Reddit is full of far-fetched stories like this that ultimately turn up to be completely fabricated (obviously for the purpose of internet points). While this one isn't ridiculously far-fetched, it's definitely borderline.
Also, the first thing that came to my mind when reading this was the movie Vivarium [1], where one of the main characters does almost exactly this. It sounds like the author watched that movie, modified it slightly, and posted it to /r/advice.
I'd like to think that people know that this stuff is (most likely) not real, but some people can chime in and provide interesting information anyway. The top comment (about being trained in working in confined spaces and asphyxiation hazards) is new information to me, for example.
In my opinion, this kind of entertainment is in the same class as morning talk show sketches like "Second Date Update." It's obviously fake (who would agree to talk about a date on the radio from a random caller?), but it's hilarious and, for some, an interesting thing to talk about with friends who might even have similarly crazy stories that are actually real.
Because (1) it's more fun discussing conclusions than assumptions and (2) it doesn't matter.
Reddit mostly seeks to be entertaining. It turns out that improv/LARPing is more fun than reading or writing the 100th comment of the day that just questions an OP. We can't know if OP is being truthful or not, so why not just assume it's true and play along.
HN is different and some subreddits focus on being educational. But most are just trying to keep engagement up and don't mind the fakery/scenario-building/theatrics, as long as it's on-topic.
Probably because it strikes a chord. I think a lot of folks on HN dig their own tunnels too: we have weird and lonely hobbies (e.g. growing algae, over-engineered homes network, etc.) others may find absurd.
It's not that much different from most motorbike enthousiasts, often spending time and money customizing them and fixing stuff themselves, riding alone to nowhere... hobbies have many forms.
> Off the job, Seymour found many ways to distract himself from his professional challenges. He enjoyed skiing, sailing, wind surfing, tennis, hiking and other sports. Some of his distractions were unique and formed the basis of many stories, most of them true but perhaps distorted with time. He used these distractions to clear his mind for his work challenges. One favorite pastime he had was digging tunnels for the sheer joy of digging tunnels.
> Seymour loved challenges, and digging tunnels was just another challenge for him. Even as a child, Seymour was a problem solver. His sister tells the story about when Seymour was a young boy, he rigged a Morse Code connection between his bedroom and his sister's so that they could communicate after lights out. His father became aware of the late night clicking and told Seymour to shut down the system because it was bothering the rest of the household. Seymour's solution was to convert the clickers to lights and to continue to communicate with his sister.
This isn't the first time "tunneling" has appeared on HN, nor the first that it intersected with the techy/hacker community.
There was the case where a hacker who gave talks at Defcon built a tunnel, and paid someone to continue the work. The worker died and he went to prison [1]. There was some discussion about this case on HN in 2019 [2], and a Darknet Diaries episode about the whole multi-year scenario [3].
There’s also strong shades of non-conformity and anti authoritarianism in it. Who is this GF? His mom? Who is she gossiping to (Reddit), the nosy neighbor? Her annoying friends?
I don't question it because I have no reason to think it's fake. It could be, but there's nothing indicating it is. In the absence of proof showing it's fake, I have to assume that it's real.
I think it's a fantastic idea, and have thought of doing it myself.
Not really. In the case of zombies you want to be high up with a good view around all of your entry/exit points. Going into a tunnel is a good way to get stuck in a tunnel.
What's interesting about this to me is the way it sort of causes you to examine why certain things are acceptable hobbies and other things aren't. This particular hobby has three notable attributes:
1. It's risky.
2. The end product doesn't seem particularly useful if we set aside the mental/physical benefits. i.e.: it's done for it's own sake.
3. It's novel.
I would argue that 1 and 2 are attributes that a great number of hobbies share. Skiing, Mountain biking, football, kayaking, woodworking, sitting in a chair and playing video games all weekend. All these things carry some very specific and often non trivial risks to health or bodily harm over time.
Of course because these hobbies aren't novel, the benefits of the hobby are well understood. Our understanding of the risks and how to mitigate them are also quite a bit more understood.
It seems to me that the real 'problem' with this tunnel digging hobby is how novel it is. Which consequently leads to a lack of knowledge about what the risks and benefits may be.
Of course it's possible the poor guy is just dealing with a mental illness.
I'd strongly add "4. It's isolating." There are no issues with "solo" hobbies, but it's definitely another axis and social hobbies def improve your sociability and relationships.
It's all a matter of context, people can learn to do this, but one would need a reason.
I've actually visited an old Victorian-era house that had "a tunnel" in the basement. It ran from the front of the basement, underground, to somewhere underneath the public street where it terminated in a half-cylinder chamber perpendicular to the tunnel. Everything was lined with bricks, solidly built. I was told it was used to store booze during prohibition but no one is really sure. Found this on youtube (https://youtu.be/nDTyz7ivgNk?t=78), that's the one.
Yes! It was actually a plot point in Better Call Saul season 4 that an engineer on a covert underground project violated OpSec by talking about it about it a bar, which prompted a ton of interest and follow up questions.
It's all in your attitude. If you are/act embarrassed about your weird characteristics, your listener will probably assume that's the right way to feel. Something similar happens if you are/act excited.
I have yet to hear of a mountain biker causing a collapse that destroys a nearby road, which someone raised as absolutely a possibility here. Less that the risks are "novel" and more that they are absolutely known in the mining industry which is why this is illegal.
