> ...has been dividing his time between building the next generation of supercomputers and digging an underground tunnel that starts below his Chippewa Falls house and heads toward the nearby woods. "He's been working at it for some time now," says Rollwagen, who reports that the tunnel is 8 ft. high, 4 ft. wide and lined with 4-by-4 cedar boards. ...
From the wiki source, my inference is that the tunnel is at least 4 inches long if he was able to line it with 4x4 boards... But aren't 4x4 boards typically called "posts"? I'm amused by how poorly Time reported this.
The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an 8 by 4 feet (2.4 by 1.2 m) cedar-floored tunnel under his house, explaining that the digging helped him to think about computer designs. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem," he said.
When I switched from construction to freelance web design I spent a couple years doing part time so I could listen to podcasts. Digging, or just about any repetitive physical activity, is therapeutic and unlike programming I don’t have to think much. Now days I do a similar thing with the gym, but it’s still not the same. Reminds me of the end of Office Space where the main character refuses a new programming job because he likes digging and working outside.
Well more like a kept a couple of hours a few times a week for podcasts, and the company was happy to have me as I had a worked with them for awhile prior to becoming an engineer.
I'd bet this was also part of his nuclear war survival plans, it's said he moved to Chippewa Falls in part because the Twin Cities were too obvious of a target.
Eccentric aristocrats get trapped by the social norms of their classmates. There's even lore around this. For example, people who don't think Shakespeare actually wrote anything[0] also tend to believe it was written by some aristocrat who couldn't reveal they participated in something as vulgar as creative writing.
I had some childhood friends who could have served as the basis for the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. Four brothers with varying degrees of brilliance, their household a constant state of mayhem. One did indeed dig a tunnel under the foundation of their house. It was more of a crawlspace but it went all the way down there…
Then there was the twenty-year-old tarantula… the time one learned to spin yarn and made a sweater out of his dog’s hair… that time they procured some authentic bedouin garb and built a bonfire of plastic american flags on the driveway (this was pre-9/11)… fun bunch
I can relate to that. My home's basement has a side resting on a rocky mountain. I have daydreamed of secretly digging into the mountain and making a secret room, but it's not feasible: neighbors would complain of noise, the construction would be quite evident, and there's subterranean wiring and likely gas/water/drain pipes in the way. It would also be awful to find a spring and flood the house.
This must be at an elevated space or in a dry area. Otherwise the water table would stop him. She should ask him to take a video of the tunnel for her so she can see what it looks like down there (without having to go in herself).
One of the best things about Dwarf Fortress is the story telling that surrounds it. I remember reading a great story on the forums about a Dwarf possessed to build a great work, but in the end it was only a legendary iron bucket.
Some of the more… mundane artifacts are nevertheless very useful. An artifact bucket can be used to build a very high-value well that gives dorfs happy thoughts. Artifact doors and floodgates are indestructible and impervious to invaders that can knock down standard issue furniture. Artifact tables and chairs are obviously useful for furnishing dining halls and offices.
Yeah, always embark with a few turtles, and save the turtle shells from the garbage pile, as an early strange mood can make or break a fortress (make it if they make something masterpiece you can display in the dining hall, break it if they can't get something like turtleshell and descend into madness triggering a tantrum spiral).
Alas, (unless you mod the game) you do not get shells from turtles you bring on embark or import through trade; they are already processed and ready to eat, no shell included. You do not even get a shell when you buy mussels!
Pond turtles are considered fish and live fish is not available to bring on embark. Since the only source for shells is fishing it is somewhat common to mod the game to make shell acquisition easier, you might have had one of those running.
I hope at some point miners in DF will get a special strange mood in which they go and dig out some crazy architectural masterpiece, a dining hall or a dwelling or a tomb fit for a king. Currently they just go and create an artifact masonry item, which is a bit boring.
Oh, and there could be another strange mood where the affected dorf becomes obsessed with delving too deep and too greedily, with certain spoilery consequences if not stopped in time.
