🏗️ The Horde Wants Me Dead...

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Hello Fellow Engineers!

👷‍♂️ Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where engineers build 500m-wide space ears to listen for aliens, architects add stairs to bridges just to keep things spicy, and used cars are flipped with nothing but duct tape and misplaced confidence.

In this edition, we dive into China's cosmic telescope (sorry architects, it’s entirely functional), review a waterfall bridge so unnecessarily vertical it should come with a Sherpa, test our morals in Car Dealer Simulator, and shout out a real-life engineering legend who actually made things that move. Oh, and there’s probably my dog doing something questionable.

Read on – it's all downhill from here... unless you're walking across that Norwegian stair-bridge.

Let’s dive into it 👇

This week, we’re giving away ONE copy of Cat God Ranch! 🐱⛩️

Ever dreamed of running a chill mountain sanctuary… for a divine feline being? No building permits, no architects - just you, some mystical cats, and a lot of sacred snacks. 🐾

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… 🥁

🏆 Jean.Tomballe🏆

Check your inbox! Your cat gods await.

Didn’t win? Don’t worry - there’s more divine nonsense coming your way soon.

Want in on the next giveaway? Vote in the poll below and show us where your engineering loyalties lie. 🌉🔥

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

The World's Biggest Ear

Today’s megabuild marvel isn’t a bridge, a tower, or even something most people would call a "building." It’s FAST, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou, China. And unlike the swoopy nonsense architects love to sketch, this thing actually listens to aliens.

Engineered to fit inside a natural karst crater (because nature did half the trenching for us, cheers, erosion), FAST is the largest single-dish radio telescope on Earth. That’s 500 meters across, with 4,450 aluminium panels all precisely controlled by 2,200 winches. It’s like if a satellite dish and a Transformer had a baby, and then that baby started mapping the universe.

FAST has already discovered over 900 new pulsars since it went operational in 2020, and because we don’t like distractions while alien-hunting, the area around it is an enforced electromagnetic silence zone. That’s right, no phones, no Wi-Fi, and definitely no Bluetooth-enabled sketchpads for architects.

🔗 Read more about it here

Why It’s Cool (and Architect-Proof):

• 500m wide dish, nestled in the terrain like it’s hiding from budget meetings

• 300m active aperture that shape-shifts using winches - precision alien eavesdropping

• Purpose-built feed cabin, suspended on cables above the dish.

• A whole town built around it.

So next time someone praises a “beautiful building,” remind them engineers built a space ear big enough to hear a black hole whisper.

⚡ Cool Links

🧟 The horde wants me dead...
The Horde Wants You Dead is an intense little survival game based on my Timberborners audience and my use of sluices!

🧩 Herdling - A Serene Indie Adventure with Heart
From the creators of Far: Lone Sails, “Herdling” is a short but deeply moving indie game about herding whimsical creatures called Calihorns. Light puzzles, emotional bonds, and a painterly look.

🕯 Keeper - Double Fine’s Strangest, Weirdest Game Yet
Living lighthouses, mutant birds, and candy‑floss-powered puzzles in a post‑apocalyptic setting. Double Fine is leaning deep into surreal - thanks to Xbox Game Pass letting engineers take the creative driving wheel instead of architects.

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

Disaster…

Hey Alexa, play the titanic theme tune…

🎻 

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

Car Dealer Simulator. Where duct tape is cheaper than ethics.

This week I became a certified used car dealer - which means I washed a 1995 rust bucket, sprayed it yellow, and sold it for more than a brand-new hatchback.

You know... capitalism, but make it sketchy.

Also, I may have accidentally stood on a car to wash the roof - realism at its finest.

If you’ve ever wanted to flip cars like a dodgy engineer with racing slicks and no morals, this is your game.

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

Ever thought “You know what this terrifying cliff edge needs? Stairs.”? No? Well, an architect did - because the Vøringsfossen Step Bridge is a real thing. It crosses a waterfall by going DOWN in the middle, then back up again.

Yes, they turned a bridge into a fitness challenge.

To be fair, the engineering is solid, steel trusses, rock anchoring, and it hasn’t collapsed under the weight of a thousand selfie-taking tourists. But that staircase? That's architect energy at its most chaotic.

Final score: 4.3/10