Summary

In Second Chamber, MacFarlane takes readers on brief journeys through a series of underland chambers. He describes a painting of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, young men who went underground to flee religious persecution. They slept underground for 300 years and emerged when the danger was gone. He also describes an underground brick storage facility in Wales for the art of the National Gallery in London, meant to keep the treasures safe from bombs. Next, he describes a man who entered a cave near Nidderdale, England during the cold war to prove to British people that they could survive underground in the event of nuclear war. MacFarlane describes the tunnels that connect the Gaza Strip to Egypt, which provide supplies to the people of Gaza in times of blockade. Near the end of the brief prologue, MacFarlane describes the seed vault in...