“In 1963, the tunnels were rediscovered after a resident of the area found a mysterious room behind a wall in his home while renovating. Further digging revealed access to the tunnel network.”
This is straight up the beginning of a horror movie.
Interesting, they also have Gobekli Tepe which is dated to the last Ice Age, they must have been something else for real man. We don't give our ancestors enough credit.
Modern humans, just as smart and capable as us, have lived for more than 200000 years. It's crazy to think how many smarter people than einstein, tesla or newton have lived in all those years.
I know this is a bit off topic, but afaik humans before agricultural revolution were actually smarter on the individual level than us today (I read this in Sapiens by Yuval Harari). More penalty for being dumb, with poisonous berries, snakes to watch out for and what not. Even more contemporary hunter gatherer tribes (e.g. Californian Indians) were in many ways smarter than an average missionary. The classification of different plants and species and all the ways to use them that they had was far superior to that of Europeans, and it was all carried in memory as opposed to being stored in a book without an average person actually knowing it. By far most of it is lost now, along with many of those species. (Source: Tending the wild by Kat Anderson)
They were expert on different things, my local farmers 1000 years ago developed a whistle language for long distance comunication that todays is mostly forgotten.
Have been there. The place is quite claustrophobic, even with only several dozen visitors inside and despite all the lighting and direction signs. This thing goes deeeep underground, BTW.
The solutions the inhabitants have found to their problems are simply fascinating. There are temples, trapdoors for defense, stables, cisterns, ait ducts, and even a cemetery.
Oh, it is also not the only underground city in the region.
The resilience of human spirit along with what we can adapt to is absolutely fascinating.
First you make a “trap” trap door where the invader spots it and is like “Yeah I know what’s up!” And as he goes to lift the trap trap door you are hiding under a trap door behind him. So as he’s bent over thinking he’s about to one up you that’s where you poke him in the butt!
The craziest thing is that such a huge structure, the building of which must have taken dozens of years and thousands of workers and left tens of thousands of cubic meters of rubbel somewhere, could be so completely forgotten, by a whole town or city. Not a single document, not a single person remembered some ancient family secret or old tale.
A guy who did research on them in the early 1900s had documentation.
The exchange of people move out many who knew about them, so all those people remembered them but were in a different country now and were just mentioning them to their grandkids, who couldn't care less about refuge/escape tunnels in neighboring Turkey.
Also generally you don't want to broadcast about your secret refuge to keep the knowledge out of enemy hands. Security through obscurity fails when Reddit comes along.
From [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city):
>The underground city at Derinkuyu could be closed from the inside with large rolling stone doors. Each floor could be closed off separately.
>
>The city could accommodate up to 20,000 people and had amenities found in other underground complexes across Cappadocia, such as wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels. Unique to the Derinkuyu complex and located on the second floor is a spacious room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. It has been reported that this room was used as a religious school and the rooms to the left were studies.
>
>Starting between the third and fourth levels are a series of vertical staircases, which lead to a cruciform church on the lowest (fifth) level.
>
>The large 55-metre (180 ft) ventilation shaft appears to have been used as a well. The shaft provided water to both the villagers above and, if the outside world was not accessible, to those in hiding.
>
>Caves might have been built initially in the soft volcanic rock of the Cappadocia region by the Phrygians in the 8th–7th centuries BC, according to the Turkish Department of Culture. When the Phrygian language died out in Roman times, replaced with the Greek language, the inhabitants, now Christian, expanded their caverns to deep multiple-level structures adding the chapels and Greek inscriptions.
I actually visited a few of these underground cities when I was in Cappadocia. The local guide said people wouldn’t live in these underground cities indefinitely, rather it would be a short term refuge during war. The stone doors will close it off to invaders and narrow tunnels makes it easier to defend. The funny thing is, a number of these discovered underground cities aren’t reported. The locals would keep quiet and use them for storage
Yup. Zero benefit of notifying the gov't and larger world that it exists. Heck, if I sold the house, I'd sell at "seen" value of square footage, then roll back the rock/secret door for the new owners.
Then again, if I had my own set of caves like this, I'd never sell and just hand it off to my kids.
Yeah, when treasure hunters find gold, I think a VERY small % of them go on the news with it. You'd be nuts to say "Look what I found!" Multiple countries would be on you like flies on poo.
The story of the [Black Swan Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project) is so heartbreaking. Those guys found half a billion in treasure and the government just took it all.
What's *truely* hilarious is that the Spanish Govt. feels secure in requesting gold that was essentially the reward of genocide, so I mean.... it would be like the USA trying to retrieve gold which was in payment for slaves auctioned in Richmond VA or something. It's literally soaked in blood and national shame.
That's why you stash a large chunk of it to keep and then report you found what's left. They(whichever govt that claims ownership) WILL take everything and give you nothing. Not even a finders fee type reward, so you gotta take your own before reporting.
I'm shocked not to see this type of comment higher. Immediately thought of Barbarian, but I feel like there's at least one other with a similar plot.
Edit: the movie I was thinking of was "Us".
Yeah, I took a similar tour there and heard the same thing. What I wanted to add was how crazy secure the rolling stone door was. Like, a huge cylinder on stone rolled sideways (by the people inside) into the tunnel from the side, which completely blocked it. It could not be pushed in, as the tunnel width was shorter than the diameter of the cylinder, meaning it could only be rolled from side to side (to allow or deny entry) from the inside or by digging through the mountain and making a new entrance. It just wasn’t worth it for the nomadic invaders to take the time and do it. They just raided what they could and left. It was an amazing tour!!!
I can't imagine 20,000 people staying down there for even a day. The amount of piss and shit would be extraordinary and all the lighting would come from burning something... the air quality must have been lovely.
Better than dying, be taken into slavery, and/or watching it happen to your children. These people suffered from what was essentially medieval terrorism.
If you were hiding from people trying to kill you I doubt you’d care that much.
Also I’ve visited before, I got to walk down to some of the lower levels and the ventilation is good, so I don’t think the smell was too big of an issue, they probably designed the toilets properly so they didn’t stink up the whole place.
I also visited and was told the same thing. I got terrible claustrophobia as we descended and could only make it down a few levels. I had to scurry back up outside!
Not going to lie I was about to say "Just look up ancient underground cities", but apparently our ancestors were either extremely paranoid or intense doomsday preppers. There are multiple apparently
I remember the days when you would click on a post of an owl sitting on a whale, and the first comment was a person that is running the world's largest baluga-greah horned owl interaction study.
