Subterrenes: Like Submarines but Underground

of the floor. We passed through the doors into the outer jacket, secured them, and then passing on into the cabin, which contained the controlling mechanism within the inner tube, switched

on the electric lights. Perry looked to his generator, to the great tanks that held the life giving chemicals with which he was to manufacture fresh air to replace that which we consumed in breathing, to his instruments for recording temperature, speed, distance, and for examining the materials through which we were to pass. He tested his steering device and overlooked the mighty cogs which transmitted its marvelous velocity to the giant drill at

the nose of his strange craft. Our seats into which we strapped ourselves were so arranged upon transverse bars that we would be upright whether the craft were plowing her way downward into the bowels of the earth, or running horizontally along some great seam of coal, or rising vertically towards the surface again at length, all was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer. For a moment we were silent, and then the old man's hand grasped the starting lever.

There was a frightful roaring beneath us. The giant frame trembled and vibrated. There was a rush of sound as the loose earth passed up through the hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake, and we were off. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind, the production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was that little coal reading there was from at the Earth's Core by Edgar

Rice Burrows, published in nineteen fourteen. Is that the one where Tarzan goes to the center of the Earth. No, and I know you're joking, but Tarzan does go to the center of the Earth in a follow up novel. Because this particular novel, because this was this this kick started a series that dealt with essentially like an inner world, a hollow earth environment. This was the the Pellucidar series.

Uh yeah, so Tarzan I think goes to Pellucidar and a follow up and we'll we'll talk more about Pellucidar here in a in a few minutes. But the reason that we're were we kicked off with this reading is that this is this is pivotal, This is uh this what is being described here. The iron mole is a subterine, right, So that was not a mistake. You weren't trying to say submarine that is a subterrean as in beneath the earth, as in the same way that a submarine is beneath

the ocean. So what we're talking about today is a submarine for the ground. Yes, like submarines, but underground. Some sort of vehicle uh that has some sort of drilling or melting apparatus um on its front end or perhaps on the rear end as well, then enables it to travel through the earth to so to burrow through even solid rock, as if it were some sort of giant worm making its way through the ground. Now, you might not have heard of a subdarine before but I bet

you have seen one in science fiction. Uh So, before we dive into the science and the actual and in some cases alleged technological history of the submarine, I thought we might run through some fun examples from film and TV, and then we'll also come back around to Edgar Rice

Burrows again before we venture into the real world. Now, Robert, right when I jumped in the video chat today, you and Seth were tall king about the like seventy thousand episodes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated TV series, and immediately it came to mind, like, oh, yes, didn't Shredder? Was it Shredder or was it Krang One of the villains rides around in a giant underground drill in that show? Oh? Yeah, yeah,

I was. I was chatting with Seth about this because I'm not sure if it was the first time I saw a sci fi vision of a subterarine, but I have a very clear memory of those um but believe it was the especially the arcade Beat Him Up teena Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. I think it was a

good week Konami, right, Maybe it was Konami. Anyway, I remember the arcade version was a lot better than the port to the nes Oh yeah, yeah, the arcade version was really kind of beautiful, and I've seen some more recent ports of it, uh that that you know, really really felt all right, you know. I mean it was a total quarter guzzler. It was just how many how many quarters can you put into this machine at your local pizza hut in order to beat it? But it

was it was so much fun. And and one of the things was that frequently the boss at the end of the level would arrive via a transport module this thing that looked like a rocket, except the cone of the rocket is a big drill and it comes burrowing up through the earth and then it opens up and here's the bad guy for your fight. Here's Bebop the punk bore yeah or yeah, or it's Shredder, or it's

Crane himself, and they're coming up. The idea is that, of course Krane's layer is the subterranean techno dome, this big uh you know, domed vehicle base that is often like in the molten core of the Earth, and they have to send up their their myrmidons, their their foot soldiers up to the surface in these specialized subterranes and the techno dome or the techno drome. I always thought it was like the like video drome. Oh, we have just received an update from Seth. It is in fact

techno drome um, which can be a little confused. I think I trans figured it into my head because it is a a like a spherical looking structure it had. It looks kind of like a dome. It is a technodrome whatever that is actually supposed to be. You would imagine that the interior has a domed ceiling, perhaps painted by michel Angelo or something. Is yes, but it's a picture of of crying and shredder about to have this

divine type yeah, crying reaching out. Yeah. So there's the series, which which certainly Seth can attest to and I have memories of. It was a lot of fun and had these vehicles in there as well. There was even a toy version of it. I included a picture of this for you, Joe. I don't know if you remember this or not from your the toys of your childhood, but it is a more ornate version of the subcarine from the cartoon. I remember it, but I didn't have it

that this was an object of coveting for me. Yeah, I I remember for me personally teenage Mutan, Ninja, Turtles, the cartoon, and just the overall like sensation of the toys and all. It came around this weird time where I still very much I certainly watched all these shows and I wanted to have the figures. I wanted to

have these action figures, especially Shredder and Crane. But there was this kind of feeling at that point that you weren't supposed to have toys anymore, Like you weren't supposed to enjoy this stuff, which is total b s. And I'm thankfully snapped out of that and have spent the rest of my you know, adult life, um, you know, realizing that action figures are awesome and and I should buy them for myself or my child. Uh. It's it's that horrible middle period. I mean, it's just like with

movies too. It's like how Roger Ebert talks about how you know, when you're a little kid, GAMMERA is great because it's a rocket powered turtle. And then you get older and more mature, and you think this is stupid because it's not realistic. And then you get even more mature than that, and then you realize Gamera is great again. Yes, and Gamera is great. Um and and and I and I will say that you look back at Teenage Ninas, I had so many crazy just on zo elements in it. Uh,

it was fabulous. I mean you had this armored Ninja and he's with there with an alien brain that's in this giant android body, and they're sending Ninja's up to the surface in these crazy drill submarines to fight. Uh. You know, obviously teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, which is in itself such a strange concept. So that was one subterarine

that I think a lot of people probably remember. Older viewers or certainly viewers who caught this show like on Sci Fi Channel in reruns, might remember the Thunderbirds, you know, like Thunderbirds or go well the this was the nineteen sixties puppet show with these very signature looking characters. Um that I understand. I was reading that they were partially inspiration for the animation style on the long running Star Wars clone World War series that I'm watching now with

my son, Um. But in this show, the characters had these crazy vehicles and one of them was the Thunderbird too, and it featured all these different pods, and one of them was called the Mole, and it was a drill headed vehicle then enabled the team to venture into the Earth. Now, this establishes a theme that's going to continue throughout the episode, which is that there is a lack of imagination among the people who create under underground drilling machines for science

fiction because it's always a mole. It's always a darn mole. Like, why can't you think of some kind of other burrowing creature. Why isn't it a sicilian or or something like that, you know, I mean, come on, how many moles can there be? Or even a naked mole rat that's close enough. Yeah, there's there's so many other ways to go, but everyone

