Tunnel Hacking
Some universities have utility tunnels to carry steam heat and other utilities. Utility tunnels are usually designed for infrequent access for maintenance and the installation of new utilities, so they tend to be small and often cramped. Sometimes, utilities are routed through much larger pedestrian access tunnels (MIT has a number of such tunnels, reducing the need for large networks of steam tunnels; for this reason, there is only one traditional steam tunnel at MIT, built before many buildings were connected).
Tunnels range from cold, damp, and muddy to unbearably hot (especially during cold weather). Some are large enough to allow a person to walk freely; others are low-ceilinged, forcing explorers to stoop, bend their knees, or even crawl. Even large tunnels may have points where criscrossing pipes force an explorer to crawl under or climb over a pipe — a highly dangerous activity, especially when the pipe contains scalding high-pressure steam (and may not be particularly well insulated, or may have weakened over the years since installation).
Tunnels also tend to be loud. Background noise may prevent an explorer from hearing another person in the tunnel — who might be a fellow explorer, a police officer, or a homeless person sheltering there. Tunnels may be well lit or pitch-dark, and the same tunnel may have sections of both.
Tunnel access points tend to be in locked mechanical rooms where steam pipes and other utilities enter a building, and through manholes. As with roofs, explorers bypass locks to enter mechanical rooms and the connected tunnels. Some adventurers may open manholes from above with crowbars or specialized manhole-opening hooks.
Read more about this topic: Roof And Tunnel Hacking
Famous quotes containing the words tunnel and/or hacking:
“You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be ‘observed’ are manipulated to produce a new phenomena
[sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature.”
—Ian Hacking (b. 1936)