[ExI] tunnels, was: RE: Inflation and the 2024 election

[John Clark]

*I said that because of the existence of hydrogen bombs it was a good idea
if people didn't elect a POTUS that was an ignorant amoral imbecile, and
somehow you sidetracked that to a discussion of tunnel building techniques.
Weird. *

*John K Clark*

On Sun, Oct 18, 2026 at 12:21 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com>
> *Subject:* RE: [ExI] Inflation and the 2024 election
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> *From:* John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
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> *>>>…Tunnels John.  Deep, far from harm in a nuclear attack or unruly
> mobs.* *Sheesh was it really necessary to spell it out? *
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> *>>…Yes I think it was. You can't get very "far" in 20 minutes… John*
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> *>…You don’t need to, if you can get very deep….*
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> *I realized I understated the case.  You could get very far as well.*
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> *Consider the task of building tunnels.  The amount of soil to be removed
> is approximately proportional to the square of the diameter of the tunnel.
> The Caldecott Tunnel is one I use occasionally, width 9.8 meters, height
> 12.5, so we can say it is close enough to about 10 meters diameter for
> estimation purposes.*
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> *Consider an escape tunnel, whose only purpose is escape.  Could a vehicle
> be made with a diameter of two meters, so an escape vehicle is the size of
> a minivan?  How about one meter?  How “tall” are you from the top of your
> head to the bottom of your ass when you are in a dentist chair?  Even a
> tall fat guy could fit in a vehicle one meter in diameter for a few
> minutes.  If an escape vehicle is built for a tunnel that size, it could be
> made to go really fast.  There’s nothing in the way down there, so why not
> 100 km/hr?  Why not 200?*
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> *The Caldecott Tunnel is about 1 km in length, so the 1 meter diameter
> tunnel could be made about 100 km in length by removing the same amount of
> soil, or 50 km if you wish to argue that the Caldecott is roughly
> semi-circular.  Also note the Caldecott has four bores.*
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> *A dump truck can haul about 30 cubic meters of soil, so about 40 meters
> of tunnel for each dump truck if we assume a one meter diameter tunnel.
> During the approximately two years where the neighbors were complaining
> bitterly about the constant noise, a dump truck left the Naval Observatory
> about every 4 to 6 minutes, around the clock.  That’s about 300 trucks a
> day or about 10,000 trucks a year, so about twenty thousand trucks removes
> enough soil for about 400 km of tunnel just from soil removed from just
> that one site.  Somebody check my math, as I am doing it in my head.*
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> *If you think it is too technically difficult or expensive, note that the
> Gazans built a huge tunnel system funded primarily from foreign aid.*
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> *John I do urge you to use your imagination and recognize that those who
> design these kinds of systems are as smart as you are, and that there are a
> lot more of them than there are of you.  Once you do that, imagine what you
> would do if you were in command the military and you knew your enemy could
> send you rockets with nuclear warheads, aimed with high accuracy.*
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> *spike*
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