comes back to the mole. And and that also includes Pixar because I know a number of Certainly, if you're you're too young to remember a teenage Mutiny Turtles or certainly Thunderbirds, then perhaps you remember the Incredibles. At the very end of this film, we're introduced to a new supervillain called the Underminer, who arrives in an epic uh and an epic subterine with a drill, this time on either end. Uh. It's a a fun scene, just kind of like a way to close out the film. He's

a bigger character in the sequel. Have I have seen the sequel? Uh, Yeah, he plays a larger role in that. But he's also mole themed. Clearly, Yes, yes, clearly mole themed. Um, let's see. Oh and and this is so weird. We were we kind of decided to do this episode and I had it in my mind, and then I happened to check out. Uh, this new series on Hulu titled Solar Opposites. It's a it's a new show from Rick and Morty co creator Justin Royland along with Mike McMahon,

who also worked on that show. Uh. They dropped the entire first season on Hulu, and it's it's it's a lot of fun. It's it's definitely for grown ups. But it's the you know, a similar vibe to Rick and Morty, but perhaps a little less meta and um, with characters that are a little more likable. Um. But I've started

watching it in BAM. Right there in the opening of the first episode, there's this vehicle called the Earth Drill that's used by the character Corvo to obtain nickel alloy from the Earth's core in order to try and fix his spaceship. And there's this great sequence where core of a you know, fires it up and starts drilling into the earth to go get the nickel, and it started immediately causes earthquakes in like China and London, and there's a big tidal wave somewhere else in the world due

to the seismic disruption of the thing. I like that the design is a little bit trown shaped, is a little bit light cycle kind of in profile at least. Yeah, it's a really cool design like that. They didn't just you know, slap together something that looked like the like the the transport module all over again. It has has some really cool wheels. But anyway, these are just a

few examples. You'll find submarines all over the place in science fiction if you really start looking for them, like it'll just turn up eventually, I think, in any kind of science fiction scenario. For instance, there's one in Fallout seventy six, the current Fallout game. I looked around, I was like, there's gotta be one in Star Wars somewhere, and it looks like there is a combat drill in the Darth Vader comic books, like Darth Vader rides one

into battle at some point, like an a T dril ty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be a T drilt. I like that, Um yeah, yeah, because I figured Star Wars University's room for there's certainly room for a subdarane. There's some rocky planet somewhere where there's a battle between uh, you know, the the Empire and um, you know, some hapless species of subterranean creature. But I feel like we got to bring it back to the Edgar Ice Burrows because I will admit so

I have never read this book. At Earth's Core his novel about the drill that goes down, and uh, I don't know, actually, I guess timing wise, this would be coming after Jules Verne's journey to the Center of the Earth, So I don't know how derivative of it it is. Um. But I did manage to watch about the first twenty minutes of the nineteen seventy six film adaptation of this book Last Night, starring our old friend Doug McClure. You

know the man. Hi, I'm Doug McClure. You might remember me from such films as that one with the Fish People, and it also had Peter Cushing in probably definitely, not even no doubt at all, the goober reest role I've ever seen Peter Cushing in, where he is just like a bumbling doo fast with a high pitched, uh cartoon

professor voice. Yeah, this was This was the ninety six adaptation, directed by Kevin Conner, and um, yeah, you might expect, like Doug, with Doug McClure and Peter Cushing, you might think, Okay, Doug's gonna play kind of the meaty doofist, which he did so wellbe Doug McClure is awesome. He's a he's a treat. When you see his name pop up in one of these older films, you know you're you've got

a nice film ahead of you. But Peter Cushing, you think especially all right, we're thinking seventy six, we're thinking Star Wars is just after this practically, and you know, you think the dignified, stoic Peter Cushing, He's gonna play this dignified scientist who invince this thing. But no, he plays this goofy doofist character as well. Uh, and it's great. I mean, Cushing is is wonderful. He has he has ranged, so I guess in a way, it's nice to see

him flexes his acting muscles in another direction. I mean it's an unfamiliar setup. Normally, I think you'd have more like, you know, the Dufus in The straight Man, but it's like a dual Dufus lead. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have Carolyn Monroe in there as well, a screen legend in her own ride. Yeah. She played still a star in Star Crash. Yeah, she was in I think she was in a James Bond film yeah yeah, yeah, and and numerous so she was very much an icon of

of the day. Hi, I'm Doug McClure. And I didn't get a haircut before filming this. Oh yeah, he's pretty shaggy in this. Yeah. It looks and it doesn't even look like it's intentional. It looks like he just, you know, it was meaning to get it trimmed and he didn't. Yeah. Uh. Now, a lot of people where I think we're reintroduced to the summer, introduced to it to the for the first time.

The most recent season of Mystery Science Theater three thousand that aired on Netflix, because this is one of the films that they riff and it's I remembered as being one of the best episode odes of the the MST three K Revival. But the film in and of itself,

it's just is tons of fun. It's colorful, It's it's weird and wacky, you know, it's it's I feel like, even though I haven't read this particular Edgar Rice Burrows novel, it does feel true to the spirit of them because they're they're There are a number of cool things going on in this. First of all, we do have the

Iron Mole. We have a drill headed subterine vehicle that takes our characters deep into the earth and it takes us to this hollow earth realm called Pellucidar and Uh and here we have a number of crazy elements taking place as well, because we have a species of telepathic terra saurs called the Mahars that rule over stone age humans that are also there. There's also like a giant bipedal bird Tyrannosaurus rex thing. It's kind of like Sam the Eagle and it runs around chasing Doug and Peter

Cushing in this giant underground corn field. I don't know if that's in the book. Yeah, I don't know. I'd love to hear from someone who who's who's red this one, because I've read a couple of Burrows books um back in the day, and I remember them as being pretty fun. You know. He gets into a little bit of scientific speculation while also getting into lots of you know, swashbuckling style action, but then occasionally like some really atmospheric you

almost kind of like pulp horror moments as well. Uh So, Yeah, and of course he wrote a ton of books. This was this one just kicked off a mini series that he did dealing with this inner world he created. Uh and and he was he was a highly influential fiction writer at the time. So it seems to me it's possible that he might be the originator of our like popular culture and to a certain extent, scientific obsession with

subterranes in especially in the twentieth century. So I was looking around to see if there were any hard bio biographical details on where Burrows got the idea for the iron mole um, because it seems like he might have been the first I don't know for sure. It's you know, it's very possible that there's some other short stories from the time period, or some book I'm missing in which a character introduces the idea of a of the subterine,

but I wasn't able to come across it myself. Let me know if you if you have an answer to that now. Certainly, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth came out earlier in eighteen sixty four, but this book does not feature a fantastic drilling vehicle. No, they just they just find a hole in the earth and just kind of walk all the way down. It's more of a spelunking adventure. They traveled down via lava tubes,