To borrow a metaphor, I'd say that now we are just quibbling over price. :) Discussions about relative risk, externalities and the like are all very relevant when it comes to other hobbies as well.
It's just that most of the relevant conversations surrounding these things were had decades ago with other hobbies, and many hobbies probably wouldn't have a prayer of actually passing muster if they were new today - Full contact football being a good example.
This issue of legality that you raise is a good one though, and likely the most relevant, unless this guy is going out into the desert to do this.
Aside from the obvious personal risks of mountain biking (falling, personal injury) some usually unauthorized mountain bike trails can absolutely do damage to forests and ecosystems, based on bike traffic an erosion. I haven't heard about destroying a road, but there doesn't seem to be a very good reason to pick that as the specific line for acceptability. I don't think destroying roads is generally acceptable, but we also don't know if there's an actual risk of that happening in this case.
Mountain biking is well known for being an unwanted presence. It makes hiking trails into miserable obstacle courses. Made worse by the fact that if it's allowed at all, people will go as fast as they want, it's not like there's radar traps set up.
I'm in favor of majorly reducing all hobbies that have danger or inconvenience to others. If you can't play 110DB music in the streets at night, there's clearly a general precedent and consensus that your hobby is not anything special and has no right to be a public nuisance or environmental disaster.
> he said that he’d work to get some sort of ventilation system installed ASAP, and that he’d even dig with his dad’s old gas mask if it’d make me feel better.
This guy ... I don't think he understands but he seems nice enough
Some communities exist for a single purpose. Rule 2 on that subreddit: Posts must ask for advice. If you want to loop the community in on your personal story, you do have to post it elsewhere.
It's just like this community - we don't allow offtopic posts either. Except instead of a small modteam, we have people who have a certain amount of karma to "remove" (bury) the post.
Still a weird rule tho. You'd think they want to hear if their advice was good or not and have a catalogue to look back at on what worked for certain situations.
No idea. I'll note that the original post was to /r/Advice, and the removed update was to /r/relationship_advice. No idea why they switched subreddits, but I expect that was part of it.
r/BestofRedditorUpdates is probably my new favorite sub, and I appreciate the legwork people put into gathering the pieces of posts into a coherent and satisfying story.
There's also a (probably apocryphal) story about Seymour Cray (the supercomputers guy) digging his tunnel too:
> John Rollwagen, a colleague for many years, tells the story of a French scientist who visited Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. Asked what were the secrets of his success, Cray said "Well, we have elves here, and they help me". Cray subsequently showed his visitor a tunnel he had built under his house, explaining that when he reached an impasse in his computer design, he would retire to the tunnel to dig. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem", he said. [1]
> Update: Mr Bali Hai sez, "I worked for Cray Research from 1984-1996, and I can tell you that the story of him tunneling under his house is largely a fabrication made up by John Rollwagen to enhance Seymour's reputation as a quirky, visionary genius (which he was, but not because he was digging tunnels under his house). What actually transpired involved Seymour having some excavation work done on his basement by contractors. As far as I know, none of them were elves.
The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an 8 by 4 feet (2.4 by 1.2 m) cedar-floored tunnel under his house, explaining that the digging helped him to think about computer designs. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem," he said.
When I switched from construction to freelance web design I spent a couple years doing part time so I could listen to podcasts. Digging, or just about any repetitive physical activity, is therapeutic and unlike programming I don’t have to think much. Now days I do a similar thing with the gym, but it’s still not the same. Reminds me of the end of Office Space where the main character refuses a new programming job because he likes digging and working outside.
Well more like a kept a couple of hours a few times a week for podcasts, and the company was happy to have me as I had a worked with them for awhile prior to becoming an engineer.
I'd bet this was also part of his nuclear war survival plans, it's said he moved to Chippewa Falls in part because the Twin Cities were too obvious of a target.
I had some childhood friends who could have served as the basis for the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. Four brothers with varying degrees of brilliance, their household a constant state of mayhem. One did indeed dig a tunnel under the foundation of their house. It was more of a crawlspace but it went all the way down there…
Then there was the twenty-year-old tarantula… the time one learned to spin yarn and made a sweater out of his dog’s hair… that time they procured some authentic bedouin garb and built a bonfire of plastic american flags on the driveway (this was pre-9/11)… fun bunch
Eccentric aristocrats get trapped by the social norms of their classmates. There's even lore around this. For example, people who don't think Shakespeare actually wrote anything[0] also tend to believe it was written by some aristocrat who couldn't reveal they participated in something as vulgar as creative writing.
> ...has been dividing his time between building the next generation of supercomputers and digging an underground tunnel that starts below his Chippewa Falls house and heads toward the nearby woods. "He's been working at it for some time now," says Rollwagen, who reports that the tunnel is 8 ft. high, 4 ft. wide and lined with 4-by-4 cedar boards. ...
From the wiki source, my inference is that the tunnel is at least 4 inches long if he was able to line it with 4x4 boards... But aren't 4x4 boards typically called "posts"? I'm amused by how poorly Time reported this.
I can relate to that. My home's basement has a side resting on a rocky mountain. I have daydreamed of secretly digging into the mountain and making a secret room, but it's not feasible: neighbors would complain of noise, the construction would be quite evident, and there's subterranean wiring and likely gas/water/drain pipes in the way. It would also be awful to find a spring and flood the house.
