Slashdot Mirror
Infiltration
Elvis Maximus writes "Today's Salon has a piece by Janelle Brown on "infiltration," the practice of intruding in campus steam tunnels, abandoned mental hospitals and the like." Some fascinating links here, especially for New York City.
One other interesting tidbit. (Warning, this is hearsay, and may even be a local urban legend.) Ronald Reagan came to our university to speak. Supposedly some hours before the speach, some students were caught in the tunnels. They ended up spending the day sitting in their rooms in the company of a humorless secret service agent. I guess the feds have gotten a bit more thorough since the grassy knoll.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Strictly speaking, this isn't 'infiltration', but it's a great walkthrough of a Cold War radar installation in the UK. You can almost smell the decay..
r /index.html
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/b/bempton/tou
(apologies for the 'broken' link)
I love to do this kind of stuff - I don't normally tresspass in places that are posted offlimits, but there have been some times...there was an old military base that I was just *dying* to go look around in, but I was somewhat paranoid that it might be monitored in one way or another. Does anyone know how common that is, monitoring abandoned places?
-lx
Should have expected that from Salon.
:)
My brother, a *great* (if I say so myself) building hacker from MIT back in the 80's woudl probably be offended at the "gateway drug" refernce. (He ran and led the MIT off-limit undergread tour for many years.)
He's a scrupulously honest person who wouldn't trespass on places he didn't have a close familial relationship with.
Which is a good thing since building hacking , as theyc all it at MIT, did get him inetrested in security to the point now where as a hobby he's a professionally trained security expert and knwos hiw way around most locks and security systems
My point is this:
It's different when you're in the heat of the moment and your adrenalin is a pumpin'. You think about danger and all, but you don't care so much. It's been weeks since you've been this alive. It depends on the situation, of course.
I think it's a misconception that there are a bunch of angry homeless and other such characters with knives and guns just roaming around, waiting to confront somebody. This is largely in thanks to the movie industry.
From the infiltration article: they saw hash dealers, but there was nothing even resembling a confrontation. The hash dealers didn't care that the guys were down there exploring. Shit, the hash dealers themselves have had the exhilerating feeling of exploring that place.
Say one were to run into a scene like a meth lab. It's my opinion that that doesn't necessarily need to be considered dangerous. As long as one explains what they're doing (exploring) and doesn't act like they're going to turn the meth'ers in or anything, everything's cool IMHO.
I know it's not for some people, but let me tell you it sure puts a nice cap on the boring 9-5 life that most of us live.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
Phrasm
Were all going to die why not take the Government with us.
I'd pay money to see someone infiltrate Area 51...
Large steam pipes (like in Bone Collector) are usually used to keep water hot in smaller pipes inside when they need to reach an apartment building few blocks away. Steam is ideal for this since it, unlike water, can be compressed and can be several times hotter than boiling water. There are pressure release valves throughout and if you get zapped while looking for an empty conduit, you will probably die in less then 30 secs. If you survive, you prob won't want to live anyway. Hehe, you worry about pocket change when it comes to lawsuits related to industrial accidents. You should be worrying about the 50% of your taxes that go straight to Pentagon and billions that are being wasted on NYC's Metrocard system. Now that's a real waste.
when I was about 12, we noticed that the grate was off the end of the 6 foot diameter flood sewer
pipe in Newton, MA, where it emptied into the Charles River in the village of Waban.
We explored miles of these pipes, and popped out of manholes here and there all the way to Newton Corner. One particularly foolhardy fellow even further explored the 3 foot diameter pipes.
Later, we explored the old MWRA aqueduct in South Natick, which was empty at the time. The topper was when we lowered a Honda QA50 minibike into the tunnel and blasted along at 40 MPH as far as we could go.. pumphouse to pumphouse.
And someone allegedly went into a Russian NUCLEAR Submarine base.
MMmmmmm. Anyone else reminded of the story about an old bomb being found somewhere in America?
Maybe it's just because I'm seeing this from the perspective of a wuss, but what exactly are people hoping to find in a nuclear sub base? Buried Treasure maybe? i would have thought, with something like that, either there would be some form of security, (or still in use) or be empty for a reason, and the idea of a reason for leaving a nuclear sub. base seems to me to be a good warning sign!
Of course, people are obviously doing this. Did anyone get the links to why they did this, or how well it went?. Wuss-ness aside, if they can do something like that and get out ok (and not get caught), then they'd have to have a good story to tell!
Why yes, all my base are belong to you.
How did you guess?
I grew up within walking distance of an abandoned VA hospital in Augusta, Georgia. In middle school and early in high school, we would go up there and wander through the halls and rooms, looking at abandoned equipment and poking through old filing cabinets. The cool part was that behind the main building--a hotel that had been converted during WWII to support a nearby air base--there was a warren of interconnected buildings with low rooftops between them to run up and down.
There was a security guard who seldom left his post, but as long as you were quiet, you could have a great time. The guard kept ruffians out, and vandals, but us sneaky geeks could have a great time.
One spring we took turns setting up MUDlike puzzles for each other. You dropped clues on floors in various rooms leading to a secret prize somewhere. The prize was a Smurf doll I had appropriated from my younger sister. I'd go to school and the winner would show me the doll, then it was his turn to hide it.
When they demolished the hospital in the mid-1980s, I was left with some great memories. By that time the building had starting to get creepy--scattered beer cans and used condoms littered certain rooms, and the place lost its innocent mystery. But my sister and brother and I would ride horses around on the enormous front lawn on fragrant evenings, ducking the branches of tall magnolias.
But vadding is a hell of a lot of fun. Once you start looking at a building as a machine, you'll want to start poking around to see how it works. The basements and rooftops of the 42-story skyscraper near Underground Atlanta kept me and my colleagues amused on slow workdays in the mid-1990s.