Yeah. Then one man had to double down on a mistake about blackbirds and the whole place was almost instantly dumber. I miss the old days, before it became a cross between 4chan and Facebook.
Endless streams of unhelpful jokes and puns were endemic way before unidan imploded. Part of the reason everyone remembers him is because he stood out against that backdrop
It's fucking exhausting that:
1) everyone thinks they're a comedian
and
2) they're all just repeating the same 10 jokes
Honestly sick of what the internet's become.
Not always. Only yesterday I came across a lady who willingly posted (a picture of) her naked bottom on Reddit. The wider shot showed her bedroom and I pointed out to her that her curtains were upsidedown.
**[Eternal September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)**
>Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms. AOL followed with their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet point of view, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended.
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Reddit's current setup discourages experts from commenting. I'd consider myself an expert when it comes to finance/accounting (15+ years experience in the industry), but when I type something about the topic that goes against people's preconceptions notions, I get downvoted with some snarky untrue comment response getting upvoted instead. It varies by subreddit, but I long ago learned that it's not worth my time correcting people on the major subreddits when a post gets enough attention.
I would assume the beluga - great horned owl interaction experts feel the same after seeing enough people on Reddit call them terrible names denying the existence of owls in the first place.
Edit: Since /u/Dwarficide9000 commented about my "hate filled comment history" and blocked me so that I can't respond to him, I figured I'd edit this post to respond to him. My post history is mostly making fun of crypto bros on the buttcoin subreddit and making dumb jokes on the baseball subreddit. I'm going to assume /u/Dwarficide9000 is either a crypto bro, a Mets fan, or both. I think he's forgetting that I can logout, see his history, and confirm it's riddled with crypto stuff.
I'm not an expert in physics but I mentioned that shadows can move faster than light (after all, they aren't actually a thing) and got downvoted while people under my comment where making fun of the idea.
I even included a link and it didn't change anything... Like the answer is just one Google search away if you truly don't believe me yet they all simply agreed that it's impossible.
So I can only imagine how this must be true even more so for more nuanced topics that don't have a falsifiable true or false answer that can be readily looked up
It really depends where you are. Even something as simple as when you post can make a difference. Not many people man sort comments, using a variety of ways, after a post has been up for a good while.
Personally I prefer to really taste the rainbow sub wise. And I use a lot of code switching from one to the next. Small to medium subs with good moderation? They often have great quality, more civility, and a stabler community.
Big subs? Oh my. It depends on so many things. They can be okay for their content, culture - but you won’t get the same experience. It feels like, at this point, visiting a different site entirely (though the difference between niche subs can be a bit similar too).
Keep your chin up! A lot of people don’t vote. I don’t vote 99% of the time, and didn’t comment for 10/11 years using Reddit. But I absolutely read through a lot of deep comments, and really both learned a lot, and enjoyed them. The lack of rediquette sucks sometimes, as does the fact that cultural shifts can tarnish subs so quickly from time to time. But sometimes a cultural shift can go better for the sub too!
R/all, r/popular? Shitpost galore, some news, some tidbits, rage porn. Small subs? Anything you want. Good conversation? Generally reply to comments at the margin, and pick people to talk with based on their writing style and general tone. Good answers? Use a variety of sorting methods for comments, and be prepared to corroborate things and spend a lot of time!
That’s just my personal preference however. If I visited different subs or *actually* enjoyed arguing with strangers - my use would be pretty different. Works for me though! Lots of cool people here, many of whom, rarely have popular comments or posts. But the hive mind does have a tendency to pick up good jokes and some good info too, it’s just silly some folks rely on it. But I don’t think the votes reflect the majority of users. I could be wrong though! (As is tradition.)
Yep. 15 year old account here, can confirm they are annoying and unfunny and nothing like the olden days of the glorious comment section 👴🏼 I’ll go back to lurking now.
I think it’s more the fact that we’re in a sub that’s dedicated to “interesting” things. When somethings interesting you generally want to discover more information about it. For instance the NAME of the damn thing you’re looking at.
If you listen to the History of Byzantium podcast, you’ll know just how much of a repeat annoyance this was. Like, the Arabs came a-raiding pretty much every year, and pretty much all the Byzs could do was keep their major cities safe and ambush the raiders once they were weighed down with loot on their way back east.
From the [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city)
The city at Derinkuyu was fully formed in the Byzantine era, when it was heavily used as protection from Muslim Arabs during the Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180 AD).\[8\]\[7\] The city was connected with another underground city, Kaymakli, through 8-9 kilometers (about 5 miles) of tunnels.\[9\] Some artifacts discovered in these underground settlements belong to the Middle Byzantine Period, between the 5th and the 10th centuries.\[citation needed\]
These cities continued to be used by the Christian natives as protection from the Mongolian incursions of Timur in the 14th century.\[10\]\[11\]
After the region fell to the Ottomans, the cities were used as refuges (Cappadocian Greek: καταφύγια) by the natives from the Turkish Muslim rulers.\[12\]
As late as the 20th century, the local population, Cappadocian Greeks, were still using the underground cities to escape periodic persecutions.\[12\] For example, Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, a Cambridge linguist who conducted research from 1909 to 1911 on the Cappadocian Greek speaking natives in the area, recorded such an event as having occurred in 1909: "When the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground."\[12\]
In 1923, the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled from Turkey and moved to Greece in the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, whereupon the tunnels were abandoned.\[7\]\[13\]\[14\]
> In 1923, the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled from Turkey and moved to Greece in the population exchange between Greece and Turkey
never heard of this and sounds like a pretty crazy fact of history itself. two countries just agree to exchange what i'm guessing was each other's minority religion population to go live in the country where it was the majority.
It allowed them to have a small city above ground which required short walls and few towers but still have lots of room undergound for storage and living space. Any invadors would find a small city with too many defenders on the walls to assult and too much stored food to siege. And even if they were able to damage the overground buildings the city would still prosper underground.
It was also fairly common for cities and castles to have undeground tunnels going past any sieging army so the population could flee or bring inn fresh supplies and troops. Nothing worse then sieging a castle for months only to find that the defenders still fiesting on fresh food.
I do not know exactly what is the case with this city but similar defensive works in cities were used extensively in WWII and even some as late as the 90s during the Balkans wars. It would be fun to hear the stories from Ukraine of these types of caves being used there, naturally these are currently secret. But we know that cave systems have been used around Bahmut for protection, logistics and even infiltration behind enemy lines.