One of the best things about Dwarf Fortress is the story telling that surrounds it. I remember reading a great story on the forums about a Dwarf possessed to build a great work, but in the end it was only a legendary iron bucket.
Some of the more… mundane artifacts are nevertheless very useful. An artifact bucket can be used to build a very high-value well that gives dorfs happy thoughts. Artifact doors and floodgates are indestructible and impervious to invaders that can knock down standard issue furniture. Artifact tables and chairs are obviously useful for furnishing dining halls and offices.
Yeah, always embark with a few turtles, and save the turtle shells from the garbage pile, as an early strange mood can make or break a fortress (make it if they make something masterpiece you can display in the dining hall, break it if they can't get something like turtleshell and descend into madness triggering a tantrum spiral).
Alas, (unless you mod the game) you do not get shells from turtles you bring on embark or import through trade; they are already processed and ready to eat, no shell included. You do not even get a shell when you buy mussels!
Pond turtles are considered fish and live fish is not available to bring on embark. Since the only source for shells is fishing it is somewhat common to mod the game to make shell acquisition easier, you might have had one of those running.
I hope at some point miners in DF will get a special strange mood in which they go and dig out some crazy architectural masterpiece, a dining hall or a dwelling or a tomb fit for a king. Currently they just go and create an artifact masonry item, which is a bit boring.
Oh, and there could be another strange mood where the affected dorf becomes obsessed with delving too deep and too greedily, with certain spoilery consequences if not stopped in time.
There is a great story about an old man who lived in Hackney, East London who dug a series of tunnels under his house and surrounding houses. He was finally found out when other peoples houses started subsiding.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney...
When I was a kid I moved into my grandparents house and my uncle showed me a tunnel in his basement bedroom that he had started when he was a kid so he could sneak out. He turned 18 and moved out before he finished it, so it was my turn after that. By the time we moved out the tunnel was almost to the alley behind the house/backyard. Probably 60 to 70 feet long.
I always wondered what they thought when they tore the house down 15 years later.
I remember watching this video [1] about that same guy.
> "The Hackney Mole Man", In 2006, a network of tunnels were discovered beneath a house in Hackney, London. This discovery initiated a wave of public concern and media attention revolving around a lone figure, known locally as 'the Mole Man'.
Also, following an artist mentioned in the video, I tracked this page [2] and an interesting excerpt:
> Though flattered by my interest, the Mole Man proved to be extraordinarily difficult to work with. He was extremely racist, misogynistic and paranoid, and was only interested in talking about my sex life. His elusive, subterranean behavior – in many ways like that of an actual mole – and his obsession with tunnels was the ultimate Freudian manifestation. I soon realized, though, that the sexual overtones of our relationship threatened to over-take the project completely.
Underminer : Behold, the Underminer! I'm always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me! I hereby declare war on peace and happiness! Soon, all will tremble before me!
I wouldn't call that a "great" story since it was ultimately not just pointless but actively harmful to everyone.
Dashrath Manjhi's story is one I would qualify of "great", after his wife sadly died from what he perceived was a delay of care due to his village remoteness, he resolved to straight carve a roadway through the ridge abutting his village (over which the nearest town was located). Spent 20 years carving a 110m long and 9m wide road through the ridge, apparently with hammer and chisel.
Probably several chisels, and maybe even multiple hammers. I've done my share of chiseling and I've never worn one out yet but I'm not in the habit to going through 100+ meters of rock, even so my cold chisel is probably only about 80% the size that it was when I first bought it.
Oh yes absolutely, he explained that initially the other villagers had thought him crazy, then after a few years and visible progress some started giving him food or chipping in for tools replacement.
The sheer perseverance is humbling. I have a hard time staying focused on anything for much longer than week, and those tend to be interesting and intellectually rewarding, to be focused on transforming rock to rubble and removing it for decades is somewhere just below 'god mode'.
In the 90s I knew a guy on suburban Long Island who had started tunneling out of his basement. Last I heard he had gotten a couple of hundred feet under some neighbor's properties. Lost touch with him long ago and never found out how it turned out, but there were no reports in the local papers, so I can only assume he is still down there somewhere.
I don't know if there is something with redditors or the internet itself, but early on in this I got the feeling that the text was trying to entertain me rather than asking a real question.
Maybe the karma points subconsciously incentives people to write profusely detailed situations before hit Send. Almost impossible to believe.
There are forums outside of reddit almost dedicated to do exactly that (post fake stories on reddit). Honestly, the posts (not this one, I think this is actually real) are sometimes so outlandish and "baity", yet reddit almost always fall for it. There's this bizarre pattern of always suggesting divorce, calling the cops or other very... "reddit" advice that comes off as unadjusted.
And while the posts might be fake, the disturbing thing is that the comments/advices usually are not.
As a userbase increases, the lowest common denominator falls.
I don't have any estimates on the rates of change, but consider how huge Reddit and some of the default subs are, and how half of those people are below-average intelligence(Carlin quote?).
I'm not at all surprised to see dumb shit on big subs, or to see people lying on the internet for imaginary points. I just moderate my expectations based on where I happen to be at a given time.