Happiness is an unlocked maintenance door.
--
This is not my sandwich.
That reminds me of the sign at the gates - "Property of U.S. Army. No Trespassing" -very faded, but still readable. That was one of the signs on my list of stealing (along with the Neighborhood Watch sign - you're not watching very well, are you?). Maybe next time I go see my parents I'll have to make a short detour...
Where i used to live in the Philippines we used to do this a lot. Nothing like crawling around old Japanese WW2 tunnels and finding old boots, saki bottles, ammo canisters, shells, and even live ammo! Also used to crawl in small (really small) gold mine tunnels..but stopped that cause they were too dangerous. Here in the States...well I guess crawling around the brush while playing paintball will have to do. ;)
Although in college when i worked security we used to go to some really really cool places on campus :)
This kind of reminds me Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It's a book that describes a man who unwittingly becomes part of a seperate society that lives in the sewers and on the rooftops. This soceity is invisible to the common people and is ruled by rats. Highly reccommended, especially if you practice infiltration / vadding yourself.
Haven't read the Salon article yet, but there are three things to be careful of in abandoned buidings: cops, homeless people, and criminals. You're trespassing, and if there are "no trespassing" signs posted, you can probably be arrested for criminal trespass. As for the homeless, most of them are harmless, but lots of them are mentally ill, and if you suddenly invade a schizophrenic paranoid's home, or stumble onto a meth lab or crack den, or even some boozing surlies, you could be in some very real physical danger.
--
This is not my sandwich.
Next time you fly into Heathrow, keep an ewe out for an enormous gothic tower near the airport - that'll be the Sanitorium. Many people mistake it for Holloway's other famous building, the university nearby in Egham, but that's nowhere near as impressive.
But having lived inside Founder's (the Holloway building at Egham) for a year I can tell you it's pretty damn fun for exploring, especially after some hallucinogens...
Of course, we at nearby Harvey Mudd already have switched 100BaseT in the dorms, so such projects are unecessary. =P
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
C'mon now, rats? Cops? The elusive mole people (née squatters)?
You've got bigger worries - C.H.U.D.s.
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
Why do you ask?
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
My friends and I used to do that all the time. Especially under the bank. They've closed it up now. The police didn't call it 'infiltration' though, it was called 'trespassing' or 'breaking-and-entering'. Go figure.
No surge protector will protect my surge. - Commodore64
We included the outdoors tho', too. I remember some storm drain activities and such. Good, dangerous, idiotic fun!
**>>BELCH
Actually, I'm working on a set of single-player maps which seem to have acquired quite a bit of the atmosphere described by this infiltration malarkey. Players will get the chance to explore various grimy, semi-abandoned Cold War-inspired buildings and structures, in a quest for survival and escape set in some of the less well known areas of the Black Mesa complex.
:-)
I'm trying to give the maps a realistic feel - I think up cool structures, and tailor the gameplay around them. Recently, I've been building a nuclear silo, and I've got ideas for stations, machinery complexes and so on.
It's called Half-Life: Parallax, and it might be released at some point in the next year or so...
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
www.welcometohell.net
this is a site in norther new jersey dedicated to an old sanitorium. found it spraypainted on the walls of the place when we were adventuring there one night, had a good laugh, then we all went back and secretly checked the url
although there's not much left of the place now, i remember seeing it when it was all there and the photos _really_ do it justice...as well as the wealth of historical information, maps, and other sundry stuff the site includes. truly awesome site if you're into this sort of thing. i only wish the place was still all there as there was some seriously creepy stuff there about a decade ago when it was still standing
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
that the cops (campus or otherwise) have really cracked down on the steam tunnel intrusion in the last few years...
I can remember a few forays through the steam tunnels that ended with some co-eds getting the holy !#%&*^ scared out of them when the 'tunnel party' emerged. The fact that the one in the lead was wearing a 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' mask might have had something to do with it.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
Somewhere in the article, read "Infiltration is in no way a new concept -- after all, who hasn't clambered through an abandoned building, ducked under a fence to explore or slipped behind a barrier to see what's there?" ;-) Wonder that tendency also contributed its bit to the ideas propogating into horror movies!
Really?
If there is a power plant close enough, you can also use the waste heat from that to heat buildings. Since less than 40% of the total heat from burning fuel at a steam plant gets turned into electricity, this can make quite a difference.
At Northwestern Michigan College in the 60's and 70's, the faculty had keys to the steam tunnels and routinely used them to go between buildings without going outside in the winter. You could comfortably walk single file down those tunnels. Students weren't supposed to use them (liability issues if some idiot ran his head into a pipe bracket, and the tunnels just weren't big enough for the between-classes rush), but sometimes snuck in. The steam pipes were over a foot in diameter; water, drains, and electricity were also routed through there.
In the steam tunnels, live steam! Ever see steam pouring out of a vent? It did because a 60 year old pipe burst. Confined space + Live steam + you = severe burns.
In basements, live step down transformers, air compressors, steam lines, hot and cold water, and other goodies. I have seen bare 1,000 volt buss bars behind a door that was rusted open. Oh yeah, I needed a flashlight to see it because the bulb was burnt out. Cool huh? Warning sign covered up by the door, no lights, only a hum to let you know you are about to die (made me turn around).
Whatever you do, please stay away from buildings that have those cute little radiation signs on them. Yes, there are places that you can get yourself hurt. Where I worked, the baddies were protected by two locked doors, and trenches built into the floor so that you could walk around. It was also one of the first targets the nuts thought of! The radiation protection people do their best to keep you out and warn you, but some figured that you get what you deserve if you break in.
As for people eating in places like this, well Ewwwwww!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There's a whole system of tunnel's under Vienna, where some movie was done. There are tours daily through them; you enter through a manhole in the central city square. Damn cool tour.
