1: a worm for ramming loosened earth into the walls of
Speaker 1: the tunnel, corresponding to the withers and propellers corresponding to
Speaker 1: the hind legs. In the front part of the body
Speaker 1: of the machine is a powerful cutter made of hard alloy,
Speaker 1: behind the four propellers, which push against the walls of
Speaker 1: the tunnel and move the machine forward at a speed
Speaker 1: of thirty ft per hour. The cutter rotates at a
Speaker 1: speed of three revolutions per minute for use in hard soils.
Speaker 1: The cutter can also be given hammer blows as it rotates.
Speaker 1: Uh and it says yes, this would have needed a
Speaker 1: human pilot to steer it. So. The article claims that
Speaker 1: the machine was built and tested in the Ural Mountains
Speaker 1: in nineteen six, and Soviet engineers have it says, made
Speaker 1: improvements in its speed and size since then. The article
Speaker 1: does not really even though it's called battle mole. The
Speaker 1: article does not you mentioned military applications. Instead, it emphasizes
Speaker 1: how useful this kind of device would be for the
Speaker 1: kind of tunneling we were talking about earlier, like for
Speaker 1: mining or for urban engineering. One thought that comes to
Speaker 1: mind thinking about this is if well, I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, if you wanted to solve this engineering problem,
Speaker 1: like looking to the mole is is is certainly one
Speaker 1: way to to to try and answer those questions, even
Speaker 1: if things might not scale up all the way. But
Speaker 1: in terms of a warfare scenario, it seems like this
Speaker 1: is the sort of thing that, if you could pull
Speaker 1: it off, would be very advantageous in older modes of warfare.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you're dealing with with siege warfare,
Speaker 1: having a battle mole could really turn the tide. Perhaps
Speaker 1: even in trench warfare, you know where you have you know,
Speaker 1: these hard fronts, uh, in these Noman lands. You know
Speaker 1: that I could see that being a factor. But it
Speaker 1: is certainly I don't know, people may disagree with me,
Speaker 1: but it seems like once you get into the World
Speaker 1: War two era and the post for War two era,
Speaker 1: the usefulness of this kind of a device, even if
Speaker 1: you could pull it off, becomes um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: less obvious. Yeah, it's I mean, it seems much more
Speaker 1: useful in the world that doesn't already depend on air power.
Speaker 1: You've already conquered the skies at this point. Now you
Speaker 1: you could say that well, maybe the maybe an underground
Speaker 1: mole at least hypothetically could be more stealthy than air power.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we have stealth bombers and
Speaker 1: stuff now, but um, well, you know, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of the super secret weapon um of the Byzantines, the
Speaker 1: Greek Fire. We did an episode on that, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that came out about it was that
Speaker 1: it was it was useful if you used it every
Speaker 1: once in a while under very specific circumstances. But if
Speaker 1: people were expecting it, uh, then it lost its usefulness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like more useful as a kind of shock weapon
Speaker 1: than as like a regular mainstay of how you win battles.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I want kind of put a bow
Speaker 1: on this issue of the Soviet atomic battle mole. There
Speaker 1: appears to be a very good, skeptical and well sided
Speaker 1: dive into the issue of the atomic subterine from way
Speaker 1: back in twelve at the Atomic Sky's blog. And it's
Speaker 1: called the atomic subterine. Uh. The author of this blog,
Speaker 1: I think offers a very reasonable assessment of this weird
Speaker 1: and murky subject, in addition to a very good right
Speaker 1: up in general of atomic subterine ideas as they were
Speaker 1: explored in the United States, which Robert, I know you're
Speaker 1: going to get into in a minute here. But the
Speaker 1: author here he just goes by Mark, but he acknowledges
