5 Largest Abandoned Cities in the World

for the first 95 of our time on earth humans built no sediments we were mostly demanding and would follow the food and water when we learned to grow our own crops we started to put down roots literally and suddenly settling made sense so across the globe we began clearing trees carving out enormous quarries and building villages towns and cities as fast as we could but not all of them have survived some towns grew around a particular resource like the gold mining town of bodie in california when the gold run out so did the people leaving a perfectly preserved snapshot of the wild west and a lot of brothels in other cases a disaster triggered the mass exodus of people like in centralia pennsylvania this town decided to burn landfill waste and accidentally set fire to a cold seam the fires raged underground and created sinkholes that emitted deadly amounts of carbon monoxide this was discovered when a 12 year old boy fell into one luckily though he was pulled to safety and the entire town was evacuated the underground fires they still burn today 60 years later other settlements weren't really abandoned but only ever managed to attract a small number of residents leaving them eerily empty the most famous examples are ordos the ghost city of china and burj al-babas the turkish town of over 500 identical disney-like castles but not including ordos these examples are all towns or villages a relatively small investment to abandon in rare cases entire cities have been left deserted lost to war natural hazards or even submerged under the sea like alexandria or real life atlantis however relatively few are still standing for visitors to explore with silent streets buildings left frozen in time and occasionally a creepy doll left discarded in the dust [Music] [Music] in azerbaijan is one such city bounded in the 18th century and granted city status in 1828 aghdam was once home to 30 000 residents it thrived during the soviet period producing butter wine silk and hardware but when the first nagorno-karabakh war broke out in 1988 between the armenians of the region and the republic of azerbaijan the city became a battleground initially it was used by azerbaijani forces as a base to attack karabakh they launched bm21 grad rockets and bombing raids from the city killing both enemy troops and armenian citizens armenia retaliated by shelling the city indiscriminately destroying many of the buildings on season controlled in july of 1993. the civilian population was evacuated or forcibly relocated and agden became part of a buffer zone remaining uninhabited to this day remarkably their professional football club karabakh aghdam continue in exile playing most of their matches in nearby baku and becoming the most successful azerbaijani team to ever compete in the european championships they even made it to the fourth round of the 2010 uefa league despite having no home ground to prevent azerbaijan from ever returning and retaking the city the troops continued to shell and bomb and do whatever they could to destroy what remained this included the bread museum taken out by an armenian grad missile in august 1992. while a bread museum might not sound like the greatest lost or the most thrilling day out it did contain a few notable pieces including a 150 gram piece of carbonized bread donated by a russian survivor of the leningrad blockade she saved it and somehow avoided eating it even on the verge of starvation unfortunately along with bread from the russian cosmonaut camp and thousands of grain samples it was never recovered all buildings left standing were dismantled and scavenged for construction material to be used in steppen occurred the capital city of nagorno-karabakh this includes the agda mosque which was stripped bare and left ruthless when andre galifia visited in 2007 to photograph the destruction he found a herd of cattle had moved in and the floor was thick with manure this of course sparked outrage and cleaning and refurbishment began to preserve muslim cultural heritage in the area today the city is a sprawling sea of the remaining carcasses of buildings without windows roofs or any valuable metals it's littered with mines and it's off limit to visitors apart from those brave enough to bribe taxi drivers and sneak in however it won't remain like this for long in 2020 a ceasefire was agreed and agton was returned to the control of azerbaijan authorities say over a hundred billion dollars worth of damage was done and removing the mines will take 15 years despite this they're hopeful that they can make the majority of the city habitable again within three to five years enabling displaced citizens to return they even plan to make the rebuilt acting better than before in 2021 azerbaijan's president ilhim aliev visited the site to lay the foundation stones of a school museum residential building and a park and presented an ambitious plan to merge eight nearby villages with agdan creating a smart green city of a hundred thousand people not all ghost stories were lost to war in 1970 the city of prippet was built in ukraine to house the workers elite scientists and engineers of the chernobyl nuclear power station it was constructed just three kilometers away from the plant and was home to around 49 000 people mostly young families the average age was just 25 years old tragedy struck on the 26th of april 1986 during a test to see how much power was needed to keep the number four reactor functioning during a blackout negligence and a lack of safety measures led to the reactor overheating resulting in a steam explosion that caused huge quantities of radioactive material to be expelled into the air as the fire raged over nine days that followed the disaster released 500 times the amount of radioactivity as the hiroshima bomb and the city was declared unsuitable for human habitation for the next 24 000 years for 36 hours after the explosion officials dithered unsure whether or not to order an evacuation all the while radioactive particles rained down on the residents and their