Cue The Sun...
As a Caltech student, I can definitely affirm the accounts of the great steam tunnel tradition. The house most famous for this sort of thing is Blacker.
One fine day, we decieded we needed a faster intranet between the north and south houses for the trading of DivX, porn, and such [shared 10BaseT just does not cut it anymore]. So, the most obvious solution was to set up some routers (FreeBSD and Linux) and drop some gigabit cable. (we only had 100BaseT NICs, but we got a good deal on the cat 5e)
Of course, it was wonderful to have relatively easy access to the tunnels, enabling us to run the cable quickly, neatly, and safely.
Here's some wonderful pictures of the whole thing. The tunnels became quite constricted in some areas, so we had to protect our buddy from the elements (asbestos, spiders, god knows what) as he crawled in the dirt underneath the students houses.
Preparing...
Ready to go..
Anticipation
Success!!
> Many infiltrators shy away from press coverage
/. or they might get a ton of *publicity*.
Gee, lucky that they didn't didn't get a write up in Salon or posted on
As well, the University I went to (University of Regina, in Canada) had a very strict and very enforced policy against Infiltration; one urban legend told to me by the security guards was that under the building known as the Language Institute, there is a huge open space that is well-lighted with a sand floor: an indoor beach. The legend continues that a sophomore, after finding it, took his girlfriend for a "picnic" there, and was eventually caught by the security guards "having dessert" ("wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know what I mean?"). Both were promptly expelled.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Resist the temptation to go down telco manholes tho. A friend of mine went down one 5 years ago(while I was on lookout), and didn't realize all the gases and such down there. Fortunately, he didn't die, or get injured for that matter.
I went to a private school (Bedstone) in Shropshire, England, which is an old country estate. The cellars were used as boys' changing rooms, and we found a small tunnel leading from the cellars to a hall, and we could see out of grates that were underneath a couple of benches. It was fantastic just lying there watching teachers and pupils go by, oblivious to the pairs of eyes peering out of the darkness. The rats were a bit of a nuisance, though.
1) Another reason for tort reform.
2) "Think of it as evolution in action." (Niven & Pournelle, Oath of Fealty.)
that's where i'm from, and i didn't see anything on the webring and other pages about dallas, just mostly new york, etc.
Ok, not to be pickey, but you can't have steam and water at the same temperature (in the same environment - ie pressure). Since water phase changes into steam at 100C, it will be either a gas of > 100C or a liquid of < 100C. Admittedly, steam will mess you up, it's just not at the same temperature as water.
Maybe I missed it but I can't believe no one from Columbia has posted.
Website for tunnel maps for many university campuses with maps and lots of info on Columbia.
Columbia at one point had the third largest building tunnel system in the world, behind MIT and the Kremlin. It is famous for many things including the beginning of the Manhattan Project.
This 7M pdf also contains a good article on the history of Columbia's tunnels.
Tunnels are a major part of geek life at Columbia and tunneling has been incorporated into the traditions of many campus organizations. CUMB (Columbia University Marching Band) gives an underground tour at the beginning of every school year.
Water under pressure (such as 250psi found in steam pipes) can end up in a superheated liquid state much hotter than 100C. In any case, rupturing a 250psi steam pipe in an enclosed tunnel will cause a steam explosion and cook you like a lobster in a big hurry. Caution is advised.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
When I was a kid, I thought exploring construction sites was wonderful. You could walk through a house before it's built. Step through a wall. See how dirty an operation it really is before it's all cleaned up. My parents told me not to. Silly parents, what did they know? I broke my leg at a construction site when I was 8. Sometimes prohibitions make really good sense.
----------------------
I seem to recall that here in the UK property owners are required by law to secure dangerous structures to prevent children from breaking in and injuring themselves.
Well, if I recall correctly, the guide didn't make it onto the web until the mid-90's. And it was quite a scandal. The MIT groups had always tried to avoid this kind of media coverage to avoid the "stupid-newbie" problem. One had to be introduced to the community by an established member.
As an interesting aside, this activity is called "hacking" at MIT.
Man, that takes me back. Mushroom picking on Prune Hill. The horsey girl was so shocked when I explained what all the hippies were doing in her field :-)
Another link to check out in search of odd holes in the ground and old anomolies... Weird New Jersey. The website supports a magazine that can occasionally be found in local book stores.
Proof positive that what the rest of the US has know for years is true... New Jersey is strange.
...cover something like over a mile in length: http://www.mooreshire.com/psusteam/
Every year there is a news story about some scouts going into an abandoned mine and never coming out again. Sometimes the bodies are never found. Some of the dangers are here.
Falling down a several story vertical shaft can be a real drag.
I don't mean to be a spoil sport, but the skill in vadding/infiltration is not getting access, but not putting yourself in a situation you can't get out of.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
A major benifit of using a central steam plant for a complex of buildings is efficiency. Central steam is a very efficient way to heat several buildings, AND the unused heat can be reclaimed and turned into electricity back at the central plant (Caltech saves 20-40% on their electric bills this way.)
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
I know of a couple places, like the top floors of the downtown Ramada Inn in Indy, and a couple highway bridges that are fun to go under and avoid dying from. Email me if anyone knows more.
In no way should you click here, this is for novelty use only, delete it after 24 hours, etc.
Ben^3The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Back in '98, my company won a contract to do telecomm surverys for all government buildings in NYC. So in addition to traipsing through the phone closets, we got to poke around in the basements looking for distribution points and the like. This wasn't quite the same, but it was fun to be on the 3rd (4th?) basement sublevel of the World Trade Center.
