Why is the U.S. considering building a huge underground science and engineering facility? Why does it have to be underground? The National Science Foundation states that the complex will serve the field of underground science. The project is called DUSEL which is short for Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. The complex, if approved, will consist of large laboratories, caverns and also classrooms where underground science will be taught. I know that once you mention the word underground laboratory that many people will start talking conspiracy theory. Things will be said like the reason this is being built underground is to hide the extraterrestrial aliens who are helping on some other project that is being kept from us. Sometimes you just have to take things the way they seem and I believe that this is one of those times.

The type of science that will be performed in this complex has to do with things like neutrinos and cosmic rays. Neutrinos are particles that seem to have no mass and pass right through us and the earth in astounding numbers every day. In order to measure the amount of neutrinos on a daily basis or longer, a tank that is placed underground and filled with a cleaning fluid substance is needed. As the neutrinos pass through the fluid they leave a trail. So for this reason anyway, an underground facility would be needed. Some might also want to measure cosmic rays, but these do not penetrate rock. I don't know the reason for going underground to detect Cosmic ray muons, but maybe some scientist out there can explain this to us? Being underground will advance the sciences of geomicrobiology and geosciences and will help with mining engineering, it is claimed.

It is said that the installation will be a multidisciplinary facility. A place where many different fields that pertain to underground science and engineering will come together. This is not the first time something like this has been proposed. For at least the last ten years, underground labs have been proposed. Since this is a civilian lab we hear about it, but I wonder how many military underground labs have been built in the last ten or more years. Every country seems to have a program for building underground. The U.S. Air Force is said to possess several of those giant boring machines of the type used to dig the tunnel between England and France. Would they have them if they weren't going to use them? There are many stories going around that claim that the military has embarked on an underground building program and that many of the military bases and airstrips are now connected by hundreds of miles of tunnels. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but I can tell you this, the U.S. protested the fact that Russia was building a huge underground facility. Apparently they also are doing a lot of underground building.

The proposed American facility will not only contain underground buildings, but would also utilize caverns and shafts and would be quite extensive and possibly lend itself to some other type of use in an emergency or even be capable of being a cover for some other kind of activity. I am not saying that this would be the reason for building it, I am just saying that it might be capable of other uses. The reason that I say this is that it is going to be the deepest underground science facility in the world if built. It is projected at being 8,000 feet below the surface of the earth. The stated reason for this is cosmic-ray shielding. It does make one wonder, doesn't it. Could this be a place that would protect the president and congress in event of a nuclear attack? Could there even be missiles stored there away from harm's way? That would also be possible. Remember I said that sometimes we have to take things at face value? I don't think that any of the alternatives that I have mentioned are feasible, because there are probably deeper or just as deep military bases underground that are far more secret.

Currently the deepest scientific facility is SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It rests at a depth of 6,800 feet. Right now the deepest known U.S. Facility is only down a couple of thousand feet. It is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Apparently the plan is to go down through a mine, but that mine is currently flooded. The government plan calls for an interim laboratory that will be down about 4,850 feet. This makes no sense to me and seems like a pork barrel project. If you need to wait and pump out all the water in the mine before you can dig down to 8,000 feet, wait and do it. Don't construct expensive projects at different depths. It seems to me that the government just can't wait to give this money away. South Dakota seems to be the place where the project will probably take place. There is a good chance that given the economic condition of the country that this lab will never be built, but there is the alternative that it may become a black project, one that is hidden from the public. Believe me when I tell you that this would not be the first time something like this has happened.

As weapons became more and more powerful man began to dig to escape their effects. Trenches were dug to protect soldiers from bullets and even cannon fire and they did a pretty good job unless a shell fell into the trench. Then there were underground forts and tunnels like the Maginot line in France, that was built right after World War I and failed to protect anyone. Construction kept going deeper and deeper as missile silos were built and bunkers were constructed that went hundreds of feet below the surface. Now we are talking in thousands of feet not hundreds and the time may not be far off when we discuss underground buildings in miles of depth. The proposed DUSEL would be down over 1.5 miles. Will the world become such a terrible place in the future, that the only place that we will feel safe will be miles under the earth?