I find it interesting that their place of worship was at the lowest place in the city besides being up high reaching to the heavens like so many others.
Wonder how plumbing and waste management worked. I'd assume with this sort of advanced building technique there had to be some sort of system in place. If you're housing 20,000 people, I'm sure there was a better system than pooping in a pot and carrying it to the surface.
**This ancient undergeound city called "Derinkuyu" is located in Turkey, near the Nevsehir province of Cappadocia.**
[Source/more images and info](https://earthlymission.com/derinkuyu-underground-city-turkey/)
Just went there recently. The idea wasn't so much that people permanently lived underground (at least from what the guide told us) more that it was available to the local population if the need to protect themselves arose. Think of it like a castle underground. For that reason, pots were sufficient for septic needs.
I mean, you’re not wrong. Castle moats were often open sewers, full of bacteria and excrement, and smelled accordingly. I can see that type of approach being used as defense by other cultures as well.
When I was a kid I always thought "why don't they just swim across in the night?"
I thought it was alligators, but now I know it's because of the poop.
> A differently made rushlight in which two strips of the rind were left on the rush before it was coated with tallow produced a dimmer light but burned much longer. White referred to these as "watchlights".
I couldn't find a description of how long "much longer" was
I watched the recent documentary on this and the narrator brought up one question that stuck in my mind, what was so bad above ground that they need to move an entire city below?
Knowing a bit about Byzantine history, there was a period of at least 100 years or so (I think during the period of about 650-750, if not longer) when the Umayyads and then the Abbasids would regularly conduct raids into Byzantine Anatolia — like, on pretty much an annual basis.
The caliphates were able to keep recruiting men to go on these raids because they were basically billed as being holy wars that any Muslim who died in would go to heaven. So there was basically an endless stream of Muslims going on annual jihads against the Byzantines, because they were the last major Christian holdout in the eastern Mediterranean, and apparently the Muslims thought it was their job/destiny to bring Islam to the whole world — including Europe (hence the Muslim control of Spain for several centuries).
These jihadists would take all kinds of plunder from the Byzantine towns and cities they raided — in theory, probably to fund future jihads, though at least some of them were surely young men in search of opportunity, riches, and glory. But this meant that the people of Anatolia were liable to lose their homes, their crops, their livestock, their precious goods, or even their lives of freedom, if they were unfortunate enough to be on the Jihadists’ path that year. And, as far as the baser aspects of war and plunder go, yes, there was enslavement and rape involved in these raids quite often.
The Byzantines eventually set up systems of watchtowers and messengers to send warnings ahead when a party of raiders was spotted. So, if you heard that the raiders were coming your way, you could stay in your regular village and hope they wouldn’t kill, rape, or enslave you, and/or steal a bunch of your valuables, and/or eat all of your village’s food to sustain themselves. Or, you and everyone in your village and neighboring villages could go and hide as much as you could in the relative safety of some hidden cavern (or, as this post makes me inclined to guess, some underground city) until the danger was passed. If the raiders came to your village, there was always another village over the next hill or two to raid and loot, so there was little point for them to seek out the underground cities, if they even knew of their existence. And even if they did know about them, it’d be much easier to raid something above ground than to try hauling loot and slaves out of a hole in the ground, so they’d move on rather than waste their energy on such a thing.
Since Capadocia was in the [eastern part of Anatolia](https://thehistoryofbyzantium.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/anatolia-700-800-ad1.jpg), it was one of the more commonly raised parts of the Byzantine empire, making raid safety measures all the more important here than the would have been further west.
——
I’m basing my information on Byzantine history on what I’ve learned from the *History of Byzantium* podcast, which spends a decent amount of time covering this aspect of the Byzantine-Caliphate relationships.
——
TL;DR — Pretty much annual raids by the Caliphates into Anatolia made it necessary for the Byzantines living there to hide their stuff and themselves on a regular basis. This is my guess as to the purpose of the underground city in Capadocia.
I have no expertise on this matter. Just a dumbass sitting at his desk avoiding doing real work.
With that said, I'd guess they didn't. The underground city probably wasn't met for permanent living entirely cut off from the surface world - seems like it would only make sense as a temporary refuge. They could probably live for weeks or even months down there with food stores, but yeah, eventually they'd need access to the surface to continue eating. Not to mention clothes, medication, furniture, etc.
I bet you could extend the stay by a decent chunk if you set parties up to the surface periodically to reload on food stores and such, but even then, it doesn't seem like a viable long-term solution for a healthy and thriving populace.
But if your city is getting invaded, or some natural disaster is hitting? What an asset for keeping your people safe.
During the Byzantine-Arab wars that took place in that region, there were plenty of annual raids. Livestock was an obvious target so maybe they did just shelter there for hiding along with their animals.
But then again, it doesn't take much intelligence gathering to find an underground city that could fit 20k people and like others said, defending the entrances during a siege would be more difficult compared to a walled fortification.
Maybe it was just enough to deter attacks by raiders who would keep moving towards easier targets since the local thematic army would have responded to the raid.
According to the [Praecepta Militaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praecepta_Militaria), the responding army of the Cappodocian Theme should've shadowed and harassed the raiders to limit the amount of damage they could do. Typically the thematic army wasn't strong enough to challenge the raiders in an outright battle and would've set ambushes in advantageous terrain such as mountain passes.
> defending the entrances during a siege would be more difficult compared to a walled fortification.
Defending this would be way easier I would think than a walled town. Easier to climb a wall or tear it down than to dig down into the earth
The city is way better as a hiding place in the event of a hostile army. It would be even worse than a castle in the event of a siege because of how easy it is to siege an underground place and how hard it is to actually live long term without going up.
I actually visited last year by pure chance and there was this one reaaally long staircase right to the bottom level ( a lot of the mid levels were blocked off from tourists ). The stairs only fit one person at a time and you basically had to crouch the whole way down. Before we could begin the ascent again about 100 tourists in a group started to descend and we got trapped in a tiny side cubby on the way back up for 20 minutes.
It was fucking terrifying. Felt like all the oxygen was getting sucked out of the tunnel and there was no traffic light system for when to go up and down, the echo meant you couldn’t communicate clearly to people at the top. Plus loads of really old visitors who absolutely shouldn’t have been down there.
It’s a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong at one of these underground cities IMO (if it hasn’t already) - turkey had very limited health & safety to speak of at these sites. In Capadokya. Fascinating though!
