Trial Baboon reader and guest blogger Jim in Clark’s Grove told a story last week about a friend who deflects vinyl siding sales telephone pitches with the news that he “lives in a cave.” Apparently this tactic works because no one in the vinyl siding industry has expanded into the Man Cave Design Racket. Yet.

Living underground is not uncommon in human history. Consider the Sinagua people of the area now called Arizona. Their former dwelling place is a National Monument, and their apartment building has endured for ages without benefit of siding of any kind – vinyl or aluminum.

Beijing has an Underground City – a vast bomb shelter built in the 1970’s in anticipation of nuclear war with Russia, not unlike the individual fallout shelters that Americans built in the 60’s for the very same reason. When I was growing up in Westchester County, New York, my father built such a fallout shelter underneath the garage. You got into it by puling open a heavy iron door in the concrete slab that we parked the cars on. Climbing down the ladder to enter our refuge you could feel the air chill, the humidity increase, and the apocalypse descend. Fortunately the only creatures who spent an appreciable amount of time down there were the spiders.

And then there are the Mole People, still thought to be living in subway tunnels in NYC.

Not that living underground is a lark or a joke. People in Syria who would like to avoid getting killed by their government or its opponents are actually taking refuge in ancient Roman caves.

What would you have to do to adapt to life underground?