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Level 7 is the diary of Officer X-127, who is assigned to stand guard at the "Push Buttons," a machine devised to activate the atomic destruction of the enemy, in the country’s deepest bomb shelter. Four thousand feet underground, Level 7 has been built to withstand the most devastating attack and to be self-sufficient for five hundred years. Selected according to a psychological profile that assures their willingness to destroy all life on Earth, those who are sent down may never return.
    Originally published in 1959, and with over 400,000 copies sold, this powerful dystopian novel remains a horrific vision of where the nuclear arms race may lead, and is an affirmation of human life and love. Level 7 merits comparison to Huxley’s A Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 and should be considered a must-read by all science fiction fans.

“Subterranean Twin Cities is a treasure—a book for the Tom Sawyer in all of us. Greg Brick is one of those few persons with the unique talent to write expertly about his adventures, bringing readers along with him on hands and knees.” —Steve Thayer, author of Saint Mudd and The Weatherman.

We tend to send things underground that we are not interested in ever seeing again. Sewage. Garbage. In the past, we have used the underground to age such provisions as cheese and beer. In Subterranean Twin Cities, geologist, historian, and urban speleologist Greg Brick takes us on an adventurous, educational, and—thankfully—sanitary tour beneath the streets and into the myriad tunnels, caves, and industrial spaces that make up the Twin Cities’ fascinating and surprisingly vast underground landscape.

In this groundbreaking tour, the first of its kind of the Twin Cities, Brick mines the stories that lie below the city surface. Beginning with an accessible history on the geology of the area—including the giant cone-shaped mollusk Endoceras, whose thirteen-foot-long fossils are found in the Mississippi gorge—Brick guides us into a series of astounding firsthand expeditions. We follow him into St. Paul’s historic Carver’s Cave, with its stories of sunken treasure; through the many caves constructed for brewing, cheese ripening, and mushroom farming; and into the world of nineteenth-century show caves for tourists. We even find ourselves in the “Shangri-la” of urban caves: the extensive Schiek’s Cave seventy-five feet beneath the busy streets of downtown Minneapolis.

From spending the onset of Y2K in Carver’s Cave (just in case) to long hours wading in underground rivers, Brick proves himself a knowledgeable, wry, and daring guide. Subterranean Twin Cities shines a headlamp (with extra batteries, of course) into the captivating labyrinths beneath the Twin Cities and reminds us that what we see aboveground is really only half of the story.