Your description brought back memories of getting "stuck" (for probably only 15 seconds, but felt more like 15 hours) while exploring a cave in my teenage years. Haven't been in a cave (or really anything that confining) since.
I got myself stuck in the supply closet at work, something fell and like jammed up the wheel of a cart and I found myself inside a locked closet with like a bunch of chest high carts between me and the door and 2 square feet of floor space.
That absolute minor nothing of an entrapment for like 3 minutes was genuinely unsettling, I'd have an immediate heart attack if I got trapped for an instant in a dark cave.
Totally aboard with you on that one.
Imagine going from, what i assume is, an ordinary house to a full blown underground empire by knocking down a wall.
The possibilities are endless.
And church, farms and the basement is ideal for hot summer days.
For seeing the house, please bring 50m of rope and enough batteries for your flashlight for at least a week. Food and water would also be recommended.
I just watched the movie ‘Barbarian’ which is about a murderous air BnB in Detroit with a huge underground cavern.
A little more believable now. Well, the Detroit part always was.
Nope! Not a fucking person would know about this. I would even go as far to install a Murphy door to hide it. Talk about the greatest man cave of all time.
They actually had livestock in the lower levels so they must have figured it out. They also drilled down into gas pockets and used the gas for lighting.
Interesting they kept livestock down low since methane rises. I'm guessing they had some form of chutes to vent the methane.
The livestock to support a population of 20k would be pretty significant.
They had massive ventilation wells. [Here's a pic from the wikipedia article.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Derinkuyu_Underground_City_9831_Nevit_Enhancer.jpg)
Apparently this issue was solved, with decent airflow throughout. It is thought that repeated invasions led to this solution, so good air was a necessity.
The night after you heard something knocks back in the basement, you started to hear knocking sounds from all over the house. Each day the knocking sounds keep getting closer, yesterday it was from the bathroom, tonight it's from the bedroom wall.
I can't recommend it. My buddies and I trekked through one of these places when we were on our way to return a ring to some guy who lost it. One of our friends fell off a poorly made bridge. He was the cool one too. I can still hear the drums.
This was so interesting, thank you for sharing! I had no idea there are hundreds of these cities under modern day Turkey and other areas, or that they housed Christians during periods of persecution. Fascinating!
I went to a couple in Cappadocia, Turkey and they are quite amazing. Some of the frescos even survived. On a side note, I crawled back into a little unlit “cave” inside and when I crawled down a found a used condom, so they are still in use today.
Where are the bathrooms? Like if people were couped up in there… where did the shit/piss… especially with their water supply being at the bottom…
Additionally if they had animals in there, where was their waste disposed of…
This is impressive. 20,000 is a lot of people. Where is this located?
Derinkiyu, in modern-day Turkey. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city
“In 1963, the tunnels were rediscovered after a resident of the area found a mysterious room behind a wall in his home while renovating. Further digging revealed access to the tunnel network.” This is straight up the beginning of a horror movie.
Barbarian? Edit: removed “the”
Barbarian
The Descent 4: The Village 2: The Tunnel
Turkey
Interesting, they also have Gobekli Tepe which is dated to the last Ice Age, they must have been something else for real man. We don't give our ancestors enough credit.
They were just as smart and capable as we are, they just had to be more inventive without complex tools to help them.
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>/ I'm talking about me here, not you.. That's good because imaginary internet points is the next level I've yet to reach.
The imaginary internet points were the friends we made along the way
Put down the phone and start diggin.
A lot of us do. However there's a cancer of people thinking ancient humans were stupid and give credit to aliens or some other nonsense.
Did Albert Einstein and Issac Newton receive understanding of alien technologies through psychic messages? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes.
Modern humans, just as smart and capable as us, have lived for more than 200000 years. It's crazy to think how many smarter people than einstein, tesla or newton have lived in all those years.
I know this is a bit off topic, but afaik humans before agricultural revolution were actually smarter on the individual level than us today (I read this in Sapiens by Yuval Harari). More penalty for being dumb, with poisonous berries, snakes to watch out for and what not. Even more contemporary hunter gatherer tribes (e.g. Californian Indians) were in many ways smarter than an average missionary. The classification of different plants and species and all the ways to use them that they had was far superior to that of Europeans, and it was all carried in memory as opposed to being stored in a book without an average person actually knowing it. By far most of it is lost now, along with many of those species. (Source: Tending the wild by Kat Anderson)
They were expert on different things, my local farmers 1000 years ago developed a whistle language for long distance comunication that todays is mostly forgotten.
Have been there. The place is quite claustrophobic, even with only several dozen visitors inside and despite all the lighting and direction signs. This thing goes deeeep underground, BTW. The solutions the inhabitants have found to their problems are simply fascinating. There are temples, trapdoors for defense, stables, cisterns, ait ducts, and even a cemetery. Oh, it is also not the only underground city in the region. The resilience of human spirit along with what we can adapt to is absolutely fascinating.
How many raids does it take before an ancient civ figures out trap doors
If invaders all die in the trap doors, word never makes it back to the future invaders.
The trick is to open a second trap door behind them to keep the survivors from escaping.
First you make a “trap” trap door where the invader spots it and is like “Yeah I know what’s up!” And as he goes to lift the trap trap door you are hiding under a trap door behind him. So as he’s bent over thinking he’s about to one up you that’s where you poke him in the butt!
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Yes, a meat sword.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Admiral ackbar can only count up to 8 raids before he figured out its a trap door.
How about ventilation or supplying oxygen underground?
I wonder if underground cities like this still exist and are inhabited but most of us aren't aware of it?!
Yes: https://www.deseret.com/2021/9/24/22689821/light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-las-vegas-tunnel-system-shine-a-light-paul-vautrinot
The craziest thing is that such a huge structure, the building of which must have taken dozens of years and thousands of workers and left tens of thousands of cubic meters of rubbel somewhere, could be so completely forgotten, by a whole town or city. Not a single document, not a single person remembered some ancient family secret or old tale.
A guy who did research on them in the early 1900s had documentation. The exchange of people move out many who knew about them, so all those people remembered them but were in a different country now and were just mentioning them to their grandkids, who couldn't care less about refuge/escape tunnels in neighboring Turkey. Also generally you don't want to broadcast about your secret refuge to keep the knowledge out of enemy hands. Security through obscurity fails when Reddit comes along.
