3266: Holes

Holes

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Title text: If you're thinking 'Wait, a giant crystal cave in Mexico? What's that?' then I'm SO excited for the image search you're about to do.

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Explanation

This is one of 43 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently, using the power of New Mexican crystals, and found in a hole. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Feature	Type	Approx. elevation/depth	Notes	More information
Bingham Canyon Mine	Open-pit copper mine	~+2 km	Utah, USA	One of the world's largest human-made excavations, over 1 km deep and several kilometers across.
Veryovkina Cave	Cave	~−2.2 km	Georgia (Abkhazia)	Currently the deepest known cave on Earth, explored to more than 2.2 km below its entrance.
Mponeng Gold Mine	Gold mine	~−4 km	South Africa	Among the deepest operating mines ever built, reaching nearly 4 km below the surface.
Sanford Laboratory	Underground laboratory	~−1.5 km	South Dakota, USA	Former Homestake Gold Mine, now used for experiments in particle physics, neutrinos, and dark matter.
Giant Crystal Cave	Cave	~+1 km	Naica Mine, Mexico	Famous for enormous gypsum crystals, some over 10 m (33 ft) long, formed in hot mineral-rich groundwater.
Derinkuyu Underground City	Underground city	~+1.5 km	Turkey	Ancient underground city capable of sheltering tens of thousands of people and their livestock.
WIPP	Nuclear waste repository	~+0.6 km	New Mexico, USA	The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant stores long-lived radioactive waste in a stable underground salt formation.
Restof [Retsof] Salt Mine	Salt mine	~−0.6 km	New York, USA	Once the largest salt mine in the United States before major flooding in the 1990s.
Jinping Laboratory	Underground laboratory	~+1.6 km	Sichuan, China	Built beneath Jinping Mountain and protected by over 2 km of rock, making it one of the world's deepest underground laboratories.
San Andreas Fault Observatory Borehole	Geological scientific borehole	~+0.6 km	California, USA	Aimed at collecting geological data about the San Andreas Fault for the purpose of predicting and analyzing future earthquakes.
CFB North Bay	Military bunker	~+0.3 km	Ontario, Canada	Cold War command center carved into solid rock for North American air defense.
Woodingdean Water Well	Well	~−0.4 km	England, United Kingdom	Hand-dug in the 19th century and still the deepest hand-excavated well ever completed.
Diefenbunker	Military bunker	Near sea level	Ontario, Canada	Massive four-story underground bunker built to house the Canadian government after a nuclear attack.
Deep Underground Command Center	Proposed military bunker	~−1 km	Nevada, USA	A proposed U.S. command facility that was never constructed after extensive planning.
Lake Peigneur	Lake	~−0.2 km	Louisiana, USA	Famous for a 1980 drilling accident that transformed a shallow freshwater lake into a much deeper saltwater lake.
Sydney Opera House Parking	Parking garage	Slightly below sea level	New South Wales, Australia	Deep underground parking beneath one of Australia's most recognizable landmarks.
Onkalo Spent Nuclear Fuel Repository	Nuclear waste repository	~−0.4 km	Satakunta, Finland	Designed for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel for over 100,000 years.
Raven Rock	Military bunker	Near surface	Pennsylvania, USA	Alternate U.S. military command center, sometimes called the "Underground Pentagon."
Delaware Aqueduct	Water tunnel	~−0.3 km	New York, USA	The world's longest water tunnel, supplying drinking water to New York City.
Wieliczka and Bochnia Salt Mines	Salt mines	~−0.3 km	Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland	Historic medieval mines famous for underground chapels, sculptures, and vast chambers carved from salt.
Atchison Storage Facility	Underground storage	Near surface	Kansas, USA	A former limestone mine converted into climate-controlled storage for records, film, and valuables.
SNOLAB	Underground laboratory	~−2 km	Ontario, Canada	Located inside an active mine and used for dark matter, neutrino, and astroparticle physics experiments.
Detroit Salt Mine	Salt mine	~−0.35 km	Michigan, USA	Extensive salt mine directly beneath downtown Detroit and the Detroit River.
Hongyancun Subway Station	Subway station	Near surface	Chongqing, China	One of the deepest metro stations in the world due to the city's steep mountainous terrain.
Nuclear Test Shafts	Test tunnels	~+1 km	North Korea	Underground tunnels used for nuclear weapons testing beneath Mount Mantap.
Super-Kamiokande	Neutrino detector	~−1 km	Gifu Prefecture, Japan	Giant underground tank containing 50,000 tonnes of ultra-pure water used to detect neutrinos.
Gran Sasso Laboratory	Underground laboratory	~+0.7 km	Italy	The world's largest underground research laboratory by volume.
Modane Laboratory	Underground laboratory	~+1.5 km	France	Built beneath the Alps to shield sensitive physics experiments from cosmic rays.
Gotthard Tunnel	Railway tunnel	~+0.6 km	Switzerland	The world's longest railway tunnel, stretching 57 km through the Alps.
Cheyenne Mountain Bunker	Military bunker	~+1.5 km	Colorado, USA	Hardened military complex built inside a granite mountain to survive nuclear attack.
Kola Superdeep Borehole	Scientific borehole	~-12 km	Murmansk Oblast, Russia
Lake Baikal	Lake	~−1.6 km	Russia	The world's deepest and oldest freshwater lake, containing roughly 20% of Earth's unfrozen surface freshwater.
Sediments under Lake Baikal		~	Russia
IDDP-2 Borehole		~
Dead Sea	Salt lake	~−0.4 km	Israel/Palestine/Jordan	Earth's lowest exposed land surface, famous for extremely salty water that allows people to float easily.
Ryfylke Tunnel	Road tunnel	~−0.3 km	Norway	One of the world's deepest subsea road tunnels.
Pantai Remis Mine	Tin mine	Near sea level	Malaysia	A flooded open-pit tin mine that eventually became a lake after its seawall collapsed.
Great Blue Hole	Marine sinkhole	~−0.1 km	Belize	A giant circular marine sinkhole popular with scuba divers and marine researchers.
JOIDES Resolution Expedition 307	Scientific ocean borehole	~−6 km	Atlantic Ocean	Ocean drilling expedition that cored deep into the seafloor to study Earth's geology and climate history.
Deepwater Horizon Borehole		~
Glomar Challenger hole 504B		~
Mohole		~
JOIDES Resolution Expedition 329	Scientific ocean borehole	~	Atlantic Ocean	Ocean drilling expedition that cored deep into the seafloor to study Earth's geology and climate history.
Mariana Trench	Oceanic trench	~-10 km	Pacific Ocean	The deepest oceanic trench on Earth. At the bottom, the pressure exerted by the kilometers of water above is about 15000 psi.

