200-Meter Tunnel Discovered in Sri Lankan Prison
Wow:
In a startling discovery, officials of the Kalutara Prison on Horana Road have found a tunnel nearly 200 metres long and eight feet below the prison ground leading to the Kalu Ganga complete with electricity and light bulbs, dug by LTTE suspects in custody over a period of one year.
The tunnel was uncompleted. And the article fails to answer the most important question about this sort of thing: What did they do with the dirt?
“We also suspect that they would have daubed their bodies with soil and had later washed it away to prevent detection of their clandestine project,” the official said.
I don’t see that method being able to dispose of 200 meters worth of dirt over the course of a year, even assuming a small tunnel.
Michael Ash • October 5, 2007 2:19 PM
Really rough: assuming 2m^2 surface area per human, 1mm of dirt spread evenly over the skin, and a 1m^2 cross section tunnel, done once per day for a year, you get a length of 73 centimeters. In order for that to create a 200 meter tunnel you’d need almost 300 people working on it daily. That does sound pretty unlikely.