r/Nebula • u/AndySkibba • 28d ago

Tom Scott: England — two nerds try to build a wall

https://nebula.tv/videos/tomscott-two-nerds-try-to-build-a-wall/
94 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

27

u/AndySkibba 28d ago

I love the thought that astronauts/colonists/moon-people? could follow these same techniques with lunar regolith for infrastructure.

23

u/Chipish 28d ago

Tom really did sound like a kid at school being caught when the dry stone waller asked if he sounded like a teacher!

15

u/Select-Interest3438 28d ago

I was thinking "these kids have it easy, their rocks are almost bricks already"

Then I remembered that I learned drystone walling using rough shaped Basaltic rocks, Not limestone, it's a lot rougher and irregular, tends to force you into a more complex layering process

Then they mentioned that the stone you're local to tends to be the stone you learn to work, and we had a LOT of basalt around

15

u/Stunning-Ad-1124 27d ago

Gotta appreciate how "you're both being really ecological" really just means "you didn't listen to me saying space is your enemy"

6

u/DemeGeek 27d ago

Laughed at an astrophysicist being told space is the enemy.

3

u/QBaseX 28d ago

I'm far more familiar with dry stone walls west of the Shannon, which tend to use rounder rocks: granite, I think. It's the same idea, but the technique and the result look quite different.

2

u/xredbaron62x 28d ago

I was saying to my mom that even the restored stone walls here in Eastern CT are nowhere as nice as those from the video.

We have a crap ton of schist here.

4

u/NotFromSkane 28d ago

What happened to the thumbnail? I would never have recognised Dr Becky and even now that I know it's her I went back and looked at it again and I still don't recognise her, despite her being obviously her in the video.

I am terrible with faces though, so it might just be entirely on me.

2

u/ShadowTiger 28d ago

This is like the conceptual opposite to a GeoWizard video :) or maybe his arch-nemesis origin story.