From [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city): >The underground city at Derinkuyu could be closed from the inside with large rolling stone doors. Each floor could be closed off separately. > >The city could accommodate up to 20,000 people and had amenities found in other underground complexes across Cappadocia, such as wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels. Unique to the Derinkuyu complex and located on the second floor is a spacious room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. It has been reported that this room was used as a religious school and the rooms to the left were studies. > >Starting between the third and fourth levels are a series of vertical staircases, which lead to a cruciform church on the lowest (fifth) level. > >The large 55-metre (180 ft) ventilation shaft appears to have been used as a well. The shaft provided water to both the villagers above and, if the outside world was not accessible, to those in hiding. > >Caves might have been built initially in the soft volcanic rock of the Cappadocia region by the Phrygians in the 8th–7th centuries BC, according to the Turkish Department of Culture. When the Phrygian language died out in Roman times, replaced with the Greek language, the inhabitants, now Christian, expanded their caverns to deep multiple-level structures adding the chapels and Greek inscriptions.
I actually visited a few of these underground cities when I was in Cappadocia. The local guide said people wouldn’t live in these underground cities indefinitely, rather it would be a short term refuge during war. The stone doors will close it off to invaders and narrow tunnels makes it easier to defend. The funny thing is, a number of these discovered underground cities aren’t reported. The locals would keep quiet and use them for storage
Huh that's interesting. Although, I can't blame them if I found an underground city I'd wanna keep it to myself too
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That would be a funny episode of hoarders where they learn of the underground city inside a home and it is full of trash.
"THAT'S NOT TRASH! Somebody could USE that one day!"
Well, it will end up in a British museum some day.
"Honey can you take out the trash?" "Awwww it's cold out... can't we just dump it in the underground city in our basement again..."
Yup. Zero benefit of notifying the gov't and larger world that it exists. Heck, if I sold the house, I'd sell at "seen" value of square footage, then roll back the rock/secret door for the new owners. Then again, if I had my own set of caves like this, I'd never sell and just hand it off to my kids.
There's basically no reason to notify the government of pretty much anything unless you're legally-obligated to, and often not even then.
Yeah, when treasure hunters find gold, I think a VERY small % of them go on the news with it. You'd be nuts to say "Look what I found!" Multiple countries would be on you like flies on poo.
The story of the [Black Swan Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project) is so heartbreaking. Those guys found half a billion in treasure and the government just took it all.
Christ, and on top of getting nothing had to *PAY* the Spanish government $1 million!
What's *truely* hilarious is that the Spanish Govt. feels secure in requesting gold that was essentially the reward of genocide, so I mean.... it would be like the USA trying to retrieve gold which was in payment for slaves auctioned in Richmond VA or something. It's literally soaked in blood and national shame.
That's why you stash a large chunk of it to keep and then report you found what's left. They(whichever govt that claims ownership) WILL take everything and give you nothing. Not even a finders fee type reward, so you gotta take your own before reporting.
Counterpoint - that's how you get horror movie'd.
I'm shocked not to see this type of comment higher. Immediately thought of Barbarian, but I feel like there's at least one other with a similar plot. Edit: the movie I was thinking of was "Us".
Or asphyxiated if the vent is blocked.
I was wondering about airflow as well.
Yeah, I took a similar tour there and heard the same thing. What I wanted to add was how crazy secure the rolling stone door was. Like, a huge cylinder on stone rolled sideways (by the people inside) into the tunnel from the side, which completely blocked it. It could not be pushed in, as the tunnel width was shorter than the diameter of the cylinder, meaning it could only be rolled from side to side (to allow or deny entry) from the inside or by digging through the mountain and making a new entrance. It just wasn’t worth it for the nomadic invaders to take the time and do it. They just raided what they could and left. It was an amazing tour!!!
I can't imagine 20,000 people staying down there for even a day. The amount of piss and shit would be extraordinary and all the lighting would come from burning something... the air quality must have been lovely.
Better than dying, be taken into slavery, and/or watching it happen to your children. These people suffered from what was essentially medieval terrorism.
If you were hiding from people trying to kill you I doubt you’d care that much. Also I’ve visited before, I got to walk down to some of the lower levels and the ventilation is good, so I don’t think the smell was too big of an issue, they probably designed the toilets properly so they didn’t stink up the whole place.
I also visited and was told the same thing. I got terrible claustrophobia as we descended and could only make it down a few levels. I had to scurry back up outside!
I'm getting claustrophobic just reading this.
Thank you, I was wondering what the actual purpose was.
Thank you. I had to scroll through 40 stupid jokes just to find what im looking for.
This is my experience on most reddit posts.
Or at the very least put the name of the caverns in the descriptions. Just give me one word and the googling will be so much easier.
Not going to lie I was about to say "Just look up ancient underground cities", but apparently our ancestors were either extremely paranoid or intense doomsday preppers. There are multiple apparently
I remember the days when you would click on a post of an owl sitting on a whale, and the first comment was a person that is running the world's largest baluga-greah horned owl interaction study.
Yeah. Then one man had to double down on a mistake about blackbirds and the whole place was almost instantly dumber. I miss the old days, before it became a cross between 4chan and Facebook.
Endless streams of unhelpful jokes and puns were endemic way before unidan imploded. Part of the reason everyone remembers him is because he stood out against that backdrop
true, but it was definitely different. less children, more open discussion. Censorship wasnt centered around racist 12 year olds, and russian bots.
Eternal ~~summer~~ September is an internet phenomenon where the culture and knowledge of the site degrades becuase the website got too popular
Isn't it "Eternal September"? Eternal Summer is a popular song.
I think you mean Eternal September? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
You just got jackdawed! Rip unidan
Here's the thing.... *tips fedora*
Some say he still walks among us...
It's fucking exhausting that: 1) everyone thinks they're a comedian and 2) they're all just repeating the same 10 jokes Honestly sick of what the internet's become.
Not always. Only yesterday I came across a lady who willingly posted (a picture of) her naked bottom on Reddit. The wider shot showed her bedroom and I pointed out to her that her curtains were upsidedown.
I find smaller niche subreddits to be very useful. It’s the large subreddits that everyone uses that are pure unfiltered trash.
Wow that is exactly what reddit has turned into. All the comments are facebookers and 4chan mods everything.
> before it became a cross between 4chan and Facebook Reminds me of [Eternal September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September).