Speaker 1: the claims we've talked about so far regarding the alleged
Speaker 1: Soviet atomic battle mole, and he concludes that there probably
Speaker 1: was a real Russian program in the nineteen fifties to
Speaker 1: develop a conventional chemical powered tunneling machine known as an
Speaker 1: underground boat. But that the part about the atomic battle
Speaker 1: mole and krutz Chev's attack plan, uh you know, attack
Speaker 1: the US from below, that this is not just untrue
Speaker 1: but possibly a prank gone wrong. Uh So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read from his in note here quote I strongly suspect
Speaker 1: that the supposed nuclear powered prototype was an April fools
Speaker 1: hoax by the Russian language Popular Mechanics magazine. The first
Speaker 1: mention of it I can find online comes from the
Speaker 1: April issue of that magazine, and the diagram they include
Speaker 1: incorporates what appeared to be mechanical tentacles. In any case, however,
Speaker 1: neither of these were a subterine, but rather tunnel boring machines,
Speaker 1: And based on everything I've read, I think he's very
Speaker 1: possibly correct in fact, I might even say probably, and
Speaker 1: if so, this would be interesting because we'd be again
Speaker 1: in territory I mentioned this earlier, like the territory of
Speaker 1: the Edison murder confession that we talked about in the
Speaker 1: Louis Le Prince episode of Invention, where something originally intended
Speaker 1: as what I think was a non malicious, explicit explicitly
Speaker 1: fictional document is later misinterpreted by a bunch of other
Speaker 1: writers as a legitimate news report. And this is why
Speaker 1: April Fool's articles should be exiled to Siberia forever, like
Speaker 1: no more of them ever. I agree. And on that note,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss uh some of the US based research into
Speaker 1: the idea of a subterarine. Alright, we're back, alright. So
Speaker 1: we think that these reports about the Soviet atomic subterarine
Speaker 1: and the the attack America from below planned that this
Speaker 1: is probably not true. It's you know, it may be
Speaker 1: based on some actual research that took place, but the
Speaker 1: the overall story is not real and this thing was
Speaker 1: never actually built or tested in the Earl Mountains, at
Speaker 1: least as best we can tell. Um. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the idea of an atomic subtarine was never
Speaker 1: seriously investigated at all. That's right, So I I too
Speaker 1: was looking at that Atomic Sky's blog post, and I
Speaker 1: was also looking at a piece by Steve wentz Uh
Speaker 1: in the National Interest that that also cites that particular
Speaker 1: blog post. UM. And yeah, the United States also looked
Speaker 1: into this technology, into this idea of a subterarine uh
Speaker 1: specifically UM. During the nineteen seventies, Lost Alamos National Laboratory
Speaker 1: explored the use of nuclear of a nuclear powered subterarine.
Speaker 1: Engineer Bob Porter was allegedly inspired by at Earth's Core
Speaker 1: by the by the Boroughs novel after noting the three
Speaker 1: thousand degrees integrade temperatures of a prototype reactor in the fifties,
Speaker 1: and then in one experiment by Potter showed that this
Speaker 1: sort of drilling could be possible. The resulting project was
Speaker 1: intended to produce a vehicle quote capable of penetrating the
Speaker 1: Earth to depths of ten kilometers to extend geological and
Speaker 1: geophysical exploration into the Earth's mantle. Now, the important idea
Speaker 1: here is that this sub tureen envisioned by Potter here
Speaker 1: would not drill just through traditional boring like a you know,
Speaker 1: a drill bit or a bunch of drill bits that
Speaker 1: it would primarily work through melting, right, using the superheating
Speaker 1: from either a nuclear or an electrical source to to
Speaker 1: superheat something like some tongue sten or something that would
Speaker 1: melt the rock away and allow you to just kind
Speaker 1: of like go through it like a hot knife through butter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, it would be swimming through the earth.
