👷‍♂️ Undersea Roundabouts & Industrial Balloon Destruction

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Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where balloons are solved with escalating force, roundabouts are installed under the Atlantic, and bridges are scored on load paths instead of vibes.

This week we’re industrially popping balloons, admiring a tunnel that looked at the ocean and said “we’ll go under,” harvesting an entire solar system for fun, and reviewing a Bangkok bridge that absolutely lifts.

If you enjoy serious engineering, minimal architectural nonsense, and numbers getting aggressively larger… you’re in the right place.

Let’s get into it 👇

🎈 Balloon Hater – an incremental clicker game about doing what engineers do best: applying increasing levels of force to a problem until it disappears.

You pop balloons.
You buy bigger weapons.
You unlock new areas.
You discover “special” balloons that give temporary boosts, which is basically the game saying, “have you tried more power?”

It’s simple. It’s chaotic. It escalates responsibly.

And yes - we’re doing it again 🥁
We’re giving away FIVE copies of Balloon Hater, because nothing says community like industrialised balloon destruction.

🎉 This week’s winners:
lammertristan2
rileytab99
gsharf
flockhartarchie
micric

As always: submit a bridge in this email’s poll to enter future giveaways.

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

This week’s project is so absurdly overqualified that it sounds like a prank: an undersea tunnel with a roundabout in the middle.

Which already tells you:
👉 engineers built it
👉 architects tried to add a skylight and were removed for safety reasons

Say hello to the Eysturoy Tunnel (Eysturoyartunnilin) in the Faroe Islands - home to the world’s first undersea roundabout.

What is it?

A three-branch subsea road tunnel that links Streymoy (where the capital Tórshavn is) to Eysturoy, with a roundabout junction under the Atlantic. It opened to traffic on 19 December 2020.

Why this is god-tier engineering

• 🕳️ About 11.2 km total length across the branches

• 🌊 Reaches 189 m below the sea surface at its lowest point

• 🔁 The roundabout itself sits roughly 70–73 m below sea level

• ⏱️ Cuts the Tórshavn ↔ Runavík trip from “pack snacks” to about 16 minutes

It’s traffic engineering, tunnel engineering, ventilation/safety design, and “don’t flood” all rolled into one… beneath an ocean.

No glass. No statement façade. No “inspired by the motion of waves.”
Just rock, road geometry, and the quiet confidence of people who trust calculations more than vibes.

If you’ve got a project that’s hidden, ridiculous, and somehow works perfectly - send it in.

⚡ Cool Links

🏢 Shanghai Super Tower: The 60,000 Ton Behemoth Made Out Of Steel

🐸 “I'm making a game where you are Stuck in a Well with a Frog.”

🏗️ (From the archives) Paddy helps me build the new barbecue...

🦦 I went fishing... (the American way!)

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

Paddy checking his first community post!

From the archives, an 8-week old Paddy enjoying all the pets and cuddles from YouTube viewers so far, here he checks out how his first community post is performing!

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

Starvester is an incremental game where you start by holding click on a planet called Vesta and very quickly graduate to industrialising an entire solar system like it’s a casual Tuesday.

You’ll hire drones that contribute about as much as my editors (i.e. less than one person holding click), then build space elevators, spam satellites, and eventually start harvesting a star with a Dyson swarm.

It’s deeply satisfying, mildly unhinged, and the numbers stop meaning anything around the time your fuel income becomes “yes.”

👉 Watch the video here: Starvester – I harvested a solar system

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

This week we’re heading to Bangkok for a bridge that looks like it bench-presses traffic for fun.

Say hello to the Bhumibol Bridge - a twin cable-stayed crossing over the Chao Phraya River that decided one pylon simply wasn’t dramatic enough.

What’s going on here then?

Opened in 2006, this isn’t just a bridge - it’s part of Bangkok’s Industrial Ring Road, meaning it exists to move serious traffic efficiently around the city instead of through it.

And instead of one crossing, engineers built two cable-stayed bridges with:

• 🗼 Two diamond-shaped pylons (173m and 164m tall)

• 📏 Main spans of 326m and 398m

• 🔄 Sweeping approach viaducts that curve like someone actually modelled vehicle paths

Architects probably pitched a single elegant swoop “inspired by Thai culture.”
Engineers said: “Cool. But here are the load combinations.”

Why this slaps structurally

• Designed for heavy urban traffic loads

• Deep pile foundations in soft river sediments

• Balanced cable-stay system distributing forces cleanly into the pylons

• High clearance for river navigation

• Seismic and wind considerations because tall pylons don’t get to wobble for fun

It’s tall, it’s efficient, and it absolutely earns its silhouette.

There is some architectural flair - the diamond pylons are doing a little posing - but crucially:

The structure justifies the aesthetics.
The cables are working.
The spans make sense.

No decorative nonsense pretending to be structure.

Final Score: 9.4 / 10