I think. So I ended up consulting I think three different Burrows biographies in search of any answers on you know, where he got his ideas. I'm just a little nugget of like, hey, he was reading in Popular Mechanics or something, you know, but nothing turned up. So it seems entirely possible that Burrows might have invented the sci fi subterine as we know it, and in doing so, as is often the nature with sci fi influenced scientific minds all

of that century to investigate the idea further. Um. However, even if he invented the sci Fi subterine in his own right, he was definitely inspired by technological achievements in tunneling and burrowing that had taken they were taking place at the time, and had taken place towards the end of the previous century. Well, maybe we should take a quick break and then when we come back we can talk about some of the real science and technology of

burrowing vehicles. Thank alright, we're back. So like I was I was saying here earlier, burrows I think would have definitely been inspired by the real life advances and tunnel boring machines during the nineteenth century. UH tunneling shield technology came first successfully used for the first time to excavate UH the Thim's tunnel beginning in eight But this is just as the name implies a protective structure that allows human excavators to work underground. It's not even a machine, right,

So describe briefly the the tunneling shield. This is basically kind of like a movable roof shield that you can take with you as you continually remove new material from as the tunnel is made. Yeah, I would say combine that with the concept of say a drilling template, and that's pretty much what you have. But then this leads into some of the first tunnel boring machines UH. And what is often brought up as the first tunnel boring machine, though it's a real stretch to call it a vehicle,

came in eighteen forty five with the Mountain Slicer. Is that really what it was called. Yeah, it was called the mountain slicer. It was not named it wasn't called a mole at all. Again again, it wasn't a vehicle really. But it was commissioned by the King of Sardinia in eighteen forty five to dig the French rail tunnel between France and Italy through the Alps. And it was the work of Belgian engineer Henry Joseph Mouse And this was the first UH. This is often considered the first tunnel

boring machine or TBM. It consisted of more than one d percussion drills mounted at the runt of a locomotive sized machine which was mechanically power driven at the entrance to the tunnel. So think about what kind of of an engineering project it is to do something like this, especially to have a single machine, because tunneling is you know, it's not just like moving through water, which kind of like is is easily displaced around you as you dive

through it. Of course, when you're tunneling through hard material, one of the big problems you're gonna have is continually removing everything that you're drilling out of place in front of you as you go. Right. And then if we're thinking of saying, we keep talking about the mole as the bio biological uh analog for all of this. Well, when you're talking about the ocean, right, you're talking about ships and submarines basically doing the things that other organisms,

even large organisms, are capable of doing. But when you're talking about you know, you're not just talking about burrowing through loose soil here, we're talking about burrowing through solid rock, which is is not something that is general they considered within the realm of certainly you know, a vertebrates capabilities or or even or any kind of you know, or organisms capabilities. This is this is something new well certainly not at any speed that would be useful from like

a civil engineering point of view. Right, um, so uh I want to talk just a little bit more about the idea of the tunnel boring machine or t b M. There there's tons of information out there written about t pms because this is a this is a huge area of engineering, right figuring out how to improve these machines

for the production of tunnels. UH. One particular definition I came across in laboratory testing of materials for tunnel boring machine drag bits by Catuition at All UH defines a t b M as a quote machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. So that's something to keep in mind too, is when you're dealing with tunnels, you're dealing with boring through not just one type of rock or soil,

but multiple. Yeah, and I think it's important that it mentions the circularity of the tunnel because this is a feature that This will actually come up again later in the episode when we talk about different methods for producing a whole tunnels in rock. The drill based method, which is based on grinding and removing material, tends to be by nature circular, right, just because of the limitations of the kind of machine you have to use to drill

and bore out. Yeah. Absolutely. Um another source on the mountain slicer I was looking at in hard Rock Tunnel Boring Machines by um Metal, Schmidt and Rits. The authors described the mountain slicer as having quote worked with hammer drills, chiseling deep annular grooves in the stone, dividing the face

into four two by point five meter high stone blocks. Now, the interesting thing here is that supposedly the mountain slicer successfully demonstrated it was you know, there was a successful demonstration of this technology in a test tunnel for something like two years EARS, but it was ultimately not used for the Alpine project in question due to doubts about the drive equipment and its power requirements and its ability to sustain the wear of its usage. So they ended

up just using traditional tunneling tunnel boring techniques instead. But I think this this drives home like just the real the true engineering challenge here. You know, it's quite a feat to even create a what seems to be you know, working prototype like the mountain slicer, but then it's quite another to actually use it and use it and use it for the extended period of time required to actually

complete the project. Yeah, exactly. And we should emphasize again that when we're talking about these types of boring machines like the Mountain Slicer, this would again not be a vehicle designed to just like autonomously run around under the ground. This would be a stationary like institute machine that's for a particular project, right, Yeah, and and certainly is not working in isolation. Um. So this is all, like I said, you could you could see the mountain Slicer as a

potential first for TBMs. But a lot of people give credit to American designer Charles Wilson, who designed a t b M in eighteen fifty one, patented in eighteen fifty six. It was called Wilson's patented stone cutting Machine, which doesn't I don't know, it doesn't have as much it It doesn't sound as a uh you know, is wagnery as that to previous one. I should have called it, what, uh, Wilson's rock stapper. Yeah. So anyway, Wilson's patented stone cutting machine,

and and it was successful. They used it to bore the Hoosic Tunnel in northwest Massachusetts, and it had rotate a rotating mount for the disc cutters at the front of it. Now, there's obviously a lot more to the science and subsequent development of tb ms, but I thought we might cut to the chase here. I think we can already see how Yeah, Mountain, We're gonna Mountain. Cut to the chase. Even, I think we can already see how how even their early forms help inspire the idea

of subterarine. But even considering the more modern forms of the TBM, you know, you have to ask how close does the idea of a subterarine really get to a TBM. So we have to consider the facts. So first of all, as as we mentioned already, generally speaking, a t b M, and there are different varieties of TBM for different types of rock. It is a tool, not a vehicle. It is, you know, a piece of equipment. It's used to make a tunnel, not to simply tunnel from one place to another.

I suppose you can say it does both, but the tunnel making is the key focus. Plus it's part of a system and an overall project that entails workers, specialized trucks to haul away the rock, etcetera. You're not gonna hijack one of these things and bore a rogue tunnel with it. Also, TBMs are in general neither independent nor truly mobile, and here this is important too. They are

certainly not fast. Yeah. Now, I think another thing is that a lot of these are going to be in some kind of way, and not exactly like a train, but sort of on rails like in a way. They will have infrastructure that is supporting the forward movement of the vehicle. And it's not just like rolling ahead on its own right. It is a thing you move up

or you have at the front of your tunnel boring project. Now, one of the more exciting players in the realm of of of TBMs these days is none other than Elon Musk. Okay doak. Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with this joke, but he founded the Boring Company in I was trying to read about it, but I just fell asleep. You just, uh joke I've ever made on the show. Let's cut it. No, let's leave it. Let me deal with the shame. Now you can laugh at Elon Musk jokes. Um,

it's it's it's clever. They really commit to it. Um. If you can look at the website and you can see that there's a lot of tongue in cheek there, but but it is a real project, and then it looks like they're making a lot of exciting progress here. So part of the whole idea of the Boring Company is that they want to they want to see tunnel usage being a huge part of our sustainable future, Like in terms of of creating more sustainable infrastructure, it's better