children some reported headaches metallic tastes coughing and vomiting but others were completely unaware and continued gardening playing in the streets and even hosting a wedding when the order was finally given on the 27th of april the residents of prippet had just 50 minutes notice to gather their belongings and attempt to board one of the evacuation buses which had been drafted in from across the country the queue of buses was 20 kilometers long but the residents were calm and sensible and the evacuation was completed within a few hours if only the buses had been called 36 hours earlier debate still rages about the number of deaths that resulted from the disaster 30 died in the initial explosion and radiation poisoning killed many more the numbers became blurred when the ussr fearing bad press banned radiation from being given as a cause of death the world health organization estimates the civilian death toll to be around four thousand but this doesn't include the members of the soviet military who were drafted in to help with the cleanup so the true figure is likely a lot higher the radioactive particles also traveled around the world and some studies have estimated that the chernobyl disaster has been responsible for almost one million premature cancer deaths today the exclusion zone covers a thousand square miles but radiation levels are low enough for most people to enter preppit for short periods with a visit exposing them to less radiation than a transatlantic flight ex-residents travel there to pay their respects to the graves of their loved ones or to see what's left of their old homes sadly thieves strip the city of anything of value soon after the disaster tourists also venture into private and bring back photos of a city frozen in time with family portraits yellowing on the walls toys left to decay on the floor and an eerie ferris wheel rusting in the forest the only residents now are the wildlife that retook the city once the humans left despite the radiation brown bears wolves lynxes and moose have thrived initially animals in the area were born with mutations and deformities but survival of the fittes means that they died quickly and the creatures there today appear largely unaffected and thrilled to be living without humans another example of a human-free city is the lost city of petra in jordan established by the nebateans as a trading post it was initially situated between oman damascus and the red sea making it an ideal heart for commerce in the area essentially in the middle of a harsh desert the site should never have been able to support a city but the navitans were clever and they created their own oasis they made the most of what little water there was and installed a system of dams underground systems and conduits that could harvest and store rainwater for the dry months and rock-cut channels and underground pipes were employed to harness any natural springs they also embraced the mountainous terrain as an excellent defense against the greeks and employed rock-cut architecture to carve impressive buildings directly into the cliff faces at its peak the city housed over 20 000 residents who found wealth and security trade was booming and nabataeans were even able to charge travelers atoll for crossing the territory however their success wouldn't last as the roman empire expanded into the middle east they took over the city initially they invested heavily building new roads lined with massive columns but trade began to drift north and ships took over from the difficult job of transportation through the desert petra's importance as a trade center was declining fast but the final blow came when the 363 a.d galilee earthquake struck destroying many of the buildings and crippling the water system the city was largely abandoned with just a few bedouins remaining in the caves they feared any more outsiders could finish off the destruction of the city so they endeavoured to keep its location a secret and the city became lost but not abandoned for hundreds of years however in 1812 swiss traveler johan ludwig burkhart heard rumors about the dead city he became obsessed with finding it and disguised himself as a bedo in procuring his own goat his story was that he intended to sacrifice at the prophet aaron's tomb said to be located in petra so locals directed him to the city exposing it once again to the west from then on numerous archaeologists arrived to work in the city and uncover his secrets even now we only have access to 15 of it the rest remains hidden underground in 1985 the jordanian government decided to begin the unesco world heritage site designation process and forcibly removed the bedouins leaving the city abandoned but that doesn't mean it's been left alone in 2007 it was declared one of the seven wonders of the world and has been a backdrop for several films including indiana jones and the last crusade transformers revenge of the fallen and the mummy returns unfortunately unlike preppit the animals haven't thrived in petra wildlife is stifled by tourism and animal rights group peter has threatened to intervene the camels used to carry visitors have been abused they're whipped and beaten and in one case they were seen working with open fly infested wounds over one million tourists visited each year and the bedouins now live in houses constructed nearby earning money by offering tours and selling indiana jones souvenirs i imagine the city's fate wasn't quite what the napateans envisaged when painstakingly carving their oasis [Music] just as an earthquake finished off petra natural disasters are a common theme in city abandonment pompeii was an ancient roman city near naples in italy was built on a lava plateau caused by a previous eruption of mount vesuvius and it was home to around 20 000 people tragically in 79 a.d it erupted again 1 800 years after all memory of it being a volcano had been forgotten the eruption began with 18 hours of pumice rain that gave most of the residents a chance to escape around 1 150 remained in the city whether they didn't understand