Transcript

This is one of 32 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

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Discussion

thank god the site is back up again, that outage was scary. on a more relevant note, yay, another long data page! - Vaedez (talk) 02:43, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Must have missed that (can see other references to it below). It was working before I went to bed (this wasn't here yet), but I'm guessing it's the same overzealous webscraping/watever (automated, either by hand or AI 'material grabber') that we had over a few days last month. Though must have started later and finished far earlier, this last session. 82.132.236.125 13:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

It couldn't cope with all the holes. 82.13.184.33 13:09, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

i'm here before the image! 216.25.182.141 03:59, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

yeah, that'll be due to an issue with the site/the bot that generally creates the comic pages (as mentioned in "created by a BOT") having trouble uploading to the site - Vaedez (talk) 04:39, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

okay, i think i uploaded the image correctly? its certainly in now, and i didn't touch how the image is embedded, but it looks maybe too big in the page - Vaedez (talk) 04:46, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm a bit surprised that the Deepwater Horizon Bore Hole didn't get an "Oops" tag. 60.240.65.62

Is the deepwater horizon bore hole a joke? --2001:638:807:508:8FD3:E0DF:F738:D961 05:47, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

I think the "oops" tag here is specifically for ones that accidentally got flooded, not for ones that experienced other kinds of disasters. 2600:387:15:5130:0:0:0:6 16:52, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

The russian hole got filled in again, they we're afraid of deamons. The deepest hole that ist still open is KTB in Windischeschenbach at 9101m [schobi]

Did nobody notice that Randal made a typo in the word bochnia? 217.95.141.233 05:18, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Also a typo on Retsof (restof) 192.176.203.237 (talk) 13:29, 2 July 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Why does this site constantly go out? It's starting to concern me. RG (talk) 05:57, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

(See reply to first comment.) 82.132.236.125 13:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Point the first: Surprised that CERN didn't get a look in. Not particularly deep, but then again some of the others aren't, and maybe even are also "far wider than deep". And CERN's 'underground ring(s)' hole is very much in Randall's awareness. Makes you wonder what other examples were deliberately left out. 82.132.236.125 13:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Point the second: I think there needs to be two 'depth' columns in the table. The one currently there is (I think) all "(height above/)depth below MSL", but a second column for "maximum depth below the local surface" (or better description) might be useful. i.e. the mountaintops they're dug in below (even if tunnelled in from the side, it's the 'overhead' rock, not the 'shaft-depth', though notes about that might not go amiss). For the Dead Sea it is at its own surface (though its depths are at watery depths starting from that below-sealevel point). The oceanic ones would be depth below the (surrounding?) sea-floor. - I can trivially add in the whole column, right now (and set it up for proper useful datasortvalue, etc), but would have to leave it blank of data until I can actually do enough of the research. Rather than that, just mentioning it. Maybe someone else has the time, before I do (this evening, maybe?). 82.132.236.125 13:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

This is just what I just got edit conflicted while commenting. 82.13.184.33 13:07, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Have finally managed to complete splitting the height/depth columns and filling them out to the best of my ability. Some of Randall's heights don't seem to match what I found. The question marks next to the JOIDES Resolution ones are because I couldn't find anything that I could make enough sense of to get a good answer, so had to just go with estimating off Randall's depiction. 82.13.184.33 09:55, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia the Ryfylke Tunnel is not ONE of the deepest subsea road tunnels but THE deepest tunnel of any kind. It is expected to be surpassed by a tunnel planned to be completed in 2033 (also in Norway) 13:33, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Diggy diggy hole! Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 14:08, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Not including the Mines of Moria seems like a significant oversight on Randall's part. 82.13.184.33 14:25, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe it's worth separating elevation column into elevation on surface and elevation of deepest point? Or maybe add "depth"? 46.150.68.106 (talk) 15:25, 2 July 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I would like to see an explanation of the "oops"es. 2A02:A03F:EAF3:5F01:1F0F:E27D:721D:8118 16:05, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

The "oops" are discussed in the "More Information" section of the table

Has Randall got his feet and meters mixed up with the Retsof Salt Mine? Best I can ascertain, it's about 225 m (~700 ft) above sea level at the surface and about 300 m (~1000 ft) deep (putting it about 75 m below sea level. The comic has the entrance around 600 m above sea level and the whole thing about 1000 m deep. 82.13.184.33 16:17, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Is the image broken for anyone else? I can only see the top half. AmethystSky14 (talk) 17:00, 2 July 2026 (UTC)
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