Reddit's is kind of infamous for posts from people in insane relationships. (There's even a rumor that Grimes posted there while dating Elon, but that's unconfirmed so I won't link it here.)
There's a ton of fake stories posted to reddit. Some of them are creative writing projects. Others are pretty clearly "push-polling" certain political/social themes to generate outrage. The bad ones are pretty obvious, yet most of the comments slurp them up. Most people just aren't very critical of the things that they read.
it's more than subconscious. It happens fairly often that people on Reddit fabricate stories for karma. Sometimes it's because it's their job, i.e. farms that generate accounts with a large amount of karma with the purpose of selling them
I think about this too. It's got a conflict ("he's doing something I don't want him to do"), it's weird enough to be eye catching but not weird enough to be unbelievable, serious enough to warrant concern but not so serious that it isn't funny to read and think about, and comes with an explicit invitation to engage. It's got relatable themes (loneliness, male hobby obsession, finding fulfillment outside the drudgery of work) and has an easy entrypoint for engagement.
I'm not saying this is fake, especially since it wouldn't really matter either way, but it's interesting to think about. I remember reading something about people who fake advice column letters. There's a real art to the best ones.
Chances are I won't do it, but there's something very intriguing about subverting the urban landscape and creating a little (or massive?) hidden world. What's held me back is other prevailing interests and not owning any land where I could get away with it.
Maybe I'm not mentally fit myself, but I don't think the tunnel-digging is bad for his mental health. If anything, it could be helping him deal with something else that it's really a symptom of. But I have no idea. I'd be more likely to believe that he has an obsession, and it's debatable whether any particular obsession is pathological.
This guy probably has a shot at making it big on social media if he posted photos/videos. I know I would subscribe. If he brought in the bux, I'm sure her attitude would change, the inherent danger of amateur tunnel-digging notwithstanding.
We have places where you can pay to "pan for gold", i.e, get muddy and get maybe a flake of gold, so we have people paying to be 49ers.
You can pay to pick up heavy things and put them back down, so we have people paying to be stevedores.
So why not have places where you can pay to dig tunnels? With proper supervision and a bit of safety gear, it could be quite nice, you could even allow people to purchase memberships for "their tunnel" and compete with others ...
> We have places where you can pay to "pan for gold", i.e, get muddy and get maybe a flake of gold, so we have people paying to be 49ers.
Back when I lived in California gold country I used to know a guy who would go panning for gold for free and usually made enough money to pay for the beer he took out there — though I suspect the fresh air and beer were the important aspects to his gold bug.
—edit—
Should add his “secret spot” was somewhere right in the middle of Auburn and I believe within walking distance from his house.
There are a lot of places in California gold rush country where you can legally pan for free. There are some rules, but nothing oppressive that keeps you from having fun and findings some flakes. I don't live far away and a friend even has a little portable sluice he takes out sometimes. Hobby prospecting is a fun way to spend a day.
> You can pay to pick up heavy things and put them back down, so we have people paying to be stevedores.
Very off-topic, but "stevedore" is an awesome word. Spanish is my first language, and wouldn't have guessed the word for "estibador" in English, it looks so weird. Had to lookup the etymology, and it's weird because sailors imported the word from Spanish or Portuguese. The original Latin verb is "stipare".
I moved from the Midwest, with feet and feet of dirt and soil, to Upstate New York, with thin, rocky soil and shallow bedrock. The first time I went to plant a tree in my new yard, I dug down a short way and hit a good sized rock that I couldn't work out with my shovel. So I went to the store and got a pickaxe. After working around it for awhile, out popped a nearly perfect cube of rock.
All serious safety concerns. Also: Something that happens more often than we hear about is tunnelers breaking into an open space which collapses some of the floor they're standing on, causing them to fall and get seriously injured, or die. Is he tying himself to something? Does he have ground-penetrating radar?
I one hundred percent agree. unless you have proper tools training and equipment for confined space work, trench work, and mine safety you shouldnt be doing this. depending on where you dig you risk exposure to a host of bad hombres including methane, radon, arsenic, and asbestos.
One thing to consider is that property rights and mineral rights are completely different in most states. Identifying the owner of the mineral rights to the property might the the first step in getting him to cease and desist.
another thing to remember is that if you dig too deep, get too stuck, or are generally too cumbersome, rescuers will not pursue your rescue or exhume your corpse. As in the 2009 nutty putty cave disaster, youll simply be left interred, with a memorial marker. death by entrapment is a slow death of exhaustion and dehydration.
Is it the role of society to stop people from taking risks they willingly accept? And at what point?
If I want to skydive? Kayak across the Atlantic? Run a fight club? Build a custom homestead? Smoke? Drink? Do drugs? Play Russian Roulette?
Where's the line? There's one somewhere. To me, digging tunnels feels like the sort of thing which we should allow. Some of the others, I'm okay banning.
I think we should absolutely allow people to pursue dangerous activities they are passionate about. Having limits on how far rescuers will go to bail you out of trouble is also perfectly fair.
Within your own property lines (and mineral rights), away from all utility lines and easements, and done so as not to damage nor undermine any neighbor's property or structures, yes.
In short - either do it out in the country, or get appropriate permits.
Certain activities do have a high level of risk acceptance by society. Sky diving includes the use of a large amounts of paperwork with an additional video recording of your accepting of said risks. On a visit to Hawaii, there are signs post that say if you continue past the sign, you are accepting there are risks involved that the state is no longer responsible for.
