Underground L.A.?

Yes. (via BoingBoing)

Urban Stalactites

Spotted on the uptown-bound platform of the 4/5/6 last weekend. At first glance I took them for the usual peeling paint that can appear on the ceilings of the older subway tunnels (and given what paint used to be made of, isn't that an appealing thought?) but I soon recognized these miniature stalactites for what they are.

Natural stalactites are the result of dripping limestone elements that recombine in almost palindromic chemical reactions as they make contact with water and air, respectively. Stalactites can also form, however, on concrete, through a more rapid reaction fueled by the calcium oxide found in concrete. It's interesting how natural processes can inform a man-made structure -- we tend to focus on the reverse, but nature always has the last word.

"Smugglers Build an Underground World"

Via "Smugglers Build an Underground World" NYT, Dec 2007:

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

TECATE, Calif., Dec. 6 — The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence.

Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two pumps. The neatly squared walls, carved through solid rock, bear the signs of engineering skill and professional drilling tools.

...

Most of the tunnels are of the “gopher” variety, dug quickly and probably by small-time smugglers who may be engaged in moving either people or limited amounts of drugs across the border. But more than a dozen have been fairly elaborate affairs like this one, with lighting, drainage, ventilation, pulleys for moving loads and other features that point to big spending by drug cartels. Engineers have clearly been consulted in the construction of these detailed corridors.

While a 1300' tunnel isn't exactly an 'Underground World', the idea does have some possibilities to it. What would a more complicated underground complex dedicated to smuggling look like? Where would such a complex be located? What would its inhabitants be like?

1)Where are smuggling tunnels found? Smuggling takes place where some commodity or service is cheaper on one side of a border of some sort, and profit can be made by selling it on the pricier side of the border. Once it's across the border, further smuggling tunnels/complexes/methods may be used to continue the commodity's journey to the center of maximum profit for the smuggler.

Top places to find smuggling tunnels in the real world today are places like the US/Mexico border - there are people who want to cross, and there is also a commodity (drugs) which is easier/cheaper to produce on the Mexican side and smuggle across than it is to produce on the 'denied' US side of the border. Another place smuggling tunnels may be found today is on the Egypt/Gaza Strip border, where weapons and other denied goods that can be obtained in Egypt are smuggled into Gaza. These borders are not 100% hostile, but neither are they tension-free.

2)What is being transported? You name it. Drugs, money, people (with or without their consent), weapons, and other goods get smuggled through a variety of means. Perhaps in a fantasy setting, monsters that have been eradicated and outlawed in a peaceful kingdom are smuggled in for underground bloodsport arenas. Deep elves pay handsomely for surface elves captured and transported below as slaves. Salt is taxed heavily in one kingdom but plentiful next door, and the salt mines connect directly to passages that circumvent the border.

3)What features might a smuggler's complex have? Well, for starters, its about transportation, so there will be systems of pulleys, tracks, elevators, slides, and other means of conveying things from one part of the complex to another with relative ease. Even so, a smuggler must be able to stop things getting from one place to another too easily when law enforcement (or delvers!) show up, so any such transport system will be peppered with defenses, traps, diversions, false pathways, and portions which can be shut off by the complex's controllers. It will have hidden entrances at least on the denied side (but probably on both sides), and may have 'dead drops' for cargo so that suppliers or customers never actually come face to face with the smugglers.

If the complex is inside a borderland mountain, it might have lookout towers on both sides of the border, to warn of pending invasion on the denied side and of incoming shipments on the production side. It might also contain warehouses for storing goods, housing areas for the smugglers (or any living traffic). It might have communication systems of speaking tubes built in to allow various parts of the complex to coordinate moving goods or people. If the complex ever falls into disuse and becomes inhabited by other denizens, these features will still make it distinct from other subterranean complexes. The speaking tubes may instead be used for taunting other denizens, and controlling the chokepoints in the transportation system will always indicate who the real powerholders are.

Am I forgetting anything?