All serious safety concerns. Also: Something that happens more often than we hear about is tunnelers breaking into an open space which collapses some of the floor they're standing on, causing them to fall and get seriously injured, or die. Is he tying himself to something? Does he have ground-penetrating radar?
There are a lot of things which could go wrong with tunneling. Bad air or collapse being a possibility.
There is also the possibility he is competent at this as well.
I would raise the idea of bringing someone in who could assess the current effort for safety and quality. Most people who are building properly should welcome this. Being highly defensive from prying eyes definitely raises some red flags.
I one hundred percent agree. unless you have proper tools training and equipment for confined space work, trench work, and mine safety you shouldnt be doing this. depending on where you dig you risk exposure to a host of bad hombres including methane, radon, arsenic, and asbestos.
One thing to consider is that property rights and mineral rights are completely different in most states. Identifying the owner of the mineral rights to the property might the the first step in getting him to cease and desist.
another thing to remember is that if you dig too deep, get too stuck, or are generally too cumbersome, rescuers will not pursue your rescue or exhume your corpse. As in the 2009 nutty putty cave disaster, youll simply be left interred, with a memorial marker. death by entrapment is a slow death of exhaustion and dehydration.
Is it the role of society to stop people from taking risks they willingly accept? And at what point?
If I want to skydive? Kayak across the Atlantic? Run a fight club? Build a custom homestead? Smoke? Drink? Do drugs? Play Russian Roulette?
Where's the line? There's one somewhere. To me, digging tunnels feels like the sort of thing which we should allow. Some of the others, I'm okay banning.
I think we should absolutely allow people to pursue dangerous activities they are passionate about. Having limits on how far rescuers will go to bail you out of trouble is also perfectly fair.
>To me, digging tunnels feels like the sort of thing which we should allow.
Except, you know, there might be electrical lines, sewer lines, water pipes, etc, underground. It might also affect property value, if your tunnel floods it could lead to mosquitos, lots of unintended consequences could happen.
Also, if you have a family, loved ones, friends, etc, they also have a right to try to stop you from doing something potentially stupid.
Although I guess if you want to buy an island or some land all by yourself and dig holes all day, whatever. Otherwise, we live in a society and when what we do has consequences for others around us, society tends to get involved.
Should we then police the caloric intake of people too? Obesity kills way way more people than tunnels. Like where's the line? And while tunneling might damage utilities, obesity is putting a strain on the healthcare system. To be sure, I'm not saying we should treat overweight people any differently. It's just that your reasoning can be used to justify disallowing pretty much everything that isn't risk free. "We live in a society" goes both ways and does not imply individuals need to give up everything for the greater good
I think you're confusing the premise that society should have limits with the premise that things should be illegal. We do police caloric intake, and honestly I think we should do more because obesity and associated problems cost the American taxpayer $200 billion per year. Other societies than the US are healthier because those societies believe that the collective has a responsibility to individuals and individuals to the collective, and vice versa the government.
We limit risky behaviors all the time as well. It's illegal to parkour on private property, but not everywhere. It's illegal to freedive and BASE jump in many places, but not everywhere. Some caves aren't legal to explore, for others, you have to be an expert. Expertise is a way society gatekeeps many dangerous activities. If you're under the age of 18 or older than 75, you can't climb Mount Everest.
We no longer put heroin or cocaine in soda, we regulate some drugs and outlaw others on the premise that addiction poses a burden both on the society and the individual. We also have doctors and treatment centers as society's way of intermediating between people and bad behaviors.
And yes, there are reasonable limits placed both by society and by the law, on where and how and how big you can dig holes. It isn't an unacceptable imposition on your personal liberty that you just cant take a shovel anywhere you like and start digging anywhere you want.
>"We live in a society" goes both ways and does not imply individuals need to give up everything for the greater good.