The accepted role of society seems to be that if you want to do risky things, we're going to make sure we're not liable.
Without commenting on the role of society in this particular issue, I'll note that you have to know and understand the risks in order to accept them. And in my experience (aerospace) people are exceptionally bad at both identifying and assessing risk in areas outside their field of expertise.
Two of those things are something society can choose to not do. Can't necessarily ignore a collapsed tunnel in certain areas, but the alternative of banning an activity can be removing responsibility of rescue.
Perhaps in China, or some other country that doesn’t value human life. In the West we generally don’t just watch people drown and say “sucks to be them.”
>To me, digging tunnels feels like the sort of thing which we should allow.
Except, you know, there might be electrical lines, sewer lines, water pipes, etc, underground. It might also affect property value, if your tunnel floods it could lead to mosquitos, lots of unintended consequences could happen.
Also, if you have a family, loved ones, friends, etc, they also have a right to try to stop you from doing something potentially stupid.
Although I guess if you want to buy an island or some land all by yourself and dig holes all day, whatever. Otherwise, we live in a society and when what we do has consequences for others around us, society tends to get involved.
Should we then police the caloric intake of people too? Obesity kills way way more people than tunnels. Like where's the line? And while tunneling might damage utilities, obesity is putting a strain on the healthcare system. To be sure, I'm not saying we should treat overweight people any differently. It's just that your reasoning can be used to justify disallowing pretty much everything that isn't risk free. "We live in a society" goes both ways and does not imply individuals need to give up everything for the greater good
I think you're confusing the premise that society should have limits with the premise that things should be illegal. We do police caloric intake, and honestly I think we should do more because obesity and associated problems cost the American taxpayer $200 billion per year. Other societies than the US are healthier because those societies believe that the collective has a responsibility to individuals and individuals to the collective, and vice versa the government.
We limit risky behaviors all the time as well. It's illegal to parkour on private property, but not everywhere. It's illegal to freedive and BASE jump in many places, but not everywhere. Some caves aren't legal to explore, for others, you have to be an expert. Expertise is a way society gatekeeps many dangerous activities. If you're under the age of 18 or older than 75, you can't climb Mount Everest.
We no longer put heroin or cocaine in soda, we regulate some drugs and outlaw others on the premise that addiction poses a burden both on the society and the individual. We also have doctors and treatment centers as society's way of intermediating between people and bad behaviors.
And yes, there are reasonable limits placed both by society and by the law, on where and how and how big you can dig holes. It isn't an unacceptable imposition on your personal liberty that you just cant take a shovel anywhere you like and start digging anywhere you want.
>"We live in a society" goes both ways and does not imply individuals need to give up everything for the greater good.
With trenches, since the person has their head above ground, they think even less of safety.
The problem comes after a rain or a very dry period where the sides of the trench collapse. If you are unlucky, the dirt buckles your knees, pulling you down and possibly covering your head.
There’s a reason construction teams bring in reinforced barricades for anything much over 3 feet. Yes it saves on rework, but it’s also about safety.
When I was a kid my dad stopped me from digging a cave in a 5ft tall pile of snow that got stacked up by a plow. I was so mad about that for a long time, but he was probably right. Digging it would likely have been fine, but once it started to melt it could collapse at any point (probably during the heat of the day, when I or another child might have been around).
There are a lot of things which could go wrong with tunneling. Bad air or collapse being a possibility.
There is also the possibility he is competent at this as well.
I would raise the idea of bringing someone in who could assess the current effort for safety and quality. Most people who are building properly should welcome this. Being highly defensive from prying eyes definitely raises some red flags.
I wrote, "Is this a metaphor?" and then searched to see who else thought that.
From what I can tell, he's trying to dig himself out of a relationship he isn't happy in instead of just leaving. If he works hard enough digging deeper, maybe he can drive her away instead of having to own disappointing and hurting her, or it will collapse on him and he can be liberated in death and still remembered as perfect and a martyr. If only he had a father who could tell him, son, stop digging. This woman isn't your mother, accept yourself. Strike this set, grieve, and move on.
Or he's just a nerd with a shovel, but it's never just a nerd with a shovel.
Well, YouTubers are doing this in front of a huge audience (9M views on just one part of a series), so I would guess a lot of people share a similar interest in doing this too. I would be worried about accidents as well, but if popular folks on YouTube keep pushing this as something that can be done, I am sure many people who are not worried (and lack the skills) will follow until it eventually ends in a disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAxiWkwlC0
Yeah, I have to agree. He's essentially become a real-life Tim Taylor from Home Improvement. Every project he does is more outrageous and dangerous than the last outrageous and dangerous project. Almost none of what he does should be attempted by hobbyists at home, frankly.
It's interesting because, not too dissimilar to building tree houses, digging or tunneling is something kids are obsessed with that has a clear evolutionary advantage.
A nice tunnel is something you can use to store food in, stay safe from predators in, use for shelter or to stay cool in, have a shadow puppet theater.
I wonder if hes just got a bit of a positive feedback from some monkey brain circuits.
I think the GF should get him enrolled in some community college tunnel building classes or some such and demand he build it well and safely. Beyond that, it seems like a pretty benign hobby.