The other neat building was the DEA's building. While having a smoke outside waiting for our GSA contact to show up, we watched a bunch of undercover agents gear up for a sting or a raid. For all you crack dealers out there- don't screw with these guys! Anyway, inside the building each door to the stairwell was locked by both a biometric hand scanner and a keypad. Funky.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to do the FBI or the Secret Service departments. They probably would be just as good.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
...has basically taken the place of alt.college.tunnels. a.c.t. was overrun by spam, so the folks who frequented it started a mailing list, and eventually a website grew out of it. If you're interested in this stuff, check out the site and more importantly join the list, great source of info.
-Molehunter
when I was a kid, we used to travel for hours/miles in the storm sewers. I recall once when we peered through a grate and realized we were in the parking lot of a mall that was about 1/2 hour away from where we entered ythe tunnels by public transit.
When I recall these adventures, it makes me think there was some divine force that prevented a summer thundershower from drowning us. Still it *was* fun at the time.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
The easy fun part is the tunnel between Barton and Shoelkopf. There is a door right behind the shotput cage and it is always able to be opened from Barton. Just watch that it doesn't close behind you and you get locked in. It should always be possible to get out on the other side, but sometimes they chain the door there.
Better are climbing the beams up to the catwalks. Fun but climbing gear would be a good idea. You might be able to do this legally by volunteering at a concert setup.
There is a ladder near the tunnel door that leads to a storage area over the doors. Once you get up there, there is a forgotten spiral staircase that leads back down into the cage where the zamboni thing is kept.
The best though is the abandoned rifle range underneath the building. On one side of the hall there are stairs leading down to the band room. On the there side there similar stairs that once led to the rifle range. The door is sometimes locked but the key is on the ring that the attendant uses that is left in the desk. You can usually get the combination lock open. The top of the stairs have been converted to storage for chairs and such but you can go a ways down the stairs and there it is blocked off with plywood with a trap door in it. If you go through this you can get to the rifle range. Bring a dust mask as the place was closed for lead contamination.
The best way to get into the hall is to know a student attendant that will let you in when he closes up. Otherwise the doors on the bleacher level are often left wide open. Failing that, you could hide in the hall, perhaps the women's bathroom, or on top of the Navy building when the hall closes. Or possible duct tape the catch on one of the side doors so that it doesn't latch properly. Often the attendants don't even check these.
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?1998%2D22%2D 12 D 27 D 09 D 43 D 58 D 31
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?1998%2D22%2
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?0998%2D07%2
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?0998%2D08%2
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?1997%2D00%2
http://www.pvillage.org/viewphoto.asp?1997%2D65%2
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
If I wanted expertise in lockpicking, MIT is the last place I'd go.
"gateway drug"...
and closed the browser window. I don't have time to waste reading articles by numskulls.
Though "infiltrating" sounds fun, I personally tend to think there might be a REASON why condemned buildings are condemned, so I recommend you do some research and infiltrate at your own risk...
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Wow, this sounds really cool. Since we've pretty much explored the earth, it seems like there's nowhere "new" to go, nothing new to discover. Adventure has sort of died. I think that's why we see people getting all excited about going out into space, or climbing mountains, or participating in extreme sports. There just isn't much that hasn't already been done. Nobody will ever open Tuts tomb for the first time, or scale Everest for the first time, or find an isolated culture in some remote mountain range. But this "infiltration" seems like a revival of exploration, adventure and discovery...but instead, you aren't exploring new things, you're exploring, old, forgotten things, relics from the past. All of a sudden history is not just something you read about in a book, or watch on TV. It's real, it's here, you've discovered it, your touching and seeing things that people in past lives created or worked with. Really cool stuff. I wonder if there is a group around where I live.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So, on my last day there, this only girl of our group of adventurers invited me down to the steam tunnels for one last walkthrough; with a gleam in her eye. We walked from one end of campus to the other, clambering through dark passages with perhaps a little more body contact than absolutely required. I was distraught, of course, about getting kicked out of school, but enjoying myself at the same time.
So we end up breaking into the computer room in Maryland hall at about 4:00 am. This was a common destination; as it let you combine both kinds of hacking in the same trip. When we got there, everybody else in our group had decorated the room for a surprise going-away party. I cried, of course -- what do you do? You never have friends again like those you had in school.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
This is nothing new. vadding has been part of hacker culture for years
Rich
...this being the noble art of climbing the exteriors of (usually university) buildings, mostly at night. Maximum points if you could leave a chamber pot on the top...
The original Doctor Dark.
The tc.umn.edu steam plant was still active at least back in the mid-90s when I was there - it just seemed abandoned. Despite the notorious tunnel security and the legends surrounding it, the steam plant (schmutzfabrik, people called it) was almost notoriously unguarded, so much so that it was a favorite high school drinking location. Later, it was just a convenient shortcut to cut from campus over to the St. Anthony Main area. Just don't go down to the parking lot on the river flat, because it seems to be where the U cops like to idle their engines and eat donuts.
(The U tunnels on the other hand, were always a mystery - with stories of people getting busted for even standing around storm drain pipes, or going through a door in the student union and ending up on the other side of campus or down by the river. Some of these stories might be real -- go to the U engineering library and look at some of the utopian underground societies the civil engineering department was dreaming up in the 1970s.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Plus, steam at say, 101C, has many times the amount of heat energy than that of liquid water at 99C.
All of that energy goes into your flesh when the steam condenses on you. I don't think it'll be a pretty sight.
Yeah, it's called tunneling here to and most frosh are introduced to it at least once. We have our own cellebrity scare too: supposedly the Queen Mum was visiting and as she and her enterage were walking down the Olive Walk some girl pops up out of a steam tunnel cover. Scared the begeesees out of the security.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I can't seem to find anything about the UVA tunnels on the web, and from what I see they're quite extensive, especially around Scott Stadium and environs. I've heard that you can get all the way to the downtown mall from the chem building... One of these days I'll get around to trying it.
