Diggerstvo (from the English digger - digger) - the study of underground communications. People involved in digging are called diggers. Diggers are engaged in the study of underground structures built by man using building materials and technologies, ventilation shafts, drainage systems, sewers, underground rivers, abandoned and operating underground military facilities.
In the bowels of the earth, under the joint influence of chemicals, electromagnetic and other physical fields, as well as the radiation of radioactive waste that modern civilization buries underground, physiological deviations, anomalies appear, even mutants appear.
Some researchers are inclined to believe that a new incomprehensible and sometimes hostile life for the inhabitants of the heavenly world is being born underground.
It is not surprising that in such conditions urban myths about underground lakes and stalactite caves with mysterious creatures appear, subway tunnels are teeming with ghosts, werewolves, gnomes and other representatives of the otherworldly reality. Digger jargon gave them their own names - "sliders" and "hohriks", but in general - "glitches" …
If you do not go into mysticism and speak quite seriously, then we can conclude that a new life has long arisen and is constantly developing in the sewage system of Moscow, generated by the unreasonable, if not simply criminal, activities of people.
These are fish, small animals and insects, altered under the influence of a chemical "broth" created by a mixture of wastewater from industrial enterprises and scientific laboratories. The results of scientific research carried out by scientists from Moscow and St. Petersburg are published in newspapers and scientific journals.
Victor Pegasov, Candidate of Biological Sciences from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who conducted a comprehensive survey of the fauna of the Moskva River in 1997, believes that practically some freaks live within the capital: some specimens lacked fins, others did not have scales, and others did not had an eye, the fourth had a deformed jaw.
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Moscow fishermen call these inhabitants of the river "pugs". You can only meet a normal fish by a miracle. But the "chemical broth", already diluted with surface water, which is formed in underground sewage flows, gets into the Moskva River.
But if such "pugs" arise under the influence of "non-concentrated" waste from enterprises, then what should the creatures living in the sewer network look like? This is where it is worth carefully and without prejudice to listen to the opinion of the diggers, who have been living in the undergrounds of Moscow for more than ten years.
“Imagine the houses of mutant worms living in an alkaline environment,” says V. Mikhailov. - Their dwelling resembles formations in the form of halves of the brain. We called them "brainworms". These are the inhabitants of mines at a depth of 160 meters."
And here is another mutant, an inhabitant of the Moscow sewer:
“An incomprehensible animal was sitting in a dry lateral branch and crunched with something unpleasant. He had an eerie half-naked tail, reminiscent of a large rat overgrown with coarse bristles. There was a very pungent smell of musk in the dungeon. We called such a creature a "corpse eater."
It is not the higher animals that change most rapidly under the influence of big cities, but insects and other primitive, rapidly evolving creatures:
“This monster had to be called a 'large scalpendroid', although there are few similarities with the latter. It looks more like a large earwig - a kind of creature in a chitinous shell, which, apparently, feeds on insects."
According to the Moscow speleologist and secretary M. I. Burleshina, under the Izmailovo area live saucer-sized cave grasshoppers. The population of huge American cockroaches up to ten centimeters long is widely developed in the undergrounds of Moscow.
These giant black creatures were allegedly brought from America to hunt small prolific local brethren. The overseas insects liked the Moscow climate, and, according to folklore, they multiplied to such an extent that the brick walls began to crumble under the onslaught of chitinous bodies …
For a long time, legends about giant rats from deep dungeons circulated in the capital. For the first time, the Moscow diggers met them completely unexpectedly - in the tunnels under the zoo. There were about five of them. They walked along a tunnel that stretched towards the zoo, the White House and further, to the American embassy … The dungeon explorers threw crowbars and, without waiting to see if the rats wanted to chase them, hastily retreated.
In the dark, the rats seemed huge. Later, on the surface, having calmed down, the diggers more objectively assessed their dimensions: length - no more than 65 cm (not counting the tail), height at the withers - 25-30 cm. But even such "modest" dimensions are impressive - this is the size of an average fox terrier.
At first, the explorers of the Moscow dungeons even thought that they were nutria, but then they remembered the details of the animals and realized that they had met with rats underground. All proportions they have are rats, except that at the withers the mutants are slightly more narrowed and did not have such a rounded rear as their classic relatives.
Several days have passed after journalists told the media about a meeting with huge creatures under the zoo, and a man who preferred to remain anonymous called the diggers. He identified himself as a former military man and said that there are several abandoned bunkers within Moscow. Next to these structures are the radioactive sedimentation tanks of city reactors, where "any devilry" can occur.
According to the caller, he and his friends once, out of curiosity, went underground near one of the bunkers and saw whole flocks of these giant rats! Their description in detail coincided with what the diggers saw under the Moscow Zoo.
Biologists are wary of the suggestion that the giant rats were caused by radiation, chemistry, or the manifestation of geopathogenic zones. Large representatives of these animals are just another species, the so-called "Indonesian rat". They are usually five times larger than ordinary, urban, dogs in landfills are terrified of them. But if mutations are not the reason for their appearance, then how did they get to our cities? This remains to be seen by researchers.
DIGGER BIKES AND REALITY
How not to remember the myths of the world subway. In particular, about the stunning legends that "mole people" seem to live in the abandoned tunnels - homeless vagrants who never come to the surface and feed on rats. They are aggressive, attack ordinary people and have long lost their human appearance.
In 1993, Jennifer Toth's book Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Under New York was published. Its author, in particular, says that rat tenacity and survival are amazing. Scientifically, this is explained by an evolutionary strategy - high fertility at short gestation periods. As well as the collective mind - they all act as a single whole and oppose the impending danger together, be it traps, poisons or cementing underground passages.
So, no matter how we relate to what is happening underground, life in the underground requires further study. One thing is clear - this is a gigantic laboratory for the breeding of unexpected mutants and freaks, which are already beginning to develop arbitrarily, without any control from the people. Of course, to save your nerves, you don't have to look into this underworld, but where is the guarantee that this Pandora's box will not spill out onto the surface ?!
There are plenty of unverified rumors. That about crocodiles in the sewer: as if one private trader accidentally launched a couple of crocodiles into the sewage, they took root there, settled down and even began to multiply. That about the vipers who escaped from the circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and later settled in the ventilation passages of the house on Kolobovsky lane.
True - isn't it, but people talk and discuss. In a big city, everything is intertwined and connected. And the walls and basements of houses are sure to hide something from the animal world.
Tourists, as a rule, do not see mutated living creatures in the undergrounds or the metro, but synanthropic (living next to humans) animals are met at every step. These are primarily dogs, but also cats, rats, crows.
The dog tribe, for example, has learned to use many of the achievements of mankind. Crossing the road, they behave exactly like people: first they look to the left, then to the right. In the metro, they feel (by smell or by some landmarks invisible to people) which station they have arrived at, where to get off, how to use escalators.
And this always amazes passengers who are simply touched by such habits and instincts. In contrast, cats, crows and rats, on the contrary, learn to avoid humans.
And what is interesting, according to the comments of zoopsychologists, the skills acquired by animals are inherited. Hooded crows have adapted especially well in the city. Some representatives of these birds like to ride down slides, putting a wing under them, others throw stones for fun.
Many have probably seen birds flying out of the dark belly of the tunnel onto the platform. It was even noticed how crows ride on the roofs of subway cars solely for the sake of pleasure. It happened that in the dimness of the metro tunnels, owls hunted rats.