to get as much of it underground as possible. And then this has been a trend in futurism UM for a while. This isn't in and in and of itself anything new, but these are some of the reasons that they cite UH for investing UM in the improvement of TBM technology. First of all, there's no practical limit to how many layers of tunnels can be built, so any level of traffic can then be addressed through these tunnels. Tunnels or weather proof tunnel construction and operation is ultimately

silent and invisible to anyone on the surface. And this is not something that I saw them touch on, but certainly as a part of the larger sort of futurism design focus of underground systems. Is, of course, if you put your highways under round, then you can have more like trees on top. You know, you can have some sort of a return to nature. You can take the you can give back the land that the that are so, you know, our highways and streets have stolen. But to

do all this you've got to make tunnels. And the thing is, tunnels are expensive to bore. The price that they quote in their materials is one billion dollars per mile, and and then it's a slow process on top of that. In fact, musk Uh joked that a snail travels fourteen times faster than a traditional TBM, and as such, they did this whole bit where they said they had this pet snail named Gary, and their goal was to beat

Gary and a foot race with their TBM. So in order to do that, the company stresses the importance of increasing TBM power output, making tb ms capable of continuous tunneling without breaks for support structure building as is currently the norm, also the importance of making tb ms autonomous, and also creating a system by which the excavated rock is then made into bricks on site or perhaps even within the t b M itself for use in the

support structure. Oh and that's another thing I should probably describe what these t b ms, and sort of all modern t b ms look like. They look like, um that they do not have a conical drill at the front. Uh. It tends to, at least at first glance, look a lot like flattery. It looks like a cross between an east cigarette and a tape worm. Oh, two great things

not to put in your mouth. Yeah. Um. The Boring Company also promotes the idea of smaller tunnels, So instead of relying just on like enormous tunnels through which you put like a you know, a four lane highway, instead make a smaller tunnel with a one way, uh, one lane highway for one way traffic as well. This also factors into the various loop and hyperloop projects that Musk

has involved in. So you, I have to say a lot of that, especially when you're talking about, you know, looking into the future, A lot of that certainly sounds more like the subterarine we know and love. Though at the same time, I think it all further underlines the realities of boring that tend to limit these fictional visions. Um. And and I should also know the boring company is actually building tunnel, so it's we're not just talking about a pure futurism project. Um. They have I believe, three

different TBMs, all of them with with wonderful names. There's the Good, there's the line Storm, which I believe I read is named for um, Robert Frost poem or a line in Robert Frost poem. And then there's the proof Rock. Oh j Alfred proof Rock. Yeah. Um, the proof Rock, which is is two words in the name here is one that's still in development, but we will be used soon.

Why is it named the proof Rock? Is it is it lying like an patient eutherized upon a table or is it let's um, I think maybe it's just like the proof if it's in the r I don't know how deeply it is invoking the poem. It has measured its progressing coffee spoons, well, whatever you know, we want to call them. Um. These are some of the stats. The line Storm is said to be two to three

times faster than conventional TBMs. Proof Rock is supposed to be as much as ten times faster than conventional machines. And I I was reading about this in the publication Tunnel Insider, which I've never read before. I was not I'm not a subscriber to Tunnel Insider. But as they put it in quote, if they and by they we mean the Boring Company, if they are able to pull this one off, it will mark a quantum leap in the history of tunnel boring technology and catapult the Boring

Company to the pinnacle of subterranean engineering. These these particular TBMs are also electric and are claimed to be three times more powerful than conventional TBMs. Uh. The Boring Company is still going strong, it seems. In fact, I was reading that they recently finished a pair of Las Vegas tunnels ahead of a plane opening. Well, more power to them, I mean, I I gotta say, just from a puristetic sense, in addition to all the practical reasons for it, I

I like the idea of relegating transportation infrastructure underground. Yeah. Absolutely, it all makes sense to me. Uh, And it seems like they're making progress. Um. You know, of course they're always questions and all of this, Like, you know, you have to you're wanting to push the technology, but also it needs to be the affordable choice as well. Um. But you know, the future. The future remains to be seen, but but I'm hopeful. It seems seems like this might

be the way. Okay, Robert, are you ready to talk about atomic battle moles? Yes, or as well atomic battle I think it is time because we've we've spoken about the pure sci fi, We've spoken about the the the the the actual technological history and and our current place concerning TBMs. Let's start dealing with some of the murcury Er territory here. Okay, so he are, We're going to dive into a bit of alleged Cold War crypto history,

and we will have to warn you up front. The sourcing that's available in English on this subject, I think is very murky, and there's a lot of uncertainty. Possibly even in fact, I would say more than possibly, I think quite probably. We're getting into some Edison Louis La

Prince murder confession territory. If you listen to our Invention episode on that, where a possible hoax document or work of fiction is being misinterpreted by later writers as a factual report and then built upon by embellishment, but with some major caveats. Are are you ready to dig in? Yes? I do want to just throw in one quick nugget here.

We're gonna be talking about about Russian UH advances, advancements or also or alleged advancements, and it's worth it's worth noting that, first of all, UH Edgar Rice Burrows was very influential just around the world, but there was also a key Russia sci fi author bad the name of Gregory Adamov, who wrote about subterines in Conquerors of the

Underground in ninety seven. Oh yeah, I was reading about this and one of the articles that I'm going to reference in a minute here points out a hilariously machine translated version of that title Conquerors of the Underground, which is Winners of the Bowels. Well that's good, okay, okay,

but yeah, well, what's what's the prompting for all this? Well, a couple of years ago you you might have seen a number of double take headlines running around the internet about the Soviets developing a nuclear powered subterine weapon during the Cold War. We can I know there was an

article on like I f L Science about it. There there's one we can check in with hero in, our old arch nemesis, The Daily Mail, The headline is quote revealed the nuclear powered mole the Soviets built to burrow beneath America and deliver atomic bombs under ground undergrounds in all caps. Oh yeah, this is a great headline, right. So I was looking to trace back to the source

some of the claims in this article. So this is not the main source of the of it, but I think it gets to the core of some of what we're going to be looking at here. So there's an English article from June in an online publication called Russia Beyond. The headlines. Now, it's just known as Russia Beyond, which is a multi lingual arm of the major Russian state newspaper rosie Skaya Gazetta. And I'm not generally very familiar with rosy Skya Gazetta Russia Beyond, I don't have a

very good sense of how generally reliable it is. But this article is derived from reporting from a government funded newspaper of the Russian Federation, and it doesn't actually name most of its sources. So I think we have to treat the claims in this article with an extremely heavy dose of skepticism. Uh that's not to say everything in it is necessarily untrue. But I would not hang my hat on anything here, but just so we can lay it on the table, let's at least look at what

this article claims. So it talks about how during the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet Premier Nikita Krutzchev ordered the construction of mechanized units that would be able to burrow underground to destroy military targets. And these might be underground bunkers or command centers or strategic missile launch sites, or to destroy underground communications infrastructure. And this hypothetical tunneling weapon that Krutzchev supposedly ordered the construction of would be

known as a battle mole. So we're back to the moles again. Now. One of the supposed advantages of the battle mole would be its ability to tunnel the targets deep behind enemy lines undetected and detonate charges, or even to surface and deposit Soviet troops, sort of like an underground APC. So was there any historical press for this well.