!sirE liaH ->- Hail Eris!
Actually you can. When water reaches 100C it needs an additional kick of about 4kJ/g to break intermolecular bonds and convert it to vapor. Actually whats really cool is when you get to the triple point of an element. You get solid, liquid, and gaseous phases in equilibrium so the compound is simultaneously boiling, condensing, sublimating, depositing, and crystallizing. It's a bit hard to get this with water but if you put dry ice in a closed container, you can observe this.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
> taxes that go straight to Pentagon and billions
> that are being wasted on NYC's Metrocard system.
So what exactly is your problem with 50% going to Pentagon? When you refuse to use the Internet (developed originally by DARPA, part of DoD, in case you didn't know), come back to me and we'll talk about money being wasted.
As for Metrocard, i adore it, it is way better than anything i've seen before. Although I'll admit to homicidal urges towards the smarty-pants who designed the user interface for some parts of the system ;)
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
What? Didn't you ever watch, The Time Machine?
(BTW, I have the DVD of George Pal's movie, if you want to stop by my apartment to watch it with me. And, while I'm getting it set up, I might tell you about my experience as a steam plant engineer for the US Navy, or tell you about HVAC.)
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Don't leave Ricketts out of this- when they weren't blowing things up they had time for the tunnels too.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Its nice to know that I and my friends aren't the only ones who used to do this.
:)
Up until about2 years ago, friends of mine and I would skulk around the old Beta properties in Abderdeen, Maryland.
Old, abandoned hotel -- it'd probably been closed for close to 25 years when we were poking around it.
Several rowhome-style houses - Some that had been closed no more than 2 years previous, some that had been abandoned for over 10 years.
And a old large (5 or 6 bedroom) house that was owned by the Beta family.
We ended up finding all kinds of interesting stuff -- old magazines, scraps of note paper (never anything really interesting on them though)
The buildings were torn down about, I think a year or two ago, but before they tore them down, we mamanged to get in with a video camera and a large flashlight (It helped that the one friend who did this with us was a member of the local volunteer firefighters, so we had a badge to show if the police arrived) (They didn't, but it was nice to have that 'safety net')
Now I live near Quantico, Virginia, and I've ALWAYS wanted to go skulking around there, there HAD To be some good exploration type stuff - but the Marines don't take kindly to that sort of thing.
Poor little no puppy toe!
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
This isn't so new... There is a zine around here all about weird places in NJ called... oddly enough weird nj. Check it out for all kinds of wacky stuff in the garden state. They also have road tours of the weird places sometimes and slideshows etc. Some spooky stuff, some just plain interesting.
_joshua_
That's funny, I get the impression now from UMN vadding pages and from vadders I know that the motion sensors are still there but are mostly ignored now. It still makes me hesitant to try though, I haven't been down there yet.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
a very bright young lad who now works at RIM seemed to enjoy the service tunnels that run throughout campus. There's still many stories of them, and this page sums it up nicely. Oh, and dig around his site and learn how to make a nice digital camera from a flatbed scanner!
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
OK, the linked article, most of the linked sites, and now this comment have mentioned steam pipes and steam plants. What are they?
Seriously, I have never heard of these things. What is steam being transported for? At first I assumed that this was to remove a waste product, but then the steam plants came up. What is this steam being produced for? This all sounds like something out of an alternate reality/history, like William Gibson's and Bruce Sterling's novel, 'The Difference Engine'.
Please, someone explain this for me!
A few years back, a friend and I were "infiltrating" an abandoned Nike missile site located in the upper Florida Keys. On the way out of the wooded area we had the misfortune of being stopped (at gunpoint) by a US Customs officer. There's nothing like the adrenaline rush one experiences when you come around the corner and see some guy in shorts (no badge or other identifying clothing) aiming a 9mm at you and yelling at you to get down on the ground (without identifying himself as being associated with law enforcement). Apparently the old roads in that area are used by drug traffickers to move into vehicles shipments that are dropped via plane into the ocean and we were now a suspected drug trafficker for being in that area. We spent the first hour laying face down in the middle of the road in the humid, blazing heat as the lone officer awaited backup. We spent the next two hours sitting handcuffed on the ground as the various local authorities tried to figure out who exactly held jurisdiction over the area we had trespassed in. One by one they came over the two hour period: the Sheriff's office, the Florida Marine Patrol, the Parks Department. By the end of the 3-4 hour roasting there were about eight officers from every imagineable government agency. They decided that the parks department had jurisdiction and we were charged with trespassing on park property and assigned a court date.
Prior to the court date the parks department discovered that the location we were sighted and arrested at, which was about 20 feet from the side of a state road, was not in fact "park property" (and was instead a DOT right-of-way) and the charges were dropped.
badtz-maru
Paraphrasing Marvin the Paranoid Android: "Nuclear subs, what else would you expect to find in a nuclear sub base?"
(Of course, since the base in question was Russian, I wouldn't be surprised if someone did find an abandoned sub... With respect to the men who crew 'em and try to maintain 'em, what your brass has done with regards to dumping near your bases is nuts.)
During my first year on campus, I heard rumours that there existed old steam tunnels that connected all the buildings on campus. Of course, my partner in crime, and myself felt it obligatory to locate these tunnels, and utilize them for our own crafty wants. Upon finding grates on the ground that billowed warmth, and often light, we found our entrance.
On various post-bar drunken wanders, we managed to get in via a metal door on the ground that we were able to jimmy the latch on the inside with the help of a strong skinny stick. Once we were in, good gravity, was it ever a good find. We could get into virtually any building on campus at any time of day or night. We could hook up cable to any residence room, and we could wreck havoc onto the digital phone system that the University used.
They go on forever, narrowing to the point that you walk single file, and duck way down, and opening up into cavernous rooms that echo when you talk. Some of the tight squeezes were reminisant of spalunking into a cave except that this was all man made.
