Going Down

I came across this picture (and accompanying article) in a copy of ‘National Geographic Kids’ magazine (my daughter has a subscription) and it immediately fired my imagination. I wanted to start writing stories about life in the earth scraper.

What would it be like to live on the lower levels? Would it be like taking a berth on the lowest level of a ship? I’ve done that and it’s not fun. There was a wall beside my swaying bunk that was designed to blow out if the lowest level flooded so that the rest of the ship remained balanced. I imagine it would be cosy down at the tip of the earth scraper, though. If a little dark. Maybe they could decorate with a Journey to the Centre of the Earth theme–parks with prehistoric foliage and piped in dinosaur sounds. (Actually, that would be pretty cool.)

As I wouldn’t want to be at the top of a sky scraper during an earth quake, neither would I like to be anywhere below the second level (okay, anywhere inside, AT ALL) of the earth scraper. Being buried alive is not an abject fear, but not something I fantasise about, either. I’m mildly claustrophobic and I don’t like tunnels which my family loves to remind me about every time we drive through the Lincoln Tunnel to NYC. Lovely people, aren’t they?

I actually meant to talk about story ideas (not my phobias) and there are a multitude. Architecture like this would be perfect for a lot of end of the world scenarios, even an almighty earthquake. Imagine the adventure of climbing out of the earth via collapsed levels. Or, if the building became the only safe haven. Or, if there were aliens living deep below us and the tip of the earth scraper, er, scraped their territory. The power fails and folks are locked inside. On her twelfth birthday, a resident discovers there is a world above the one she knows. One with a sky.

Are there trains connecting other earth scrapers? Does the entire population of our world now live underground? Why?

I don’t know if this will ever be built. A quick search produced no news beyond the design being released in 2011. Still, concepts like this are exciting for all sorts of reasons. Human ingenuity and our future are as exciting as the stories we might write about them.

More pictures and some information about the project and it’s designers here.