Within your own property lines (and mineral rights), away from all utility lines and easements, and done so as not to damage nor undermine any neighbor's property or structures, yes.
In short - either do it out in the country, or get appropriate permits.
Two of those things are something society can choose to not do. Can't necessarily ignore a collapsed tunnel in certain areas, but the alternative of banning an activity can be removing responsibility of rescue.
Perhaps in China, or some other country that doesn’t value human life. In the West we generally don’t just watch people drown and say “sucks to be them.”
Certain activities do have a high level of risk acceptance by society. Sky diving includes the use of a large amounts of paperwork with an additional video recording of your accepting of said risks. On a visit to Hawaii, there are signs post that say if you continue past the sign, you are accepting there are risks involved that the state is no longer responsible for.
The accepted role of society seems to be that if you want to do risky things, we're going to make sure we're not liable.
Without commenting on the role of society in this particular issue, I'll note that you have to know and understand the risks in order to accept them. And in my experience (aerospace) people are exceptionally bad at both identifying and assessing risk in areas outside their field of expertise.
With trenches, since the person has their head above ground, they think even less of safety.
The problem comes after a rain or a very dry period where the sides of the trench collapse. If you are unlucky, the dirt buckles your knees, pulling you down and possibly covering your head.
There’s a reason construction teams bring in reinforced barricades for anything much over 3 feet. Yes it saves on rework, but it’s also about safety.
When I was a kid my dad stopped me from digging a cave in a 5ft tall pile of snow that got stacked up by a plow. I was so mad about that for a long time, but he was probably right. Digging it would likely have been fine, but once it started to melt it could collapse at any point (probably during the heat of the day, when I or another child might have been around).
From one of many other related articles, "The equipment was fed by what Wink called a dangerous, “haphazard daisy chain” of power cords. And on the day of the fire, hours before it broke out, Beckwitt was aware of the smell of smoke in the basement, according to Wink, but reacted only by adjusting the circuit breakers."
That one article can't capture this situation well enough, there was an entire series of them (and it's still ongoing), but one of the issues had to do with the authorities dealing with the situation and simply not knowing what to do to secure the tunnel after the fact. Tunneling was haphazardly done and had gone beyond his property line and undermined neighbors' homes, and it got very complicated.
I wrote, "Is this a metaphor?" and then searched to see who else thought that.
From what I can tell, he's trying to dig himself out of a relationship he isn't happy in instead of just leaving. If he works hard enough digging deeper, maybe he can drive her away instead of having to own disappointing and hurting her, or it will collapse on him and he can be liberated in death and still remembered as perfect and a martyr. If only he had a father who could tell him, son, stop digging. This woman isn't your mother, accept yourself. Strike this set, grieve, and move on.
Or he's just a nerd with a shovel, but it's never just a nerd with a shovel.
Well, YouTubers are doing this in front of a huge audience (9M views on just one part of a series), so I would guess a lot of people share a similar interest in doing this too. I would be worried about accidents as well, but if popular folks on YouTube keep pushing this as something that can be done, I am sure many people who are not worried (and lack the skills) will follow until it eventually ends in a disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAxiWkwlC0
Yeah, I have to agree. He's essentially become a real-life Tim Taylor from Home Improvement. Every project he does is more outrageous and dangerous than the last outrageous and dangerous project. Almost none of what he does should be attempted by hobbyists at home, frankly.
There is a great story about an old man who lived in Hackney, East London who dug a series of tunnels under his house and surrounding houses. He was finally found out when other peoples houses started subsiding.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney...
In the 90s I knew a guy on suburban Long Island who had started tunneling out of his basement. Last I heard he had gotten a couple of hundred feet under some neighbor's properties. Lost touch with him long ago and never found out how it turned out, but there were no reports in the local papers, so I can only assume he is still down there somewhere.
When I was a kid I moved into my grandparents house and my uncle showed me a tunnel in his basement bedroom that he had started when he was a kid so he could sneak out. He turned 18 and moved out before he finished it, so it was my turn after that. By the time we moved out the tunnel was almost to the alley behind the house/backyard. Probably 60 to 70 feet long.
