Posted on 05/28/2026 4:43:48 PM PDT by dynachrome
Denver International Airport is preparing to open portions of a mysterious underground tunnel system that has long been plagued by conspiracy theories.
Officials announced plans this week to convert sections of the airport’s underground baggage tunnels into pedestrian walkways connecting concourses A, B and C.
The tunnels, which have long fueled speculation involving secret bunkers, "lizard people" and underground military facilities, will become an alternative route for passengers traveling between terminals.
Currently, travelers primarily move between concourses using the airport’s underground train system.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston acknowledged the airport’s unusual reputation while discussing the project.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I liked the short lived series.
I never flew through Newark.
“That’s where the alien aircraft are hangared.”
No they’re not. Denver is the transport hub for the underground, hypersonic rail service to Area 51 and Dulce, New Mexico.
“but all I see is rocks”
But did they move on their own.
wy69
James Madison had tunnels for the students to use between buildings in the quad.
Hoagland professed to see gears and other machine parts and even the head of a robot like C3PO. Bell, who lived in the Nevada desert, said that looking at rocks or pictures of rocks too long could make you imagine that you were seeing things that were not there.
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
“...could make you imagine that you were seeing things that were not there.”
We are a very immature race with a tiny idea of what life is. I said it is jest, but could it be true? We don’t know and as long as we insist to being the only intelligent life in whatever people wish to call our placement in space, then we will remain a closed minded race and always behind the curve.
People wonder why they remain in seclusion. Would you entertain approaching a planet so interested in killing itself? I wouldn’t and I’m just a people and didn’t have the technology to travel from somewhere through space or time or both to get somewhere like here. They chose that poorly.
wy69
“After all, that is more or less what we do with primitive tribes.”
Even with our limited intelligence.
wy69
Experience can teach when intelligence fails. Stand on a fire ant nest once and one learns to avoid them.
“Stand on a fire ant nest once and one learns to avoid them.”
Did that in Florida once and you’re right. But taking off my pants in my front yard to get a hose for help was a bit embarrassing when I got them washed off. But I guess it might have been comical had it not been myself.
wy69
As a life long Floridian, I have been in similar circumstances more than once. Fortunately, the USDA has cultivated and distributed a species of phorid fly that seems to be reducing the fire ant problem.
“As a life long Floridian...”
I was stationed in Tampa, MacDill, in 1975 through most of 1977 starting my second enlistment after getting healthy again. I PCSed bringing scars from that stay from the ants. Must be some brave flies.
wy69
The flies are bred in special labs, but were originally imported by the USDA from Argentina, the home of the imported fire ant species. The flies are a species specific parasite and are small enough to lay eggs on the head of a fire ant. The eggs hatch and the larvae eat the brain of the fire ant. Just trying to avoid the flies seems to distract fire ants and suppress their foraging activity.
As it was, the first fire ant control effort in the 1960s was a failure. Old B-17 bombers were fitted with hoppers of poisoned corn meal that they sprayed over vast swaths of Florida and the Southeast. Unfortunately, the poisoned bait killed off most species of ants and made it possible for fire ants to come back even stronger.
As a boy, I saw the B-17 fire ant bombers in action and at a local Orlando airport. The whole thing was peculiar, with old warbirds made into pest controllers.
“The whole thing was peculiar, with old warbirds made into pest controllers”
Surprisingly there were many military aircraft used for crop dusting and pest control. Crop dusting with insecticides began in the 1920s in the United States. The first widely used agricultural aircraft were converted war-surplus biplanes, such as the De Havilland Tiger Moth and Stearman. I was flagging for Stearman aircraft for my first job at 16.
A major reason for using military aircraft is that between conflicts they were just surplus. After World War II, surplus planes became readily available (and relatively inexpensive) and agricultural use of aircraft saw a rapid expansion. By the early 1950s, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) listed over 5000 aircraft in agricultural use. Farmers found that aircraft could spray 60 to 70 acres an hour compared with 100 acres a day for a tractor-drawn ground sprayer.
Today, a variety of planes, helicopters, and drones are in agricultural use. Thanks to innovations in agricultural aircraft pioneered by Fred Weick and others, there are approximately 1,560 aerial application businesses in the United States. In addition, the country boasts almost 3,400 total agricultural pilots, who work in all fifty states. Each year, these pilots treat 127 million acres, orapproximately 28 percent of America’s cropland. I can’t give you names but I knew two of the best pilots I ever saw that both fighter pilots in WW II and Korea. One even flew in the air circus as a clown in a stearman and did the act in it taking off with his feet sticking out of the cockpit. When I was there, he would take the flaggers for fun up and do aeronautics with them. He had taught my parents to fly so he made it his mission each year to try to get me sick. He never made it and even did a lomcovák with me once. That was the damnedest feeling I ever had. But a lot of fun. It was like riding zero gravity multiple roller coasters at the same time.