One method of getting into the tunnels that we found was to get into a maintanance closet that has a tricky door that can be opened with a good old fashion flying shoulder. Then we would shimmy down a hot water pipe (not much fun) then crab walk on our back along a 1.5"x1.5" tunnel for about 100 meters.
We found that maintanance workers had porn on the walls, and that others had broken into the tunnels as far back as the 60's and left their mark with spray paint.
To those in new buildings, or campus' explore them late at night, and checkout anything that looks like a maintanace access, because often they can be lots of fun, and can allow for trickery, and copeious amounts of hellish behaviour. I think in Guelph Ontario though, the punishment on campus for being caught in the steam tunnels is expulsion. So its all about keeping the escape posibilities in mind all the time.
I work part-time for the UMN construction dept doing AutoCAD drafting. Last summer, one of the projects I worked on was to put access card readers outside each door to the elevators down to the steam tunnels. Unfortunately, I never got to go down inside the tunnels. The closest I got was taking digital photos & dimensions of each site.
I have seen the maps for them though. They go from the steam plant down to the area of the medical bldgs & there's a branch that goes under the river over to the west bank! The tunnels are ~100 ft below the surface.
Maybe I'm a bit on the paranoid side. I've seen water treatment plants detonate from sparks, and entire towns literally moved due to dangerous conditions.
I'm sure it's in the FAQs, but I'm equally sure that somebody will have trivialised it in their minds. If you =are= going to make a hobby out of going into abandoned buildings, long-forgotten tunnels, etc, at least try to find out WHY they were left.
Most, probably because they weren't needed. A few, because the building had become unsafe. (And remember that they won't have become any safer, through being neglected.) Of those few, some may have dangerous chemicals. Asbestos was, once, a popular material. And many fashionable paints and glazes from the 1700's and 1800's are now considered highly toxic and/or carcinogens.
That leaves those rare one or two places where, for some freaky reason, there has been a methane build-up in some air-tight corridor or pipe. Or something just as nasty. There are plenty of naturally-occuring gasses which will be common in a decaying ruin which can guarantee you a very bad hair day. Most have sufficient air-flow that that isn't an issue. But it doesn't hurt to be careful when you come across sealed doors to underground bunkers.
Ok, enough of the doom and gloom. If you're smart and you know what you're doing, it sounds a great activity. There are more ruins than potholes in your average city, giving "common folk" a chance to engage in "alternative spelunking".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I remember back in high school (I went to BHS in Bakersfield, CA). The high school itself is rather old, over 100 years now. It was originally the community college, and a few of the buildings date to this time.
My friend and I never explored the place, as it was way too easy to get caught, and many doors were welded shut, but there were plenty of spaces just begging to be explored. I remember in one building (the oldest, that housed the library and "study" hall), stairs led down past the basement classrooms, and at the end of the stairs were doors that opened outward (!), but had no door handles (!!) - wonder why?
I was told by my chemistry teacher that between that building and the science building (the newest building on the campus, built in the 60's), used to be tunnels that connected the two, and in the middle (aboveground was a very large field) was an irradiation lab - but it had since been filled in.
Other areas were what had to be some kind of tunnel system under the park area between the industrial hall and Warren hall, because there was this large blue capped pipe, surrounded by a small stone wall - it was a vent pipe of some kind. I remember seeing the phone company running cabling in it, so it was some kind of access tunnel. There was also, near the principal's office area, a large concrete cover thing, with a welded trap door on top, and "vents" along the edges. It was only a couple of feet tall, and stair-stepped shaped, of two layers.
Our auditorium was a WPA project - massive concrete work - walls three feet thick in areas. Of course, all over campus were bomb shelter signs, as most of the buildings had basements.
I remember going to a night class, just for the heck of it (not like I needed the grade or anything) - it was woodshop. Our "final" consisted of cleaning up and old storage area, of unfinished projects. Sawdust a foot thick at our feet had to be swept out. Then we got to organize the projects. Old desks, chairs, various other creations... One desk we opened, patterned off an old-time school desk, had a "How to Survive the Bomb" Red Cross pamphlet, from the 50's in it!
Now I live in Phoenix, Arizona - we have an old VA hospital, still in use, at the corner of 7th Street and Indian School Road. One time I was in the area looking for a job, and I wandered in (my GF was working in an adjacent area at the time). I managed to get down to the very basement of the hospital - a steam tunnel like area, very errie, very low light - and very interesting. I was approached by a guard, but made up an excuse, and got out of there. On subsequent days (after job hunts), I tried to get to the mental ward on the third floor, but the elevator kept skipping the floor as a security precaution. I couldn't find the stairs to it...
I am sure there are other areas to explore in the Phoenix area (that aren't abandoned mines - those you want to stay clear of) - I keep thinking the Westward Ho might hold interesting areas, as well as other parts of downtown...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I think one of the reasons halflife is such a good game is because it captures that kind of atmosfear. Just perfect for someone as risk-averse as me :-)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
A tour through an abandoned missile base: Abandoned missile base
How to make a sig
without having an idea
I live on the North side of Dallas. NY has subways; we, of course, do not. Many NY buildings are ancient (I guess the city has an average age of at least 100 years, maybe 150); we, of course, are younger (I guess an average age of 40 or 50 years). NY is a city of over 11 million people; we have about 6 million. (These numbers are all from the top of my head, at 1 in the morning, but I think I'm pretty close.) Thus, NY has a lot more potential. However, all is not lost. I noticed when I was South of downtown that there are quite a few old structures. I went trapsing around some when I was taking some pictures of the Dallas skyline. I might have done more, but that wasn't my purpose at the time, and I was a little afraid of getting jumped.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
I did this at the U of MN one summer day nearly 20 years ago. There was an access off of an old storm drain on the side of the river embankment.