The article claims that the first self powered underground military vehicle was designed by someone named Pyotr Raskazov in Moscow and nineteen oh four, but that this was just a design. It was never realized. He made some drawings, but the designs were lost around the outbreak of the First World War ten years later, and then there were attempts to bring the project back in the nineteen thirties under the

Soviet Union. Again, according to this article, the person in charge of this effort to to revive the underground battle mule idea was somebody identified in this article simply as engineer treble Leev, which sounds like it's it sounds like Kirk selecting a red shirt for the landing party and Star Trek, you know. Um, but engineer Trebellev wanted to quote design a machine which would look like a real mole. No,

no further explanation though. I actually I did find an article from from the nineteen fifties that explains what this is referring to. I'll leave that as a surprise for a little bit later. I mean, I would hope that the translations a little off, and the ideas that it functions like a mole and not that it just looks like one. Though that's exciting in its own right. I mean,

this is an English language article, this wasn't machine translated. Okay, well, maybe maybe it's just supposed to look like a Molden wanted to design a machine which would look like a real mole. But eventually, you know, whatever happened here, the project fizzled. And so then Nikita Krutzchev comes to power as the first Secretary of the Communist Party in nineteen fifty three after the death of Joseph Stalin, and according to this reporting, Krutzschev was big into the idea of

the battle mole and he strongly supported its redevelopment. So you know, go out there, create the people's mole. And uh. Supposedly there was a secret underground facility in Ukraine for developing and producing these moles, and the first nuclear powered

prototype for the battle mole was completed in nineteen sixty four. Now, according to the article, this would have been a tunneling vehicle powered by an internal nuclear reactor like a nuclear submarine, which again, this would be an ideal power source for like any kind of long term stealth vehicle for the same reasons it's useful for like strategic ballistic missile subs. Right. Uh, you know, the the nuclear power allows you to run silently for a long period of time without having to

return and get fuel. Somewhere and it doesn't you know, it doesn't produce any emissions other than heat, so you know, it's an ideal fuel choice. Just as a note of historical comparison, uh, the first nuclear powered submarines I looked this up. They were produced by the United States and the Soviet Union, and like the mid to late fifties. I think the US put out their first nuclear sub in then in nineteen fifty five and the USSR by night. Yeah.

And and of course it was just the overall atomic trend of of looking at ways to power various types of vehicles. I mean, there was there's the whole realm of the atomic power aircraft they're looking at. Yeah, and I think that that's clear that we could do a whole podcast on that in the future, or certainly the ideas of atomic powered automobiles and so forth. Um, So there was a lot of this line of thinking back and in the day there's a lot of enthusiasm enthusiasm

for this, uh, this sort of power. But to defend the idea here, like I think the idea of nuclear power does make a whole lot of sense for for a vehicle like a strategic missile sub because the whole point is that it needs to go out there and be hidden, and uh, you know, the strategic purpose of it is that you don't know where it is, and it's somewhere on the Earth, and it can be out there for a long time without coming back to refuel. Right. Yeah, I mean this is if we I think we've discussed

this on the show before. I mean, this is one of the key parts of of for instance, the United Kingdoms, uh nuclear deterrent. Yeah. But so back to this article from Russia. Beyond so other claims that it makes about this alleged battle mole, it says, quote it had a stretched titanium cylindrical body with a pointed end and a

powerful drill. It says the size would have been between twenty five and thirty five meters in length and then between three to four meters in diameter, and its speed underground as it's tunneling, would be between seven and fifteen kilometers per hour. Now, I am no expert on tunneling vehicles, I admit, so my judgment may be way off, but this is huge red flag for me. This sounds really really fast. That sounds much faster than a snail to

go back to uh Elon Musk's u um snail race. Right, this thing can tunnel through the ground faster than some people can run. I don't know. Yeah, okay, but the article also claims that quote the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakarov was involved with the creation of this machine, possibly with the development of the original soil crushing and propulsion system to tchnology, the cavitation flow created around the battle mole's body reduced friction and enabled it to bore through granite

and basalt. Again, I very much doubt if there's any truth to this association, but for those who aren't familiar, Andrei Sakarov is absolutely a very real and very important figure in twentieth century history. Uh Sakarov was a Russian nuclear physicist who worked on the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons

program in the late forties and the fifties. He's considered in some ways the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but he later became an activist, protesting for civil liberties and human rights within the Soviet Union, and he received a Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen I know he was not popular with the with the Soviet government for his activism. At some point I know he was sent into internal exile. Um.

But anyway, So back to the article. So the article claims that the battle Mole took a crew of five people to operate, and it could carry up to fifteen paratroopers on top of that, So again, it is actually being alleged that this thing would bore in under the earth, drill up to the surface, and then let out a bunch of dudes. Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's straight

It sounds straight up Ninja turtles. It sounds like I mean, it makes me think of stormtroopers jumping out of one of these things, right right, Or of course if it wasn't you know, fifteen paratroopers could deliver a payload of weapons or equipment or especially an explosive charge, and this payload could be of up to a ton. Now here's

here's the part where it gets really interesting. The article alleges there was a secret plan for an underground strike on America which would be triggered It said if the United States quote deteriorated beyond the point. No further explanation there, but I guess the idea is like, if if the US is starting to look weak, then like this, these things could drill in, So how would they tunnel underneath

the United States? Well, allegedly the play and was to bring them to the United States coast inside nuclear submarines, specifically to the California coast, and the California coast is singled out for its seismic instability, and then the moles would be released from underwater to tunnel into California and plant nuclear explosive charges under strategic facilities and fault lines

without being noticed right at all. And also this would this turn, this attack, it alleges, would be a kind of false flag for nature where the nuclear charges they'd be detonated, but it would just look like naturally occurring earthquakes and tsunamis all over the place, and it'd be like,

I guess Mother Nature is just mad at us. Oh man, I mean this is there's so many sci fi possibilities just in this, like the idea of say, ultimately slow moving nuclear drill machines have been slowly making their way from the California coast to the heartland, and when they finally open up, you have all these like hideously atomic mutated paratroopers that emerge. All the talk sick of injured. Now speaking Russian, so much fun to you can have with this concept. But anyway, so I've I've just got

to read the conclusion here verbatim quote. According to some reports, test runs of the Soviet nuclear subterine were carried out in different geological conditions in suburban Moscow's soils, in the Rostov region and in the Urals. Witnesses who observed the tests were most struck by the capabilities the subterine demonstrated in the Ural mountains, the battle mole easily bit into hard rock and destroyed the underground target. However, a tragedy

occurred during the repeated trials. For reasons unknown, the machine exploded deep within the bowels of the Urals, killing the entire crew. Shortly thereafter, the project was shelved. Oh man, there's a whole like cool Indie historic horror film concept right there, This doomed subterine. It gets I don't know, eaten by Judd's or something, right. I think this would make a great movie. But I have serries us doubts about this report, like even if this were published by

a source that I thought to be trustworthy. Again, I don't know much about the source and it is related to like a government funded paper. Some of like my basic plausibility alarms are flashing red. But anyway, so back to like a lot of the ten circulation of the story that was going around and you know, daily mail.

