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Why don't we live underground? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: is brought to you by Visa. We all have things
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  Speaker 1: and resolves online fraud safe Secure Visa. Hi, and welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles
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  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. As always, where the Stuff you should know? Guy?
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  Speaker 1: So hey, how's it going to Chuck? Hey? Hey, it's good.
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  Speaker 1: So um with all the the the Olympic stuff going on,
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  Speaker 1: and it's all on Beijing and all that. This is
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  Speaker 1: like the second podcast of recent times that I've mentioned
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  Speaker 1: Beijing because the Olympics are just so huge. My question
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  Speaker 1: is this, Chuck, did you know that there's an underground
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  Speaker 1: city beneath Beijing? I did, Josh, because I read your
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  Speaker 1: really cool article. Oh thank you very much, Chuck, I
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  Speaker 1: appreciate that. Did you read the is there a city
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  Speaker 1: beneath Beijing? Oh? No, I thought the one you referenced
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  Speaker 1: in your article. Why don't we live underground. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I know. There's another article on the site too, uh
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  Speaker 1: called is there an underground city below Beijing? Didn't read
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  Speaker 1: that one. It's awesome, let me tell you about it.
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  Speaker 1: So Chairman Mao gets into a little border dispute with
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  Speaker 1: Soviets in sixty nine, and the Soviets basically show them
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  Speaker 1: we're not messing around pal like we will come in
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  Speaker 1: or we will nuke you or whatever. This is at
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  Speaker 1: a time when the Russians were, you know, getting their
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  Speaker 1: chops with Cold War, so at that time, China wasn't
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  Speaker 1: much of a threat to them. Um. So Chairman Mau
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  Speaker 1: was like, okay, hey, maybe we should do something about
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  Speaker 1: this just in case. Puts um the residents of Beijing,
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  Speaker 1: the capital city of China, to work for the next
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  Speaker 1: ten years constructing an underground city that can house like
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  Speaker 1: three thousand people. And it's kind of an emergency. It's
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  Speaker 1: very cool. It's still around. Actually what is it now? Uh,
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  Speaker 1: there's parts of it, um that are accessible still. It's
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  Speaker 1: actually been turned into something of an underground mall of course, right,
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  Speaker 1: and there's tour tours and that kind of thing. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to kind of drift off from the
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  Speaker 1: tour and go down some forbidden corridors. So there's still
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  Speaker 1: like old bunk beds with rotting mattresses, and there's pictures
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  Speaker 1: of Chairman Mao everywhere. It's pretty cool. They also had like,
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  Speaker 1: um these little patches for going like mushrooms and digging
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  Speaker 1: wells and people. You could have lived in there comfortably
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  Speaker 1: for four months. That's pretty cool. It's no Olympic village though,
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  Speaker 1: that's not down there. No, no, not at this time.
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  Speaker 1: Is this the the Subtranean mutants used it for their
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  Speaker 1: two thousands six Olympics Olympics. Yeah, they don't like to
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  Speaker 1: be talked about very much, but the thing was never used,
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  Speaker 1: thankfully for for the residents of Beijing. Um. And actually
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  Speaker 1: it's just one example of an underground structure. There's there's
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  Speaker 1: tons of them all over the place. And then Nora
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  Speaker 1: add this one. Nora AD is a great example. What's NORAHD.
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  Speaker 1: It's a defense system basically that detects if you know,
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  Speaker 1: people are gonna send nuclear warheads our way, and not
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  Speaker 1: as useful anymore. Well maybe I shouldn't say that, but no,
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  Speaker 1: actually they're looking into decommissioning it in two thousand six.
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  Speaker 1: I don't I didn't find any follow up information. I
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  Speaker 1: don't think they made the decision yet. Well, they smartly
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  Speaker 1: put norad uh In inside a mountain basically mountain. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand tons of rock they dug out of
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  Speaker 1: this thing, and I think the door is like three
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  Speaker 1: and a half feet thick. And basically they determine that
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  Speaker 1: we're safe no matter what happens. Yeah, when they built
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  Speaker 1: the place in the sixties, they were a hundred percent
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  Speaker 1: confident that it could withstand a direct nuclear strike. That's nuts.
