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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

Put all human infrastructure under ground so that one is left with a beautiful mostly untouched planet. Addresses some aspects of global climate change no further need for HVAC. Reduces power load on the grid. Animals can have the surface of their planet back.

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Zero animals live underground, this will totally work.

Maybe the PP just finished watching Silo....

But he’s a computer programmer so obviously his expertise extends into all other areas.

I don’t think this was a serious comment

Indeed, being a know-it-all is not exclusive to programmers :)

Once one knows it all they obtain the title Principal Armchair Commander or PAC. One should strive to be a PAC, man.

For all their ills lawyers basically never engage in that "clearly my experience transfers" type crap. Getting them to say anything about stuff they're not experts in is like pulling teeth.

To be fair, lawyers will hem and haw about everything. Getting them to give a straight direct answer is like pulling teeth.

Once you go deep enough this is true excluding bacteria because to hell with bacteria.

Bacteria are not animals.

I think I read in this book one time that humans are animals.

Animals keep to the surface and bacteria keeps to the underground... problem solved.

True but if some fake-front group can show we are mass killing bacteria they will hire protesters and start legal battles to shut it all down. "Think Of The Streptomyces!"

It would work because underground animals live in a 3D world, unlike surface animals.

Sorry what?? :)

When I see this sort of comment, I feel like saying: 'well, go on then - you lead the way. If it's really a viable and pleasant way to live, why don't you show us?'

I have been planning it out but only for my property. I can not afford to build the national, international or interplanetary bits. Getting a good team together at my location is my only obstacle. It's very hard to find a solid general contractor and team here that will build as designed in phases. They want to do it all in one shot but that introduces a lot of legal risk if they are doing it wrong.

I love being underground. It's cool and quiet. Those facilities also last a very long time. I found many "Kilroy was here" scribbles in tunnels in the military and some of them were dated back to WWII.

Underground subways heat up the rock so much they have to add cooling eventually.

Much of the heat from a subway comes from the HVAC in the train. Add more venting to the trains that works with the trains movement and use forced air into the tunnels. Costs more but it can be done. Some of the heat comes from acceleration and braking. Make that more efficient with newer electric motors, better designed tracks, better regenerative braking. If that doesn't work require everyone to disrobe before leaving their underground home.

Another option would be to deprecate trains. Instead people travel through pressurized maglev modules in tubes at 800 mph / 1200 kph. Transcontinental tubes accelerate the modules to 8000 mph / 12,000 kph. Interplanetary offramps eject the module from earth at mach 50+ where it is caught by a sub-orbital robot ship that matches speed and takes the module to the interplanetary colony ship.

London underground deep level trains have no HVAC and most definitely have overheating tunnel problems.

You've clearly never have been on the London Underground - none of the deep level lines currenlty have air conditioning and yet they are getting hotter every year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

It's significant.

I believe it. Let's not replicate what London got wrong.

We didn't! Chicago built their subway IN THE AIR!

Ahhh Delta-V by Daniel Suarez! Great book. The human-controlled robots were really interesting imo

I am sure that some people would still want to live on the surface of that beautiful, untouched planet. And I am sure this could be arranged, for the right price of course. And as the extra bonus, all those rich surface-dwellers would not need to see the common folks and other riff-raff, who would be be living under the ground. Hey, even under ground could use the same system: top levels for more well-off folks, and lower levels for poorer folks.

I think I've read a book about this. Or ten.

Dystopian are my favorites. I have this fantasy that there are still some people that would rise up to the challenge and level the playing field.

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