City Under the Sea

2010, Technology  -   33 Comments
7.18
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Ratings: 7.18/10 from 40 users.

In the future humans may need to adapt to a life underwater. There will be many dangers. Scolding volcanic fluids and crushing pressures can kill the unwary. In some ways it's easier to live in space than underwater. We know more about the moon than the dark depths of our own planet.

The oceans are the Earth's final frontier. But we may be forced to take the plunge. And ever improving technology is making it possible. We may soon live as science-fiction writers have long imagined - under the sea.

With a host of problems threatening the Earth's surface, is underwater living a viable alternative? Meet the scientists who believe that permanently submerged colonies are not just possible, but imminent.

This is hypothetical challenge of housing 100 families below the ocean's surface and race to overcome obstacles such as bone-crushing pressures, ravaging storms, and scalding volcanic fluids to create self-sufficient underwater communities.

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33 Comments / User Reviews

  1. DustUp

    What has been discovered beyond coastal Antarctica? What was Admiral Byrd talking about? Maybe we ought to wring it out of the govt. It seems there is more to Antarctica than we are led to believe.

    It seems there is a large bit of land left if one can learn to deal with the cold better. Greenland, Siberia, Arctic, Antarctica, Alaska, Canada. A bit of Nikola Tesla tech would come in handy to keep the power bill at zero. Hydroponics, etc.

    If one must live beneath the ocean, maybe one ought to watch "Deep Blue Sea" (1999) with Thomas Jane to see how that turned out ... hahaha. Scientists doing what scientists do.

  2. Daniel Sorkin

    I thought it was a quite well-done documentary. Factual without being overly technical, optimistic about its subject without ignoring the real challenges. Whether anything will come of these undersea colony plans is another story.

  3. DustUp

    Why bother with all the pressure problems of depth and just build a city ON the sea. Maybe not in hurricane or typhoon alley but there seems to be a bit of room out there. They seem to already have them in a couple forms: 1) air craft carrier 2) north sea oil rigs. Some years back The Netherlands? started making protective berms around floating homes made of concrete and towed into position. The docu is probably on here somewhere. Oh yeah and pollute the hell out of that area as some above suggested. NOT.

  4. Nemo

    Nice vid for the dreamers among us. But to be serious, its a load of crap. Every technician understands that IF...and for the record, we never ever gonna live life on the sea floor, it never ever gonna happen, yeah as fun location like a hotel or sum, but im shure that allready excists but further it isnt necessary. There is no short of space, if you think so, grtz gov another brainwashed victim...do some research like here at topdocu for instance how to make from a dessert a nice garden of Eden...yeah it is possible and quiet simple to do so. And back to the technician thingie.......IF it was really necessary to move to the bodem of the sea, i asure you, the 'city' is constructed on land and shuffed into the sea afterwarths, so no bs with with risk for there own life builder story's....well that said, it's a dreamers.....wait there is a name for it fairtytale.

    Ps: At Tuba......why dont get mor people food clothes or shelter instead of waisting money on NASA or other peeps they still not understand how to do thing while the answers are wright here (topdocu). Dont get me wrong, i love science...but funding for this load of crap. I have all the answers, no funding needed. IF you want to life on the seafloor, well build a big as sub/tank on land shuff it into the sea, food is allready there, like fish and seaweed but you can always make your little biodome...kind a needed for oxygen anyways :D O yeah, and you people do understand that searching for water wilest living IN water is kind of uh DUMB...yeah blabla drinkingwater, weeeeell.....its a simple filterprocess to make salt water drinkable....ask you local royal navy, they do it since like the founding of the navy. This is simply a waist of time, but if you seen everything else, yeah good luck :D

  5. Marino

    What exactly are 'scolding' volcanic fluids? Don't you mean 'scalding?' Where is your proofreader?

  6. BecomingTuba

    we spend a lot of energy and billions of dollars trying to understand the solar/planetary system (everything above the sky), but how come we don't put that much effort in studying everything below the surface of the earth and ocean, including below the surface of other planets which we have discovered? When we're curious about how something works, like a portable radio or an apple, our first impulse is to dig its surface and break it into pieces to see how it works and how its made, we're not so much vested on the external "system" which makes it work, like electricity, oxygen, or water; so why's there no fervor for studying the universe in that way? Why does NASA get more gov't funding than institutions that focus solely on Earth Science and Oceanography?

  7. nada nada

    0:14 "Humans are re-adapting to life underwater ..." Totally misleading statement. The video is about recreating the same conditions we have on earth underwater, therefore humans don't need any biological adaptation to live there.

  8. jose stucco

    For every 25 residents we need a tunnel between the living quarters and working quarters? We may colonize under the sea, but it won't look anything like this. I am still waiting for my flying car they promised in those movies in the 50s.

    It is sad that all architecture schools care about these days is techno-fantasy and art stunts. I guess an honestly well thought out design isn't sexy enough for tv ratings. (minimizing exterior walls minimizes cost, complexity, materials, connections that need to be air tight. I guess with Obama running the project they will just print as much money as they need to construct this money pit of a design)

    Do you want to trust your life to somebody with so little common sense they think 100 patrons will support a restaurant? Ever been to one of those tiny little towns of a couple hundred people where the nearest gas station is 20 miles away?

  9. xxDarkSidexx

    Jack, i'm good, just a dry sense of humour, your most likely american, i have trouble americans getting a dry humor, i'm just sitting back watching the world fall apart and get destroyed :) now, digging deeper into the earth might not be to bad an idea and yes, working on the land a little better,

    lets pollute the underground with an underground mcdonals! no i'm just kidding.