I always wondered what they thought when they tore the house down 15 years later.
Underminer : Behold, the Underminer! I'm always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me! I hereby declare war on peace and happiness! Soon, all will tremble before me!
I wouldn't call that a "great" story since it was ultimately not just pointless but actively harmful to everyone.
Dashrath Manjhi's story is one I would qualify of "great", after his wife sadly died from what he perceived was a delay of care due to his village remoteness, he resolved to straight carve a roadway through the ridge abutting his village (over which the nearest town was located). Spent 20 years carving a 110m long and 9m wide road through the ridge, apparently with hammer and chisel.
Probably several chisels, and maybe even multiple hammers. I've done my share of chiseling and I've never worn one out yet but I'm not in the habit to going through 100+ meters of rock, even so my cold chisel is probably only about 80% the size that it was when I first bought it.
Oh yes absolutely, he explained that initially the other villagers had thought him crazy, then after a few years and visible progress some started giving him food or chipping in for tools replacement.
The sheer perseverance is humbling. I have a hard time staying focused on anything for much longer than week, and those tend to be interesting and intellectually rewarding, to be focused on transforming rock to rubble and removing it for decades is somewhere just below 'god mode'.
I remember watching this video [1] about that same guy.
> "The Hackney Mole Man", In 2006, a network of tunnels were discovered beneath a house in Hackney, London. This discovery initiated a wave of public concern and media attention revolving around a lone figure, known locally as 'the Mole Man'.
Also, following an artist mentioned in the video, I tracked this page [2] and an interesting excerpt:
> Though flattered by my interest, the Mole Man proved to be extraordinarily difficult to work with. He was extremely racist, misogynistic and paranoid, and was only interested in talking about my sex life. His elusive, subterranean behavior – in many ways like that of an actual mole – and his obsession with tunnels was the ultimate Freudian manifestation. I soon realized, though, that the sexual overtones of our relationship threatened to over-take the project completely.
Maybe she should buy a shovel and work with him. Also, there is a good chance this story is fake, that it is an advertisement beacon for a movie or something.
There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.
At summer camp we had joke activities like "sand a log to nothing" and "dig a hole to China". Kids would sign up for these activities and actually sand down the log and dig the pointless hole for hours. Just as popular as playing soccer, swimming, etc. I agree this tunnel boyfriend may be on to something
Two main characters were meeting after-school to dig a tunnel, although their motivation was a little bit deeper (sorry, I couldn't help myself) than just digging itself.
There's a direct payoff for working 8 hours a day. We really don't know enough about this person's motivations to judge the health of his actions one way or another, but speculating a mental health angle isn't unreasonable. And yes, I'd say the same thing if someone cutoff all social contact and most time with their partner over a more mainstream hobby as well. MH issues aren't a given, but they're certainly on the table unless we learn more about this.
The “direct” payoff is an abstraction. Follow the code. It’s so you get money to pay for food, shelter and piece of mind, possibly status. Somewhere further up Mazlow’s hierarchy is enjoyment.
Regardless, I consider anyone operating in humanity to be mentally ill in general. It’s just, how much of your mental illness impacts the rest of us, and how much of it is abstracted away so we can quickly label it harmless (mostly to the rest of us).
Digging a tunnel the closest shit to “ain’t bothering me” as it’s going to get.
Now, if your nonsense pushes you to monopolize industries and abuse labor for profit, yeah, now your mental illness is on blast.
———
Few would consider that the GF is mentally ill, so obsessed with how it would look to others, so obsessed with how it’s non conforming.
"Ain't bothering me" as an attitude applies if you don't have an attachment to the person. In this case, the partner is actually bothered by it. They don't have a right to force a halt but concerns about major behavioral changes are reasonable for a loved one to have in this situation. "Ain't bothering me" also only applies if you disregard the potential damage to local underground infrastructure, other people's property, hitting a gas line and cause a major issue, etc.