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  Speaker 1: It is nuts. Nowadays they're like, yeah, maybe in the sixties,
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  Speaker 1: not with today's inner intercontinental ballistic missiles, right, the mountain
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  Speaker 1: would shatter exactly, which actually I think you know that
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  Speaker 1: we have ballistic missiles that we can just level entire
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  Speaker 1: mountains with, right, So um, but yeah, Nora, And it's
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  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of this, uh, this homage to the
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  Speaker 1: security of underground living, and the US government is the
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  Speaker 1: isn't the only group to have, you know, come across this.
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  Speaker 1: It's not just Chairman MoU and Uncle Sam who figured
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  Speaker 1: out that hey, underground, you know is pretty secure. Um,
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  Speaker 1: you know, insurance companies and and uh, information bureaus like
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  Speaker 1: credit reporting companies uh Sun micro Systems. The people who
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  Speaker 1: run the Internet and are the keepers of all of
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  Speaker 1: our information, they've discovered the same thing I mentioned son.
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  Speaker 1: They just least I believe in old mine in Japan
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  Speaker 1: and are now they now store their network servers below ground. Um,
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  Speaker 1: it's very secure. You can't get in or out very
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  Speaker 1: easily and chuckers. In our beloved city of Atlanta, we
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  Speaker 1: even have a couple of underground buildings here there. You
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  Speaker 1: know which one I'm talking about, Atlanta, the famous or
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  Speaker 1: once famous underground Atlanta. I've got one even better than that,
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  Speaker 1: the old Equifax building now occupied by the Savannah College
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  Speaker 1: of artenam Design. Is that underground. Most of it is
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  Speaker 1: very much underground to protect you know. Obviously it couldn't
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  Speaker 1: handle an intercontinental ballistic missile shy in mountain camp, but
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  Speaker 1: it can handle something you know, and burglars can't just
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  Speaker 1: you know, prance in and out so well, I know.
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  Speaker 1: One of the other benefits to being underground is uh
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  Speaker 1: natural disaster whether. Um, you have more constant temperatures, so
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  Speaker 1: it's more energy efficient if you're underground. Yeah, and you
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  Speaker 1: you don't really think of houses as being you know,
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  Speaker 1: too terribly energy inefficient. You know, obviously there's there's some
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  Speaker 1: fat we could trim here there. But I was reading
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  Speaker 1: a study that found that, you know, transportation is always
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  Speaker 1: cited is like the big or one of the big
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  Speaker 1: sectors that contributes to climate change. It turns out that, um,
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  Speaker 1: all of the buildings in the United States consume six
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  Speaker 1: times more energy, uh and a it six times more
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  Speaker 1: greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the
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  Speaker 1: country combined. Really. Yeah, So apparently there's a whole sub genre, subculture,
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  Speaker 1: sub something of architects who have decided that you know,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of imburdened on them to kind of
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  Speaker 1: take up the mantel and start designing underground. Go underground.
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  Speaker 1: That's one of the that's one of the theories. That's
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  Speaker 1: one of the ideas that's being batted around right now. Well,
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  Speaker 1: why do you think more people don't live underground if
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  Speaker 1: it's such a if it's so great down there. Well,
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  Speaker 1: Number one, if you thought, you know, talking Americans out
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  Speaker 1: of driving SUVs is difficult, imagine telling them that they
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  Speaker 1: have to now give up their nice you know, some
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  Speaker 1: story colonial or something like that, and they have to
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  Speaker 1: move into an earth sheltered home. I think that's that's
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  Speaker 1: number one, number two, And I think the point that
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  Speaker 1: you were leading to is that it's a huge old
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  Speaker 1: slap in the face of evolution. Agreed. Yeah, Chuck Darwin
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  Speaker 1: is is rolling in his grave as we speak. He
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  Speaker 1: would be just just just thinking of this. You know,
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  Speaker 1: either either that or we'd be salivating it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: a perfect natural experiment, like, yes, stupid humans move underground
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  Speaker 1: and so I can take notes, you know that kind
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  Speaker 1: of thing, right, Um. And the reason it's a slap
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  Speaker 1: in the face of evolution is that we're diurnal, right right,
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  Speaker 1: we uh are sleep patterns or wakefulness. Um, all of
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  Speaker 1: that is based on the sun circa rhythm. Yeah, so
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  Speaker 1: basically when we decide to go to sleep or wake up,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's generally, you know, based on the sun. Think
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  Speaker 1: about it. We're not farmers any longer, but it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of tough to sleep past sun up these days, right,
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  Speaker 1: even though we don't have to be out there to
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  Speaker 1: milk the cows or you know, plant the corn or
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  Speaker 1: harvest the corn, depending on what time of year it is.