>there's also the fact that he doesn't really have a social life, because of this thing. I'm pretty much the only person he still talks to outside of his job, and he doesn't go out and do anything anymore. It used to be that he'd occasionally head out and do some digging on the weekends, but now he spends almost all of his free time out there
This is one of those situations on Reddit I find odd.
Of all the things we're worried about here it is the tunnel. The tunnel isn't the reason, it's just a choice reflecting something else.
Meanwhile everyone focuses on the tunnel... tells this person why digging the tunnel is dangerous and tunnel technical discussion. Or they go to grand conclusions about this person who they don't know... It's like most of the advice is gathered from Jr. High students (no offense to mature Jr. High students).
Reddit, particularly when it comes to personal advice, sometimes feels like The Peanuts where there are no adults around.
That of course leads me to the other wonder of reddit, folks who describe being in a relationship but seem to know little to nothing about the other person / haven't talked about some things ... sometimes in that relationship for a long time.
The worst part to me is the Reddit comments saying obviously he must be a serial killer or something. He's digging a tunnel to have somewhere to hide your body! Aahhhhh
Sometimes a guy just wants to dig a tunnel, come on.
When I was in art school "hobby tunneling" was kind of a fad. Both the sculpture and performance art students got into it. Digging a huge hole or tunnel on campus was frowned upon, so it was that much cooler to pull it off. I remember one guy digging a giant well and another guy digging a huge tunnel by hand and literally living in it for days. The art school was 50/50 male and female and there were plenty of trends that both participated in, but only the men got into this particular art fad for some reason.
I believe Richard Feyman enjoyed digging, he's feel anxious and dig for awhile, then he could concentrate. But I believe it was just a hole or ditch, that he'd fill afterwards.
Maybe she should buy a shovel and work with him. Also, there is a good chance this story is fake, that it is an advertisement beacon for a movie or something.
People have to remember that half the crap posted on these sites is fake. Without proper evidence that this happening, people are just wasting their time commenting and just feeding the troll.
Water mines in the mountains in central Portugal. Many are said to be from Moorish times. It’s a long tradition, suffice it to say, along with the elevated stone aquaducts lining the nadirs of each valley.
The one on my old land there was dug by an elderly friends father about 80-90 years ago with a pickaxe. It took about a year and a half of full-time work. (Who fed them during that time? Was it a village funded effort?)
It’s allegedly about 150m deep, which is terrifying to imagine, as it’s like 1.6m tall and maybe 80-90cm wide or something and the bottom is full of water.
I never dared wade in more than about 5m, it’s sorta crouching person height and it’s basically just scraped out of the schist, although there are pockets of a hard white quartz of some kind that I can attest to the difficulty in breaking, one dislodges large chunks of it instead.
There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, it's gotta be healthier than so called idle games, and about as useful. Or similar to lifting weights or jogging or something. It makes him feel good, that's all the justification any non-harmful activity should need.
> In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.
If it's concerning to you to fill a need with a hobby, then you're probably going to be concerned about most people. What would you say are healthy reasons to engage in a hobby, if there are any?
I’d say any of the top three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. A hobby that helps you achieve feelings of self-actualization, esteem, and belonging is great.
Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.
Tunneling isn't the problem. This isn't a tunneling story. It would be similar if the tunnel were a ski mountain, an office or a drug den.
This is a story of escalating isolation. He's isolating from society, from people who care about him and whom, we presume, he cares about. (Or maybe not. Maybe he gets along fine at work and at church, and is simply uninterested in his SO.)
I'd say this is about his girlfriend not liking that he's isolating from society. (Which, of course, is a perfectly valid preference of hers.) There's lots wrong with society; the choice to mostly disconnect from it is a reasonable one for many people.
He shouldn't stop digging his tunnel but it sounds like he should spend less time on it if he wants to keep a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. That would be true no matter what his hobby was.
Why are you jumping to judge her? Is totally reasonable for someone in a relationship to want to spend time with their partner, and be upset if they literally never get to. What's even the point of a relationship if there's no companionship?
Agreed, but once he unleashes the Balrog it will be a bit too late. Then the area will be a Superfund site for generations until some grey guy shows up with a stick & an attitude.
At summer camp we had joke activities like "sand a log to nothing" and "dig a hole to China". Kids would sign up for these activities and actually sand down the log and dig the pointless hole for hours. Just as popular as playing soccer, swimming, etc. I agree this tunnel boyfriend may be on to something
Two main characters were meeting after-school to dig a tunnel, although their motivation was a little bit deeper (sorry, I couldn't help myself) than just digging itself.
There's a direct payoff for working 8 hours a day. We really don't know enough about this person's motivations to judge the health of his actions one way or another, but speculating a mental health angle isn't unreasonable. And yes, I'd say the same thing if someone cutoff all social contact and most time with their partner over a more mainstream hobby as well. MH issues aren't a given, but they're certainly on the table unless we learn more about this.
The “direct” payoff is an abstraction. Follow the code. It’s so you get money to pay for food, shelter and piece of mind, possibly status. Somewhere further up Mazlow’s hierarchy is enjoyment.
Regardless, I consider anyone operating in humanity to be mentally ill in general. It’s just, how much of your mental illness impacts the rest of us, and how much of it is abstracted away so we can quickly label it harmless (mostly to the rest of us).
