How do urban explorers "keep places open"?

Personally, I'm okay with telling other explorers that perhaps it's not a good idea to post photos and details of certain places openly on their Facebook wall and perhaps do some moderation on our regional forum to keep stuff private, but otherwise in my eyes even a level 9 hardcore inner circle explorer can not "claim" a location to himself.

Posted by Tupsumato How do urban explorers "keep places open"?

I'll give you an example. There is a cave that was sealed for decades. The city had bulldozed a few metric tons of dirt and rocks over the former entrances. We dug a new tunnel and it took dozens of explores months to get the place back open. Once inside, we went work again and dug a few back up entrances, stopping just a few feet from the surface. That way, if the old entrance gets sealed we know exactly where to dig to re-open it. Sure enough, the spot got blown up and sealed again, but due to the hard work of the local community, there are still other ways into the cave.

This is the kind of action we take as a community all the time. We most certainly are "keeping places open."

Posted by CowboyDan This is the kind of action we take as a community all the time. We most certainly are "keeping places open."

Amen.

Unfortunately though, I could name a hundred times more locations which have been permanently compromised, owed to the "help them out and tell em' the easiest way in" tactic.

And before someone points out the obvious, yes, of course there are a few exceptions to this, and every other rule.

Way way way tmi

Posted by Avatar-X It's a great story, but I don't see how it has anything whatsoever to do with places UER? You said in your original post: You implied that this was somehow related to UER or to another urban exploration site, by virtue of that you posted it here. But the event you describe has nothing whatsoever to do with UER or any other urban exploration site -- it could easily have been posted on a bulletin board on the campus. Are you hating on the internet just for the sake of it being the internet? Or are you just upset that you didn't do enough research to verify that this "tour" was legit? -av

Believe it or not, UER exists on the internet.

Sure act like it's my fault for not verifying a tour was legit (our contact was a well known and trusted university staff member who was in touch with a representative from the location. What could we have possibly been expected to further verify?) so that you can feel better about skating around the issue of things being posted on the internet that cause problems in the real world. FYI These owners have harassed/threatened local forums for posting photos of their location. They are a little crazy. I thought maybe the fact that they waited in the dark with cops to ambush us and shove guns in our faces was an indication of how crazy property owners can be. And they were there because of something that was posted on the internet. This is something which you deny even happens. And yet here it is happening. I didn't think I'd need to provide the whole back story on them for you. Not surprisingly, they have gone after urban exploration websites before, too.

In response to your question "Are you hating on the internet just for the sake of it being the internet?", uh. No. Are you saying things just for the sake of making it sound like you're making a point?

I am against people carelessly posting sensitive locations on the internet because it's common sense.

I'm still confused how you justify protecting entry points and not protecting locations (as if they aren't one side of the same coin). But you conveniently locked that thread without even responding to the point, leaving me to assume you really do have no response.
edit by av: my response was days ago and is here

Not only does UER happen to be located on the same internet as other websites, but it is the most well known urban exploration website to which many thousands of people flock daily. Thus I would argue that information here has a much higher probability of being abused than information posted on a lone university message board, despite the full member stipulations you seem to regard as the pinnacle of online security.

UER v Locations

That's pretty kinky.

Methinks the world needs more TUNNELZ!

We're 66% done with our confusing crawl maze. Who wants to COME DIG and turn that to 100%? And this activity is not only allowed, but encouraged by the owner!

Posted by Slim Jim Methinks the world needs more TUNNELZ! We're 66% done with our confusing crawl maze. Who wants to COME DIG and turn that to 100%? And this activity is not only allowed, but encouraged by the owner!

Curious, is it going to remain a crawl/crouch maze, or do you plan to eventually make it walkable? Either way, i need to get my ass out there. I'm not even sure why i haven't been there yet.

Posted by relikCurious, is it going to remain a crawl/crouch maze, or do you plan to eventually make it walkable?

The initial maze will always be crawl, because if we had designed it walking, we would've had to haul four times the amount of sand out of there, twice for the added height and twice so the tunnels could loop up and over each other without doubling the slope and making them too steep.

And it feels like you're going a lot farther when you're crawling.

But the series of rooms and tunnels that will lie beyond the maze will mostly be walking height. So once you solve the maze, you can hang out and party without having to crawl.