the threat of the volcano and chose to stay indefinitely or just thought they'd have more time to flee we'll never know but early the next day their time ran out as the pyroclastic flows began these are enormous clouds of burning ash that can travel up to 62 miles now they can destroy structures and simultaneously suffocate and incinerate any living thing they engulf devastatingly for the people of pompei the prevailing winds normally blowing from the southwest would have taken the flow away from them but on that day they were blowing from the northwest and directed the searing cloud straight at them and their city the space was short-lived and by the end of the second day the eruption was over no one who'd chosen to stay behind survived as the pyroclastic flows had reached temperatures of at least 2500 degrees celsius anyone caught in it was cooked instantly their bodies and what remained of their homes were then buried in ash up to six metres deep soon afterwards survivors and thieves arrived to salvage what they could even taking marble statues from the forum in the centuries that followed more eruptions buried the city even more deeply and it was largely forgotten in 1592 it was almost rediscovered when architect domingo fontana was digging in an underground aquifer and ran into the surviving walls and foundations however he didn't report his findings and pompeii remained hidden for another century excavation didn't fully begin until 1748 but even then it was poorly planned irresponsible and often carried out by untrained diggers and progress was soft and slow and damaging in 1860 italian archaeologist guserpe fiorelli finally took over and employed a much more careful approach he also noted that many of the voids found in the ash contained human remains concluding that the hollows were left after the bodies had decomposed he developed a technique to cast the bodies by pouring cement into them and clearing the ash once set this led to the incredible and often chilling recreation of the exact positions of the victims when they were hit with a pyroclastic flow a dog contorted in agony a mother attempting to shield her child and a small boy cowering covering his nose with both hands much of the resident's daily lives was preserved archaeologists found food in their ovens financial records on wax tablets and vast amounts of ancient graffiti including floreonus privileged soldier of the seventh legion was here the women did not know of his presence only six women came to know too few for such a stallion the gladiator barracks read chi i hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they ever have before in the basilica we too dear men friends wherever we're here if you want to know our names they are gaius and all us certainly a bit more eloquent than simon wazir [Music] not all cases of city abandonment have been caused by events as dramatic as war nuclear explosions or natural disasters sometimes the reason for desertion is simple economics hashima island also known as battleship island for its shape was established as a coal mining facility back in 1887 and it was bought a few years later in 1890 by mitsubishi they constructed four main mine shafts and spent almost 100 years extracting 15.7 million tons of coal contributing massively to japan's industrialization by 1961 mitsubishi built a miner's apartment block on the island out of reinforced concrete to withstand potential typhoons it made history as japan's first large-scale reinforced concrete building they continued construction on the island aiming to provide everything the miners and their families would need including a school a kindergarten hospital cinema shops and a bath house where waters would turn black as the miners washed the facilities almost made up for the stifling conditions in the mines which reached up to 30 degrees celsius and 95 humidity but not quite at its peak the island was home to over 5 000 people making it the most densely populated place on earth at the time the buildings took over and eventually everything was concrete it became known for its lack of vegetation and some nicknamed it midori nashimashima the island without green work was claustrophobic particularly for the moles who were the ones sent deep into the mine to dig and break up the coal things turned darker in the 1930s when mitsubishi began using constricted korean civilians and chinese prisoners of war as forced laborers 57 900 worked there at some point under horrific conditions the work was back-breaking they were fed little and beaten if they slacked those who tried to flee drowned during the 18 kilometer swim back to the mainland the val practice continued up until the end of the second world war by which time over 1 300 workers had died from various underground accidents exhaustion and malnutrition in the 1960s petroleum began replacing coal in japan and the need for mines declined mitsubishi officially closed the shafts in january 1974 and the island was abandoned by april although the families planned their departure the city still took on that eerie deserted privet feeling chalk writing remains on boards in the classroom kids shoes lie discarded in pathways and the hospital floor is littered with x-rays of the miner's lungs the island is now officially part of nagasaki city and opened for tourists in 2009 when it also applied to become a unesco world heritage site initially the proposal was opposed by both south korea and china due to the past use of forced labor on the island however japan offered to ensure the facility both recognized and honored those lost and held captive and each country withdrew their objections it became a world heritage site in 2015 and has also appeared in several films notably james bond skyfall since then 500 000 tourists have traveled to the island to take in the 1970s time capsule only one thing has really changed nature has begun to reclaim hashima and the island is no longer without green [Music]

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Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022