There are some bad stories about the business like my having to pull a dead pilot out of a stearman when he fell asleep and went through a walnut tree and broke his neck or one pilot that ground looped one at a small airport but walked (ran) away from it. The business has it’s risks for both the pilots and flaggers. There was a weird wind situation near the airport where we were dusting alfalfa and I had to jump off an embankment into a ditch full of water and the aircraft hit the top of the embankment and went down in the next field. No one hurt, but an expensive mistake. He was flying an Ag Wagon. I worked that job for 3 years. Saw a lot of different aircraft used. They were just modified military aircraft of different sizes and strengths.
wy69
“The whole thing was peculiar, with old warbirds made into pest controllers”
Surprisingly there were many military aircraft used for crop dusting and pest control. Crop dusting with insecticides began in the 1920s in the United States. The first widely used agricultural aircraft were converted war-surplus biplanes, such as the De Havilland Tiger Moth and Stearman. I was flagging for Stearman aircraft for my first job at 16.
A major reason for using military aircraft is that between conflicts they were just surplus. After World War II, surplus planes became readily available (and relatively inexpensive) and agricultural use of aircraft saw a rapid expansion. By the early 1950s, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) listed over 5000 aircraft in agricultural use. Farmers found that aircraft could spray 60 to 70 acres an hour compared with 100 acres a day for a tractor-drawn ground sprayer.
Today, a variety of planes, helicopters, and drones are in agricultural use. Thanks to innovations in agricultural aircraft pioneered by Fred Weick and others, there are approximately 1,560 aerial application businesses in the United States. In addition, the country boasts almost 3,400 total agricultural pilots, who work in all fifty states. Each year, these pilots treat 127 million acres, orapproximately 28 percent of America’s cropland. I can’t give you names but I knew two of the best pilots I ever saw that both fighter pilots in WW II and Korea. One even flew in the air circus as a clown in a stearman and did the act in it taking off with his feet sticking out of the cockpit. When I was there, he would take the flaggers for fun up and do aeronautics with them. He had taught my parents to fly so he made it his mission each year to try to get me sick. He never made it and even did a lomcovák with me once. That was the damnedest feeling I ever had. But a lot of fun. It was like riding zero gravity multiple roller coasters at the same time.
There are some bad stories about the business like my having to pull a dead pilot out of a stearman when he fell asleep and went through a walnut tree and broke his neck or one pilot that ground looped one at a small airport but walked (ran) away from it. The business has it’s risks for both the pilots and flaggers. There was a weird wind situation near the airport where we were dusting alfalfa and I had to jump off an embankment into a ditch full of water and the aircraft hit the top of the embankment and went down in the next field. No one hurt, but an expensive mistake. He was flying an Ag Wagon. I worked that job for 3 years. Saw a lot of different aircraft used. They were just modified military aircraft of different sizes and strengths.
wy69
As a boy though, I instinctively felt that those old warbird B-17s I saw were dishonored and ill-treated by being used to spray poison bait against fire ants. The romantic in me wanted (and still wants) old warriors to have an honorable and easy retirement.
I have some acquaintance with aviation. As a teen, I helped my father restore and update an early model Navion by cleaning, sanding, tool fetching, and other simple tasks. In that way I got to know the mechanics, instructor, and the FBO at the airport. They were all WW II veterans. Now legendary warbird restorer Tom Reilly is a family friend of many years.
One of my late father's friends built two Pitts Specials in his garage. His craftsmanship was meticulous. Sadly, although an excellent casual pilot, he was unlucky in that he lasted only about a month as a crop duster. On a hot summer day, he apparently got his load, air density, and lift calculations wrong. His Pawnee stalled and crashed when he banked after takeoff.
The airport FBO (who had been an SBD Dauntless pilot in the Pacific) suspected that recent heavy rains had left the woods at the end of the runway waterlogged and especially productive of lift-destroying humidity. As the old saying goes, the sky wants to kill you and will do so if you give it a chance.
Airport officials are transforming sections of these underground spaces into pedestrian walkways to connect Concourses A, B, and C, providing passengers with an alternative route during airport train disruptions.
Given the frequency of train disruptions and the absolute inability of anyone in the state of Colorado to repair or maintain any infrastructure, opening the tunnels is the next excuse for why the trains don’t run
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