underground city

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would you live in an underground city?

I think it would be cool to turn one of those mountain-side tunnel storage facilities into a city.

Think of the advantages during a crisis like tsunami, asteroid impact or invasion.

Clearly, there would have to be several ways in and out of the facility as well as triple-redundant (6x) power generation systems and space devoted to livestock and crops.

Apartments, houses, hospitals, malls, restaurants, security force and government.

Wow. Something new for me to think about.

I thought it would be more economical and energy efficient to live underground. The problem in mining and tunnels with concentrating gas build-up in closed spaces would make ventilation difficult I would imagine.

Downside: being cut off from the sun, nature and all seasonal changes. The psychological damage from that is a favorite theme of science fiction writers.

Lack of Vitamin D, thus brittle bones... Anyways, it would be cool to have an underground city, or even underwater (provided everybody doesn't go mad and starts killing each other )... Bioshock anyone?

Well, you're not confined to the city you live in, are you?

Living underground wouldn't or shouldn't mean they're cut off from the outside world.

I'd love to live in an underground city. That would be cool.

I'm not. But that's partly because I live and work in different places and also because I have a car. I'm guessing this hypothetical city would not have sealed off access to aboveground (which is usually the case in science fiction) but there would be a means to go up and down. Some sort of massive elevator people could take. But the odds are high that people who live in this city work in it too, otherwise there would be an ungodly communte as people jammed into those elevators, followed by an additional commute to where they worked once aboveground. Very impractical.

So people would only go aboveground recreationally or to visit those outside the city. That's enough to set it apart from the sci-fi scenarios but I doubt it's enough to keep people from being damaged by insufficent exposure to sunlight and nature.

I would like to live in layer inside a volcano. I could dress like a butterfly & call myself the Monarch

There already is, well sort of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Ped ... _Australia

and yes, i would like to live in an underground city.

Henchmen! To the Monarchmobile!

i wonder what form the transportation inside such a large enclosed space would take? what type of artificial illumination would there be? would there be giant solatubes? would there be ubiquitous giant video screens showing scenes from the outside world? how stable would it be in the event of a quake? how expensive would it be, both in construction as well as to just live there? questions, questions...

A downside for some, but an upside for others. Sunlight makes me very depressed, and I also get sunburned in about a minute without perfect cloud cover.

actually, 30 minutes in sunlight lets your skin generate megadoses of vitamin d. See that bottle? Yeah...that much times a hundred.

30 minutes in sunlight and I'd be in pain for weeks. And no amount of vitamin D would be enough to cancel out the depression I feel when I spend any amount of time outside during the day.

I have Atopic Dermititus & sunlight drys out my skin. I also have a rare vision disorder & my vision is very sensitive to light; I see better in lower light

You mean like on Trantor and The Caves of Steel? I'd much rather prefer the open on the Spacer planets. I'd miss all the greenery, the rain, the clouds, everything. Also, you'd never see any animals in an underground city. Besides, Trantor and Earth were too crowded. Asimov would have liked to live in one, though.