If they're in a rural area where those aren't potential issues and the boyfriend doesn't want to change, then the partner simply has to decide if they can live with the new situation. I think we'd agree on that.
---
I'm confused on your comments about reading into the partner's mental health. I see no indication in their post saying they're concerned about how it looks to others. As for non-conforming, they seem to be somewhat accepting, stating that they haven't made it a big issue before because the boyfriend seems relatively happy. They specifically say, "My biggest concern is his safety". That seems reasonable. Major behavioral changes on the other hand would be a bigger warning sign. (while acknowledging that a red flag doesn't mean there's an actual issue)
EDIT: From an update [1] here's why the boyfriend says he does it: "It’s just pleasant. When I’m down there, I feel safe and calm, and I’m always happier when I leave than when I went in"
I suppose there are worse coping mechanisms than that.
Agreed, but once he unleashes the Balrog it will be a bit too late. Then the area will be a Superfund site for generations until some grey guy shows up with a stick & an attitude.
He shouldn't stop digging his tunnel but it sounds like he should spend less time on it if he wants to keep a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. That would be true no matter what his hobby was.
Why are you jumping to judge her? Is totally reasonable for someone in a relationship to want to spend time with their partner, and be upset if they literally never get to. What's even the point of a relationship if there's no companionship?
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone."
The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically.
[1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.
It’s likely more dangerous thank bedrock tunneling frankly. Loosely consolidated sedimentary soil can easily shift and slide with relatively little outside input. A truck driving by, a rain, sprinklers, even someone walking over it.
And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution.
Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
A guy on our street died digging out for sewer, only ~2m deep - a side he had stacked dirt on caved in/slided and covered him. He left a wife and 2 kids. No tunnel, just unsafely stacked dirt mound.
Thank you. My partner is an architect, and while they aren’t a structural engineer, they had enough structures training in grad school to know that hobby tunnel digging is extremely dangerous. There are clearly alternative physical activities that would have all the same benefits with none of the downsides.
Tunneling isn't the problem. This isn't a tunneling story. It would be similar if the tunnel were a ski mountain, an office or a drug den.
This is a story of escalating isolation. He's isolating from society, from people who care about him and whom, we presume, he cares about. (Or maybe not. Maybe he gets along fine at work and at church, and is simply uninterested in his SO.)
I'd say this is about his girlfriend not liking that he's isolating from society. (Which, of course, is a perfectly valid preference of hers.) There's lots wrong with society; the choice to mostly disconnect from it is a reasonable one for many people.
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, it's gotta be healthier than so called idle games, and about as useful. Or similar to lifting weights or jogging or something. It makes him feel good, that's all the justification any non-harmful activity should need.
> In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.
If it's concerning to you to fill a need with a hobby, then you're probably going to be concerned about most people. What would you say are healthy reasons to engage in a hobby, if there are any?
I’d say any of the top three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. A hobby that helps you achieve feelings of self-actualization, esteem, and belonging is great.
Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.
If he can avoid the safety concerns as far as cave ins and oxygen problems it seems like an incredibly benign hobby compared to a what a lot of people are into. It must be great exercise, and he could end up with some really cool underground space if he does it properly. I wonder how many women out there who's boyfriends spend their time at the bar or at the track or doing some sort of drugs would love it if they were just digging a tunnel at home instead.
When I was in art school "hobby tunneling" was kind of a fad. Both the sculpture and performance art students got into it. Digging a huge hole or tunnel on campus was frowned upon, so it was that much cooler to pull it off. I remember one guy digging a giant well and another guy digging a huge tunnel by hand and literally living in it for days. The art school was 50/50 male and female and there were plenty of trends that both participated in, but only the men got into this particular art fad for some reason.