Speaker 1: It would be creating its own lava tube and sliding
Speaker 1: through it. Uh yeah, So I mean it's it's an
Speaker 1: ingenious solution, you know, um or potential solution. So apparently,
Speaker 1: first of all, I do want to like you, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, I would I would encourage everyone to
Speaker 1: check out that Atomic Sky's blog posts because he also
Speaker 1: goes into a little more detail about this supposed it's
Speaker 1: a scenario where they were talking about it at at
Speaker 1: outlaw luncheon or at a diner or something. Yeah, bar
Speaker 1: and um, and it just kind of the idea of
Speaker 1: it was got picked up by was it a it
Speaker 1: was a politician this politician. Yeah, the the scientists from
Speaker 1: the lab. On Friday, we're hanging out just like having
Speaker 1: drinks and talking about ideas that occurred to them in
Speaker 1: a some politician I don't know if it was a
Speaker 1: US rap or a New Mexico reps. Some politician legislator
Speaker 1: walks in and overhears them talking about this subterrane idea
Speaker 1: and gets really excited about it. Yeah, he's like, that
Speaker 1: sounds great, let's fund it. And so they did and
Speaker 1: got funded. Um. So, apparently, in addition to mining, tunneling,
Speaker 1: and exploration, the project also entailed this idea that the
Speaker 1: tech could be used to create storage cavities in the
Speaker 1: Earth in the deep perth, not only for toxic and
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. And we've discussed on the show before about
Speaker 1: out the the the deep geologic isolation of nuclear waste
Speaker 1: is actually a you know, a really supported idea. But
Speaker 1: they also got into this idea of how putting pressurized
Speaker 1: gases in these storage cavities that could then be unleashed
Speaker 1: to drive turbines for energy. It's an interesting idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would not have thought of that, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So um. According to again that National Interest
Speaker 1: article and the Atomic Skuy's blog post, uh, the everything
Speaker 1: kind of came together like this. So in the National
Speaker 1: Science Foundation funded a full scale study of the nuclear
Speaker 1: Subterraine and then a small scale electrically power prototype drills
Speaker 1: were built and one was used by the National Park
Speaker 1: Service to drill drainage holes at Bandalier National Monument near
Speaker 1: Los Alamos. The rock penetrator's lack of vibration this was
Speaker 1: apparently essential to preserving an archaeological site close by while
Speaker 1: the holes were being drilled. Yeah, and this, uh, this
Speaker 1: emphasizes again, like some of the advantages that you would
Speaker 1: have if you're just moving through rock primarily by melting
Speaker 1: rather than standard grinding drilling stuff. Also, it's like you
Speaker 1: don't produce a lot of dust and pollutants from the process.
Speaker 1: There are many ways that melting down into the earth
Speaker 1: is a quite elegant solution for tunneling. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: this referenced in some of the other like tunneling and
Speaker 1: boring articles. I was coming across the idea of of
Speaker 1: creating a tunnel in your wake that is like lined
Speaker 1: in glass. You know, again, it's like a lava tube.
Speaker 1: And therefore, you know, you wouldn't necessarily have this issue
Speaker 1: of Okay, we have all this leftover stone, what are
Speaker 1: we gonna do? How's the how's our subterarine, gonna then
Speaker 1: turn that into blocks to reinforce the wreckage it leaves
Speaker 1: in its wake. So the sources here they point out
Speaker 1: that the according to the designs to cutting head designs
Speaker 1: were looked at one for common rock and one for
Speaker 1: hard rock. So you had a traditional rotary cutting head
Speaker 1: with the cylindrical rock melters, and then you also had
Speaker 1: one with dozens of nuclear powered needle pros um, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty crazy idea, Like these are in a way,
Speaker 1: these are like little tentacles. Are almost like the tentacle, uh,
Speaker 1: you know the head of the star faced mole right
Speaker 1: where they kind of dig in and then but then
Speaker 1: they melt right. And this again, it wouldn't have necessarily
Speaker 1: like a conical tip. It might be more like a
Speaker 1: flat disc type shape with the melting elements and then
Speaker 1: the drilling elements. Yeah, really more in line with traditional
Speaker 1: TBMs in that in that respect, um. And then they
Speaker 1: also mentioned that the probes would would would unevenly heat
Speaker 1: the rock face, causing it to crack and crumble, so
Speaker 1: that would be an un aspect of it as well. Um.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I mentioned the glass walls. But so
Speaker 1: ultimately the project transfers to the Department of Energy in
Speaker 1: five and from there it apparently mostly vanished. It would
Speaker 1: pop up again in the nineteen eighties as a possible
Speaker 1: way to tunnel for bases on the Moon. And this
Speaker 1: was apparently this has six and this was a proposal
Speaker 1: by one Dr John Rowley. Yeah, well and and two
