Cave Dwellers

How would you feel about the prospect of living the rest of your life in a cave? There are a number of things that brought this question to my mind this week:

·         My husband has been sick since October; the only time he leaves the house is to go to another doctor's appointment. The house has windows, of course, but most of them have the blinds pulled shut. He has started to lament that he never leaves 'the cave' any more. He is too sick to do much more than sit in front of the tv most of the day, watching whatever he can find.

·         To keep him company, I sit in the evenings and watch whatever strikes his fancy that evening. Last night, we watched a documentary-type you tube episode about Martian colonists settling into Martian volcano flow tunnels, to protect them from a number of dangers that could happen on the Martian surface.

·         And finally, I recently read an article on the internet about a man in Turkey who was renovating his basement, took down a wall, and found himself at the end of a vast network of tunnels and chambers that had been carved into the rock thousands of years ago. Apparently, this vast underground village was started way back when, and was expanded over many generations. All the entrances were 'hidden' by boulders or vegetation, so you had to know how to get in. And there were stone doors in many of the tunnels that could be rolled shut to keep any invaders from getting in.

Personally, I find caves rather spooky, especially the dark parts. Even in the lit areas, it can be difficult to both watch your head so you don't plow into a section of low ceiling, and your feet, so you don't turn an ankle or lose your balance on the uneven floor. I also have this never-ending dread that the top of the mountain will fall in on me. I don't find them terribly comfortable places to be.

However, if I were a Martian colonist, I think I would prefer living in a cave in order to avoid:

·         Being fried by solar radiation.

·         Being frozen by the surface temperature.

·         Being exploded by lack of air pressure.

·         Being shredded by a dust storm.

·         Being hit by a crashing meteor.

Suddenly, living in a cave seems vastly preferable. Plus, the way the you tube episode showed it, the tunnel habitats would still be a collection of domes and fat, sausage-like tubes connected by a network of smaller tubes to enable people to get from one place to another. Even in the Martian tunnels, our habitats would need to be air-tight. There could be crop fields and parks, and your living quarters would look more like an apartment than a cave. I can imagine a 'native-born' Martian could spend their entire life inside the habitat, and never have to don a space suit to go out into the tunnel. Or to the surface of the planet, for that matter.

It definitely gives me food for thought. In case I ever decide to write a story about a Martian colony. Again. Because I wasn't thinking about building habitats in volcanic tunnels when I wrote my last story about colonizing Mars.

What do you think? Would you be up to living in a cave on Mars?