No idea. I'll note that the original post was to /r/Advice, and the removed update was to /r/relationship_advice. No idea why they switched subreddits, but I expect that was part of it.
r/BestofRedditorUpdates is probably my new favorite sub, and I appreciate the legwork people put into gathering the pieces of posts into a coherent and satisfying story.
Some communities exist for a single purpose. Rule 2 on that subreddit: Posts must ask for advice. If you want to loop the community in on your personal story, you do have to post it elsewhere.
It's just like this community - we don't allow offtopic posts either. Except instead of a small modteam, we have people who have a certain amount of karma to "remove" (bury) the post.
Still a weird rule tho. You'd think they want to hear if their advice was good or not and have a catalogue to look back at on what worked for certain situations.
> he said that he’d work to get some sort of ventilation system installed ASAP, and that he’d even dig with his dad’s old gas mask if it’d make me feel better.
This guy ... I don't think he understands but he seems nice enough
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[ 11.8 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling
> ...has been dividing his time between building the next generation of supercomputers and digging an underground tunnel that starts below his Chippewa Falls house and heads toward the nearby woods. "He's been working at it for some time now," says Rollwagen, who reports that the tunnel is 8 ft. high, 4 ft. wide and lined with 4-by-4 cedar boards. ...
so at that point (1988), it was not yet finished
The tunnel is long enough to get to the dragon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hobby_tunneling&s...
"The 5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself but rather had workmen build his tunnels."
Hobby tunnel manager, perhaps?
Eccentric aristocrats get trapped by the social norms of their classmates. There's even lore around this. For example, people who don't think Shakespeare actually wrote anything[0] also tend to believe it was written by some aristocrat who couldn't reveal they participated in something as vulgar as creative writing.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shakespeare_authorship...
Dibs!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel
Then there was the twenty-year-old tarantula… the time one learned to spin yarn and made a sweater out of his dog’s hair… that time they procured some authentic bedouin garb and built a bonfire of plastic american flags on the driveway (this was pre-9/11)… fun bunch
Now, if this was in a remote area...
Just get started, and work out solutions as you go along.
https://boingboing.net/2006/08/10/seymour-cray-liked-t.html http://1auglobalmedia.com/blogcontent/digging-in-seymours-ca...
Basically becoming completely obsessed like this, stoping any other task
Oh, and there could be another strange mood where the affected dorf becomes obsessed with delving too deep and too greedily, with certain spoilery consequences if not stopped in time.
There is also the possibility he is competent at this as well.
I would raise the idea of bringing someone in who could assess the current effort for safety and quality. Most people who are building properly should welcome this. Being highly defensive from prying eyes definitely raises some red flags.
I one hundred percent agree. unless you have proper tools training and equipment for confined space work, trench work, and mine safety you shouldnt be doing this. depending on where you dig you risk exposure to a host of bad hombres including methane, radon, arsenic, and asbestos.
One thing to consider is that property rights and mineral rights are completely different in most states. Identifying the owner of the mineral rights to the property might the the first step in getting him to cease and desist.
another thing to remember is that if you dig too deep, get too stuck, or are generally too cumbersome, rescuers will not pursue your rescue or exhume your corpse. As in the 2009 nutty putty cave disaster, youll simply be left interred, with a memorial marker. death by entrapment is a slow death of exhaustion and dehydration.
If I want to skydive? Kayak across the Atlantic? Run a fight club? Build a custom homestead? Smoke? Drink? Do drugs? Play Russian Roulette?
Where's the line? There's one somewhere. To me, digging tunnels feels like the sort of thing which we should allow. Some of the others, I'm okay banning.
Except, you know, there might be electrical lines, sewer lines, water pipes, etc, underground. It might also affect property value, if your tunnel floods it could lead to mosquitos, lots of unintended consequences could happen.
Also, if you have a family, loved ones, friends, etc, they also have a right to try to stop you from doing something potentially stupid.
Although I guess if you want to buy an island or some land all by yourself and dig holes all day, whatever. Otherwise, we live in a society and when what we do has consequences for others around us, society tends to get involved.
