Russian Ghost Town on the North Pole

[Music] foreign can be anywhere behind any building you can attack you can kill you [Music] [Music] oh it's okay in our second episode in the islands of svalbard at the doorstep of the North Pole we are heading to the abandoned Soviet City a few hours away by boat Jeremy then which has intrigued and Confused us for years as it is technically located in Norway so why was this Russian City built here what led it to get deserted overnight and what's left of it today join us on this adventure to find answers Adventure day look at all the fresh snow also by the way secret.com yeah new colors there's a brand new seek discomfort so check uh you know the link in the description down there [Music] at the adventure to the Russian Ghost Town begins I can't believe this is happening and I get to be here right now no camera's here okay where are we filming for it you're part of the you're part of the filming crew what who are you filming for I'm gonna have to ask you to delete the footage okay [Music] smell that foreign [Music] this is a real freaking Adventure that we're on right now the area we're going to is actually extremely dangerous with polar bears our highest concentration of polar bears you see you see that uh White Tank near the water that's where the guy got killed by polar bear [Music] we're starting to see for a meeting right now which is where we're headed who would build a town here in the middle of nowhere what are we doing here [Music] the rusty destroyed Crane and everything here looks like it's falling apart I mean I can't believe people once lived and operated a mine out of here can you imagine thank you yeah [Music] I can't believe we're here this feels made up a communist town on the edge of civilization [Music] this is even crazier than I thought yeah it's huge welcome to the ghost town pyramiden this city was originally built as a model for the ultimate communist City managed like the Soviet Union there's not much of it left there's only a handful of buildings that are still inhabited everything else that you see around us is now abandoned although at first glance some of the buildings in town don't look so abandoned but a closer look we quickly started noticing the crumbling buildings nature reclaiming the terrain and a town from the Soviet era truly Frozen in time our three-day exploration of this Soviet ghost town and the Arctic has officially begun you know I've gone to see a good amount of ghost towns abandoned places specifically this past year and all three are probably three of the most unique ghost towns on the planet it's like a dream I think there's very few people who will get to see this yeah we're some of the lucky ones sure [Music] [Music] [Music] I've seen a lot of eerie stuff but that statue right there in front of that building knowing where we are and surrounded by nothing but mountains and ice cold water is definitely top three areas things I've ever seen can you tell me why you're carrying a weapon I'm carrying a weapon because although we are in the settlement we are basically in the wilderness we can expect the bearing counter at any moment that's why we are prepared for that why do they go so high up north both communist town right geopolitics right the set of islands of svalbard are a one-of-a-kind territory ruled by something called the svalbard treaty created in 1920 it ruled that although this land is supervised by Norwegian law any country that signs this treaty has rights to come build mine and extract however much they would like 46 countries have signed this treaty around the world including Russia the U.S and strangely enough North Korea which led Russia in Soviet times to build two mining towns here first barnsberg which still has a small Act of operation and then pyramiden today completely abandoned which we are soon about to discover why Russia's presence in the Arctic is much more strategic than Some Coal operations however but rather to ensure that as the North Pole is sadly melting and a new ocean is created that they have claim and control for the new and immensely valuable trade routes in the Arctic what a crazy place to be stuck in just surrounded by Ghost Town and I guess communist Soviet Russia and polar bears everywhere it's like you literally couldn't make up a worse environment to live in from like November to February it's just pitch black like night all the time [Music] [Music] the unique thing about this ghost town is that people actually wanted to live Chernobyl and in varosha but this town the only business here was the mining [Music] after just scratching the surface of the town on our first day we spent the night in the last and only operating building and hotel in the town and the next morning woke up to find that the entire abandoned city had been covered in a fresh layer of snow this is day two it's not last night they were gonna explore the inside of the buildings Tommy had a pretty nice dream last night I was dreaming basically I was chased by polar bear and there's two girls behind me who are closer to it like in one bite the floor bear bit both their heads off that was in your dream yeah wasn't there an incident where a polar bear occupied the first floor of that building yeah it's been uh the bear got into a building and everyone who was working were kind of locked on the uh higher floors all right [Music] we're entering our first building so we are now [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Russian newspapers dated in 1996 so after the fall of the Soviet Union wow people just got up and left like the decorations still on the wall everywhere [Music] yeah ah The Beatles what the hidden room [Music] this is 76 this is like the start of this place like smack in the middle of the Cold War in the Soviet Union all these little booklets just like relics of History left here I guess it is like a Living Museum and you're not looking at these posters on a wall in a preserved Museum you're looking at it where it originally was which is even more special I guess [Music] it's so cool [Music] people lived here Misha oh why is the town called for a meeting what does it mean uh very simple as you can see the top of this mountain uh has a pyramid