Inside a GIANT Tunnel Boring Machine - The Surprising Truth About How We Tunnel!

How did a tiny sea creature inspire the machines that dig massive tunnels under cities? In this episode of Wow! I didn’t know that, we go underground - literally and historically - to explore how the shipworm, a bizarre clam-like animal that once sank ships, sparked a tunnelling revolution. From the incredible story of Marc Brunel’s first tunnel under the River Thames to the monster machines boring through the earth for High Speed 2, this is the wild, unexpected history of how nature shaped one of the biggest engineering breakthroughs of all time.

Chapters
00:00 We’re digging GIANT tunnels
00:57 HS2 is a Mega-Project on a huge scale
02:50 The sea creature that inspired TBMs
04:45 The Grandfather of tunnelling Marc Brunel
06:13 The Brunel Museum & The Thames Tunnel
08:08 How TBMs dug the London Underground
08:52 World’s first Tube tunnel – the Tower Subway
10:06 Inside an HS2 Tunnel Boring Machine
12:36 Driving a TBM
13:54 Building tunnel rings
16:04 What else could the Shipworm teach us?

#Engineering #Tunnelling #HS2 #Shipworm #NatureInspired #Biomimicry #CivilEngineering #Brunel #Infrastructure #ScienceExplained #HistoryOfEngineering #WowIDidntKnowThat #ExplainerVideo #MegaProjects #LondonUnderground

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Produced by Green Signals Productions Ltd
YouTube -    / @greensignals  
Website - https://www.greensignals.org/

Additional resources...
HS2 on YouTube -    / @hs2ltd  
The Brunel Museum - https://thebrunelmuseum.com/
Reuben Shipway - https://explorers.nationalgeographic....

Thanks to HS2 Ltd, The Brunel Museum and Reuben Shipway for being so amazing in helping us to produce this video.

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Show me you read the description by answering this question in the comments...

Tunnel boring machines are traditionally given names. If you got to name one, what would you call it?