Digging a tunnel the closest shit to “ain’t bothering me” as it’s going to get.
Now, if your nonsense pushes you to monopolize industries and abuse labor for profit, yeah, now your mental illness is on blast.
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Few would consider that the GF is mentally ill, so obsessed with how it would look to others, so obsessed with how it’s non conforming.
"Ain't bothering me" as an attitude applies if you don't have an attachment to the person. In this case, the partner is actually bothered by it. They don't have a right to force a halt but concerns about major behavioral changes are reasonable for a loved one to have in this situation. "Ain't bothering me" also only applies if you disregard the potential damage to local underground infrastructure, other people's property, hitting a gas line and cause a major issue, etc.
If they're in a rural area where those aren't potential issues and the boyfriend doesn't want to change, then the partner simply has to decide if they can live with the new situation. I think we'd agree on that.
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I'm confused on your comments about reading into the partner's mental health. I see no indication in their post saying they're concerned about how it looks to others. As for non-conforming, they seem to be somewhat accepting, stating that they haven't made it a big issue before because the boyfriend seems relatively happy. They specifically say, "My biggest concern is his safety". That seems reasonable. Major behavioral changes on the other hand would be a bigger warning sign. (while acknowledging that a red flag doesn't mean there's an actual issue)
EDIT: From an update [1] here's why the boyfriend says he does it: "It’s just pleasant. When I’m down there, I feel safe and calm, and I’m always happier when I leave than when I went in"
I suppose there are worse coping mechanisms than that.
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone."
The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically.
[1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.
It’s likely more dangerous thank bedrock tunneling frankly. Loosely consolidated sedimentary soil can easily shift and slide with relatively little outside input. A truck driving by, a rain, sprinklers, even someone walking over it.
And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution.
Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
A guy on our street died digging out for sewer, only ~2m deep - a side he had stacked dirt on caved in/slided and covered him. He left a wife and 2 kids. No tunnel, just unsafely stacked dirt mound.
Thank you. My partner is an architect, and while they aren’t a structural engineer, they had enough structures training in grad school to know that hobby tunnel digging is extremely dangerous. There are clearly alternative physical activities that would have all the same benefits with none of the downsides.
I used to dig a tunnel in our parents backyard. Don’t know how deep it got but as a kid I could go pretty far back. Pretty sure my goal was to reach our neighbor across the street.
It was definitely a death trap. It was a large dirt hole dug deep into a hill.
I was too young to even think of reenforcing it, let alone have a budget to do so. In the end my parents finally decided my tunnel was a death trap and we had to plug it up.
Thinking back I’m amazed it didn’t collapse on me. Oh well… cheating death is just part of growing up.
Only vaguely related, during one of my burnouts I worked for a high-end custom wood flooring company as (45 year old) "shop boy", electrical fixer (tools) and estimator. It was a guilty pleasure, I really enjoyed it (didn't pay well, but don't say there's nothing good about Fundies, they gave me health insurance to my great surprise).
So, in some suburban environment (which has been engineered to not have cellular reception) there is a house. Out in the yard, if you look for it, there's this thing that looks kind of like a cupola, sitting on the ground, about 50 yards from the house. It has a basement (never found the pool). In the basement was a metal door, with a little room and a hallway around a corner. When the door shuts behind you it goes "WUMP! Wump! wump wump wump wump". Looking around the corner, there's a pulley, like a clothes line, disappearing into the murk. It's a gun lane.
Guy who'd bought the house wanted to use it for a wine cellar. He wanted a wood floor in it (on top of the concrete). This is insane! We found an amazing high-end engineered product (laminated) faced with cypress. Aged it in the hole for a couple of months prior to installation. Lost about 10% of the product, but we planned for that. Crazy. Paid well.
I almost guarantee this is a shelter / disaster prep, the "inherited property" thing is what is the giveaway.
All of a sudden he has a "playground", maybe some cheap property that doesn't have a great use or value otherwise. Those become nice to have for dude toys and dude projects.
Girlfriend of course has multiple agendas that she didn't discuss with him and doesn't like any activity outside of those, which is garden variety manipulative partner stuff.
From one of many other related articles, "The equipment was fed by what Wink called a dangerous, “haphazard daisy chain” of power cords. And on the day of the fire, hours before it broke out, Beckwitt was aware of the smell of smoke in the basement, according to Wink, but reacted only by adjusting the circuit breakers."
That one article can't capture this situation well enough, there was an entire series of them (and it's still ongoing), but one of the issues had to do with the authorities dealing with the situation and simply not knowing what to do to secure the tunnel after the fact. Tunneling was haphazardly done and had gone beyond his property line and undermined neighbors' homes, and it got very complicated.
This reminds me of the Temples of Humankind, where a new-age community in Italy (possibly an abusive cult looking at their Wikipedia page) dug in a mountain for a couple decades without planning permission but by the time they were discovered they were impressive enough that they were allowed to keep them.
This must be at an elevated space or in a dry area. Otherwise the water table would stop him. She should ask him to take a video of the tunnel for her so she can see what it looks like down there (without having to go in herself).
I'm betting on fake story for karma. Makes you think how many stories we hear on the internet are fake yet shape our perception of the world for many people who take things at face value.
