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Why are there so many tunnels under London?

economist.com

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Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#51

Post by quarterto »

claudius wrote: post #16
cmajewsk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about 'too old', but it is old. It states in the article that..." the London Underground, opened in the city 150 years ago.: The county I am living in currently, will be celebrating only its 42 birthday tomorrow...think about it.

And I am very thankful that the undergrounds in the cities where I spent most of my time were built much later: Tunnelling techniques evolved quickly during the late 18th and early 19th century, allowing for much more ‘comfortable’ tunnel diameters – there is a reason the London Underground is called the tube, it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains.

> late 18th and early 19th century

The first underground lines were in 1863. That's the mid 19th century. The first deep level train (what's actually the Tube) was the City & South London Railway, opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax.

> it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains

Not unless you're like 6' 6" (and thus taller than 99.5% of males). http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62018000/jpg/_62018161...

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#52

Post by csmuk »

junto wrote: post #49
csmuk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite common assurances otherwise, this is possibly the case. It's not beyond engineering technology of the era. When people purchased bunkers post-cold-war, they were confronted with "permanent sealed" doors that cannot be opened within the bunkers. These are welded shut and the ports on the door filled with concrete so that it filled whatever was behind. You can go and see these at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex and cou…

I'm fairly sure that this bunker is still in use. Since someone reading this might have similar interests, I have a question. I have recently seen a document, which I think must have been part of the Snowden leak, but I'm struggling to find it again. It s a map of all of the listening points from the Tempora program. They were all common first names, differently sized boxes on the map. If anyone knows what I'm talkin…

http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret5.htm#data-centres

^^ start here. I'm sure there are maps somewhere.

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#53

Post by ksrm »

csmuk wrote: post #52
junto wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure that this bunker is still in use. Since someone reading this might have similar interests, I have a question. I have recently seen a document, which I think must have been part of the Snowden leak, but I'm struggling to find it again. It s a map of all of the listening points from the Tempora program. They were all common first names, differently sized boxes on the map. If anyone knows what I'm talkin…

http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret5.htm#data-centres ^^ start here. I'm sure there are maps somewhere.

I visited SYGDC in Tankersley a few years ago. It's even more impressive on the inside. Don't remember seeing any doors marked "TEMPORA" though.

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#54

Post by csmuk »

ksrm wrote: post #53
csmuk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret5.htm#data-centres ^^ start here. I'm sure there are maps somewhere.

I visited SYGDC in Tankersley a few years ago. It's even more impressive on the inside. Don't remember seeing any doors marked "TEMPORA" though.

If its anything like the MoD when I worked for them then they were probably still waiting for the sign PO to go through...

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#55

Post by sokoloff »

quarterto wrote: post #51
claudius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am very thankful that the undergrounds in the cities where I spent most of my time were built much later: Tunnelling techniques evolved quickly during the late 18th and early 19th century, allowing for much more ‘comfortable’ tunnel diameters – there is a reason the London Underground is called the tube, it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains.

> late 18th and early 19th century The first underground lines were in 1863. That's the mid 19th century. The first deep level train (what's actually the Tube) was the City & South London Railway, opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax. > it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains Not unless you're like 6' 6" (and thus taller than 99.5% of males). http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62018000/jpg/_62018…

"Check yo fax" is not consistent with the standards of the HN community (nor with the overall high quality of the rest of your comment).

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#56

Post by Someone »

csmuk wrote: post #47
junto wrote: post #18

There are lots of secret MOD tunnels as well. Some of them run out of London across the country with rail tracks to nuclear bunkers that were to be used when nuclear war broke out. To put the scale of it in perspective, one if the tunnels runs to a bunker in Wales south of Aberystwyth.

Despite common assurances otherwise, this is possibly the case. It's not beyond engineering technology of the era. When people purchased bunkers post-cold-war, they were confronted with "permanent sealed" doors that cannot be opened within the bunkers. These are welded shut and the ports on the door filled with concrete so that it filled whatever was behind. You can go and see these at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex and cou…

I would start digging a few meters outside of those doors. If you use ground radar or the like, it should not be too hard to find such a tunnel even 20 or 50 meters from the bunker.

