<story><title>The Boring Company [video]</title><url>https://boringcompany.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickjarboe</author><text>When a city in America is destroyed by a nuclear explosion, Americans will re-learn why suburbia was so popular. Hopefully this won&amp;#x27;t happen for a long time and we will have a good stretch of city living. I love cities, but having millions of people concentrated enough to be killed by a single device; this is very different world than the one humans evolved in.</text></item><item><author>mirimir</author><text>&amp;gt; Mostly because they live&amp;#x2F;work in areas that aren&amp;#x27;t dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with transfers.&lt;p&gt;Well, suburbanization was a totally dumbass move. Maybe instead of building tunnels, we could be rebuilding cities. We could be designing them to be attractive enough that people would want to live there.</text></item><item><author>whack</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live&amp;#x2F;work in areas that aren&amp;#x27;t dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren&amp;#x27;t going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency.&lt;p&gt;The real question is: is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway?</text></item><item><author>pnathan</author><text>This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people.&lt;p&gt;If he&amp;#x27;s looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network.&lt;p&gt;edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It&amp;#x27;s difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there&amp;#x27;s no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can&amp;#x27;t happen. Musk might be able to drive some significant improvements there. No idea. But tunneling itself is not a reason to knock an idea beyond the cost and geoengineering involved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>obmelvin</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s such a terrible reason not to live in a city. I don&amp;#x27;t see how it is significantly more likely for only a single incident like that to happen. If we really have a catasophre or act of war it will likely effect larger regions than just a single city.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Boring Company [video]</title><url>https://boringcompany.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickjarboe</author><text>When a city in America is destroyed by a nuclear explosion, Americans will re-learn why suburbia was so popular. Hopefully this won&amp;#x27;t happen for a long time and we will have a good stretch of city living. I love cities, but having millions of people concentrated enough to be killed by a single device; this is very different world than the one humans evolved in.</text></item><item><author>mirimir</author><text>&amp;gt; Mostly because they live&amp;#x2F;work in areas that aren&amp;#x27;t dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with transfers.&lt;p&gt;Well, suburbanization was a totally dumbass move. Maybe instead of building tunnels, we could be rebuilding cities. We could be designing them to be attractive enough that people would want to live there.</text></item><item><author>whack</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live&amp;#x2F;work in areas that aren&amp;#x27;t dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren&amp;#x27;t going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency.&lt;p&gt;The real question is: is this new solution more efficient than the current alternative of driving on the highway?</text></item><item><author>pnathan</author><text>This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people.&lt;p&gt;If he&amp;#x27;s looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network.&lt;p&gt;edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It&amp;#x27;s difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there&amp;#x27;s no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can&amp;#x27;t happen. Musk might be able to drive some significant improvements there. No idea. But tunneling itself is not a reason to knock an idea beyond the cost and geoengineering involved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mirimir</author><text>Sure, maybe that was part of it. Interstates were, for sure. But then, the Soviets were building huge warheads, which could take out metro regions.</text></comment>