Is it possible to live underground

An increasing amount of research suggests that we need them. A lack of natural light is linked to the aptly named Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, while access to green, open spaces do wonders for our mental and physical health.

So if we want a happy and healthy life underground, we would need to bring these things with us too. And in a lot of cases, this is an excellent choice, because it means we have more of that precious above-ground space for humans. All that dirt, for example, is great at stopping radiation. The more stuff you have between you and the radiation, the the more likely it is to hit that stuff before it hits you. Being surrounded by all that mass is good for other things as well.

Your above ground house has to contend with a little wind every now and then, but most of the time it just has to support its own weight. Move underground, and all that changes. So as well as supporting its own weight, your whole building has to act like a giant retaining wall , pushing back the dirt all around it. And after all that, you still need somewhere to take all of that heavy dirt, so you can start building in your hole. It all comes down to maths — quite often, the maths of economics.

Sometimes, it is. So building underground keeps things nice and cool. In fact, many of their underground buildings started off as opal mines, so the hard engineering was already done. In a city as big as Beijing , the empty space above ground is pretty much full. Many homeless people also live in tunnels beneath Las Vegas. And large communities of orphans live under the streets in Bucharest, Romania.

Related: How did people wake up before alarm clocks? As more people move to cities, more of those city dwellers may move underground. Places such as Singapore are exploring options for building downward. The technology needed to do so is already here, said Eun Hee Lee, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham's Malaysia campus who studies the psychology of being underground.

The challenge is convincing people to move underground. In reality, being beneath the earth hasn't yet been shown to cause negative psychological effects, as long as lighting, room size, ceiling height and other physical attributes of the setting are consistent with aboveground, Lee said. For example, technology such as lightwells, which allow natural sunlight to brighten underground spaces using materials such as reflective paint, could fight depression that arises from a lack of sunlight.

People may feel isolated from their counterparts on the surface, and they may feel a lack of control, but these feelings are manageable, Lee said. It is virtually impossible for any city to exist without buried power and information networks; underground water transmission, sewerage pipes, malls, basements, pedestrian tunnels, and motorways; sometimes a subway system, etc. Helsinkians already enjoy access to a subterranean swimming complex, shopping area, and hockey rink.

A data center has been built beneath a cathedral and uses cold seawater to cool its machines, drastically cutting energy consumption. The plan establishes the construction of a further underground structures in forthcoming years, including apartments and public spaces. Thus, since it is winter in the north , why not turn our eyes to the subterranean world and ask: is it possible to live underground? Is it reasonable? Is it desirable? Is it feasible? Cities were once built with materials extracted from beneath the space they would eventually occupy, which left quarries of huge dimensions beneath urban feet; such abandoned galleries sometimes collapsed, causing disasters.

The urban underground is also full of deserted shelters and bunkers—remnants of past wars, cold or warm—catacombs, and so on. Most of these networks are now empty, but they still exist. There is plenty of room down there. Why not use it? I can almost hear you grumbling—yes, you who are reading this post: living underground like rats! Why the hell would we do that? More recently, what can be described as underground cities existed in China Banpo , Turkey Cappadocia , and Israel Maresha between two and three thousand years ago.

Underground passages for emergency evacuation were an inherent part of many medieval cities. Nowadays, there are troglodyte villages in France nearby Poitiers , Spain Granada , and others, where thousands of people seem to live a good life. More pragmatically, nearly 70 percent of the world population lives in urban areas, and according to the United Nations two billion more people will move into cities in the next 20 years.

Educators could disseminate the information and tools people need to thrive underground. Design could play a role in our adaptation, too. Researchers in Antarctica, where greenery is sparse, quickly recognized the mood-boosting benefits provided by laboratory greenhouses. Similar spaces could pay dividends in our crusty new home. Other positive sights, sounds, and smells could migrate with us—and not just in digitized Super Mario form. A plan for an underground city in Singapore has expansive shafts pulling daylight down into the layered depths.

Ultimately if technology and culture can support us in space, they can probably support us inside our own planet, too. Whether we need to do it, or can do it at scale, remains to be seen. Buttons or no buttons—it's your call. Larger tires should allow drivers to push their vehicles even harder. This is how Pirelli developed them.