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I've recently been reading up on mold creating subway networks and I thought that it would a neat thing to add to my world.

So I have giant subterranean slime molds in my world that creates tunnels as it expands. The tunnels are supposed to be big enough to be used as subway networks, leaving behind trails of mold for people to follow. The time scales it needs to create a kilometer-long tunnel usually takes years. What I'm trying to figure out is how exactly the mold is able to tunnel through kilometers of rock and soil. I haven't found anything in the real world I could use.

My question is: Is there a mechanism the slime molds can use for creating expansive tunnel networks?

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  • $\begingroup$ You seem to be asking to build your world for you. Instead try to build it yourself and ask us to help resolve any specific technical issue you may encounter. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Commented Aug 3 at 2:50
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    $\begingroup$ The linked article has nothing to do with slime molds digging through the earth, it's about how the nutritional system of the mold (you should be thinking about your blood vessels) is a good model for efficient tunneling. What you want might be ants or worms. (Really, the science-based tag for this question?) $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Aug 3 at 3:35
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    $\begingroup$ @Dmyt Unlike all other tags, which scope the question, the science-fiction, science-based and hard-science tags scope the answers. The expecation of a science-based answer is that it reflects science as we understand it today. There is no slime mold on the macro level you're talking about. There's nothing like slime mold like you're talking about. Unless people ignore the tag, you've blocked out any rational answers. Have you read the tag's wiki? You should. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Aug 3 at 3:56
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    $\begingroup$ We are not a brainstorming or idea generation site. We are here to help you solve specific worldbuilding problems not build your world for you. You could just avoid explaining why or use whatever explanation you can come up with. If you decide that there is a specific problem with your explanation you could ask us about that. Otherwise you are asking us to establish a fact about your world for you instead of helping you establish the fact for yourself. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Commented Aug 3 at 6:51
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    $\begingroup$ You came across an article linking slime molds to efficient networks of tunnels, turned that into tunneling slime molds, and ask us how that would work. This is a perfect example of asking others to generate ideas. How could this not count as brainstorming? $\endgroup$
    – Joachim
    Commented Aug 4 at 23:01

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You can't get it to go where you want/need it to, not at depth.

Let's review; you need a slime mold that eats rocks, an idea that isn't without scientific merit, many fungi eat into their substrate for nutrients as do many sponges with the difference being that the sponges live on boulders not logs. The problem you have is how do you entice a rock eating slime mold to go the way you need it to?

With slime mold networks scientists use closely spaced food concentrations (which, because they're in the open air, shed detectable particles into the environment) as proxies for population centres and use the mold's feeding tendrils as a map for laying out hard links between those centres in the real world. Now compare your scenario; we have a mold that eats rocks, it only wants rocks and is tuned to find the ones it finds "tasty" under current nutrient loads. Given the heterogeneous and unpredictable nature of rock formations there's nothing to act as a food concentration that will get it to move in the underground direction you want it to go instead of heading over there where that surface clay deposit is just what it needs today. The second problem is the distances involved; even if we posit an engineered organism that moves toward something other than food. This organism has to be able to sense the concentrations of this non-food stimulus, through solid rock, over kilometres, with only the, extremely basic, chemical receptors on it's surface. If it has more than that it isn't a slime mold anymore.

If you want to keep the molds and the tunnels they leave behind have them eat particular ore veins or similar. There you actually have a justifiable precedent, the mold is chasing food concentrations. The tunnels they carve out in pursuit of the ore can continue to expand slowly after the primary vein is gone as a thin skin of the mold continues to eat what it happens to be sitting on leaving behind round(ish) tubes. Those can be washed out with fungicides, to avoid eventual destabilisation by continued slime mold action, and used by the human population. The mold may even leave behind useful material in the form of reduced metals or purified minerals that are its wastes but a boon for the humans exploiting them.

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I maintain that subterranean tunnels are out, but, if your humans are willing to put the cover in the cut and cover building technique there is a possibility. You still need a slime mold that I wouldn't want to share a biosphere with; one that is capable of eating it's way through the rocky subsoil/bedrock of the planet in question at speed, and will. Frankly with any carbon based organism that eats rocks, particularly silicates, at great speed, for breakfast I always worry about what is on the dessert menu. Given such a slime mold you could lay out a trail of bread crumbs, hopefully not literally bread, between point A and point B and your mold will follow it across the surface crewing down into the rock below in a way reminiscent of the Shoggoth in Charles Stross's "A Colder War". This leaves you with a nice smooth cut across the landscape that you can vary the depth and width of with judicious use of food concentration, mold irritants, and fungicides. Then your humans can come along behind the mold, when it is safely dead, lay track, build a roof and back fill the remaining space as needed.

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It eats it

I’ll leave the chemistry to you, but it eats the solids and excretes a mixture of liquids and gasses which can either be easily removed or naturally dissipate.

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    $\begingroup$ That's not a mold I want to meet in a dark alley, or let loose on a planet I plan to live on, but it's also the only thing that makes any sense. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented Aug 3 at 5:45

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