You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hello Nate Rock, Climb a Correspondent.

Hello to you Emily Quang, shortwave host.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Yeah.

We're going to talk about something pretty intense today.

Where are you taking us?

Let's start there.

So I've got a story for you that I reported about a thousand feet underground in a place

where it's actually sometimes safer to be underground than it is to be on the surface.

Hmm.

Where is that?

Old mine in eastern Ukraine.

This region is seen a lot of conflict right now.

Yeah, it's where most of the fighting has occurred over the last few months.

Some of the miners joke there that the good part about being in a mine is that at least

there's no air raid sirens because they're constant otherwise and you're already underground

so you don't have anywhere to go.

Obviously, the bad part is that the bottom of a mine is not the place you want to be if

there's missiles being launched at structures on the surface and there's little contact with

the rest of the world.

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