The Spire
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The Spire is a New Khemrian innovation designed to deal with the problem of housing shortages and over-crowding.
The main super structure of the Spire is 5km tall and 7km wide at the base. The Spire is designed to house approximately 125 million people and also includes work places, entertainment, shops, services, etc, even parks, making it in effect a complete self-contained city. The Spire will have a number of heliports at various levels on the structure and will also have its own dedicated airport at the base of the tower. Within the Spire itself, transport will be via a two-stage lift service, with high speed lifts stopping every 50 levels and low speed lifts running within each 50 level unit, for movement on each level there will be a network of radial and circular trams.
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| The Spire at night |
Some parts of the outer surface is covered with solar cells and, particularly near the upper levels, wind turbines, however the majority of the Spire’s electricity is produced by nuclear reactors buried several hundred metres beneath the main structure. It has been calculated that this thickness of solid rock between the superstructure and the reactors will be more than enough to ensure that should the worst happen and a reactor goes critical and explodes the city and its inhabitants will be protected from the blast. Likewise there is also be a substantial thickness of rock separating each individual reactor preventing a chain reaction occurring. These measures combined with the reliability and safety of our newest reactor designs means that the citizens of the Spire have nothing to worry about from the reactors.
The altitude of the upper reaches of the Spire makes it a perfect vantage point for astronomical telescopes and for atmospheric observations and this was factored into the design. In addition, the Spire includes some capabilities for weather control, with devices for releasing cloud seeding chemicals and large fans for inducing minor changes to wind currents.
Due to the extremely large number of people that live in the Spire it was recognised that there would be some issues arising from this. As a result, the Spire was made into a semi-autonomous province with its own separate police service and a Spire council to take care of the day-to-day running of the city, also the post of Lord Chancellor was created to lead the Spire authorities.
During the design process the designers were aware that such a high profile and vast structure would inevitably attract the attention of terrorists. To combat the threat of a terrorist group using a highjacked airliner to attack the Spire, the Spire has numerous defensive weapons such as SAM and AA gun batteries. In addition to combat the threat of fires the Spire has two structure wide fire suppression systems: The primary system is a multi-purpose sprinkler system linked to a central control centre, the sprinklers are capable of releasing, dependant on the situation and location, water, foam and halon. The auxiliary system consists of mobile fire fighting teams that work both from within the Spire and from helicopters outside the Spire. Also the Spire was built in sections and each section is separated by an armoured bulkhead that can in extreme situations be sealed, preventing any movement into or out of the section and also preventing any fire/explosion/other hazard from spreading.
