Everyday brings something new for us to fear LOL - I'd never even heard of a flippin sinkhole till a few months ago and now they're appearing all over the place

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/9908055/In-pictures-sinkholes-craters-and...

Another one.

Holy Moly!!

Someone was right before when they said everyday brings something new to fear. Its like you will be too frightened to go out of your front door next. NOW a hole could open up and just SWALLOW YOU!!!!!!. Where would you go it would be awful,,being underground where no one could hear you. The stuff of NIGHTMARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Sink holes aren't new though, it's just that there are more of them since the heavy rain and a build up of groundwater over certain types of substrates.

This explains some of the reasons:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26242258

As John Laurie (Frazer in Dad's Army) would have said: "We're doomed - DOOMED I tell you!"  

It might not be quite that bad, YET!!!  but in my opinion you'd surely be living in a fool's paradise if you did not make at least some contingency plans for the overseeing of an emergency situation.

At it's worst scenario cattle will have to be put down if footrot sets in.  There will be a dire shortage of staple foods such as bread and milk as whole fields, no farms, face massive crop failure where the topsoil is washed away.  The Government will have to step in more and more with subsidies.  It is already happening to potatoes.  That happened not so long ago when half the vegetables just rotted into the ground, and there were barely enough root vegetables to feed the livestock.  **bleep**, stored for winter feed dragged in till April.  Because of crop failure there was a massive bread and sugar shortage.  I kid ye not - this happened in about 1973.  You queued for everything.  If you saw a queue outside the bakers, you'd join it, not knowing what you were queuing for.  It was grim.  My late father and I had to suppliament potatoes for spaghetti - we ended up enjoying it.  Pasta - cheap, easy to cook and versatile.  Start off with pasta of any type.  Cheap as chips and easy to cook - has a very long shelf life.  Follow this up with porridge - you don't need milk - it can be made with hot water, and is substance in an emergency.  Long life milk, put into a cupboard and forgotton about. or better still, condenced milk - one teaspoon whitens and sweetens tea.  Powedered eggs are already disappearing.

Start NOW - DON'T WAIT UNTILTHE ELEVENTH HOUR.  Prophet of doom?  I hope so  

LOL Frederick

Yikes....another one:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/460775/Woman-critical-in-hospital-after-car-swallowed-by-sinkhole

"Delight in the wonder of sinkholes, the Grand Canyons of suburbia"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/19/sinkholes-wonder-geology-geological-phenomena

Hmm I wonder if Jonathan Jones would still be saying that if he woke up one night and found himself at the bottom of one  

Here, they've not long comp[leted a small new-build estate and I think it's been build on unstable ground.

Here's a sample:-

Just to the right on that pic is a shaft (I think it was an airshaft to what was the mine below). The blokes working on the site said it was 300 metres deep, that's nearly 1000 feet!!! OK, they capped the shaft but when the site was nearly completed, guess what they put a few yards away from it?

Yep, that's right, a soakaway! Here it is with a cone on top:-

At the other end of that site, the ground looks like this:-

That's shale and asking for more trouble down the line. 

I can't understand how the building inspector let that pass.

---

@saasher2012 wrote:
That looks bloomin unstable to me, would a drought also cause problems as well as excessive water logging?

---

saasher, unlikely drought would cause problems but groundwater would over time as it  

creates carbonation which is where carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, which then eats into the "stone". 

I've seen it happen in old buildings but fortunately not a sinkhole!