In all these places, it seems to trace back to an article in Gelopnik by senior editor Jason Torchinsky, who, to his credit, does show skepticism about some of these claims, maybe more so than some of the derivative articles do. Um which but it tries to follow up on these claims by consulting some contemporary articles in Russian language sources,

a lot of it machine translated, though um So. It was Torchinsky, by the way, who pointed out that idea of the machine translation of conquerors of the underground being winners of the bowels. So he is the winner of the winner of the bowels. But um he develops on the assertion that this this guy, remember engineer trabellev that he wanted it to look like a mole. Uh. Twarcensky points out that this is supposedly because he studied X rays of a mole skeleton in order to design the machine.

That makes a little bit more sense uh and will be further developed even more by another source I found. As for the reports of this nineteen thirties model, there's all this vagueness in the sources. It's hard to tell from what's available, how large Trabelle's model was supposed to be,

whether it was crude, etcetera. Um Regarding the prototype built in nineteen sixty four, Twarcensky turns up some more claims about how the project came to an end from the Russian reporting and rosy Skaya Gazetta, which is apparently what that Russia Beyond article was sort of derivative of. But here here's additional detail machine translated, of course. Quote. However, during next tests in nineteen sixty four, a car that penetrated the Ural mountains near Nisney tag Gil for a

stance of ten kilometers for unknown reasons, exploded. Since the explosion was nuclear, the apparatus with the people in it simply evaporated and the broken tunnel collapsed. In the press was the name of the deceased commander of the Battle Mole, Colonel Semyon Budnikov, but official confirmation of this never sounded.

The project was closed. All documentary evidence of it was liquidated as if nothing had ever happened, very conveniently here, right, So all physical evidence of this experiment is completely erased from the earth. And then it gets even fishier and starts to get into territory where I'm wondering who's fooling who. So this is again from the Rosy skya Gazetta report explaining why the explosion happened. Quote or maybe another civilization exists literally under our feet, and the guards did not

want the Soviet mole to penetrate the forbidden limits. After all, the technical characteristics allowed the battle mole to reach the center of the Earth. Therefore, unique underground machine was destroyed, and the mystery of the longstanding Soviet project is likely to never be fully revealed. Oh okay, so the underground civilization might have sabotaged it. Yeah, that doesn't sound pas right,

So there's definitely something wrong with this story. It doesn't necessarily mean that all of the reports of historical Soviet battle mole development are untrue, though here I'm getting the feeling that a lot of these reports may be embellished, and this report about the nineteen sixty four vehicle specifically

might be a complete or near complete fiction. So the next thing I was looking to was seeing if we can figure out about mid century subterrane projects from like contemporaneous sources, like was anything published about it at the time that I can access in English and understand? And so I did come across something this was this was linked through another source I found there was a nineteen fifty six, actually December thirteen, nineteen fifty article in New

Scientists called Russia's Battle Moles. Okay, now we're dealing with a publication we can get behind, I mean to an extent, Like now, I don't necessarily trust all of the claims in this article either, but at least it might give us a better idea of not necessarily what really happened, but what ideas were actually being discussed in the nineteen fifties. Uh. You know, this isn't like a you know, decades later source.

Now we can find out whether or not the idea of these machines was actually in the air, regardless of whether or not they were actually built. And I will know this is a very early article for New Scientists. It was founded a New Scientist I think was founded just a month or two before this article was published.

In nineteen fifty six. But it starts off talking about how slow and labor intensive the process of tunneling is and how great it would be to have a machine that's like a mechanical mole or an underground boat that can speed up the process of digging tunnels. And then they go on to report an unnamed contemporary Russian technical journal that is describing the attempts of Soviet scientists to build a machine like this um, something that would be

able to independently drive around underground boring tunnels. And they corroborate the idea that this research is based on bio mimicry, the biomimicry of the mammalian mole quote. The investigation of moles technique was carried out in the Ural mountains. Local hunters taught the Russian scientists how to catch moles. Then the lengths of the captured moles from tip to tail

were measured. Next, the animals were allowed to burrow and the duration of their task was timed with a stop watch, from the moment they started digging to the moment that the end of their tails disappeared into the earth. In this way, the speed of digging under various conditions was calculated. In clay, the mole borrowed at a rate of two hundred and thirty four ft per hour and in black earth three d and sixty one ft per hour. In some cases even higher speed were attained. The second part

of the investigation was carried out in the laboratory. A box measuring sixteen inches square by eight feet long was used. The box was packed with clay soil and arranged in front of an X ray machine. A mole was placed at the front end of the box and it started to burrow its way through the soil in the box. By X ray photography, a record of the moles progress was obtained, showing the movement of its muscles and skeleton. Okay, so this is starting to become actually clear to me now, yeah,

I mean this is this is where we're again. We're talking about biomimicry. Here we said, we're talking about uh, scientists considering a problem, an engineering problem, and then looking

for an answer in um evolved biology. Right. So they discovered that the mole digs by working its head and its paws back and forth along and access in the front to to loosen the soil ahead of it, and then it moves the displaced earth out of the way and presses it up into the side of the tunnel, sort of packing it against the edges of the tunnel

with its what they call its withers. I guess that's like the back of its neck and upper back area, and with its shoulders, and then it continually applies forward pressure by digging in and pushing with its hind legs.

And the article claims that this pressing out of the displaced earth by the strong withers and the shoulder muscles of the mole is actually the most important discovery here, because again, one of the biggest problems with with drilling, tunneling, boring, whatever you want to call it, is how to deal

with the displaced material as you go right. The New Scientist article goes on quote from the lessons learned with the mole, the Russians built a mechanical model, followed by a larger scale machine consisting of a cutter corresponding to the mole's head, a worm for ramming loosened earth into the walls of the tunnel corresponding to the withers, and propellers corresponding to the hind legs. In the front part of the body of the machine is a powerful cutter

made of hard alloy. Behind the four propellers, which push against the walls of the tunnel and move the machine forward at a speed of thirty ft per hour. The cutter rotates at a speed of three revolutions per minute for use in hard soils. The cutter can also be given hammer blows as it rotates. Uh and it says yes,

this would have needed a human pilot to steer it. So. The article claims that the machine was built and tested in the Ural Mountains in nineteen six, and Soviet engineers have it says, made improvements in its speed and size since then. The article does not really even though it's called battle mole, The article does not really mention military applications. Instead, it emphasizes how useful this kind of device would be for the kind of tunneling we were talking about earlier,

like for mining or for urban engineering. One thought that comes to mind thinking about this is if well, I mean, first of all, if you wanted to solve this engineering problem like looking to the mole, is is is certainly one way to to try and answer those questions. Even if things might not scale up all the way, but in terms of a warfare scenario, it seems like this is the sort of thing that, if you could pull it off, would be very advantageous in older modes of warfare.