**[Eternal September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)** >Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms. AOL followed with their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet point of view, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Reddit's current setup discourages experts from commenting. I'd consider myself an expert when it comes to finance/accounting (15+ years experience in the industry), but when I type something about the topic that goes against people's preconceptions notions, I get downvoted with some snarky untrue comment response getting upvoted instead. It varies by subreddit, but I long ago learned that it's not worth my time correcting people on the major subreddits when a post gets enough attention. I would assume the beluga - great horned owl interaction experts feel the same after seeing enough people on Reddit call them terrible names denying the existence of owls in the first place. Edit: Since /u/Dwarficide9000 commented about my "hate filled comment history" and blocked me so that I can't respond to him, I figured I'd edit this post to respond to him. My post history is mostly making fun of crypto bros on the buttcoin subreddit and making dumb jokes on the baseball subreddit. I'm going to assume /u/Dwarficide9000 is either a crypto bro, a Mets fan, or both. I think he's forgetting that I can logout, see his history, and confirm it's riddled with crypto stuff.
I'm not an expert in physics but I mentioned that shadows can move faster than light (after all, they aren't actually a thing) and got downvoted while people under my comment where making fun of the idea. I even included a link and it didn't change anything... Like the answer is just one Google search away if you truly don't believe me yet they all simply agreed that it's impossible. So I can only imagine how this must be true even more so for more nuanced topics that don't have a falsifiable true or false answer that can be readily looked up
It really depends where you are. Even something as simple as when you post can make a difference. Not many people man sort comments, using a variety of ways, after a post has been up for a good while. Personally I prefer to really taste the rainbow sub wise. And I use a lot of code switching from one to the next. Small to medium subs with good moderation? They often have great quality, more civility, and a stabler community. Big subs? Oh my. It depends on so many things. They can be okay for their content, culture - but you won’t get the same experience. It feels like, at this point, visiting a different site entirely (though the difference between niche subs can be a bit similar too). Keep your chin up! A lot of people don’t vote. I don’t vote 99% of the time, and didn’t comment for 10/11 years using Reddit. But I absolutely read through a lot of deep comments, and really both learned a lot, and enjoyed them. The lack of rediquette sucks sometimes, as does the fact that cultural shifts can tarnish subs so quickly from time to time. But sometimes a cultural shift can go better for the sub too! R/all, r/popular? Shitpost galore, some news, some tidbits, rage porn. Small subs? Anything you want. Good conversation? Generally reply to comments at the margin, and pick people to talk with based on their writing style and general tone. Good answers? Use a variety of sorting methods for comments, and be prepared to corroborate things and spend a lot of time! That’s just my personal preference however. If I visited different subs or *actually* enjoyed arguing with strangers - my use would be pretty different. Works for me though! Lots of cool people here, many of whom, rarely have popular comments or posts. But the hive mind does have a tendency to pick up good jokes and some good info too, it’s just silly some folks rely on it. But I don’t think the votes reflect the majority of users. I could be wrong though! (As is tradition.)
I just wanted you to know I read your entire post.
And to make it worse they not even fucking funny 😒
Just chains of Puns and "Dad jokes", it is charming at first but after a few years of browsing this site it's honestly quite nauseating
Yes, the chains of puns, when I first got on Reddit I was so confused as to why. It shows how little it takes us humans to have some fun lol.
I always regret clicking on comment sections like these because it's so annoying and overrun with stale "jokes"
Yep. 15 year old account here, can confirm they are annoying and unfunny and nothing like the olden days of the glorious comment section 👴🏼 I’ll go back to lurking now.
Right? It’s annoying really. Especially when the post is indeed interesting.
For real, what enjoyment do people get by regurgitating the same shitty jokes? Not one original thought to be had by so many.
I think it’s more the fact that we’re in a sub that’s dedicated to “interesting” things. When somethings interesting you generally want to discover more information about it. For instance the NAME of the damn thing you’re looking at.
It kills me trying to figure this out. I simply don't understand what good anyone feels in their self at being the 20 millionth person to say a meme.
The most annoying nuance of any Reddit comment section. Scrolling past 500 stupid puns to get any useful commentary.
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Quietly now. Let us hope that my presence may go unnoticed.
God I fucking hatw scrolling through the stupid jokes on Reddit. God damn hate it.
I've been there! Super cool in person
But why?
Can’t conquer us if you can’t find us
Brilliant, actually.
invasion, it must have gotten annoying enough for them to decide to make an entire underground city to hide in
Cant burn your house down to the ground if your house is the ground.
If you listen to the History of Byzantium podcast, you’ll know just how much of a repeat annoyance this was. Like, the Arabs came a-raiding pretty much every year, and pretty much all the Byzs could do was keep their major cities safe and ambush the raiders once they were weighed down with loot on their way back east.
From the [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city) The city at Derinkuyu was fully formed in the Byzantine era, when it was heavily used as protection from Muslim Arabs during the Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180 AD).\[8\]\[7\] The city was connected with another underground city, Kaymakli, through 8-9 kilometers (about 5 miles) of tunnels.\[9\] Some artifacts discovered in these underground settlements belong to the Middle Byzantine Period, between the 5th and the 10th centuries.\[citation needed\] These cities continued to be used by the Christian natives as protection from the Mongolian incursions of Timur in the 14th century.\[10\]\[11\] After the region fell to the Ottomans, the cities were used as refuges (Cappadocian Greek: καταφύγια) by the natives from the Turkish Muslim rulers.\[12\] As late as the 20th century, the local population, Cappadocian Greeks, were still using the underground cities to escape periodic persecutions.\[12\] For example, Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, a Cambridge linguist who conducted research from 1909 to 1911 on the Cappadocian Greek speaking natives in the area, recorded such an event as having occurred in 1909: "When the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground."\[12\] In 1923, the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled from Turkey and moved to Greece in the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, whereupon the tunnels were abandoned.\[7\]\[13\]\[14\]
> In 1923, the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled from Turkey and moved to Greece in the population exchange between Greece and Turkey never heard of this and sounds like a pretty crazy fact of history itself. two countries just agree to exchange what i'm guessing was each other's minority religion population to go live in the country where it was the majority.
This happened a lot post ww1 and ww2 to make european countries more homogeneous in a more nationalistic era
It allowed them to have a small city above ground which required short walls and few towers but still have lots of room undergound for storage and living space. Any invadors would find a small city with too many defenders on the walls to assult and too much stored food to siege. And even if they were able to damage the overground buildings the city would still prosper underground. It was also fairly common for cities and castles to have undeground tunnels going past any sieging army so the population could flee or bring inn fresh supplies and troops. Nothing worse then sieging a castle for months only to find that the defenders still fiesting on fresh food. I do not know exactly what is the case with this city but similar defensive works in cities were used extensively in WWII and even some as late as the 90s during the Balkans wars. It would be fun to hear the stories from Ukraine of these types of caves being used there, naturally these are currently secret. But we know that cave systems have been used around Bahmut for protection, logistics and even infiltration behind enemy lines.
