Journal 11: November 10th

I decided to do some more research on caverns this week. I got an idea that maybe they could be used as bomb shelters, or some kind of protection from the elements in the future if the surface of the earth were to be unsafe. Like nature's safe havens.

Then I came across this article: http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pageunderground.html





This is fascinating. I knew that caves and trenches were used in war, but the idea of entire underground cities that could house 20,000 is beyond what I could have ever imagined. The article also touches on the history of caves and how they are intertwined with ancient religious history.


In the last few years I've gotten interested in urban exploration, but I've never been in a cave. I know that some people on a UrbEx forum I am a part of have explored the Catacombs. The picture on the left is from someone's personal trip down into these tunnels. There are secret entrances that allow explorers access to the tunnels without going on a guided tour.



All over the world, people have found secret underground tunnels and documented their adventured on the forum: uer.ca.

Another part of the first article on caverns caught my attention:




"As a kid, I used to explore caves in the Santa Clarita Valley with my dad. Kids actually got a specific ailment from going into caves in that area, due to breathing a mold inside the caves. In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, people began to come down with "Valley Fever," which had symptoms very close to those the kids in the caves got. The theory was that the intense shaking of the earth, shook the molds and dusts out of the caves and land, and people inhaled it. And photographs from the air, of the moment of the quake, show dust clouds rising like steam, out of the land."





Maybe this is the cause of the widespread sickness caused after the Peru earthquakes that I talked about in my previous post.