It’s cooler underground because it’s well insulated. That also means it’s incredibly difficult to get rid of any waste heat. With artificial lighting, electronics, hell even just people moving around, that’s a ton of heat being out that needs to go somewhere. Not to mention the amount of ventilation that would be required just to have breathable air. Are you imagining people driving around on underground roads?
Comment on Would it be better to just have a lot of society be underground?
jpreston2005@lemmy.world 5 days agoYou wouldn’t get sunlight
Mad skylights, my dude.
it can get hot when you’re underground
It is almost universally known that being underground is cooler.
flooding will be a significant issue to tackle. Earthquakes might exacerbate the issue as well
Basements typically have sump pumps, and drainage. We build buildings that can withstand earthquakes, why couldn’t the structure of the underground dwelling be similarly strengthened?
you need to build all the infrastructure for somebody to move and live on the surface
Bro we already built that.
emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
But then you wouldn’t get the protection from the elements being underground gives you, you would just be more vulnerable to flooding by creating a deep valley. Unless you mean placing glass over the entire thing, but that would be very expensive, it would be very heavy (so needs to have even stronger supports), and would need to be cleaned by somebody on the surface.
It depends on where you are. In very sunny places, yes, it would be cooler. However, when you are deep underground, it can get very hot as well! Many construction projects involving digging out deep tunnels and holes have been cancelled because it became too hot for the workers and machines to operate!
Yes, you would, I mentioned this point needed to be considered. It’s a larger consideration when you’re underground, as there needs to be additional supports to prevent the chamber and tunnels from collapsing (you might have seen the braces of those mining tunnels, think those but on a much larger scale)
But with the solar panels idea (or your skylights w/ glass), you can’t really use the current infrastructure. You would need special roads, homes, etc. that go around them. Also, I would assume that less urbanised areas would need more development to be able to manage an array of solar panels or glass skylights.
Also, I treated this question more like what if humans never built massive cities above ground and we became underground dwellers (perhaps sometime after heavy construction equipment catched on),
jpreston2005@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Oh I’m just picturing people having Hobbit-style houses, while everything else stays the same for the most part