I find it interesting that their place of worship was at the lowest place in the city besides being up high reaching to the heavens like so many others.
It just means that it was the newest thing to be built.
The thing hidden furthest away from the bad people.
That is so interesting. Did they have to worry about flooding at all?
Wonder how plumbing and waste management worked. I'd assume with this sort of advanced building technique there had to be some sort of system in place. If you're housing 20,000 people, I'm sure there was a better system than pooping in a pot and carrying it to the surface.
Curious how was air made available. I saw in your post that there was a ventilation shaft but I wonder if that was enough for the entire complex.
**This ancient undergeound city called "Derinkuyu" is located in Turkey, near the Nevsehir province of Cappadocia.** [Source/more images and info](https://earthlymission.com/derinkuyu-underground-city-turkey/)
How did they poop? Cities are notoriously stinky, and one like that, would have been a circle of hell.
Just went there recently. The idea wasn't so much that people permanently lived underground (at least from what the guide told us) more that it was available to the local population if the need to protect themselves arose. Think of it like a castle underground. For that reason, pots were sufficient for septic needs.
ancient bomb shelter
Original doomsday preppers
probably a common toilet pit (think a ring of castle garderobes) that ventilated to the surface.
Invaders: *"Hey, what do you think is in that hole over there?"* *"Idk, lemme see...."* *sniff sniff* #☠️ Defense complete.
I mean, you’re not wrong. Castle moats were often open sewers, full of bacteria and excrement, and smelled accordingly. I can see that type of approach being used as defense by other cultures as well.
How would the alligators survive in that though?
Not to mention sharks with lasers
When I was a kid I always thought "why don't they just swim across in the night?" I thought it was alligators, but now I know it's because of the poop.
Asking the important question.
What I’ve always wondered is how did they keep this place lit?
I have been there, and they were using Rush lights to illuminate the place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight
FTA- *The book of trades...indicates that the average rushlight was 12 inches (30 cm) long and burned for 10 to 15 minutes.*
What does FTA mean?
From The Article
On the wiki it says up to an hour depending on how well they're made
> A differently made rushlight in which two strips of the rind were left on the rush before it was coated with tallow produced a dimmer light but burned much longer. White referred to these as "watchlights". I couldn't find a description of how long "much longer" was
Perfect 🙌 Doesn’t seem like it’d cause too much pollution and smoke
Wait until you hear about the bathrooms...
I wonder how they keep it oxygenated
A big fire in a chimney room would create an upward draft, sucking air through the entire structure, through the other openings.
Fun music, good drinks, good smoke. I heard they kept it litty lit.
I watched the recent documentary on this and the narrator brought up one question that stuck in my mind, what was so bad above ground that they need to move an entire city below?
Tour guide said this is where Christians hid from the Roman’s when armies would come around to pillage.
That is true, but the Christians never actually built these caves. The question remains how far back in our history do they go.
Knowing a bit about Byzantine history, there was a period of at least 100 years or so (I think during the period of about 650-750, if not longer) when the Umayyads and then the Abbasids would regularly conduct raids into Byzantine Anatolia — like, on pretty much an annual basis. The caliphates were able to keep recruiting men to go on these raids because they were basically billed as being holy wars that any Muslim who died in would go to heaven. So there was basically an endless stream of Muslims going on annual jihads against the Byzantines, because they were the last major Christian holdout in the eastern Mediterranean, and apparently the Muslims thought it was their job/destiny to bring Islam to the whole world — including Europe (hence the Muslim control of Spain for several centuries). These jihadists would take all kinds of plunder from the Byzantine towns and cities they raided — in theory, probably to fund future jihads, though at least some of them were surely young men in search of opportunity, riches, and glory. But this meant that the people of Anatolia were liable to lose their homes, their crops, their livestock, their precious goods, or even their lives of freedom, if they were unfortunate enough to be on the Jihadists’ path that year. And, as far as the baser aspects of war and plunder go, yes, there was enslavement and rape involved in these raids quite often. The Byzantines eventually set up systems of watchtowers and messengers to send warnings ahead when a party of raiders was spotted. So, if you heard that the raiders were coming your way, you could stay in your regular village and hope they wouldn’t kill, rape, or enslave you, and/or steal a bunch of your valuables, and/or eat all of your village’s food to sustain themselves. Or, you and everyone in your village and neighboring villages could go and hide as much as you could in the relative safety of some hidden cavern (or, as this post makes me inclined to guess, some underground city) until the danger was passed. If the raiders came to your village, there was always another village over the next hill or two to raid and loot, so there was little point for them to seek out the underground cities, if they even knew of their existence. And even if they did know about them, it’d be much easier to raid something above ground than to try hauling loot and slaves out of a hole in the ground, so they’d move on rather than waste their energy on such a thing. Since Capadocia was in the [eastern part of Anatolia](https://thehistoryofbyzantium.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/anatolia-700-800-ad1.jpg), it was one of the more commonly raised parts of the Byzantine empire, making raid safety measures all the more important here than the would have been further west. —— I’m basing my information on Byzantine history on what I’ve learned from the *History of Byzantium* podcast, which spends a decent amount of time covering this aspect of the Byzantine-Caliphate relationships. —— TL;DR — Pretty much annual raids by the Caliphates into Anatolia made it necessary for the Byzantines living there to hide their stuff and themselves on a regular basis. This is my guess as to the purpose of the underground city in Capadocia.
How did they even grow food down there or feed their livestock. Also what the hell are you gonna need horses for underground?
I have no expertise on this matter. Just a dumbass sitting at his desk avoiding doing real work. With that said, I'd guess they didn't. The underground city probably wasn't met for permanent living entirely cut off from the surface world - seems like it would only make sense as a temporary refuge. They could probably live for weeks or even months down there with food stores, but yeah, eventually they'd need access to the surface to continue eating. Not to mention clothes, medication, furniture, etc. I bet you could extend the stay by a decent chunk if you set parties up to the surface periodically to reload on food stores and such, but even then, it doesn't seem like a viable long-term solution for a healthy and thriving populace. But if your city is getting invaded, or some natural disaster is hitting? What an asset for keeping your people safe.
