Spelunking in Las Vegas

LowellPorter writes "There's an article here about some reporters who check out the sewers in Vegas after a known criminal escapes a police dragnet through them. They expect to find lots of people living in there, but only end up interviewing a couple of bums."

caving

[devonbowen]

Spelunking is a term popularized by the media and usually used by people that don't seriously venture underground. Caving is the preferred term. Since people that use the term spelunking are often found yelling for help with a burned out flashlight or at the bottom of a pit unable to climb the rope out, the difference in the two terms is generally illustrated by noting that "cavers rescue spelunkers".

Devon

Boring

[stere0]

They found large concrete pipes with 5-6 people living inside them. These stories [urbanadventure.org] are far more interesting!

Here in Luxembourg, we have kilometers of casemates [luxembourg-city.lu] [pdf]. Only two sites are open to the public, but I've had the chance to explore a couple. Two years ago I saw some graffiti by people who fled underground during air strikes in WWII. I've never met any bums though.

Ah my memories of youth

[Billly Gates]

I use to live in suburb of Houston and I remember driving along creeks and rivers to find such storm drains. I loved exploring them or hanging out in them. The only downside is that the gulf coast gets heavy downpours quite often on any such given day especially during the spring or summer. So be aware if any of you want to do this. You can easily drown in some of these smaller drains. Me and an old buddy of mine did this once and within only 3 minutes of the heavy rain the small trickling stream only a few inches wide turned into a white water river. It roared and had a current to it and it was hard to stand up. I was afriad of being sucked down and having my head slamed into the concreate as I fell down or having my lamp get washed away. Pretty scary. Luckly we were only 700 or 800 feet in and close to a larger pipe that wouldn't filled over our heads with water. We quickly headed for the bigger pipe and barely made it out. I always watched the weather channel before I entered another drain pipe after that. I am moving to Las Vegas this July so I will check these tunnels out. I sure miss my drain pipe spelunking pals from High School.

For *real* tunnels, visit Moscow

[david.given]

Check out Mysteries under Moscow [bullatomsci.org]. A group have been exploring the tunnels under Moscow since the 1970s and have found:

• Up to 12 levels of tunnels
• Nuclear bunkers
• Lots of human skulls
• Whole tribes of people living there
• Mass burial sites
• A hastily abandoned chemical laboratory
• A 3000-seat bunker under a cathedral
• Strange religious rites
• All kinds of other weird stuff

It would be scary if it wasn't so fascinating. The article linked to above is quite old; have any Russian slashdotters seen the TV programme mentioned?