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  Speaker 1: But we've evolved that way. So there's snug getting rid
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  Speaker 1: of it now, right. Uh. And we we also are
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  Speaker 1: kind of linked to the sun. Well, I don't even
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  Speaker 1: want to say kind of we are sun slaves. Basically
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  Speaker 1: the Egyptians had it right when they called sun raw
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  Speaker 1: and worshiped it, because that's pretty much how linked we are.
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  Speaker 1: Needed that vitamin D. Yeah, think about it, chuck. We
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  Speaker 1: get all of our other vitamins from like milk, from
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  Speaker 1: um vegetables, that's a great example. Yes, from chewing on rocks,
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  Speaker 1: the whole thing. We get every single one of our
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  Speaker 1: vitamins from an external source except one vitamin D. That's
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  Speaker 1: we actually create that through a process of photosynthesis within
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  Speaker 1: our own bodies right from the Sun's radiation. It serves,
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  Speaker 1: it serves as a catalyst for vitamin D production in
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  Speaker 1: the body. In vitamin D is important. How do you ask,
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  Speaker 1: how partext against rickets? Ever seen a rickets patient? It
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  Speaker 1: is a it's a it's a lack of bone development.
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  Speaker 1: And actually, when I was researching this, uh, there's of
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  Speaker 1: the children in Europe and America in like some terrible
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  Speaker 1: couple of decades of the nineteenth century suffered from rickets.
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  Speaker 1: If they lived in an urban area, they rickets to
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  Speaker 1: some degree or other. Um. There's a picture of a
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  Speaker 1: girl who is a ricket suffer. She's nineteen, her names
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  Speaker 1: shall Wing. It's in the article on how stuff works
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And she's two ft tall and she's cute
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  Speaker 1: as a button. But she's she's nineteen and she struggled
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  Speaker 1: with rickets her whole life versus congenital But you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of problems associated with a lack of
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  Speaker 1: vitamin D. And don't forget the serotonin. Yeah, serotonin is big.
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  Speaker 1: Serotonin is a hormone um, responsible for basically good moods. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And you can get enough yeah yeah, but positive outlook. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And conversely, if you don't have enough serotonin, which is
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  Speaker 1: produced from exposure to the sun, or actually lack of
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  Speaker 1: exposure to the sun, you go out in the sun. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: melatonin is produced, right, okay. Uh. And once the melatonin
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  Speaker 1: production stops, meaning you're out of the sun, serotonin production
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  Speaker 1: kicks in. So one leads to the other. Uh. So
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  Speaker 1: you have to have sunlight, which accounts for seasonal effective disorder. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And it's not just the sun that we need. We
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  Speaker 1: need air, and we need air in certain supply. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And we also are pretty acclimated to the um atmospheric
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  Speaker 1: pressure around sea level. That's what we've evolved to adapt to,
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  Speaker 1: which is why scuba divers and even miners it's the
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  Speaker 1: same thing as being underwater and need to depressurize or
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  Speaker 1: decompresses that come up. Exactly That's exactly right. So living
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  Speaker 1: underground poses a lot of problems to us. UM. You know,
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  Speaker 1: should we listen to to the ghost of Darwin, to
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  Speaker 1: Darwin beyond the Grape? Should we trapes into this natural experiment?
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  Speaker 1: Or is it too late? Have we already started? That's
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  Speaker 1: a good question, and the answer is yes, we have
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  Speaker 1: already started. You know, we were talking about Nora m
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about Mr Chairman Mao's underground city in Beijing.
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  Speaker 1: There's a lot of actual, like everyday architecture out there
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  Speaker 1: that's below ground, right. I know that the Marin County
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  Speaker 1: Jail is partially underground. It's kind of cool looking building, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: which provides for a lot of security. Like you're saying,
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  Speaker 1: it's more energy efficient, keeps the prissoners nice and cool. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they're they're just kind of cooling out the Marine County. UM,
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  Speaker 1: and there's there's a really cool example of an underground museum. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: In Williamsburg, Virginia, there was this old colonial settlement from
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  Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, and rather than build this visitor center
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  Speaker 1: and museum above ground to detract from the natural scene,
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  Speaker 1: they actually built it into the side of a hill.