It was interesting to a 15 year old, but I'm not sure what the interest would be now. I mainly remember it as hot, dirty, dark and extremely frowned upon by the campus police.
The part about the police is what made it less an exploration and more of an evasion -- the tunnels had quite a few motion sensors which in past 'spelunking' expeditions had been set off by others in our party, yielding trespass citations.
We evaded the motion sensors but because they were there and we had no map, we didn't get to 'explore' the system very much. We ended up climbing out of the subbasement of a steam plant and hiding behind a vine-covered fence as the police drove by slowly. The most remarkable thing about the whole experience was the steam plant -- I don't know how we climbed up 3 levels of that place (it was very open, like an old factory in a movie) without someone seeing us -- but it was like the steam plant was totally abandoned.
In toto it was an adventure, but looking back there wasn't much to it -- just a lot of walking around in a hot, dark place worrying about the cops.
Explore the dark silent depths of usenet groups/hierarchies that have fallen into disuse!
--
Tweet, tweet.
(From the Jargon file)...
. ht ml
;-)
http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/v/vadding
#include "us hackers did it first.h"
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
thanks. yea of course dallas is way too new to be much good for exploring but there's got to be at least one or two interesting places.
just in case you were wondering, steam-tunnel infiltration is not new. here at VT we have a long-standing tradition of "running" the tunnels (one i personally have nothing to do with) that goes all the way back to my father's frat days. that makes it at least...um...35 years old or so.
Search for the milk crate gang if you want to find out about these works of art.
I discovered this about 6 months ago. A friend was just wondering around our neighborhood and came across this big brick wall. He came back and told me, so we went over that night to climb over it. On the other side was the Naval Asylum. We live in Philadelphia, by the way.
It was built in the 1820's to house US Naval officers no longer able to care for themselves. It's just been sitting there since 1976, when it was abandoned. The Naval Home (new PC name) is now in Georgia if I'm not mistaken.
Anyway, we've made quite a few visits to this place. The back yard is fantastic. It's extremely overgrown, but in the middle is an almost-defunct gazebo. On either side of the main building are two large houses. One housed the "governor" of the complex, and I forget who the other was for.
The first time we went, we explored the inside of the main building a little - we first walked in through a back entrance into the old cafeteria. We went down a long hallway which traversed the building front-back. It intersected with two looooooong hallways, going side to side through the building. Well, we got to the front of the building and noticed that we were stnading about 10 feet from a collapsed floor. That, and the fact that our only flashlight's batteries weren't working led us to a near panic, but we managed to calmly walk out of the *dark* building until we figuratively pee'd out pants. So, we went home for a lantern and batteries (and a stock of beer - to get sufficiently drunk).
The second visit, later into the same night, led us throughout the building. A few of the interesting things we found are:
o Three small rooms labled "Special Care Room #1", "Special Care Room #2", and "Medication Room"
o A calendar, left hanging on the wall and on the month of November, 1976 (same month the place was abandoned).
o The central room of the building - round with a tall (about 3 stories tall) arched ceiling. Windows from higher floors look out into the room (making the room a bit more scary to be standing in).
o Scattered all over the floor of the central room were "Request for Dismissal" slips, all signed and dated in the 60's and 70's.
We stayed long enough on this visit to sit on the back balcony and watch the sun rise over the Schylkill, Philadelphia's main river.
The overall feeling this place produces is definately eerie. The paint is peeling from the walls and ceilings everywhere. Paint chips cover the tiled floors so it's impossible to walk quietly (for better or worse). There are a few areas (hallway intersections, central room, etc) where it's impossible to see everything at once - especially with only single-beam flashlights. The thought of crazed Naval officers from pre-Civil War through post-Vietnam eras living and dying within the same walls is also a little spooky...
On subsequent visits, we did more exploring of the main building, but we also explored one of the mansions next to it. We didn't go too far into the house, as most of it had already collapsed (ceiling beams, staircases, etc) We did get around the entirety of the first floor and the basement. In the kitchen was the skeleton of a cat, with fur still placed naturally, making it look almost alive...
I had no idea these "infiltration" groups existed. I'm making plans (as of now) to go back and do a photography project at this complex. When that happens, I'll surely create a site and post everthing I've got.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
There's an abandoned railroad tunnel on the east side of Providence that goes for almost a mile, from slighty north of the art club to Gano St. Its almost a mile in length. The art club exit is down the hill from a small parking lot. The tunnel features a burned out car, a tv and a mural to Spaghetti-Os (yay risd).
There are also tunnels from Moses Brown (of which I am an alumni) to the river. I assume other places have these tunnels also. These tunnels were intended for underground railroad related activities. Today, they carry networking and phone cables. I am not sure if the tunnels to the river are intact anymore. There are definitely some grates on the river end and security doors on the other end barring access.
Just watch your back; some underground, outta the way tunnels do have the occasional squatter or so. Don't poke them with sharp sticks or anything.
--M.
Features much subway exploration, deserted hospital raiding and maniac Governement agent avoidence. Really tense. Really engaging. Really out of print at the moment...
Channel 4 show it occasionally...
Yes the cops were probably busy on the way to arrest a recreational drug user to be put in front of the wonderful Rockefeller laws.
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
Any San Diego residents reading this...
:)
check out the tunnels every chance you get.
they're constantly creating access points when
they build new stuff
have fun
In late High School a small group of us explored the Brio site near Houston, TX. It was a new community created by a land developer. Nice houses on the average. Anyway, due to the burying of massive quantities of toxic waste nearby a *lot* of children living there had turned up with leukemia, often fatally.
