MovieChat Forums > City of Ember (2008) Discussion > How to build an underground city

How to build an underground city


1. Don't use Nixie tubes for the countdown timer, they're so 1970s.
2. Provide the instructions for egress in a safe built into the mayor's office, don't put them in a box that can easily be mislaid. The second key attached to the mayor's chain is all that needs to be handed over.
3. Don't print the instructions on edible paper.
4. Don't use easily sunk little boats.
5. Don't put a waterwheel in the way.

Also, I don't know about the book, but why is most of the technology from the first half of the 20th century? The filament lights, the levers and dials &c.?

I think it would have been better if the technology had been very futuristic, but failing. Electroluminescent panels in the ceilings, most of them faulty, and replaced by oil lamps and crude arc lamps plugged into the mains sockets.

And the food cans looked like regular ones, not some kind of super-duper vacuum packed irradiated synthetic food that might feasibly last for hundreds of years.

I liked the way they had to plug their headlamps into the mains with long cables. Rechargeable batteries fail eventually.

I liked the way that jobs were allocated by lot, but weren't some of the graduates just children? How would they do the job of a pipeworks labourer? (For that matter Saoirse Ronan wouldn't have taken to her allocated job very well.) It seemed to be rather easy to swap roles, but maybe that was more or less intended.

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Nixie tubes are fine if you've got a generator to run them for 200 years. :)

I think that the old technology partly communicated the way that the people living there were stuck in development, thus behind where they would have been. To us, large-filament incandescent lights are a big symbol of that. Imagine the movie with modern technology; to us at a subconscious level it wouldn't look like they had been there for 200 years without any development.

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6. Fill the city with people devoid of free thought and will.

It's the only explanation I can come up with for why those kids were the first people to turn that cog clockwise, which they only did because the instructions told them to.

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7. Put a big, upwards staircase in the middle of the city, with a hatch that opens after 200 years, instead of a confusing and dangerous one-way rapid deadly water slide as means of leaving. Has the added bonus of allowing traffic between the city and surface. Seriously.

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I understand that many of the issues were manufactured to create peril BUT why was there only one generator? I work at a county Emergency Operations Center (EOC). We have 3 huge diesel generators. It takes about one and a third of them to run a fully opeational building. We rotate their run times about 6 hours and, if need be, we can scale back the power requirement.

Back-up, back-up, back-up!

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The whole thing could have been done FAR more simple for the builders. Instead of all those boats - which you could easily imagine there were too many inhabitants to even be enough boats for. The little box which everything relies on.. Since you already HAVE a timer counting down for 200 years. Why not have a huge door with stairs going up. Have it hidden in the dark but lamps around it that would turn on once 200 years have passed. As soon as the time is up the lights come on in a path to the door that opens and there are instructions written on a metal plate telling you to get out and so on.
As is with the movie - as well as in the book. There isnt any way to get BACK into the city so you couldnt even get back to take the remaining supplies which would be sorely needed in an empty world ( I wont spoil the books but DAMN you all need to read them - im at the second book now)

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Watching the movie and reading about the books (3 wars and 4 plagues) the Builders built Ember in a hurry so I guess they had to find a way to save a number of people with limited resources. Not to mention that due to the conditions we don't know if the Builders were the cleverest people ever or just the cleverest left.

Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.

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True. They did look like they were doing it in a hurry.
However it would have made ALOT more sense to hide a big steel door in the darkness. After 200 years they would light up a path to it like a runway and the door opening to a hallway with the truth engraved in hard plastic or metal with the stuff they need in order to go up and out.

I REALLY would love to have seen the remaining books turned into movies too.

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