A great companion piece on a government bureaucrat who solved the problem on how to optimally support the roofs in longwall mines: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/michael-lewis-chris-marks-the-canary-who-is-government/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/mic...</a>
I was surprised that insurance companies wouldn't cover damage from mine subsidence. I guess the lesson is to never buy property if you can't get insurance to cover something (wildfire, flood, hurricane, etc) at a reasonable rate since you're all but certain to encounter it eventually and be left on the hook for high costs.
I remember visiting LKAB in Kiruna, Sweden. Enormous iron ore mining operation and not abandoned at all. I believe it accounts for 10% of all concrete consumption in Sweden. The town in all its Scandinavian mid-century glory at the time was slowly collapsing with facilities and people being moved away a few km. Really hope they saved that erect rocket from the town square.
I can only recommend a visit to the "Ruhrpott" area of Germany. Probably <i>thousands</i> of mines were dug over the centuries, hundreds alone after WW2 when people dug for coal on their own under horrendous conditions, and none of them documented. Accidents and incidents aboveground happen frequently when old shafts collapse. A lot of former mining sites have been converted to museums, although none of them actually allow access at the old depth. You can spend a month in NRW and not be able to visit all the museum sites!<p>The entire Ruhrpott settled and sank so much that if the water pumps in the largest mines would cease operating for too long, the entire area would flood. It's literally called "Ewigkeitslasten" (forever burdens) for that reason.