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#57

Post by dredmorbius »

VLM wrote: post #44

Nobody else caught on to the "its booming economy provided the financing." bit? To say a tunnel is capital intensive is an understatement. So you need rule of law, stable and very large financial markets, relatively low corruption. In comparison, there are other large cities built on good tunneling dirt that are perfectly unsuitable for a tunneling project for purely human reasons. Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tun…

Excellent point.

I've been looking at economics as a discipline, and what it does and doesn't take into account. Three of those factors are stability (which allows complex and advanced concepts to flourish, including advanced infrastructure), risk (and who bears it), and power relationships (again, who has power over whom).

Another example would be religious catacombs -- underground structures with religious significance, notably in Rome, Paris, London, and elsewhere. Again, the Church (large, stable, wealthy) established these.

Another aspect of London's underground infrastructure is its sewerage system, constructed in the 1850s, and one of the modern world's first sanitation systems. It was constructed in the face of a massive cholera epidemic (imported from India) which was claiming millions of lives throughout Europe and tens of thousands in England, and exhibiting a mortality rate of 10-20%, often killing within 12 hours. The mechanism (oral ingestion, gut development, fecal-oral transmission) had just been posited and demonstrated by John Snow and his famous map of cases identifying the Broad Street pump, contaminated by a nearby (3 foot distant) septic tank which was leaking into it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system

There are many histories of this, one of the better ones I've encountered is James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed", episode 7, "What the Doctor Ordered". The entire programme covers the emergence of the modern medical and public health system. The portion specific to the cholera epidemic and the infrastructure effects starts at 19 minutes in:

http://fixyt.com/watch?v=wM2UZ26b1EQ

The fascinating part is that much of what's now considered to be "British nature" (cricket, stiff upper lip, jolly good) emerged as a consequence of this epidemic as well.

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#58

Post by batbomb »

ColinWright wrote: post #30
zhuzhu wrote: post #2

The city is too old.

The difference between America and England is that the Americans think 100 years is a long time, whereas the English think 100 miles is a long way. Just for reference ... My house was built in 1903. The college I went to was founded in 1352. The city my wife grew up in was occupied by the Romans sometime between 70 and 80 AD.

Maybe it's a little different because I grew up in New Mexico next to the Navajo reservation, right smack in the middle of tons of pueblos, but you have a very euro-centric view of the world if you think everybody in America thinks 100 years ago was a long time ago.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#59

Post by maratd »

VLM wrote: post #44

Nobody else caught on to the "its booming economy provided the financing." bit? To say a tunnel is capital intensive is an understatement. So you need rule of law, stable and very large financial markets, relatively low corruption. In comparison, there are other large cities built on good tunneling dirt that are perfectly unsuitable for a tunneling project for purely human reasons. Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tun…

> Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tunnel thru

That's an understatement. It's solid bedrock. Great for skyscrapers. Really bad for tunnels.

Re: Why are there so many tunnels under London?

#60

Post by graeme »

dredmorbius wrote: post #57
VLM wrote: post #44

Nobody else caught on to the "its booming economy provided the financing." bit? To say a tunnel is capital intensive is an understatement. So you need rule of law, stable and very large financial markets, relatively low corruption. In comparison, there are other large cities built on good tunneling dirt that are perfectly unsuitable for a tunneling project for purely human reasons. Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tun…

Excellent point. I've been looking at economics as a discipline, and what it does and doesn't take into account. Three of those factors are stability (which allows complex and advanced concepts to flourish, including advanced infrastructure), risk (and who bears it), and power relationships (again, who has power over whom). Another example would be religious catacombs -- underground structures with religious signific…

I agree with your point in general, however I think the catacombs were built because the early christian's were lower class social outcasts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Rome#Christian_cat...

What's that about cricket, stiff upper lip, jolly good? I'm curious.

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