Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

news.ycombinator.com

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#31

Ancient humans are thought by some researchers to have done much the same. The deep underground artworks in some French caves are said to be evidence of humans escaping the cold. There's a reason I can think of that it might not work so well again. Lots of non-human animals survived the cold quite well, so there was game for those ancient ancestors to hunt, but there might be much less game surviving in great heat.

And having game to hunt or not, is relevant to modern citizens how?

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be that “Most dugout homes are excavated into hillsides rather than dug from shafts” from your second article. AFAIK temperature doesn’t get cooler underground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient

Hi, I'm in actual geophysics .. and you're linking to a phenomenon (quick, read your own link) that occurs over a scale of tens, hundreds, and thousands of kilometers. Near surface underground is different. Aquifers and all manner of other things behave differently to your blanket "AFAIK temperature doesn’t get cooler underground" and it's well known in practice that digging down a few stories evens out the tempretur…

data center was the original reason for my buried wall: the computers were going to live on that wall and shed their heat into it. Big heatsink. Worked well for a couple years and then AT&T decided to take away my bandwidth, so i had no more excuse to have 10kw of racks running.

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#33

My house is half dug in to a hill; west TN USA. Summer cooling is a bigger concern here than winter heating; and it wins in the summer. In the winter, it's still a minor win, the half the house with the dug in brick wall wants to be ground temperature (say 60F), which is still higher than air temperature... but its difficult to get it heated up to temps i can live with (72F). Much thermal mass that has inertia. Moist…

Thanks for sharing.. I love hearing how people deal with overcoming challenges in building science. There are so many unique situations, but they all simplify down to a handful of variables.

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#34
The one by the people who flew with the geese is interesting.

https://youtu.be/RoGuvvzHY1A

Edit: I'm thinking mostly underground is much cheaper and reduces the risks of wildfire, wind, hail, tornado, and lightning. / There's also the opal miners in Australia who built their whole town underground. https://youtu.be/4h9XwwgQKRQ&t=2s

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#36

Radon and lack of vitamin D will be problems.

Radon and Thoron in Kenyan earth houses, I dont know if this problem spreads to various underground railway/metro systems which are everyday and common in cities.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2019.0011...

Vit D, can be replicated with UV-B flo tubes used by people keeping reptiles.

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#37

Ancient humans are thought by some researchers to have done much the same. The deep underground artworks in some French caves are said to be evidence of humans escaping the cold. There's a reason I can think of that it might not work so well again. Lots of non-human animals survived the cold quite well, so there was game for those ancient ancestors to hunt, but there might be much less game surviving in great heat.

And having game to hunt or not, is relevant to modern citizens how?

Post-apocalyptic citizens will get hungry too, although heat death isn't the usual apocalyptic scenario.

Re: Ask HN: Possible to go/live underground to cool off?

#38
I won't be able to back this up by any form of proof, but I have talked with the R&D departement of a major construction company located in France. They have plans to try to build underground cities in the foreseeable future in order to cope with 1) overpopulation in already dense cities and 2) provide alternative solutions to living in cities that are getting warmer and warmer. They showed me pictures of what it could look like, and you can basically imagine The Line in Saudi Arabia, but underground. That was 3 years ago.

What surprised me the most was that it was something they thought would be mostly sold to the very rich. This conversation got me very depressed.

Post reply on HN