You know, like if you're dealing with with siege warfare, having a battle mole could really turn the tide. Perhaps even in trench warfare, you know where you have you know, these hard fronts, uh, in these Noman lands. You know that I could see that being a factor. But it

is certainly I don't know. People may disagree with me, but it seems like once you get into the World War two era and the post War War two era, the usefulness of this kind of a device, even if you could pull it off, becomes um uh, you know, less obvious. Yeah, it's I mean, it seems much more useful in the world that doesn't already depend on air power.

You've already conquered the skies at this point. Now you could say that well maybe the maybe an underground mole, at least hypothetically could be more stealthy than air power. I don't know. I mean, we have stealth bombers and stuff now, but um well, you know it reminds me of uh, the super secret weapon um of the Byzantines,

the Greek Fire. We did an episode on that and one of the things that came out about it was that it was it was useful if you used it every once in a while under very specific circumstances, but if people were expecting it, uh, then it lost its usefulness. Yeah, it's like more useful as a kind of shock weapon than as like a regular mainstay of how you win battles. But anyway, so I want to kind of put a bow on this issue of the Soviet atomic battle mole.

There appears to be a very good, skeptical and well sided dive into the issue of the atomic subterine from way back in twelve at the Atomic Sky's blog, and it's called the atomic subterine. Uh. The author of this blog, I think, offers a very reasonable assessment of this weird in murky subject, in addition to a very good right up in general of atomic subterarine ideas as they were explored in the United States, which Robert I know you're

going to get into in a minute here. But the author here he just goes by Mark, but he acknowledges the claims we've talked about so far regarding the alleged Soviet atomic battle mole, and he concludes that there probably was a real Russian program in the nineteen fifties to develop a conventional chemical powered tunneling machine known as an underground boat, but that the part about the atomic battle mole and krutz Chev's attack plan, uh you know, attack

the US from below, that this is not just untrue, but possibly a prank gone wrong. Uh So, I'm gonna read from his in note here quote I strongly suspect that the supposed nuclear powered prototype was an April fools hoax by the Russian language Popular Mechanics magazine. The first mention of it I can find online and comes from the April issue of that magazine, and the diagram they

include incorporates what appeared to be mechanical tentacles. In any case, however, neither of these were a subterraine, but rather tunnel boring machines, And based on everything I've read, I think he's very

possibly correct. In fact, I might even say probably, And if so, this would be interesting because we'd be again in territory I mentioned this earlier, like the territory of the Edison murder confession that we talked about in the Louis La Prince episode of Invention, where something originally intended as what I think was a non malicious, explicit, explicitly fictional document is later misinterpreted by a bunch of other

writers as a legitimate news report. And this is why April Fool's articles should be exiled to Siberia forever like no more of them ever. I agree. And on that note, let's take a quick break. But when we come back, we'll discuss uh some of the US based research into the idea of a subterarine. Thank alright, we're back, alright. So we think that these reports about the Soviet atomic subterine and the the attack America from below planned that

this is probably not true. It's you know, it may be based on some actual research that took place, but the the overall story is not real and this thing was never actually built or tested in the Earl Mountains, at least as best we can tell. Um. But that doesn't mean that the idea of an atomic subtarine was

never seriously investigated at all. That's right, Uh, so, I I too was looking at that atomic Skuy's blog post and I was also looking at a piece by Steve wentz H in the National Interest that that also cites that particular blog post um and Yeah. The United States also looked into this technology, into this idea of a subterarine UH specifically um during the n lost Alamos National Laboratory explore the use of nuclear of a nuclear powered subterarine.

Engineer Bob Porter was allegedly inspired by at Earth's Core by the by the Boroughs novel after noting the three thousand degrees integrade temperatures of a prototype reactor in the fifties, and then in experiment by Potter showed that this sort of drilling could be possible. The resulting project was intended to produce a vehicle quote capable of penetrating the Earth to depths of ten kilometers to extend geological and geophysical

exploration into the Earth's mantle. Now, the important idea here is that this subterine envisioned by Potter here would not drill just through traditional boring like a you know, a drill bit or a bunch of drill bits, that it would primarily work through melting right using the superheating from either a nuclear or an electrical source to to superheat something like some tongue sten or something that would melt the rock away and allow you to just kind of

like go through it like a hot knife through butter. Yeah, in a way, it would be swimming through the earth. It would be creating its own lava tube and sliding through it. Uh yeah, So I mean it's it's an

ingenious solution, you know, um or potential solution. So apparently the first of all, I do want to like you, like you mentioned earlier, I would I would encourage everyone to check out that Atomic Sky's blog post because he also goes into a little more detail about this supposed a scenario where they were talking about it at at out luncheon or at a diner or something. Yeah, bar and um, and it just kind of the idea of it was got picked up by um, was it a

it was a politician this politician. Yeah, the the scientists from the lab on Friday, we're hanging out just like having drinks and talking about ideas that occurred to them in a some politician, I don't know if it was a US rap or a New Mexico reps. Some politician legislator walks in and overhears them talking about this subterine idea and gets really excited about it. Yeah, he's like, that sounds great, let's fund it. And so they did

and got funded. Um. So, apparently, in addition to mining, tunneling and exploration, the project also entailed this idea that the tech could be used to create storage cavities in the earth, in the deep Earth, not only for toxic and nuclear waste. And we've discussed on the show before about out the the the the deep geologic isolation of nuclear waste is actually a you know, a really supported idea.

But they also got into this idea of how putting pressurized gases in these storage cavities that could then be unleashed to drive turbines for energy. It's an interesting idea. Yeah, I would not have thought of that, but yeah, that's pretty cool. So um. According to again that National Interest article and the Atomic Skuy's blog post, uh, the everything

kind of came together like this. So in the National Science Foundation funded a full scale study of the nuclear subtu rain and then a small scale electrically powered prototype drills were built and one was used by the National Park Service to drill drainage holes at Bandalier National Monument near Los Alamos. The rock penetrator's lack of vibration. This was apparently essential to preserving an archaeological site close by

while the holes were being drilled. And this, uh, this emphasizes again like some of the advantages that you would have if you're just moving through rock primarily by melting rather than standard grinding drilling stuff. Also, it's like you don't produce a lot of dust and pollutants from the process. There are many ways that melting down into the earth is a quite elegant solution for tunneling. Yeah, I saw this referenced in some of the other like tunneling and

boring articles. I was coming across the idea of of creating a tunnel in your wake that is like lined in glass. You know, again, it's like a lava tube. And therefore, you know, you wouldn't necessarily have this issue of Okay, we have all this leftover stone, what are we gonna do? How's the how's our subtermarine gonna then turn that into blocks to reinforce the wreckage it leaves

in its wake. So the sources here they point out that the according to the designs two cutting head designs were looked at, one for common rock and one for hard rock. So you had a traditional rotary cutting head with the cylindrical rock melters, and then you also had one with dozens of nuclear powered needle probs. Um, which is a pretty crazy idea, Like these are in a way,

these are like little tentacles. Are almost like the tentacle, uh, you know the head of the star faced mole right where they kind of dig in and then but then they melt right. And this again, it wouldn't have necessarily like a conical tip. It might be more like a flat disc type shape with the melting elements and then the drilling elements. Yeah. Really more in line with traditional