Storing $1,000,000 of treasure

Via Weather Sealed, here's a handy chart of how much space $1,000,000 worth of various goods takes up, the best subterranean hiding place, and the, er, risks associated with each.
Stuff That You Might Put In Your Hole

Material	Value Per Pound	Size Of $1,000,000	Bury In	Pros	Cons
Wheat	$0.09	190,000 bushels	subterranean silo	never hungry	bulky, mildew, mice, locusts
Moonshine	$0.13	160,000 7gal stills	corked clay jugs	many lovely banjo solos	blindness
Gasoline	$0.49	320,000 gallons	underground tank	Peak Oil, baby!	fumes, third degree burns
Ammo	$2.10	525,000 shells	surplus ammo cans	gun owners need you	you need owners with matching gun
Vodka	$7.80	1,800,000 shots	Russian-proof bear boxes	the Bloody Mary	requires V8 and Worcestershire
Jerky	$18	27 tons	duct-taped lawn bags	infinite lifespan	everything stinks like jerky
Cigarettes	$57	7 pallets	basement of abandoned 7-11	captive market	nicotine stains
Guns	$60	2,500 shotguns	water-tight firearm lockers	reinforces Alpha Dog image	ATF raids, terrorism indictment
Silver	$270	3,700 pounds	rolling plastic totes	Werewolves begone!	not Gold
Caviar	$2,400	1,100 servings	Arctic tundra	endear yourself to power elite	must ice or eat within 3 hours
CPUs	$6,000	4,000 chips	sealed anti-static tray	light weight, inert, brainy	loses half of value every two years
Cocaine	$9,000	50 kilos	legs of faux llama keepsakes	world-wide demand	unstable customers, Scarface
Gold	$16,500	275 bars, 100g each	treasure chest	time-tested currency	metal detectors, confiscation
$100 Bills	$45,000	43? stack	mason jars	backed by U.S. Government	worthless beyond Thunderdome
Diamonds	$175,000	black velvet pouchfull	vault with lasers and trip wires	profit, intrigue, girl’s best friend	low utility, De Beers assassins
Plutonium	$2,000,000	1.3 inch sphere	argon-filled, lead-lined bunker	ultra-compact	CIA, critical mass, death by inhalation

Chi-Town Underground:

Points, too, for "Pynchonian twist":

Subterranean deluge in Chicago. [via Granta]

Dungeon Design in 'Shadow Complex'

Via MTV Multiplayer, some discussion of how a drawn side-view map of the subterranean complex of a game was crucial to its development:

For [Donald] Mustard, the map was one of his proudest achievements. "We always considered the main character in 'Shadow Complex' to be the world itself. The idea that it's this massively unfolding, layered world, and the more you get the power-ups, the more the world opens up to you."

Clearly it wasn't as simple as just designing as they went. For a game like this it requires a huge amount of planning. Said Mustard, "Even before we started making the game at all, we designed the entire game on paper first. We knew where every power-up was going to be, where every secret was. And that planning phase took a long, long time."

Before you start building, it pays to spend a long time in the design phase. I also like that to the developers, the map is the protagonist. How true that is sometimes for those of us in the subterranean design and construction business. Sure, delvers and denizens come and they fight, but the map itself often sticks more strongly in my mind. More from Donald Mustard:

"We created these little grid blocks and lines. We did a lot of it by hand at first, but then we went and transcribed it all into [Adobe] Illustrator…you could literally see a side view of the map, it was all just gray, with lines and stuff. And we had a stick figure that represented the player, and we'd say, 'Ok, the player can jump this many units high.' And we had a little graph that showed how high you could jump and how long it would take to build up to a speed run and stuff like that. So we'd 'play through' the entire game with this little stick figure guy."

Say, that's not a bad idea - maybe we could take some of the maps of subterranean complexes we've designed and, before committing to building schedules and excavation subcontractors and all the other headaches of production, maybe we could, like, pretend to have imaginary delvers visit the dungeons, but do it all on paper! Oh man, this is going to save me so much trouble. But where am I going to find people willing to pretend to be imaginary dungeon delvers?

Bats via Infravision

Remember how in early D&D some races had "infravision" which was essentially thermal predator vision? This is what the entrance to the bat-infested cave system looks like to an elf:


I always thought I wanted infravision, but now it seems a little, well, terrifying. (edit: Of course I still want it though. Don't be silly.)

Via Wired