Mysterious Alien Ship or Dragon Egg Under Seattle?

One of my favorite fun dragon flick is the 2002 film, Reign of Fire from Buena Vista Pictures, starring Dark Knight's Christian Bale, Interstellar's Matthew McConaughey, & Gerard Butler.

It's basically about humanity trying to survive a dragon infested Earth.  And it all started with the London Underground mining project encountering and waking up a hibernating dragon.

Or how about the 1967 film, Quatermass and the Pit (AKA Five Million Years to Earth) where they find, again in the London Underground project, a mysterious buried spacecraft, starting all kinds of troubles!

So many movies tap into the mystery of strange things found under the ground during mining, excavation, cave exploration or even satellite imaging... and it's a great way to start the mystery of the movie.  (If it's done well)

Now, on to the reality of What's Under Seattle!

There has been a tunneling project going on under Seattle using a huge tunneling machine named Bertha.  Bertha is five stories tall, uses a crew of twenty and was working on a two-mile tunnel.

But something afoul has taken place and Bertha has run into something called...  "the object."  And the object has stopped Bertha in its tracks!

We're doomed!  Dragons and aliens are about to consume the Earth!!!

Or not. 

But the thing in their way must be huge, considering.  Take a look at the pic above of the size of the tunnel Bertha is creating.

Many romantic theories being thrown out there include alien ships, buried trains, a piece of the older city sunken into the ground, ice age boulders and sunken ships.  (Seattle has a fascinating geologic history.)

The problem is that Bertha does not have windows up at the front where the grinding gears are located, so the techs have to figure out how to crawl up through the machine to take a gander at this Kryptonian interstellar ship.  Or Megatron!

Or giant rock.

They'll know in due time and the mysterious veil that has grabbed our imaginations will be lifted, and all will be back to the boring old normal.  (If we're lucky.)

There's a great informative piece over on the NY Times about this issue.  Check it out.  Also, here's Bertha's Flickr page.

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