Consequently the entire neighborhood had been abandoned. However, you could still see the odd lighted window in a house or the flicker of a television in an upstairs window. Bear in mind that there were hundreds of houses in this area - block after block. Most of them were entirely boarded up. It was a decidedly eery experience capped off by our visit to the abandoned elementary school. The overgrown playground alone gave off a terribly post-apocolyptic vibe. There were also abandoned cars littered here and there.
We tried to go back a few months later but by then the police were in force and they sent us home promptly. Still, glad to have seen it.
Infiltration.org is real nice, and they're fine fellows, but sometimes, you have to draw the line. Someone found my Montréal Métro (sorry, just in french, except for this page) website, and kept pestering me for infiltrating it. Not something to do, and for safety, I had to put a disclaimer on my Métro exploration pages (all my explorations were legit - duly accompanied by Métro officials).
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...A friend took me to an unused portion of our downtown Lazarus (in Columbus, OH), and showed me all the strange stuff he had found back there. He worked there, and since he sometimes didn't have anything better to do, he would go exploring in the recesses of this Lazarus. Crazy how a fully operational Dept. store can have such a seedy dark side to it. It was actually rather creepy, and I don't get creaped out that easily.
how Katz 'infilitrated' his way into ./ ?
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
i've been a fan of infiltration.org for a while now: that's probably because i live in Toronto, where a lot of the "infiltration" on the site is being done. the pictures of Toronto's Subway Tunnels are amazing (including an abandoned station i never knew about). plus i had no idea how many strange things were hidden in the Royal York Hotel!
i've read most of the articles over in great detail, but i'm still too chickenshit to go down into the Subway tunnels myself. phrases like "allowing just barely enough room for a human to press up against the wall and let a train whip past" don't exactly make the situation any better.
but it's great that some people are doing this and making the pictures and information available to the rest of us on the web! it's definitely a site worth reading.
- j
Of course it's not new; I just wonder how they can bother to print an entire article and not mention one of the earliest and most influential net articles on the subject. The MIT lockpicking guide was on the net and popular when I was in school, circa '90. http://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide/mit-guide.html
There's plenty of Victorian era sanitoriums that are currently empty here in the UK. One of the biggest and most interesting was Holloway Sanitorium, which has actually been restored and turned into apartments, but for fifteen years lay rotting. It's a massive structure which was opened in 1885 and closed in the early eighties. It was then used occassionally for film work and music videos (including the Cure's Charlotte Sometimes video).
Then the original owners who had bought the hospital from the NHS went bust. The subsequent owners stripped the slate roof off and let the building decay. They wanted the land the building was on for houses, and thought that if the building decayed to a point where it was unsavable they would get permission to pull it down.
Instead the council sued the f*ck out of them, and a new consortium finally stumped up the cash to restore it. They got permission to build houses on what had been the gardens, as they had run to rack and ruin.
While it was derelict, some friends and I used to regularily break in at night to both the sanitorium and it's church. The enormous tower was full of pigeon crap, but well worth the climb.
Next time you fly into Heathrow, keep an ewe out for an enormous gothic tower near the airport - that'll be the Sanitorium. Many people mistake it for Holloway's other famous building, the university nearby in Egham, but that's nowhere near as impressive.
(Google turns up a few relevant links if anyone's interested).
Chris
The newsgroup has been around since at least 1994. I'm not sure how much traffic it gets these days, but it used to get a fair amount in the days before the web was such a big deal. I can still remember how disappointed we were when after exploring every building on campus , there were no steam tunnels. Ahhh the good ole days. --Silurian
Yes, a lot of us have done this over the years, and some of us continue... it's a fascinating thing to crawl around in God-knows-what under some building, I recommend everyone try it at least once!
If you're looking for more information, do a search on "urban exploration", or subscribe to the UE mailing list at www.urbanexplorers.net (yes, that was one of the links mentioned in the article, but this is a list I've been subscribing to for quite a while, it's got some interesting traffic!)
note:the subject of this message is vadding because that's the old-school/MIT name for this black art.
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
The U tunnels on the other hand, were always a mystery - with stories of people getting busted for even standing around storm drain pipes, or going through a door in the student union and ending up on the other side of campus or down by the river.
The weird thing was I think some of the pedestrian tunnels actually dovetailed with the steam system. It was possible to walk from Kolthoff Hall all the way to Williamson Hall without going outside. The tunnel portion that ran from Northrop to Williamson appeared to have access grates in the side walls leading to a more utility-oriented portion of the tunnel.
I believe there was a parallel tunnel along the mall connecting Vincent, Tate, and Morrill Halls. Other building groups often had their own tunnelplexes, like the Superblock dorms.
However, now that i'm grown up and more mature, i'm curious about two questions:
1) If one of these adventurers gets themselves maimed or G-d forbid killed, will their relatives sue the city (in case of NYC, quite likely) and will I - via my tax money - have to pay big time because "the city didn't provide adequate protection to them from their own actions".
2) Another consequence these folks don't consider when posting such info on the web - while most of them are probably more intelligent people who are capable of getting the thrill while avoiding death, what is some idjit reads the web site, decided to heroicaly follow directions, and gets himself offed by whatever danger it was that cause the site to be closed?
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
anybody do this in dallas?
In Russia, they call themself stalkers - after the novel Roadside Picnic and the movie Stalker
Some of them brag that they can get into Moscow Metro-2.
Workers in Chernobyl investigating the remains of the disaster often ignored safety regulations and radiation limits. They also called themselves stalkers.
Naeser's Law:
However it is very dangerous; a teenage boy recently died in a drain due to a flash flood. Other hazards include gas, locked grates and prosecution. Cave Clan said this kid wasn't a member, they rejected him as being too young. The Internet has made what was once fairly well-kept secrets about tunnel entrances etc. very easily available, and it seems a lot of the web sites related to Cave Clan and draining in Australia have been closed pending legal advice.
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Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.