Volcano under the city
A new rat pope was elected.
Praise Cheesus
Thank you, much a-brie-ciated.
I love how plausible this is
Something’s happening in Zaun.
That’s just from the ruins of Old New York that New York is built on top of. The mutants down there are a steampunk society.
It’s from the streamed clams they’re having.
Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:
Thank you. There’s so many people responding with unhelpful answers.
Ummm. It’s called the “Free Exchange of Information and ideas”. It’s about time you got used to it, Boomer. It was all your idea.
I’ve never been called a boomer before, I’m far from it. Let me exchange a free idea and information; you’re a fucking moron.
Sorry to have hurt your millennial feelings.
No feeling hurt here. Quite the opposite. Again, allow me express my “free exchange of information and ideas” and my somewhat amused feelings; You’re a fucking moron!
And you, sir, are an accomplished wordsmith! I mean, “fucking moron” twice? Brilliant! Thank you for you contributions!
Don’t feed the troll, ignore and move on.
Wtf? Bad form, Peter Pan.
You should tell this guy.
Wow that’s neat
No, that’s heat.
Yeet the heat or beat the meat
Yeet the meat not the heat.
There’s a lot of things under the streets of New York, many of them cause heat. In order to cool them off the heat is vented outside and the warm moist air meets with the cool dry air and condensates into droplets that we see as steam. Same affect as breathing out on a cold day, you’re not creating steam but it looks that way because the warm moist air from your breath is condensing in the cool dry air.
Could you name one thing that would cause heat under streets? It’s kinda hard to believe tbh
When you take a hot shower where do you think that water is going?
Wouldn’t it cool off in the sewer, though?
Yes but hot water continues to flow in.
And it doesn’t need to stay very hot. It just needs to be warmer than the outside air temperature in order for vapor to form.
The ground and continuous hot water input keeps everything insulated.
But cold water is also continuously flowing in. And as someone said, it perhaps cools down quickly. Is that all and all enough for such a dense vapor cloud to appear as in pic?
If it is colder above ground, than the ambient temperature of the ground, IIRC that’s somewhere in the 50° F range, and less humid than the sewers, sure.
More hot water than cold water is flowing in. It’s a simple thermodynamics problem
How so, or do you just wanna sound smart
Pipes transferring steam.
Subway brakes.
Ehhhhhhhh
The New York City steam system includes Con Edison’s Steam Operations, a piped steam system which provides steam to large parts of Manhattan. Other smaller systems provide steam to New York University and Columbia University, and many individual buildings in New York City also have their own steam systems. The steam is used to heat and cool buildings and for cleaning and disinfecting. It is the largest such system in the world and has been in operation since 1882.
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now unfortunately
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now
unfortunatelyvery fortunately since children don’t know how to look out for a superheated steam leak and it was only a matter of time before a child got fucking bisectedFtfy
Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology
Whole parts of Eastern Europe still transport Steam for heating.
What you think of is district heating, it (usually) just uses warm/hot water instead of steam.
Amazing for the 1800s
Wow this makes me realise why so many movies set in New York I watched in the 80’s and 90’s often had steam coming up from the ground.
Denzel movie used the steam pipes
That’s not smoke. It’s a space station.
That’s no moon, it’s… oh, wait… shit.
What the other comments aren’t mentioning is that, as you’ve probably learned, poops steam. Put a lot of poops under the ground (i.e. sewers) and that steam has to go somewhere, due to various complex thermodynamic principles that are probably beyond the scope of this question.
It’s not poop. It’s people running hot water. That hot water needs to go somewhere and that somewhere are the sewers.
Hot water flowing through the sewers is warmer than the air temps. The air being vented from the sewers is also hot because of the water.
As the hot air comes into contact with cold air outside of the sewers you see vapor form as the cold air squeezes condensation from the hot air.
Despite the fact that poo steams if it is really cold outside, I have a strong suspicion they did not build a smoke stack to release a cloud of shit-smelling steam in the city.
Based on media set in New York, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
With respect, I believe you may have confused New York with Cleveland.
Old steam heating system. They vent it when they’re working on a section.
Side-note: surprised by all the fellow New Yorkers i’m seeing in this thread. I thought yous were still at the other place.
I wonder if they could make it more efficient by running at a lower temperature and installing water source heat pumps in buildings. https://youtu.be/abGiNL9IT54
That’s a good idea! My understanding is that the old steam network is slated for decommission and replacement by this program, basically a large distributed geothermal heat pump network that also harvests from major heat producers like data centers and provides both heating and cooling.
It will end the era of the steamy-street Sin City aesthetic but should be many, many times more efficient than the old steam system. Phase-change thermal transfer in HVAC systems is nearing 400% efficiency, so 4 times more efficient than the theoretical limit of direct heating, because it only uses the energy necessary to move heat from one place to another rather than produce it, and it works for both heating and cooling.
Right now I believe they’re piloting the system in NYCHA buildings (public housing) of neighborhoods outside the old steam network, like Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, but supposedly the plan is to expand to the rest of Manhattan.
Edit: corrected coefficient of performance
Yep. Detroit has this, too.
Yeah it’s common enough I figured most knew, but a few years ago I went ice skating at the bryant park rink with this girl who refused to walk anywhere near the steam. She thought they were toxic and didn’t accept my explanation, so we had to walk an extra few blocks to get around the steam work. Shrug
Teenage mutant ninja turtles barbeque
Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.
I swear I thought this answer was about as accurate as the one that said “dragons”.
How steampunk for probably the largest city in the world to use steam in this day and age? I love it…
I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th [or 35th] largest city.
11th, OR 35th? Could you explain?
Or 3rd or 76th.
It depends on how you define the city, here’s my source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
That list is from 2018
NYC didn’t grow any more populous since.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/nyregion/nyc-population-decline.html
I don’t know why they include the surrounding areas as part of the city population. The 5 boroughs is roughly 8 million people. If you live in jersey city, you shouldn’t be counted as part of nyc population
I don’t know why they care about population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_by_area clearly land is more important because land votes not people.
