Mysterious object block Seattle tunnel progress

reply to post by HoboHumpinSloboBabe


You posted it before I did! My God! YOU FOOLS! Get Dr Quatermass!

reply to post by HoboHumpinSloboBabe

There is a thing for finding stuff under London!

One of my Favs Reign of Fire (2002)

Medieval fantasy meets futuristic science fiction in this effects-heavy action epic from former X-Files director Rob Bowman. In present-day London, 12-year-old Quinn Abercromby witnesses the awakening of a hibernating dragon from a centuries-long slumber, the result of a construction dig supervised by his mother and an incident for which Quinn feels partially responsible.

reply to post by Q33323


They should have a tube in the machine that can insert a filament camera to the front or something. Must be costly to try and figure out what they are dealing with blind.

Cool, can't wait to find out what it is that is can block a giant boring machine that weighs 7000 tons, is 57.5 feet high in diameter and 326 feet long and is designed to tunnel through rock, including boulders!

This seems to be the latest from Seattle's channel 5 TV news:

Seattle King 5 News

It details plans to send people down to see what's going on. Someone from the tunnel project also mentions that it is below fill layers and in the native soil and they do not think it is something like a buried railroad car.

I'm hoping for the 5 Million Years To Earth scenario, but I like the monolith and the secret underground Starbucks headquarters or Boeing UFO base theories as well!

My guess is that it's going to be a section of pipeline that was used for one of the regrade projects in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Either that and/or pieces of pier pilings from where the original waterfront used to be.

Seattle's one of those interesting cities that have had some rather big civil engineering projects if you look at it's past, so there's probably a lot of leftover junk buried and long forgotten. Might be interesing to see what they find.

reply to post by Char-Lee


I'm sure they can slip a camera in somewhere. I presume there's also a portal somewhere on that massive earth-grinding disc.

One question: you'd think they'd all ready surveyed the tunneller's path with ground penatrating radar. Perhaps the object is "cloaked".

reply to post by ikonoklast


From your update:

WSDOT officials said it could be something stuck in the tunnel boring machine behind the cutting head or something in front of it.

Well it will be a bit of a disappointment if it is just something behind the head.

And it could take up to a week to find out!

Well, the other thing it could be is a box with a frog in it. If so, put it back.

rickymouse
Impressive machine. www.popsci.com...
Got that Mayan look to it

edit on 11-12-2013 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)

Thanks for that link - that is awesome. To think that these machines are usually custom built one off designs that will be buried once they have finished their job.

Wouldn't it be funny if they discovered the obstruction was another buried tunnel boring machine

reply to post by HoboHumpinSloboBabe


You get my vote for no other reason than the absolutely bichin name and avatar. Love the startrek shirt. I am still chuckling at the name, thank you i needed the levity today.

Wonderful girl, how the heck you think of that. If that is you in avatar where you buy shirt.....

I do hope it is something kewl and not just boulder. Maybe it is old lava tube.

The Bot

There are a few high resolution pictures of Bertha on Google. Kinda cool! And it is so freakin' CLEAN. Who has to wash that thing?

reply to post by rickymouse


That Bertha is so cutting edge. We are shown the junk technology.

Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Given the area being tunneled, my money is on a long abandoned piece of underground Seattle. Hell, just walking along the waterfront, you still see pieces of walls and the sticking out from the embankments. That whole part of the city has a lot of half buried buildings in it.

I would doubt the boulder, though. Given that 100 plus years ago, that part of Seattle was inhabited pretty close to the depths it has been found, a boulder would have surely been mentioned or noticed.

Why would a bolder be know yet old parts of the city forgotton. There should be extensive records of past urban contruction.


My bets on a odd bit of rock.

reply to post by saucepan

Washing it? Probably have to clean it off once in a while. I wonder why they can't retract it a little and then as suggested earlier go to one of the rock extractor outputs and look through. Surely the rock they cutout has to go out the other side somehow.

I read a local article about this last night, thanks for sharing!

I read that this ginromous beast cuts through basalt, but is not designed to cut through metal. Add to that there are so many layers of development on top of our existing downtown. It's a hilly area, but many hills were made artificially by using fill dirt and landfill.

I grew up in Fremont district that seems like a natural hill but it's made of dredge landfill from creating the Ballard locks. Also Queen Anne and and part of Denny/First Hill are supposedly landfill from elsewhere.

I actually dug up my dad's backyard many years ago and extracted 100-1000's of antique bottles and artifacts, including an old oil storage tank.

Being how assbackwards this cities planning and civil engineering is (anyone who has driven around Seattle should be blantantly aware of this), I would not be surprised if it was an old piece of equipment or cabling from the old Denny regrade project back in Seattle's early days. Steel machines and cables would muck up the little drilly bits on the front end I suppose?

But I am surprised that the largest (known) boring machine does not have the ability to see what's in it's path.

What does boulder from last ice age does underground? At least here they are above the ground. Do they sink through ground or something?

could be Al Gore`s LOCK BOX

reminds me of a sci-fi book i read.

they found something in the bedrock under NY, it was really pissed off when they disturbed the stasis.

took the worlds armies to get it back in stasis. it was there for billions of years.

lol!!!

reply to post by Q33323


might be a humongous gold nugget...or enormous boulder sized diamond

Char-Lee
reply to post by Q33323

 

They should have a tube in the machine that can insert a filament camera to the front or something. Must be costly to try and figure out what they are dealing with blind.

I was a welder working on a TBM "Tunnel Boring Machine" in the Southwest, and one of my jobs was to pad, add metal by welding, to the front blades from time to time. Its not too difficult to get in front of the machine. You just dig on one side a small 6 - 10 foot hole in the wall, deep enough to get through, then back the TBM up so the hole goes to the front. It would only take a matter of hours to complete. Its considered routine maintenance.