We limit risky behaviors all the time as well. It's illegal to parkour on private property, but not everywhere. It's illegal to freedive and BASE jump in many places, but not everywhere. Some caves aren't legal to explore, for others, you have to be an expert. Expertise is a way society gatekeeps many dangerous activities. If you're under the age of 18 or older than 75, you can't climb Mount Everest.
We no longer put heroin or cocaine in soda, we regulate some drugs and outlaw others on the premise that addiction poses a burden both on the society and the individual. We also have doctors and treatment centers as society's way of intermediating between people and bad behaviors.
And yes, there are reasonable limits placed both by society and by the law, on where and how and how big you can dig holes. It isn't an unacceptable imposition on your personal liberty that you just cant take a shovel anywhere you like and start digging anywhere you want.
>"We live in a society" goes both ways and does not imply individuals need to give up everything for the greater good.
No, it doesn't and I never claimed it did.
(2) People not actually wanting to do them sometimes is a good reason too (e.g. free market forces, addiction, peer pressure)
China after the opium wars is a good example of how this can play out.
In short - either do it out in the country, or get appropriate permits.
Two of those things are something society can choose to not do. Can't necessarily ignore a collapsed tunnel in certain areas, but the alternative of banning an activity can be removing responsibility of rescue.
The accepted role of society seems to be that if you want to do risky things, we're going to make sure we're not liable.
There’s a reason construction teams bring in reinforced barricades for anything much over 3 feet. Yes it saves on rework, but it’s also about safety.
When I was a kid my dad stopped me from digging a cave in a 5ft tall pile of snow that got stacked up by a plow. I was so mad about that for a long time, but he was probably right. Digging it would likely have been fine, but once it started to melt it could collapse at any point (probably during the heat of the day, when I or another child might have been around).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/a-million... [soft paywall]
From one of many other related articles, "The equipment was fed by what Wink called a dangerous, “haphazard daisy chain” of power cords. And on the day of the fire, hours before it broke out, Beckwitt was aware of the smell of smoke in the basement, according to Wink, but reacted only by adjusting the circuit breakers."
That one article can't capture this situation well enough, there was an entire series of them (and it's still ongoing), but one of the issues had to do with the authorities dealing with the situation and simply not knowing what to do to secure the tunnel after the fact. Tunneling was haphazardly done and had gone beyond his property line and undermined neighbors' homes, and it got very complicated.
From what I can tell, he's trying to dig himself out of a relationship he isn't happy in instead of just leaving. If he works hard enough digging deeper, maybe he can drive her away instead of having to own disappointing and hurting her, or it will collapse on him and he can be liberated in death and still remembered as perfect and a martyr. If only he had a father who could tell him, son, stop digging. This woman isn't your mother, accept yourself. Strike this set, grieve, and move on.
Or he's just a nerd with a shovel, but it's never just a nerd with a shovel.
I always wondered what they thought when they tore the house down 15 years later.
Dashrath Manjhi's story is one I would qualify of "great", after his wife sadly died from what he perceived was a delay of care due to his village remoteness, he resolved to straight carve a roadway through the ridge abutting his village (over which the nearest town was located). Spent 20 years carving a 110m long and 9m wide road through the ridge, apparently with hammer and chisel.
> "The Hackney Mole Man", In 2006, a network of tunnels were discovered beneath a house in Hackney, London. This discovery initiated a wave of public concern and media attention revolving around a lone figure, known locally as 'the Mole Man'.
Also, following an artist mentioned in the video, I tracked this page [2] and an interesting excerpt:
> Though flattered by my interest, the Mole Man proved to be extraordinarily difficult to work with. He was extremely racist, misogynistic and paranoid, and was only interested in talking about my sex life. His elusive, subterranean behavior – in many ways like that of an actual mole – and his obsession with tunnels was the ultimate Freudian manifestation. I soon realized, though, that the sexual overtones of our relationship threatened to over-take the project completely.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwJVjJPtWaw&ab_channel=LateN...