TBMs in that in that respect, um. And then they also mentioned that the probes would would would unevenly heat the rock face, causing it to crack and crumble, so that would be an an aspect of it as well. Um. And then yeah, I mentioned the glass walls. But so ultimately the project transfers to the Department of Energy in ninety five and from there it apparently mostly vanished. It would pop up again in the nineteen eighties as a

possible way to tunnel for bases on the Moon. And this was apparently this has been six and this was a proposal by one doctor John Rowley. Yeah, well, and and two other co authors. Yeah, and they published a paper about, uh, excavating tunnels on the surface of the Moon to shield colonists from the radiation that you would be exposed to if you were trying to create a nuclear base or not a nuclear base, sorry, a moon base. Uh. This is a very common problem when people talk about

making moon bases. Right, You've basically just got again underground somehow. And they called this idea not a subterine, but a sub selline because it's the nice Yeah. Well, I think that that in and of itself is a it's a pretty um elegant idea. Um. You know, you can certainly imagine your lander delivers uh, the the subterine or subsiline vehicle and then like that is necessary to burrow to safety. Um. Yeah.

So in that Atomic Sky's post, Mark also touches on a weaponized concept that was discussed to use the technology. This would have been the radio isotope powered thermal penetrator or the the rip TP, in which the machine quote would form a bubble of magna and hot high pressure gases behind itself. When it nears the underground base that is, you know, presumably the target here, the pressure of the gas and magma would burst the base walls explosively, destroying

the facilities near the breach through blast and fire. On that blog post, he include some black and white too illustrations of what these concepts would have looked like. You get to see those, uh those needles at the front. There's also this image of a tunnel that has been board of what this would look like, this kind of glass line tunnel, and it has kind of look kind of like a colon oscary um, you know it, it

has kind of a colonic appearance. Uh Now. Another one of the advantages that that they talk about with respect to the rock melting versus just the traditional drill type excavator is that a rock melting model for a subtrain would allow you to to potentially create a tunnel of any shape you wanted. It wouldn't have to be a circular tube. It could be square, it could be triangular.

You know, you can do anything interesting. Yeah, Like especially if you're if you're trying to create a space for your moon base upon arriving, you know, for that you might want say a large cube cubicle space, uh, underneath the lunar surface, as opposed to just a whole bunch of tunnels to live in. Right, So I don't know. Yeah, the rock melting subsaline, I'm not sure that idea is

forever done with. Maybe they'll come back someday. Yeah, I don't know, because we've also we've discussed on the show before how there are concepts of building such bases and craters so you know, a naturally occurring um places to hide in the linear surface. So so I don't know, Um, yeah,

I guess it. Basically, we kind of leave this episode with still a number of questions, you know, like what what what is the future of boring and tunneling here on the Earth or even on other you know, on moons and planets that we might go to, and and what is that going to look like? Are we going to actually see subterines in the future, you know, I it's it's it's hard to say, but it seems like some of the tunnel boring advances that are taking place

today are encouraging of that. Um, I don't know if they're gonna let um Elon musk Uh strap a nuclear reactor to one of these things anytime soon. But well, that's another interesting thing to point out, which is that, um so, obviously there are lots of safety concerns whenever you have a nuclear powered vehicle. I mean, this is the case with all of the nuclear powered submarines and everything.

But fortunately, I would say nuclear power safety concerns are going to be les, sir, with a device that's being used to tunnel deep underground, then they would be with a lot of other kinds of vehicles, right, true. I mean it's like if it's if it fails, it's down there, right, you know, not to say that that that an accidental nuclear detonation even underground is ideal, But I don't you know, there are it's better than other places I'm saying, like

relative to an airplane or something. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I guess another thing we should quickly acknowledges that the internet is also full of claims that there are subtraines all over the place. They're making tunnels under the whole world as we speak. That are you know, that are full of like the the Illuminati warriors and everything like that. It's I would say subtraines and underground tunnels are a very common trope of conspiracy theories, and I wonder why

that is. Why is it that specifically underground enclosures are like such a common image in conspiracy theory thinking is like underground bunkers, hidden underground bases, tunnels, there's always tunnels.

What why is that? Well? I mean, I think part of it is that, I mean, these are really cool ideas, and I think a lot of conspiracy thinking does get into areas of taking things that are really cool and taking them too far, you know, taking them too far into an area where you you want to believe them so badly, and then you deal with the ramifications of believing that you know, because it's interesting, it's therefore true. Yeah, Like, yeah, the idea of the hollow Earth, that's it's a very

fun concept. I I love reading about how Edgar Rice Burrows constructed this this world. But if you start buying into that concept, there's a whole lot of baggage that comes with it. And and likewise, if yeah, if you if you want to believe submarines are real and you know they're out there in the world, burrowing tunnels and what are they doing for whom are they burrowing these tunnels? And what are the results? Suh, well I know the answer. It's for Lord kin Boat. Sorry that maybe in Next

Files right? Oh I just remember you're not the Next Files person. Yeah, yeah, sorry I was. I'm struggling with that reference. Who's Lord Kinboat. Oh he's you know, he's the Lord of the Underground Realm from Jose Chunks from Outer Space. It's one of the best episodes of all times. Oh yeah, you've You've reckoned. I need to watch that one someday. He ends up. Lord Kinboat reveals himself to a character who is named after Rocky Ericsson and who who gets a visit from Jesse Ventura as one of

the Men in Black. It's just it's it's NonStop hits, all right, I need to check that out. Well, um, well, this has been a fun one. I feel like there have to be some really cool examples of subterines and

fiction that we haven't covered. And you know, if anyone out there is is more versed in even the conspiracy theory realm of subterarines, uh, I mean, I'd love to hear about it, you know, like like I say, the idea of secret underground bases and on link vehicles connecting them all like that's that's uh, it's it's pretty pretty fun soundings as long as it doesn't end up obscuring your understanding of reality. If you can't get them out of your mind, write a screenplay, don't post on the

on the forums. But but that being said, like the real the reality of like TBM technology and and the kind of work that's going on with the boring company like bad and of It's the in and of itself is really exciting. So um yeah, there's there's plenty of of great stuff to go around just within the realm of truth here totally all right. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, you know where to find us.

That is, wherever you happen to get your podcast and wherever that happens to be. Just rate, review, and subscribe. Those are just simple things you can do to help out the show. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future. Just to say hi. You can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind com. Stuff to Blow

Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.