Re:How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
by lazide on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @11:28AM
(#31098339)
It’s likely more dangerous thank bedrock tunneling frankly. Loosely consolidated sedimentary soil can easily shift and slide with relatively little outside input. A truck driving by, a rain, sprinklers, even someone walking over it.
And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution.
Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
Re:How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
by fifticon on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @11:42AM
(#31098594)
A guy on our street died digging out for sewer, only ~2m deep - a side he had stacked dirt on caved in/slided and covered him. He left a wife and 2 kids. No tunnel, just unsafely stacked dirt mound.
Re:How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
by rotexo on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @12:10PM
(#31099056)
Thank you. My partner is an architect, and while they aren’t a structural engineer, they had enough structures training in grad school to know that hobby tunnel digging is extremely dangerous. There are clearly alternative physical activities that would have all the same benefits with none of the downsides.
True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone."
The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically.
[1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.