Mines

Mountain Biking Down an Abandoned Mine Shaft Is a Dimly Lit Descent Into Hell

There are lots of places to go off-road mountain biking if you’re looking for a cheap thrill (or the chance to break your neck). But one of the most dangerous has to be riding into an abandoned mine shaft. If your flashlight dies as you’re pedalling deep into the earth, you’re probably screwed. After countless…

This Huge BMX Park Is Hidden 100 Feet Underground In an Abandoned Mine 

Right now, indoor BMX parks are all the rage in cities across America. But obviously, these parks are limited by the size of the buildings they inhabit. How to overcome that constraint? Well, you could find an old limestone mine in Kentucky and built a BMX in its cave-like remains. That’s exactly what the owners…

What All the Metal From a Single Mine Would Look Like As a Giant Orb

Of all the ways humans have altered the Earth, mining must be one of the most awesome—just for the sheer ratio of Earth excavated to metals and gems recovered. Still, it’s hard to visualize just how much a single mine has netted in numbers, which is why For What It’s Worth is so interesting. This…

The Last Trace of Humans On Earth Will Be the Holes We Dug

When most of us think of what humans will leave behind when we go, we imagine skeleton buildings or toxic landfills. But according to some geologists, the longest-lasting impact we’ll have on Earth is actually beneath our feet—in the form millions of tunnels, deep boreholes, and mines. In a new paper inAnthropocene, the geologist Jan…

The Biggest Man-Made Hole on Earth

A few weeks ago, we looked at a photo essay on Mir Mine, a nearly mile-wide mine in Eastern Siberia that’s one of the largest man-made holes on Earth’s surface. It made us wonder: Where the largest hole ever made by humans? As it turns out, it’s right here in the United States. The land…

Journey Underground to These Eye-Poppingly Incredible Old Mines

Want to know what it would be like to live in a subterranean world? Visit these incredible old mines and see how the Morlocks live. Turda Salt Mine (Salina Turda), Romania, operated between the 2nd century, abandoned in 1932, reopened for tourists in 1992. More than three billion tons of salt was mined here. One…

The Beneath Trailer Channels That Old Descent Feeling

This is the first we’ve seen of the mine drama Beneath, and so far so good. It’s your classic “oh no we’re stuck hundreds of feet underground and there’s something down here” horror movie, but hey, if it ain’t broke… From what we can tell in the trailer, it looks like the monsters are the…

Step Inside The Historic Photo Archive Stored In an Underground Mine

Boyers, Pennsylvania, is home to the Iron Mountain storage facility, a former limestone mine that is now the storage site of more than 15 million photographic negatives and prints, all preserved hundreds of feet underground. This documentary, produced by the Hillman Photography Initiative, takes you inside for a glimpse at the collection and the folks…

Climb into a sinkhole of bureaucracy in Pennsylvania (no, really, it’s a cave), explore San Francisco’s most storied structure (not the Golden Gate bridge), and jet off to to Myanmar (or is it Burma?). Plus, SCARY CLOWNS! In this week’s Urban Reads. “The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and…

People once wanted to mine the air

Say you live in an age of balloons and explosives. Perhaps, you think, it is time to start putting those two things together. Today global humanitarian efforts continue to deal with the land mines leftover from past wars. At one point in history, it looked like they were going to have to deal with air…

Exploding Dogs Were Used as Mobile Anti-Tank Mines During World War II

Today I found out about the use of exploding anti-tank dogs during World War II. These dogs, usually Alsatians, were also called “Hundminen” or “dog mines.” They were trained to carry explosives on their bodies to enemy tanks, where they would then be detonated. No, it did not end very well for the dogs in…

These Autonomous Dump Trucks Let Mines Operate Around the Clock

As the pace of robotic integration into the modern workforce continues to increase, automatons are finding their way into an ever wider variety of industries. Already making an impact in the agricultural sector, automatons are now poised to perform the task of driving massive, house-sized mining trucks—a job once held only by highly-skilled and highly-paid…

Raytheon’s New Real-Life Minesweeper Will Make Seas Safer for Sailors

Even though Iran has backed away from from its threats to lace the Strait of Hormuz with mines, militaries around the world (the US included) continue to employ the devices in large numbers—as much as 200 times as often as any other kind of maritime weapon. So, to augment the DoD’s aging fleet of Avenger-class…

Take a Street View Tour of an Underground Chapel Built Out of Salt

If opulent isn’t an adjective you’d immediately associate with the mining profession, then you’ve clearly never had a peek inside Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine. The subterranean marvel (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) has been operational since the first shafts were dug way back in the 13th century, but the decor has come a long, long…

A Former 1900s Coal Mine Reborn as a Modernist’s Playground

Post-industrial cities have long struggled to find new uses for the (often gargantuan) factory infrastructure that once made their towns boom. Usually, that means a park or a museum. But a few cities—like Genk, Belgium—have tried a more experimental approach, turning these decrepit sites into unusual creative spaces. The Winterslag mine is on the eastern…

ASTAMIDS Fly-By Mine Detectors Save US Lives and Limbs

IEDs are far and away the greatest threat to our armed forces in Afghanistan, having killed nearly 700 soldiers since 2001 and accounting for roughly half of all US troop deaths in the region since 2008. The newly developed ASTAMIDS system aims to find these booby traps before our ground forces do. ASTAMIDS, short for…

World’s deadliest golf course boasts land mines and man-bear-pigs

Along the DMZ, golf is not a sport for the faint of heart. The golf course at Camp Bonifas, just south of the Korean demilitarized zone, boasts just one hole, but what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in hazards. Live land mines line the course, and bizarre animals stumble out…

The Navy’s New Badass Drone Hunts Mines Wherever They Hide

The Navy is building a fleet of mine-hunting ships that investigators say aren’t all that hot at finding mines. So in the coming years, those ships are going to get drone supplements to dive deep below the sea to spot the underwater weapons. Think of ‘em as pairs of robotic glasses. This is a scale…

The Dolphin Marines Roll Out to Iran’s Most Important Stretch of Water

The US Military invests billions of dollars in technology. But to keep the Strait of Hormuz — perhaps the most important stretch of water in the Middle East — open it’s using an unusual, but no less innovative, technique: mine-detecting dolphins. US officials worry that Iran might block the Strait of Hormuz using mines, armed…

This Is the Coffin That Will Save the Miners

Everything is ready to rescue the Chilean miners trapped 2,296 feet underground in San José. This is the capsule that will take the diggers out. Or like one of them phrased it, “the sarcophagus that’ll take the mummies out.” https://gizmodo.com/drill-reaches-chilean-miners-dangerous-phase-of-rescue-5659850 In fact, the rescue operation has technically started already. The rescue team is now trying…