London Underground City
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The London Underground City was an underground city below London, constructed in secret by the Societal Research Division of Nevrin during the early 1900s. The city was built to study deep-earth geology and observe the behaviour of people in a closed-loop system, and was approximately seven kilometres deep. It uses a unique vaulted design to protect against the sheer pressure of the rock above. As of 2030, the city's population was around 70,000 people; 12,000 of which were citizens of the Science sector. The experiment reached its conclusion in 2041 when the government of the United Kingdom discovered the city and attempted to reintegrate its inhabitants back into society.
History
Early
Due to the city being sealed shortly after initial population in 1937, it became "frozen" in time, retaining the 1930s style of London including the iconic "bobby" police force and much of old English slang and fashion, even though it advanced scientifically in its own way from the surface world. Functionally, it became its own country, separate from the Great Britain.
In 1980, the population of the Science sector (Sector C) began an uprising against Command and Control over worries the city was simply stagnating and disagreements over allocations of resources and funding. This civil war resulted in many people from both sectors losing their lives and the destruction of Sector E, which contained a secondary nuclear reactor used by Science.
Politics
The government of the wider Underground City (Sectors A, B, and D) was officially a democratic monarchy loyal to the British government, but functionally, it became an oligarchic dictatorship during the 1950s. On the other hand, the Science Sector was an egalitarian technocracy where research personnel are in control of the state.
Both governments were fearful of the surface world, believing it had been hit by nuclear weapons and rendered uninhabitable, until communications were restored in the 2030s by explorers who stumbled upon Access Point 54.
Culture
The original government still retained many facets of pre-1930s life, including pre-decimalisation British currency. On the other hand, the Science Sector quickly diverged from the City after its split in the 1980s. It discarded the aged style kept by the former and adopted a retrofuturist aesthetic, which was most prominently seen in its central building, the Grand Forum.
Architecture
Sectors
The city contained five sectors, all in a hub-and-spoke arrangement, with Sector C in the middle. These include Sector A - Command, Sector B - Hydroponics, Sector C - Science, Sector D - Accommodation, and Sector E - Industrial. It was powered by a natural gas well located beneath the lowest point of the city, which also originally fuelled gas lighting and heating. Food for citizens was provided by underground mushroom farms in the Hydroponics sector lit by gas grow lighting; while water came from a deep underground well.
Access Points
Though many of the access points were sealed with concrete after the city's inauguration, Command maintained a few for use in case it ever had to be evacuated, which were occasionally patrolled by agents of its "Surface Monitoring Team", more than once ending up causing the "disappearance" of TfL workers who stumbled across the entrances. The most well known entrance is Access Point 54, off the side of a Tube maintenance tunnel which was protected by a blast door manufactured by Krocera. This access point was also accessible via the London Dungeons attraction in Southwark.
The door led to a lobby, where there were two lifts that would bring people down to four Climbers, tubular shaped gravity-based transporters that were tolerant to the high atmospheric pressure and the surrounding rock. These opened at the bottom into the atrium of Sector D. A lesser known access point was Service Exit B-2, accessible behind the Sector E reactor, which via a service Climber opened into the platform of the derelict King William Street underground station below Monument.