Speaker 1: other co authors. Yeah, and they published a paper about, uh,
Speaker 1: excavating tunnels on the surface of the Moon to shield
Speaker 1: colonists from the radiation that you would be exposed to
Speaker 1: if you were trying to create a nuclear base or
Speaker 1: not a nuclear gray sorry, a moon base. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is very common problem when people talk about making moon bases, right,
Speaker 1: You've basically just got to get underground somehow. And they
Speaker 1: called this idea not a subterine, but a sub selline
Speaker 1: because it's yeah, well, I think that that in and
Speaker 1: of itself is a it's a pretty um elegant idea. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you can certainly imagine your lander delivers uh,
Speaker 1: the the the subterine or subsiline vehicle and then like
Speaker 1: that is necessary to burrow to safety. Um. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in that Atomic Sky's post, Mark also touches on a
Speaker 1: weaponized concept that was discussed to use. The technology this
Speaker 1: would have been the radio isotope powered thermal penetrator or
Speaker 1: the the rip TP, in which the machine quote would
Speaker 1: form a bubble of magna in hot high pressure gases
Speaker 1: behind itself when it nears the underground base that is,
Speaker 1: you know, presumably the target here, the pressure of the
Speaker 1: gas and magma would burst the base walls explosively destroying
Speaker 1: the facilities near the breach through blast and fire. WHOA.
Speaker 1: On that blog post, he includes some black and white
Speaker 1: too illustrations of what these concepts would have looked like.
Speaker 1: You get to see those u those needles at the front.
Speaker 1: There's also this image of a tunnel that has been
Speaker 1: board of what this would look like, this kind of
Speaker 1: glass line tunnel, and it has kind of it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a colonosphy um makes you know it,
Speaker 1: it has kind of a colonic appearance. Uh Now. Another
Speaker 1: one of the advantages that that they talk about with
Speaker 1: respect to the rock melting versus just the traditional drill
Speaker 1: type excavator is that a rock melting model for a
Speaker 1: subtrain would allow you to to potentially create a tunnel
Speaker 1: of any shape you wanted. It wouldn't have to be
Speaker 1: a circular tube, it could be square, it could be triangular.
Speaker 1: You know, you can do anything interesting, you know, like
Speaker 1: especially if you're if you're trying to create a space
Speaker 1: for your moon base upon arriving, you know, for that,
Speaker 1: you might want a large cube cubical space, uh, underneath
Speaker 1: the lunar surface, as opposed to just a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of tunnels to live in. Right. So I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rock melting subsilene, I'm not sure that idea is
Speaker 1: forever done with. Maybe that'll come back someday. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, because we've also we've discussed on the show
Speaker 1: before how there are concepts of building such bases and
Speaker 1: craters so you know, and naturally occurring um places to
Speaker 1: hide in the lunar surface. So so I don't know, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it. Basically, we kind of leave this episode
Speaker 1: with still a number of questions, you know, like what
Speaker 1: what what is the future of boring and tunneling here
Speaker 1: on the Earth or even on other you know, on
Speaker 1: moons and planets that we might go to, and and
Speaker 1: what is that going to look like? Are we going
Speaker 1: to actually see subterines in the future, you know, I
Speaker 1: it's it's it's hard to say, but it seems like
Speaker 1: some of the tunnel boring advances that are taking place
Speaker 1: today are encouraging of that. Um I don't know if
Speaker 1: they're gonna let um you U musque traffic nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: to one of these things anytime soon. But well, that's
Speaker 1: another interesting thing to point out, which is that, um So,
Speaker 1: obviously there are lots of safety concerns whenever you have
Speaker 1: a nuclear powered vehicle. I mean, this is the case
Speaker 1: with all of the nuclear powered submarines and everything. But fortunately,
Speaker 1: I would say nuclear power safety concerns are going to
Speaker 1: be lesser with a device that's being used to tunnel
Speaker 1: deep underground than they would be with a lot of
Speaker 1: other kinds of vehicles, right, true. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: if it's if it fails, it's down there, right, you know,
Speaker 1: not to say that that that an accidental nuclear detonation
Speaker 1: even underground is ideal, but I don't you know, there
Speaker 1: are it's better than other places I'm saying, like relative
Speaker 1: to an airplane or something. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I
Speaker 1: guess another thing we should quickly acknowledge is that the
Speaker 1: Internet is also full of claims that there are subterraines
Speaker 1: all over the place. They're making tunnels under the whole
Speaker 1: world as we speak, that are you know, that are
Speaker 1: full of like the the Illuminati, warriors and everything like that.