[2] https://www.karenrusso.co.uk/en/gallery/47
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crews-arrive-to-fill-in-tu...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOelRv7fMxY
Update: tnorthcutt has a better url in a reply to this comment - it is for the entire playlist and not just the first video in the series.
Here's the whole playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGjbAdaOBLBlS1MPKXYmq...
There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-channel-tunnel-1779429
so that the two tunnels meet in the middle ...
…just be careful. There’s a man in the middle of the tunnel who will try to take your stuff.
Did you have an activity to turn a log into a paddle?
Two main characters were meeting after-school to dig a tunnel, although their motivation was a little bit deeper (sorry, I couldn't help myself) than just digging itself.
If he’s healthy, I also agree that this hobby is probably not bad for mental health.
Or it's a hobby...
edit: I had no idea Terry Davies passed away in 2018; he'd occasionally drop in on HN comment threads about his OS.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
2. https://templeos.org/
Dig the fucking tunnel.
Regardless, I consider anyone operating in humanity to be mentally ill in general. It’s just, how much of your mental illness impacts the rest of us, and how much of it is abstracted away so we can quickly label it harmless (mostly to the rest of us).
Digging a tunnel the closest shit to “ain’t bothering me” as it’s going to get.
Now, if your nonsense pushes you to monopolize industries and abuse labor for profit, yeah, now your mental illness is on blast.
———
Few would consider that the GF is mentally ill, so obsessed with how it would look to others, so obsessed with how it’s non conforming.
If they're in a rural area where those aren't potential issues and the boyfriend doesn't want to change, then the partner simply has to decide if they can live with the new situation. I think we'd agree on that.
---
I'm confused on your comments about reading into the partner's mental health. I see no indication in their post saying they're concerned about how it looks to others. As for non-conforming, they seem to be somewhat accepting, stating that they haven't made it a big issue before because the boyfriend seems relatively happy. They specifically say, "My biggest concern is his safety". That seems reasonable. Major behavioral changes on the other hand would be a bigger warning sign. (while acknowledging that a red flag doesn't mean there's an actual issue)
EDIT: From an update [1] here's why the boyfriend says he does it: "It’s just pleasant. When I’m down there, I feel safe and calm, and I’m always happier when I leave than when I went in"
I suppose there are worse coping mechanisms than that.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/u6a3...
Agreed, but once he unleashes the Balrog it will be a bit too late. Then the area will be a Superfund site for generations until some grey guy shows up with a stick & an attitude.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he does the tunnel so he doesn’t spend so much time with her, but can’t say it or manage whatever is going on with him.
Random armchair psychologist from afar of course.
True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone."
The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically.
[1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.
And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution.
Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
This is a story of escalating isolation. He's isolating from society, from people who care about him and whom, we presume, he cares about. (Or maybe not. Maybe he gets along fine at work and at church, and is simply uninterested in his SO.)
In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, it's gotta be healthier than so called idle games, and about as useful. Or similar to lifting weights or jogging or something. It makes him feel good, that's all the justification any non-harmful activity should need.
[1] Mods removed it on Reddit. Archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20220417170609/https://old.reddit...
That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.
Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.
https://www.boringcompany.com/seriescround
https://reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/u6a3qp/o...
Imagine if dang did that... It's unthinkable.
r/BestofRedditorUpdates is probably my new favorite sub, and I appreciate the legwork people put into gathering the pieces of posts into a coherent and satisfying story.
If you enter, may <deity> have mercy on your soul.
It's just like this community - we don't allow offtopic posts either. Except instead of a small modteam, we have people who have a certain amount of karma to "remove" (bury) the post.
This guy ... I don't think he understands but he seems nice enough
"after church today" - I can see why he wants to get away
EP 39: 3 ALARM LAMP SCOOTER https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/39/