If he can avoid the safety concerns as far as cave ins and oxygen problems it seems like an incredibly benign hobby compared to a what a lot of people are into. It must be great exercise, and he could end up with some really cool underground space if he does it properly. I wonder how many women out there who's boyfriends spend their time at the bar or at the track or doing some sort of drugs would love it if they were just digging a tunnel at home instead.
Content moderation. Moderation creates the culture of online communities by reinforcing or diminishing certain behaviors. Not all communities have great cultures.
> He's always really happy when he comes back from digging
I'm not sure I see the problem entirely.
Digging the tunnel is his after-work / weekend video game.
He's obviously neglecting his partner a bit, but if he could balance that out, and assuming he knows how to dig without collapsing the world onto his head, it seems like there's nothing too harmful here.
I remember there being an interesting set of posts a long time ago where someone did this under their house as a passion project with only a small concrete mixer and they hand shoveled/hand troweled everything. If anyone remembers where I might have seen that I'd appreciate a link!
It's important to remember half of the nonsense on reddit is a kinder (much kinder) form of what was on 4chan back in the day, it's mostly fiction written by people to get karma. I generally don't take stuff like this (or aita or relationships) subreddit posts seriously.
Well what have you said to him to make him prefer dark underground isolation to your relationship?
But seriously, there is no mention of its purpose or where it leads? If it's nearly finished then bf/gf can find a compromise. If it has no end then there are bigger problems.
Not a tunnel in the ground, but when I was younger we were at a friend's lakeside cottage. Their grandparents had built the house with crawl spaces/ladder? spaces running through everywhere for the kids to play.
This reminded me a novel by Chuck Palahniuk called 'Choke' which one of the characters is addicted to collecting rocks. He is already in the news and perhaps from now on some sort of 'cult' starts.
This post sounds to me like the opening of some sort of horror short story, with the boyfriend finally unearthing some sort of ancient intelligence that is trapped down there and controlling him.
I worked with a hole digger in HI. The deepest he got in his yard was about 10 feet. Says his record was 20 when he was a teen at his parents' house in LA.
The tunnel doesn’t seem like the main issue. The dude is neglecting his partner and may be unaware that she would appreciate a little more of his time.
Weird. I don't see the harm in actually digging the tunnel. The issue is he is probably not ventilating properly. He is going to get sick and pass out/die if he digs deep enough with no proper machinery to move fresh air into the space.
The alternative is he is cheating on his GF and hired an excavation crew as a cover. Elaborate but..with the crap I've seen you really never know. lol.
"inherited property" = He started this with Grandpa, then he left for college and/or grandpa died, now its a memory of the good old days. Now if he could only find someone to experience this together in the current year, like someone who calls him "boyfriend"... (edited to be more explicit, this was never about digging a tunnel it was about hanging out with grandpa, kinda like I never fished to live and wasn't even a huge fan of eating fish but I liked fishing with grandpa as a kid)
All the single people on Reddit AND HN not understanding the difference between doing something with someone and doing something around someone, so using strict binary thinking if the poster is not a fellow digging addict the poster must ostracize the digger and force them to be alone. My wife does fine precision woodworking "with" me not "along" with me, for example. She's right there scrapbooking while I'm hand cutting (loose and rattle-y LOL) dovetail joints, etc. The poster is making a huge mistake by not hanging out with BF using the excuse of not wanting to lift a shovel. Read a book, watch videos, do some craft, no need to pick up a shovel.
There's never been a better time in history to take up tunneling. Youtube is full of abandoned and active mine exploration videos, uncountable hours. There's something strangely chill and technologically impressive about seeing mining works on screen. I picked up this youtube interest during the covid lockdown as a way to get out there while also satisfying some techno-curiosity. "Exploring Abandoned Mines and Unusual Locations" is good, Frank is pretty chill dude. Beware that looking at mining videos leads you down a path where next thing you know you're watching The Proper People do urban exploration and then you find the Dead Malls of Discord server and you're watching cruise director Kristin wander an empty dead mall at 2:00am when you have to work the next day...
My experience with cranky old men, being related to several and probably turning into one myself, is if they're not overly talkative you'll get the standard complaint regardless what's going on. So my elderly uncle goes to his rented farm patch "to weed the tomato raised beds" almost every sunny day but that's like five minutes work and the rest of the time he does all kinds of crazy stuff ranging from tractor maintenance to fertilizer application to whatever else his hobby interests lead him to. So this dude is probably restoring the house to move in, or planting a huge crop of "something" or maybe he's just fishing all day, but yeah he's not the talkative type and he "went out to dig today". Or sometimes that's just how guys plan hobby time. Today I WILL mow the lawn so I say I am mowing the lawn but really I spent most of the time doing misc yardwork tasks, trimming bushes, etc, still I'd simplify it as "I mowed the lawn".
Pics or it didn't happen. I think we underestimate the harmful effects of mild disinformation. And underestimate the motivation to lie on Reddit.
We are constantly subtly recalibrating our worldview so why increase the likelihood that our picture of the world is inaccurate?
Reddit is full of far-fetched stories like this that ultimately turn up to be completely fabricated (obviously for the purpose of internet points). While this one isn't ridiculously far-fetched, it's definitely borderline.
Also, the first thing that came to my mind when reading this was the movie Vivarium [1], where one of the main characters does almost exactly this. It sounds like the author watched that movie, modified it slightly, and posted it to /r/advice.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368406