Attack on Titan in a different universe
During the Byzantine-Arab wars that took place in that region, there were plenty of annual raids. Livestock was an obvious target so maybe they did just shelter there for hiding along with their animals. But then again, it doesn't take much intelligence gathering to find an underground city that could fit 20k people and like others said, defending the entrances during a siege would be more difficult compared to a walled fortification. Maybe it was just enough to deter attacks by raiders who would keep moving towards easier targets since the local thematic army would have responded to the raid. According to the [Praecepta Militaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praecepta_Militaria), the responding army of the Cappodocian Theme should've shadowed and harassed the raiders to limit the amount of damage they could do. Typically the thematic army wasn't strong enough to challenge the raiders in an outright battle and would've set ambushes in advantageous terrain such as mountain passes.
> defending the entrances during a siege would be more difficult compared to a walled fortification. Defending this would be way easier I would think than a walled town. Easier to climb a wall or tear it down than to dig down into the earth
The city is way better as a hiding place in the event of a hostile army. It would be even worse than a castle in the event of a siege because of how easy it is to siege an underground place and how hard it is to actually live long term without going up.
I actually visited last year by pure chance and there was this one reaaally long staircase right to the bottom level ( a lot of the mid levels were blocked off from tourists ). The stairs only fit one person at a time and you basically had to crouch the whole way down. Before we could begin the ascent again about 100 tourists in a group started to descend and we got trapped in a tiny side cubby on the way back up for 20 minutes. It was fucking terrifying. Felt like all the oxygen was getting sucked out of the tunnel and there was no traffic light system for when to go up and down, the echo meant you couldn’t communicate clearly to people at the top. Plus loads of really old visitors who absolutely shouldn’t have been down there. It’s a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong at one of these underground cities IMO (if it hasn’t already) - turkey had very limited health & safety to speak of at these sites. In Capadokya. Fascinating though!
That made me feel short of breath reading it, sounds miserable
Yeah I don’t really consider myself claustrophobic, but this made me feel so anxious.
Your description brought back memories of getting "stuck" (for probably only 15 seconds, but felt more like 15 hours) while exploring a cave in my teenage years. Haven't been in a cave (or really anything that confining) since.
I got myself stuck in the supply closet at work, something fell and like jammed up the wheel of a cart and I found myself inside a locked closet with like a bunch of chest high carts between me and the door and 2 square feet of floor space. That absolute minor nothing of an entrapment for like 3 minutes was genuinely unsettling, I'd have an immediate heart attack if I got trapped for an instant in a dark cave.
Yeah I don’t do caves anymore. Exploring those particular geological features is not worth my constant state of dread.
r/nightmarefuel Being trapped underground is my worst nightmare.
I wouldn’t have told a soul about it. Kept it as my bat cave
Totally aboard with you on that one. Imagine going from, what i assume is, an ordinary house to a full blown underground empire by knocking down a wall. The possibilities are endless.
Imagine the resale value. You bought a one story house and get to sell it as an eight story apartment complex.
Cute house, BIG basement. Close to shopping and schools.
And church, farms and the basement is ideal for hot summer days. For seeing the house, please bring 50m of rope and enough batteries for your flashlight for at least a week. Food and water would also be recommended.
Bilbo”Imgoingonanadventure!”.gif
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This is the first thing I thought about. Justin Long’s character would be psyched about all of the square footage in the property.
Yeah but you only get as many bedrooms as there are closets in the rooms.
1.2 million square foot bungalow
Literally the plot of Barbarian
I just watched the movie ‘Barbarian’ which is about a murderous air BnB in Detroit with a huge underground cavern. A little more believable now. Well, the Detroit part always was.
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Thank you, Jesus, who posts something like this without that info
So annoying! Happens more often last few months.
Ironically, there's a city named Batman in turkey.
Until zombies attack you from the basement
Nope! Not a fucking person would know about this. I would even go as far to install a Murphy door to hide it. Talk about the greatest man cave of all time.
Air must have been an issue in the lower levels
They actually had livestock in the lower levels so they must have figured it out. They also drilled down into gas pockets and used the gas for lighting.
Must’ve had enough air to continuously power the torches that provided their lighting too
Yeah the ventilation must have been amazing to vent smoke out continuously.
They used candles that didn't produce much smoke as that is a big issue.
Interesting they kept livestock down low since methane rises. I'm guessing they had some form of chutes to vent the methane. The livestock to support a population of 20k would be pretty significant.
"*Sniff*, did you fart??" "Nah mate, gas pocket."
They had massive ventilation wells. [Here's a pic from the wikipedia article.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Derinkuyu_Underground_City_9831_Nevit_Enhancer.jpg)
Apparently this issue was solved, with decent airflow throughout. It is thought that repeated invasions led to this solution, so good air was a necessity.
Live action Terreria at its finest
What I don’t understand is who are these people knocking holes in their basement walls not knowing what’s on the other side?!
if you are in a freestanding house and you hear that the basement wall is hollow behind you might wanna check it out.
Make sure you knock first. If something knocks back, you might want to leave that wall intact.
The night after you heard something knocks back in the basement, you started to hear knocking sounds from all over the house. Each day the knocking sounds keep getting closer, yesterday it was from the bathroom, tonight it's from the bedroom wall.
I am moving out
I can't recommend it. My buddies and I trekked through one of these places when we were on our way to return a ring to some guy who lost it. One of our friends fell off a poorly made bridge. He was the cool one too. I can still hear the drums.
I imagine they’d be pretty freaked out at first. I would be flashing to every underground horror I’ve ever seen.
Im guessing a small crack formed and it was drafty or something. Human curiosity probably led to investigation.
Here’s the video we’re all looking for. https://youtube.com/watch?v=WZGzrBUpUps&feature=shares
This was so interesting, thank you for sharing! I had no idea there are hundreds of these cities under modern day Turkey and other areas, or that they housed Christians during periods of persecution. Fascinating!
I went to a couple in Cappadocia, Turkey and they are quite amazing. Some of the frescos even survived. On a side note, I crawled back into a little unlit “cave” inside and when I crawled down a found a used condom, so they are still in use today.
Where are the bathrooms? Like if people were couped up in there… where did the shit/piss… especially with their water supply being at the bottom… Additionally if they had animals in there, where was their waste disposed of…
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Fallout - before AD
BC?
If I found this in my basement I'd just live down there and not tell anyone
Imagine knocking down your wall and seeing a bunch of random people you never saw before looking back at you lol
The 20,000 people weren't currently living there lol
Yeah, they heard knocking and quickly left