quote: University of Wyoming geologists claim to have found a race of super- intelligent "mole people" living in caves, holes, lairs and tunnels under the Bighorn Mountains. But unlike their finger-sized animal cousins, the mutant creatures stand 6 feet tall, walk upright on two legs and seem to be at least part human.
Not only that, say the experts, they're extremely dangerous, too.
Because not only do they speak and read English with surprising fluency, but their lairs are littered with books and manuals on waging biological warfare and making crude nuclear weapons -- and they hate Americans.
"The war on terror just got tougher," says a senior source at the Office of Homeland Security in Washington.
"Having Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad running around trying to cause havoc was bad enough. But now we're looking at a domestic threat that would seem to be at least as dangerous.
"And if they're reading those books on biological agents and nukes for more than entertainment, the threat could be far worse."
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Ah, I love the Weekly World News. If it weren't for them, the government would probably just cover this stuff up and we'd never find out about it!!!
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
quote:No one seems to know for sure what made the ground open up and swallow Linda Sharp on Sunday afternoon, but everyone agrees it probably shouldn't be a surprise something like that happened here.
[ January 20, 2004, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: zgator ]
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Heh. Yeah. Heard about that. Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Hey z...
Maybe you could hire the mole-people to do soil prep work for you!
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Maybe, but good soil prep generally doesn't consist of digging holes underneath building sites.
Here's my favorite part of the article.
quote:Orange County Fire-Rescue officials still aren't sure what made the hole. It's not likely a sinkhole, said Fire-Rescue spokesman Lt. Danny McAvoy, because it was shaped differently, wider at the bottom than at the top. He guessed that old tree roots may have rotted away under ground weakened by heavy rain Sunday morning.
Next time I see a fire, I'm going to tell everyone it wasn't arson, because it burned differently.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
By the way, did you happen to catch the Discovery Channel special on the Super mega building that's being considered for Tokyo? It's 2/3 of a mile high!!! Covers 120 blocks.
Cool design. The soil prep part of the show was fascinating. They're thinking that they may end up making thousands of deep drillings into the sandy soil and then filling those with concrete and building on top of that...so it would look like a giant row of combs with the teeth stuck into the ground.
Definitely a job for mole people.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Those are drilled shafts and they're actually pretty common. Except in Central Florida. They install those things through sandy soils or whatever happens to be there, but they end up in rock usually. Now you have a big concrete shaft sitting in the rock holding up your building.
In Central Florida, rock is around 200 feet deep. There are other ways to hold up buildings that are much cheaper when you're looking at drilling 200 feet or more.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Apparently, the rock layer under Tokyo is even further down than 200 feet. They're talking about NOT hitting rock. Just floating this huge monolith with fingers under it on the sandy soil.
By the way, the building will house 100,000 people, will be built by robots working 24/7 and people will move in to the lower levels while the upper ones are constructed.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Very cool. Hopefully, it will be on again.
Did they give a reason why they're going with that type of foundation and not something like driven piles?
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Yeah, they said that the driven piles would have to be something like 1/4 of a mile long or something outrageous like that. And the base rock is too far away for some other kinds of things.
I can't remember it all.
I hope you get to see it. It was fascinating. 10 buildings and you could house 1 Million people!
They said that you could live your entire life from birth to death in one building.
<arches fingers>
Excellent!
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
Bob,
quote:By the way, the building will house 100,000 people, will be built by robots working 24/7 and people will move in to the lower levels while the upper ones are constructed
You left out some very important information: they're evil robots. Evil robots, working 24/7. Not only that, they're evil, mind-controlling robots. It just keeps getting worse!
Where's my tin-foil hat? They stole it, again!
[ January 20, 2004, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: ssywak ]
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
LOL! Yes, worse yet, it will be built by the evil robots who first must rise to the top of the Robot Wars. And it will be built OUT OF the still partially working parts of the losing robots, who may or not be evil, but have so many malfunctions going on that they can't help but run amok from time to time.
Your tin foil hat has also been incorporated into the building. It's being used as the high-pressure water main.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
Big buildings. Sounds a lot like those huge buildings in that Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus in Flight. Whatchamacallits. You know, like cities inside.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
![[Smile]](smile.gif)