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  Speaker 1: Even cooler. This museum shut down in two thousand two.
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  Speaker 1: As far as I know, it's still there, which makes
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  Speaker 1: it a prime spot for urban explorers to explore. So
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  Speaker 1: it's like a one to punch for the housetop works
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  Speaker 1: articles right there. I don't know that we'd endorsed that.
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  Speaker 1: We would never never endorse libably trespassing, but yes, I
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  Speaker 1: bet it would be neat. So you got any other
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  Speaker 1: examples as well? I know Alice City in Japan. The
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  Speaker 1: Japanese are kind of leading the way because Japan is
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  Speaker 1: uh not the largest land mass, and there's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people there. They're land start, Yeah, so they're kind
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  Speaker 1: of leading away and instead of going up, up, up,
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  Speaker 1: which they've already done in spades, they're going down. And
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  Speaker 1: Alice City is one example. It's not built yet, but
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  Speaker 1: it's a it's a proposed um. I wouldn't call it
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  Speaker 1: a complete city, but uh, shopping mall. And it has
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  Speaker 1: also has you know, restaurants. I think there's office space
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  Speaker 1: and living right, I think it's a bit of a
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  Speaker 1: stretch to call it a city. Yeah, it's really cool
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  Speaker 1: looking now. Look I checked out the pictures online today.
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  Speaker 1: It's really neat. It is. It's like these two um
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  Speaker 1: parallel shafts going like fifty feet into their into the ground,
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  Speaker 1: covered with a big bubble to let light end. Right,
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  Speaker 1: and that's what. Yeah, all the light comes in through
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  Speaker 1: those through these two domes, and the two domes are
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  Speaker 1: all you can see above ground to even know anything's there. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And then it's all connected by like the series of
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  Speaker 1: walkways and tunnels and everything underground. Um. There's another proposal
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  Speaker 1: in Japan hand uh that I don't think ever came
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  Speaker 1: to fruition. It's called the urban geo grid. This one
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  Speaker 1: you actually could call it underground city. It covered or
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  Speaker 1: it would cover five square miles. Yeah, that's that qualifies
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  Speaker 1: in my but I would say, there's yeah, that's that's
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  Speaker 1: a decent size city. That's what like Kansas City, Kansas, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: something like that. Um. And it could it could hold
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  Speaker 1: or house or you know, um, it could accommodate up
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  Speaker 1: to half a million people at a time. Wow, this
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  Speaker 1: see this makes me wonder if you know what that
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  Speaker 1: means for the people on top. I mean, I'm sure
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  Speaker 1: that they're taking all the right moves and shoring up
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  Speaker 1: everything underneath there, But when you weaken the ground underneath
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  Speaker 1: what's already a large city, it makes me worry personally. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of questions. Um, Like I read
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a question from a guy who was saying, what is
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: this due to the temperature of the water table, which
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  Speaker 1: you we probably really shouldn't be messing with, and there's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of water undergroun. Yeah. Although I mean we've
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  Speaker 1: made a pretty big mess of things above ground, I
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  Speaker 1: can pretty much predict that we'd make an equally big
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  Speaker 1: mess below ground too. But yeah, inside out of mind? Wow, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: can you imagine how bad it would be then if
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  Speaker 1: we couldn't even see it right? It would be like
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the Great Pacific garbage Dump? Right you read that one?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: That that's another one. Wow, we we've just been hitting
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: them all over the right chuck. Yeah, it is a
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: plug best chuck. And our listeners can read all the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: articles we plugged today all on how stuff works dot
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Com and hang around to find out which article makes
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Chuck really crabby? Right after this, Chuck, what what makes
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: you crabby? Well, a lot of things make me crabby, dude,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: but two examples traffic and heat. Yeah, you like that,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: But this was actually a little bit of a cheat,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a pun. It's actually uh the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: article inside Deadly's Catch, which is an article that dives in.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Here we go again to uh the world of a
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: crab fishing from the awesome Discovery Channel show Deadliest Sketch Fantastic. Well,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I beg our readers to forgive Chuck for his puns
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and misleading words, and I also beg you to please
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: go read Inside Deadliest Catch on how stuff works dot
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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