    As we are on water, can you belive how lazy me, we, some of us are all getting, buying ice cubes... lol

    1. Jack1952

      No... I'm Canadian. The land of snow and ice and striking hockey players. It's in our own best interest to maintain an optimistic view of life and the world. Your post was so bleak and coupled with your "DarkSide" persona, I felt I had to poke you enough that you might just lighten up a little. Tis the season, you know.

      Hate Mcdonald's but my grandkids love it. I take them a couple of times a year, for a treat, and as rotten as the food is, there is nothing like watching the happiness in their faces as they gobble down a Happy meal and run off to playland. I figure as long as it doesn't become an everyday occurrence, not a real big deal. Besides, there will always be those places that the more discerning of us will look down on.

  10. Carl Hendershot

    Wonderfully amazing and well within human reach.

  11. xxDarkSidexx

    great! lets live under the sea and pollute it even more then what it is, kill the beautiful sea creatures that we already do on a massive scale to feed our over populated world, infact lets put an underwater mcdonals! i mean we already heavly pollute the air and the land, lets really think about completly f*cking the sea up! yay!....

    1. PaulGloor

      I think if they were to do this sort of thing they would really quickly recognize the benefits of living in harmony with the environment. The isolated environment would suffer negative effects very quickly and the residents of the habitat would be able to witness changes to the surrounding ecosystem with all the glass.

    2. Carl Hendershot

      Nothing lasts forever.

    3. DigiWongaDude

      If we don't stop our exponential population growth VERY SOON, we'll not have much choice but to begin this kind of thing (70% of the planet's surface.) But we could also use the land better (how about underground 'skyscrapers'? 8-O), and leave the oceans alone. Perhaps if we did though, we would better understand our human effects (as PaulGloor is saying). A lot of it is about our curious fascination of can we do it, and if so, what would it be like?

      Lol, underwater McDonalds would be straight out of Sponge Bob... McCrappy Patty Happy Meal please.

    4. oQ

      Done already, Montreal has a vast system underneath it's ground floor, all of it connected to shopping malls with many McDonalds and other competitors, appartment building, banks, library, museums, office space, bus-train-metro stations. But you can't fly away without sticking your nose out as there are no connection between the ariport and the system.

      One could live in Montreal and never set foot in the snow for months, kinda positive in such cold place, wouldn't say? lol (i am being sarcastic)
      1i

    5. Jack1952

      You're a "glass half empty" kinda a guy, aren't you? Those grapes are probably sour, anyway...right?

  12. joshua89

    Good doc.
    Inspiring.
    I wish I could live under the ocean and have a little sub plane.
    Maybe one day I will, who knows.

  13. Jack1952

    When I was twelve, a buddy and I found a square metal container. We cut a hole on one side and tried to glue a piece or glass over the hole and went deep sea diving in the pond. The glass leaked like a sieve but it was kinda neat. Pretended I was Captain Nemo.

  14. KsDevil

    An experiment from the movie Hello Down There and a primative version of theTV series Seaquest packed into a somewhat technical National Geographic show. Very inviting but you know humans will spoil it.

  15. GonChalabas

    "Humans can't breathe water" 11:19 It's one of those docs..

  16. Lance L Mumford

    I would rather be scolded by volcanic fluid than scaulded.

  17. PaulGloor

    Sign me up. I've got cramped quarters and Isolation licked from sharing a house with 5 other people and having worked night shifts for 2 years.

  18. oQ

    This description of this doc reminds me of a friend from wayback, Hugo Verlomme who wrote the books Mermere and the follow up Sables (both in French)....2 must read if you speak the language!

    I'll watch the doc tonight. The day is going well!
    1i

    1. DigiWongaDude

      mon amie, you are full of surprises.

    2. oQ

      Why...do you know Hugo too?
      1i

    3. DigiWongaDude

      No, just that you speak French. I don't, so don't know if google betrayed me lol.

      There's a big flaw to this documentary. Why try build an isolated environment, cut off from the land? Makes no sense. Just extend them into the sea from land, maintaining a link with the land. Steady supply of materials, food and oxygen without all the hassle.

    4. PaulGloor

      That was partly covered in the doc. Too shallow and you are subject to storms and possible damage, not good.

    5. DigiWongaDude

      Yeah I see, but they did pretty well with the Channel Tunnel (under the sea floor), could do something similar maybe? A kind of tunnel that pops up into these structures on the sea floor. The advantages being links to the land and even an access method for normal machinery to extend it in to an underground network, acting like a permanent ambilical cord. Could take it as deep as desired eventually. To my mind it seems much more logical than isolation tanks and much, much safer (as in emergency exits).

    6. Paul Gloor

      Reasonable assessment, I see where you're getting at now.
      If they were to build more of the habitat into the rock bed below the sea floor structure, like an inverted skyscraper and connect it to these 'chunnels' they would get more bang for their buck. But I don't know how the 1 atmosphere pressure thing would work then and they would have to be absolutely sure it was built on a geologically stable area and make sure of fail safes in case one popped, otherwise the whole network would flood..

      Is the entire length of the chunnel at 1 atmosphere ?

    7. Jack1952

      Jules Verne "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" I read it in English, though. High school French just never took. A shame.

  19. dmxi

    looks like bill gates has taken a plunge.

    1. Lemon Popsickle

      don,t be daft, he's coward