Speaker 1: It's I would say subtrains and underground tunnels are a
Speaker 1: very common trope of conspiracy theories. And oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder why that is. Why is it that specifically underground
Speaker 1: enclosures are like such a common image in conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: thinking is like underground bunkers, hidden underground bases, tunnels, there's
Speaker 1: always tunnels. What why is that? Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think part of it is that, I mean, these are
Speaker 1: really cool ideas, and I think a lot of conspiracy
Speaker 1: thinking does get into areas of taking things that are
Speaker 1: really cool and taking them too far, you know, taking
Speaker 1: them too far into an area where you you want
Speaker 1: to believe them so badly, and then you deal with
Speaker 1: the ramifications of believing that, you know, because it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's therefore true. Yeah, Like, yeah, the idea of the
Speaker 1: hollow earth, that's it's a very fun concept. I I
Speaker 1: love reading about how Edgar Rice Burrows constructed this this world.
Speaker 1: But if you start buying into that concept, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of baggage that comes with it. And and likewise,
Speaker 1: if yeah, if you if you want to believe submarines
Speaker 1: are real, and you know they're out there in the
Speaker 1: world burrowing tunnels, and what are they doing for Whom
Speaker 1: are they burrowing these tunnels? And what are the results? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I know the answer. It's for Lord kin Boat. Sorry
Speaker 1: that maybe in Next Files right, Oh, I just remember
Speaker 1: you're not the Next Files person. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I
Speaker 1: was struggling with that reference. Whose Lord kin Boat. Oh
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's the Lord of the Underground Realm
Speaker 1: from Jose Chung's from Outer Space. It's one of the
Speaker 1: best episodes of all time. Oh yeah, you've You've reckoned.
Speaker 1: I need to watch that one someday. He ends up.
Speaker 1: Lord Kinboat reveals himself to a character who is named
Speaker 1: after Rocky Ericsson and who who gets a visit from
Speaker 1: Jesse Ventura as one of the Men in Black. It's
Speaker 1: just it's it's NonStop hits, all right. I need to
Speaker 1: check that out. Well, um, well, this has been a
Speaker 1: fun one. I feel like there have to be some
Speaker 1: really cool examples of subterarines and fiction that we haven't covered,
Speaker 1: and you know, if anyone out there is is more
Speaker 1: versed in even the conspiracy theory realm of subterarines, I
Speaker 1: mean I'd love to hear about it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like I say, the idea of secret underground bases and
Speaker 1: tunneling vehicles connecting them all like that's that's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty fun soundings, as long as it doesn't
Speaker 1: end up obscuring your understanding of reality. If you can't
Speaker 1: get him out of your mind, write a screenplay, don't
Speaker 1: post on the on the forums. But that being said,
Speaker 1: like the real the reality of like TBM technology and
Speaker 1: and the kind of work that's going on with the
Speaker 1: boring company like that, and of it's in and of
Speaker 1: itself is really exciting. So um yeah, there's there's plenty
Speaker 1: of of great stuff to go around just within the
Speaker 1: realm of truth here totally all right. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to other episodes of
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, you know where to find
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Speaker 1: Those are just simple things you can do to help
Speaker 1: out the show. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
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