alt.hn

7/3/2026 at 5:54:25 PM

Holes

 https://xkcd.com/3266/large/

by caminanteblanco

7/3/2026 at 9:34:48 PM

Hover text is "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."

by dvh

7/4/2026 at 2:26:36 AM

Forget about that, I just learned there’s a salt mine under Detroit!

by rus20376

7/4/2026 at 7:50:56 AM

There's also one under Yerevan, Arnenia. Funnily, the altitude differences in the city are so large that the bottom of the mine is still higher above sea level than the city center.

by throw-the-towel

7/3/2026 at 10:24:42 PM

I'm excited for them too!

by pchristensen

7/3/2026 at 10:31:05 PM

Haha I definitely googled that, and I was not disappointed

by sph

7/4/2026 at 12:29:29 PM

Was missing the Iranian nuclear sites and other underground bases in this.

Also, I knew Baikal lake was deep, but not how deep its sediment layer is! That looks like something out of a Lovecraft story...

by xg15

7/3/2026 at 8:33:23 PM

Lake Baikal sediment layer almost as deep as the Mariana Trench:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal#Geography_and_hydr...

[...] and below this lies some 7 km (4.3 mi) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 km (5.0–6.8 mi) below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.

by WithinReason

7/3/2026 at 8:19:21 PM

Explain xkcd has links to the Wikipedia articles for each hole.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3266:_Holes

by cbarrick

7/3/2026 at 9:09:36 PM

Site down?

The Wikipedia page on borehole doesn’t mention Deep Water Horizon at all.

by ks2048

7/3/2026 at 9:13:19 PM

And Wikipedia says this one is over 12,000m deep,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Shaheen_Oil_Field

by ks2048

7/3/2026 at 9:32:35 PM

The >12km number is length, not depth:

> However, in May 2008, a new record for borehole length was established by the extended-reach drilling (ERD) well BD-04A, in the Al Shaheen oil field. It was drilled to 12,289 m (40,318 ft), with a record horizontal reach of 10,902 m (35,768 ft) in only 36 days.

by aw1621107

7/3/2026 at 9:14:49 PM

Y'all done hugged it to death

by AviationAtom

7/3/2026 at 9:30:25 PM

It was erroring out 12h ago.

by B1FF_PSUVM

7/3/2026 at 7:29:09 PM

I forget how cool Lake Baikal is until it shows up randomly and I'm reminded to go look it up again.

by Avicebron

7/3/2026 at 6:45:49 PM

What are all those oops for?

by halamadrid

7/3/2026 at 7:00:49 PM

collapses and floods it looks like. Here's the oops for the Pantai Remis mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ma0SVjMHA

by Cycl0ps

7/3/2026 at 8:34:05 PM

Wow, that's pretty "oops" if I ever saw it!

by bastawhiz

7/3/2026 at 8:49:00 PM

Lake Peigneur was swallowed by a whirlpool like in an anime, in a sad drilling that took away entire boats. The salt geologic bubble under the lake can absorb gigantic volumes of water, and a drilling for the exploitation of petrol initiated the hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

by eastbound

7/4/2026 at 3:16:30 AM

It's funny this came out today! Just at lunch we were googling the highest and lowest capitals of the world. Lowest is Baku in Azerbaijan, at -28m!

by sheepybloke

7/4/2026 at 5:00:48 AM

Funny that he misspelled one (derinku_y_u, literally meaning deep well), given all the effort that clearly went into it.

by ozyschmozy

7/3/2026 at 7:45:46 PM

I had never heard of Mponeng Gold Mine. Terrifying.

by lambdaone

7/3/2026 at 8:02:31 PM

Did you not scroll over to see the even more massive Kola Superdeep Borehole?

by jadbox

7/3/2026 at 8:12:47 PM

Yes, but there aren't any people in that one.

by lambdaone

7/3/2026 at 9:02:03 PM

What's at 12,000 meters deep? What are they afraid of?

by neilv

7/3/2026 at 9:22:52 PM

There's a documentary about that, in the form of the game 'Motherload'

https://www.crazygames.com/game/motherload

by rolfus

7/3/2026 at 9:36:00 PM

I played that game way back when - I highly recommend it.

Edit: thanks, that's an(other) hour of my life I'll never get back :-)

by rationalist

7/3/2026 at 10:49:09 PM

Nothing of great interest. That's a tiny scratch in the surface of the planet, less than 1% of the radius.

On the other hand although we lack the technology you'd need to destroy the damp rock where we live, we only live on some dry-ish outside surface parts of the rock, and we could trash that part and drive ourselves extinct. "Oops"

by tialaramex

7/3/2026 at 11:38:42 PM

They were asking why the two deepest holes, despite being nowhere near each other, dug decades apart, are 99.3% of 12km and 99.5% of 12km respectively. Was BP symbolically honoring the russian scientists? Does the earth have an extremely uniform material property that happens to be at a very round number of km? Just a complete coincidence all around?

(I asked AI, and it says coincidence, since BP stopped drilling once they hit oil, and the russians stopped drilling once they hit some melty rock.)

by geor9e

7/4/2026 at 9:00:22 AM

Also in both cases economic reasons. BP drilled to reach oil which makes economic sense, but AIUI the Russians wanted to keep drilling but eventually central government wouldn't give them any more money.

But yes, largely a coincidence. I think humans would see the same "pattern" if it were slightly more than 12km. We like patterns, we're the superstitious pigeon experiment but at a ludicrous scale. I would like to think the patterns I've seen point at some underlying more important truth - but the pigeon thought so too.

by tialaramex

7/4/2026 at 2:49:08 AM

XKCD always has a mobile version. You need add a m. prefix -

https://m.xkcd.com/3266/

Helps to see the alt-text if you're on a phone.

by thunderbong

7/4/2026 at 6:43:03 PM

Long pressing the image shows the title text.

by nosrepa

7/4/2026 at 2:50:33 AM

Looks pretty blurred

by saretup

7/3/2026 at 10:31:45 PM

You cannot convince me that something ridiculous wasn't covered up wrt Deepwater Horizon.

by underlipton

7/4/2026 at 1:31:24 AM

Can we update the link to https://xkcd.com/3266/

Anyone who wants the large image can click/tap the image, but the revere is harder to do.

In the other direction, Mt. Everest is 8,848.86 meters above sea level. I guess we don't include Lake Tahoe and/or Crater Lake because even though they're deep(ish), their bottoms are above way sea level?

by js2

7/3/2026 at 9:13:26 PM

[dead]

by tomlow