MIT Tunnel Network

Rainy day? Take the tunnels!

Its freezing cold outside and you’ve got to walk across campus. I’m mean it is ass-​cold outside. You’ve got no chance of making it alive. You might as well kiss a Dementor. Instead of giving in and letting our soul be stripped from you, go to the tunnels.
Navigating can be a bit tricky sometimes. Honestly, you’re going to get lost. This is fact. Embrace the fact, cuddle it, then get a tunnel map and tell it to leave.
*Note, the tunnels are also much more cool than the out of doors on hot summer days too. Shocking, I know.

Always less traffic than the First Floor Infinite Corridor.
Would get five of my stars if it continued under Vassar Street to Building 46!

The secret wonder of MIT. While I do have to trek from the farthest of the East side of campus to get to where the tunnels begin, it’s one of the great things about working at MIT in the winter. Whether I need to get to the gym in 32, or one of the many different offices all across the main section of campus, it keeps me from completely freezing in the doldrums of January winter.
Can you get lost in this craziness? Yes. It’s really easy actually. But you eventually find some stairs, which is always good.
Whether you need to get to the gym or Mass Ave, it’s a great way to get there on a cold/​wet/​rainy/​snowy day.

My first couple of months at MIT, I would take my lunch breaks underground, wandering blindly through the warren of interconnected tunnels that course beneath the main campus. At first, these excursions usually ended with me becoming hopelessly lost in the endless labyrinth of crosshatched corridors, deadends, stairwells into the abyss and doors which opened up to brick walls. These days, I can make my way from Kendall to Mass Ave blindfolded. It’s a skill set that I can’t necessarily transfer elsewhere, but it sure is handy when the weather is awful and the power goes out.
Not that the power ever goes out at MIT. There’s something ominous down here, something thrumming and humming, that you hear just below the floor, lurking in a subbasement somewhere. A nuclear reactor? A perpetual motion machine? A ginormous electromagnet? Probably all three. I’ve looked everywhere, and can’t find the source of the power. But MIT never sleeps. Something big is going on down here, you can feel it. Your hair stands on end at times, metal objects come flying out of your pockets, something sounds like it’s lumbering up from below.
The main channel of tunnels is just below ground, but there are more networks buried beneath them. How many, I don’t know. The map on the MIT site is strictly inbounds, the designated route they don’t want you to stray from. But take a chance, and you’ll find yourself descending into subnetworks of dank dimly lit corridors, and being confronted with blast doors with all sorts of ominous biohazard and runic symbols all over them. I found an abandoned bomb shelter one day, but can’t for the life of me remember where it is now. There was one rickety old stairway which went straight down into pitch black, which I couldn’t suck up the courage to descend. I think there’s a drunk Irishman down there, with a fondness for Mama Cass.
If I’m never heard from again, you’ll find my body somewhere down here — or most likely not. The MIT Tunnels keep their secrets well guarded and hid — and lost bodies even more so.