Say you are Batman, or a wanna be Batman. You need to construct your Batcave, but their is a ton of work that simply requiers the use of teams of men and heavy equipment.
How do you do it? How do you get secret passage ways in your house, and massive earthworks done on the sly?
Alfred did it. With duct tape.
Keep the construction folks confused – keep changing the plans, keep firing guys and hiring replacements, keep lying like hell about what you’re doing. Dr. Holmes’ booby-trapped death house was built in a similar fashion.
Have a very trusted constructor/team do the job. One episode of the animated Batman series featured Batman’s mechanic, a secret two-man team he relied on to build and maintain his fleet of Batmobiles.
Do it yourself. Batman’s smart enough to do the job, and has the money to get whatever gear he needs.
Unless you own the construction company being used, you won’t be able to get away with this today.
More options:
Fly in a team of people from another country, hide their destination from them and put them up (in luxury) on-site during the work. Then fly 'em back to where they came from.
Or you could just kill 'em all afterwards … although that’s more evil villian than superhero.
It also depends what you want. Finding a cave, hidden basement or whatever should be easy enough. Kitting it out with stuff is more difficult as you’ll need to buy your supplies at some point, that’s going to be difficult. Then you’ll have the problem of powering it with out someone wondering what you’re using all this power/fuel for. I guess you could attempt to use solar or wind power.
Alternatively build a factory to produce something or other. Then convert part of it into your secret bat cave, by getting all the kit made elsewhere and installing it yourself. Then hope none of your employees start wondering why the buildings smaller inside than outside.
In short, unless you have a team of loyal, trustworthy and dedicated servants you’re not going to able to build a batcave without someone being able to find it. And even if you do manage it I doubt you’d be able to hide it effectively when it was running.
:: waits for the teaming millions to prove him wrong ::
SD
There’s no reason why Bruce Wayne couldn’t form a construction corporation, rent various heavy tools, hire various contract workers frou out-of-state or overseas, do the necessary heavy work and then dissolve the coorporation.
Yeah, no-one’s gonna suspect anything when you build a freakin’ great windfarm in your back garden…
It’s gotta be solar. Although, unless you have got a lot of roof-space, the old solar panel farm would be a give-away too. Hmmm.
Petrol powered generator must be the one…
You’d have to hire subcontractors to do the planning and much of the specialized labor…unless Bruce Wayne had experience before as a contractor or done on-site supervision as an architect it’s unlikely he could just pull the whole thing out of his ass. And you can’t exactly have the same degree of secrecy when you do that. Batman would also have to have the required licenses, and any excessive firing, secrecy, and other professional trickery would get his ass reported to the Better Buisness Bureau…at least a few other people would wind up knowing the details of the structure, and once that happens, forget about it.
I realize that the building of the Batcave would be before you had a chance to fully develop your superhero persona, but I imagine with enough coaxing you could get half the JLA to stop over to help you build if you offered beer and a good barbeque. Flash, Supes, GL and WW would be better than most construction crews.
If you’re digging or converting a cave into a secret lair / headquarters, geothermal power is probably the best way to go. It’s just a little more digging, and I expect there isn’t as extensive surface facilities with geothermal as compared to a windmill farm or solar cell array.
With enough secrecy, go nuclear. This is more an option for a villain than a hero, because subverting the NRC inspectors for the nuke reactor’s license is something that the bad guys do.
Or find an underground hot water vent / geyser, and tap it to directly power the steam turbine.
Moved to IMHO.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
The Bat Cave itself I always assumed was a natural formation under Stately Wayne Manor. The construction of the access to the house must have been done in secret (Bruce, Dick, and Alfred working alone).
What I never could figure out was how the Batmobile and Batplane were built- surely the FAA and the state’s DMV would require them to be licensed with real names and addresses.
The Batcave is built over a volcanic vent, complete with lava (Dark Knight Strikes Back #3), and includes a great many galleries and exterior chambers, some with freshwater springs (Dark Knight Returns, #4).
I figured geothermal power was a no-brainer. Reasonably easy to do, with the resources of the Wayne Foundation, and provides an endless supply of untraceable power.
But I can’t say I’d wanna try and build and install a complete lava-powered geothermal power generator system singlehanded.
Or even with Alfred and a case of duct tape.
Giant mutated bats. With hard-hats and shovels.
Either that or robots.
There is a discussion in one of the Batman Sucks movies after the batmobile takes a pretty thorough beating; Alfred wonders how they’re going to fix it because they can’t just drop it off at the local body shop to get it fixed up.
In the animated series, it always looked like the BatCave was a natural formation, with stalactites on the ceiling, and lots of deep pits that really should have been fenced off (but weren’t – obviously Bruce didn’t show the place to OSHA) and other features that didn’t look like the type of thing you’d design in.
Still, that giant ramp that dropped down to let out the Batmbile must have required a construction crew. And probably tunneling equipment to provide access for the Batmobile and access to the mansion. There must have been more people than Bruce, Alfred, and Dick involved.
Well, I’m sure they could be smuggled in or something. And once there, it’s hardly going to be a problem - since the batmobile is invariably seen outside dispensing violent and surprising vigilante justice, by the time not having a license is a problem, it’d be too late. And:
Q. Did you get the license plate number?
A. No, I missed it.
Q. Damn! Now we’ll never be able to follow that large jet black streamlined rocket powered armoured car decorated with large bat wings driven by a man with rubber nipples at 100mph. He’ll just blend into the background.
Some of you misunderstand, we all know that the Batcave is a natural formation, but all of the construction, the power generation, wiring the place, the massive computer systems, all of the built in passageways and the rest of the Bat-equipment is dificult to imagine having gotten through with out many hundreds of people noticing.
Easy. I’d just hire North Koreans to do it. They’re experts.
Come on, guys, the answer’s easy: you just tell the contractors that you’re making a Batman movie!
I’m guessing he got most of the fancy parts of the bat cave built the same way any of us get our furniture moved to our new apartments: he calls his friends and guilts/bribes them into doing it. And Batman has a better class of friends than you or I:
“Hey, Supes! How’s it hanging. No, nothing much. Hey, remember that geo-thermal generator we found in Gorilla Grodd’s secret lair? The one I sabotaged to deactivate Grodd’s Kryptonite Ray right before that big buzz saw cut you in half? Yeah, that one. I’m thinking of installing it in the Batcave: ever since I upgraded the Batcomputer, we’ve had rolling blackouts in Gotham, so I need a better power source. I was wondering if you could help me out. You know, what with the lava and all the heavy lifting. I’ll buy beer.”