shape huh uh that's that's why it's called pyramid are you having sense whoa what look at this staircase wow this in the middle of nowhere [Music] so this is the canteen for the for the miners wow is like a what in shops in Egypt still have that's how they measure hello [Music] wow in the clock literally Frozen in Time [Music] yeah this is a big slaughterhouse dude this is the slaughterhouse where they kill the animals for the miner seat oh [Music] well I'm quite eager to get away from this basement [Music] no way oh my God it's an Olympic swimming pool [Music] [Applause] it's worth mentioning that an adventure like this would not be possible without us being able to own our own brand like seek discomfort so uh make sure you go to seek discomfort.com because today is our Black Friday sale this is only going to be happening this week so make sure you go to seek discomfort.com it not only supports us and allows us to create the videos that you see but it's also allowing you to wrap the message to remind yourself to prioritize getting out of your comfort zone think of it this way when you wear this you've got the perfect magnet on you that will allow people who resonate with this message to be able to come up to you to start conversations to connect and go on adventures and truly there's nothing that we wear that generates more conversations and more spontaneous connections than this as you can imagine living in this town was not easy and only economically possible with the support of the Mainland Soviet Union but in 1970 things took a sour turn a large and uncontrollable deadly fire broke out inside the mine killing several miners a fire that is still lasting to this day and required significant costs annually to localize over the years several other deadly fires broke out of the mine leading to financial hit after Financial hit as years went by and the city continued to struggle the Soviet Union collapsed and the country entered a devastating economic crisis which led to the support to pyramiden to dry up and The Economic Opportunity to slowly disappear the final nail on the coffin that led to the fall of this town that I simply cannot make up is that in August of 1996 a plane traveling from Russia to svalbard crashed and killed 141 people on board a big portion of this town's population they were all workers and families from the two Russian settlements of pyramid in barnsberg and so on the 31st of March in 1998 the last tons of coal were extracted and the mine was closed forever which explains why the latest stated document we found was from that year with all job prospects lost everyone left overnight leaving this city literally Frozen in Time currently in the kindergarten after a meeting [Music] wow just some photos of people they used to attend this school so many things are still set up like like their shoes are still on the edge of these little bends it literally looks like it's safe for a movie set yeah well the most landed propaganda we've seen so far is in the classroom look at this Soviet map This Is Our Land I noticed that in all the buildings there's a lot of light when it's so dark you want to give some sense of like difference between like the outside and the inside wow that gave me chills just the child drawing killing Nazis after a few days in pyramiden with no connection to the outside world combined with the strange weather changes on all three days we'd spent here it started to feel like we'd spend weeks in this town there's something so tiring and inherently sad about these places that spending such a long time here started to take a toll on us which is why we decided as the final step in our journey as the sun came out for the first time on this trip that we climbed to the very top of the mountain where the mine shaft was located and on the way take a final look inside the remaining traces of the mining operation and that as you can see is basically as high up as the sun's gonna get and in a few weeks it's like coming back in front of the three or four months for the locals you can see they're really soaking this in because they know it's one of the last glimmers of sunlight they're gonna get for another several months locals I mean I'm literally talking about the eight people that are here so this is the mechanic shop where they fix all the Machinery going after the mine the track's going up start from here so we're going to be following from here all the way all the way up wow [Music] we are making our way up to the top of the mountain right now literally walking on the tracks the coal and the old carriages and everything is just left on the tracks this is the Old Railway hard to make a whole lot look spookier than this I'm a little a little scared let's see how high up it is but you know I mean just based on like it's been abandoned for 20 30 years it will not collapse so just the technicians work it's all good [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] they say people come to svalbard either searching for something or running away from something in some ways I'd say we did both we went searching for stories in the northernmost territory we'd ever visited yet also ran away from everything else we'd ever known experienced a short glimpse into a part of the world that not many ever dare to venture their way to and we finally got to celebrate All traveling freely together to one of the most remote places on the planet if you want to support these films our cloning line sea discomfort is live right now with a restock of our tie-dye and a new collection for Black Friday so go to seekdiscover.com to claim your free gift with purchase see you next week thank you

Channel: Yes Theory

Views: 3,326,089

Keywords: yestheory, seek discomfort, yes theory strangers, yes theory travel, yes theory subscribers, getting out of your comfort zone, Amazon FBA, pyramiden, svalbard, exploring abandoned city, ghost town, yes theory ghost town, ghost town exploring, abandoned exploring, yes theory abandoned, abandoned soviet city, north pole abandoned, spitzbergen, yes theory transnistria, eastern europe, soviet union, abandoned soviet union

Id: D_ncku6A7iA

Length: 20min 51sec (1251 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021