What's stopping us? Not all of us have to, obviously, but at least some of us can live that way.
If our antiquated predecessors could sometimes manage it, I'm sure we can too. Maybe even better.
What's stopping us? Not all of us have to, obviously, but at least some of us can live that way.
If our antiquated predecessors could sometimes manage it, I'm sure we can too. Maybe even better.
Digging out a ton of rock and earth is a lot more complicated IRL than it is in games like Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft. Real life geology is pretty complicated, you gotta deal with shit like ground water, unstable types of earth, blasting. It's all pretty expensive and dangerous. Meanwhile humans have gotten pretty good at erecting shit above ground, we can throw up sheds and huts like nobodies business.
Edit: Also plumbing, electrical, HVAC, means of egress and sewage become problems with subterranean development. Digging a room underground, doable, but then you're gonna have to dig out additional shit to get all the water pipes and air ducts in there. Also, people like having windows, and windows are good for fire safety, but it's kind of hard to put enough windows in if only one side of a dwelling is facing the open land.
true true
woah slow down
As much as I like DF, even dwarfs couldn't mine out giant granite chambers that fucking quick with just pickaxes, come on.
I promise you I was only joking when I implied that Dwarf Fortress is literally more complicated than real life
spoiler
One thing DF just handwaves that I'm not a fan of is overburden. It would actually make minecarts mandatory if you needed to haul large quantities of waste stone out of all of your build sites, and the place where you dump it should be a significant decision (ie don't dump it near the river or you'll poison people downstream).