"It is for her love that we’ve done everything."

December 17, 2015 10:32 AM

"Like grimey servants we followed every new trace that could lead us to her, the aim of our two year quest was always to see the toughest of all the machines. A dormant juggernaut that lies underground. Her name? Iseb, the worm maiden."

coral cache one, two
via BLDGBLOG: The Conquerer Worm

Other monsters sleep and stir beneath the cities of the world, gnawing at their roots.

The Fresh Water Beast Beneath New York's Streets

"2 years after breakdown, Bertha getting ready to drill again."

Going Deep With NYC's 2nd Ave Subway

MEET OUR GIANT TUNNELLING MACHINES

Drilling Latin America's largest sewer

MARTINA reaches her target

Boring machine ‘Lady Bird’ is almost done with its work digging under D.C. - what's in a name?

posted by the man of twists and turns (21 comments total)

Like something out of Nihei Tsutomu
posted by grobstein at 10:54 AM on December 17, 2015

I swear there is a part of The Last Of Us that is pretty much exactly this shot.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:57 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I certainly know which FPP will win the "Most Boring" award this holiday season!
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:57 AM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

Very nice post!
posted by OmieWise at 11:10 AM on December 17, 2015

What the fuck? No! This is such an asshole move for those people to do. I used to work in tunnels, I am completely taken with TBM and I love those machines, I love being in them, but God, what a fucking asshole move.
posted by beefetish at 11:16 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Boring machines are anything but.
posted by dersins at 11:16 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Heavy machinery porn of the highest order! Seriously; my work thinks the first link is pornography and won't let me see it. But thanks to my iPad I was able to outwit them.
posted by TedW at 11:35 AM on December 17, 2015

What the fuck? No! This is such an asshole move for those people to do. I used to work in tunnels, I am completely taken with TBM and I love those machines, I love being in them, but God, what a fucking asshole move.

with all due respect, what are you talking about? I mean that literally. I can't figure out what you're responding to so vehemently, and I'm scouring the many links of the OP to figure out what the asshole move is.
posted by shmegegge at 11:40 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

What the fuck? No! This is such an asshole move for those people to do. I used to work in tunnels, I am completely taken with TBM and I love those machines, I love being in them, but God, what a fucking asshole move.

No joke. I like the idea of urban exploration but this was way too far. There are absolutely places you should not be going, if only for the safety of the people who might be required to go there later to help you when you get seriously injured. It's like people who take insane routes up mountains or go deep off-rail in the woods.
posted by neonrev at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

with all due respect, what are you talking about? I mean that literally. I can't figure out what you're responding to so vehemently, and I'm scouring the many links of the OP to figure out what the asshole move is.

I took them to mean the kinda b+e sneaking down into boring tunnels that you are not allowed to go into being an asshole move. I couldn't stomach the writing style in the first link and didn't read it all so maybe they did something else, I dunno.
posted by neonrev at 11:44 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The smarmy/creepy writing is a bit much yeah.
posted by nom de poop at 12:27 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

It is an asshole move because utility tunnels are not safe places for a variety of reasons, I have no idea if they were testing the air or whatever but their dumbfuck cavalier attitude toward going down into what is basically an abandoned, extra unsafe sort of construction site was just irksome as hell to read. Urgh.
posted by beefetish at 1:03 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

ah, ok. thanks for clarifying. I had no idea that this was a problem, and appreciate the info.
posted by shmegegge at 1:21 PM on December 17, 2015

I don't know if that arch style is deliberately supposed to evoke Lovecraft, but there's the germ of a good idea there: that Lovecraft was influenced in part (in addition to his much-discussed racism and apparent distaste for then-modern art and architecture) by the sheer scale of NYC as compared to his hometown of Providence, and in particular by the idea of gigantic subterranean burrowing machines. Stephen King, who was very much influenced by Lovecraft, wrote a short story, "Jerusalem's Lot" (no real relation to the much-better-known novel with a similar name), which features as its big bad a gargantuan worm.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:30 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also, Brian Lumley's Chthonians, an addition to the Lovecraft Mythos who burrow through the earth.
posted by Zack_Replica at 2:05 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Shmegegge - totally! Example - getting breathable air is tricky underground. I saw vent line going down the shaft but shafts/tunnels aren't always ventilated if they are not currently occupied. There also may be high voltage lines (480, 900V) these people are not aware of, things like that. Each tunnel is unique, these pictures are beautiful, but these places are kinda dangerous even for people who are fully aware of the risks at a particular site and have controls in place to mitigate risk.
posted by beefetish at 2:18 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'd much rather see a photo gallery taken by the sand hogs and engineers, who are likely to identify important stuff based on their experience.
posted by clew at 2:36 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think it was mostly evoking nerds trying to write in a way that evokes Lovecraft. That's an entire genre to itself at this point. It was like someone imitating Quentin Tarantino, simulacra based on simulacra.

Also it was full of self-congratulatory jargon and slang and nicknames like they're the A-team or whatever instead of some very skilled trespassers.


But boring machines are still awesome. Gigantic machinery still turns on my little kid glee mechanism.
posted by neonrev at 3:18 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Clew, you know what would be coolest, would be if one of the traveling mechanics/operators the TBM manufacturers send out did a photoshoot.
posted by beefetish at 5:11 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you feed her enough humanity, you can get to Lost Izalith early.
posted by Rinku at 5:07 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm reminded of the sequence in The Invisibles where Mad Tom takes Dane (soon to be Jack Frost) into the tunnels underneath London as part of his intiation.
posted by giantrobothead at 4:01 AM on December 19, 2015