How Abandoned Cities Work

of the cryogenic freeze are starting to wear off? Fantastic? Yeah, and your hair looks magnificent to still and Chris, I want to say congratulations on the birth of your second child. Way to do absolutely nothing. Thanks. Yeah, Well, let's get to it, shall we. Speaking of, uh of absolutely nothing, we're talking about abandoned city today, yes, and specifically modern abandoned cities. So, I mean, there's such thing as ghost towns, and there's one, uh, a legitimate ghost town out in

California called Body, California. Um. It was a old gold mining boom town and they've got the old saloon and you know that kind of thing. Um. But the thing is, when you go there, you can imagine um, guns slingers drinking sasaparilla at the bar, but you can't really relate to them. I find modern abandoned cities much more fascinating. Note to you. Yeah, and in a way, it's it's even creepier because you can relate to the people when

you see the things that are left behind by these people. Uh, you can relate to it a lot better than you could with the Old West, because we've never lived that that lifestyle, right exactly. I mean I've been a gun slinger, but it wasn't in the Old West, you know, I mean, give me a break. So one of the things when I was researching this article was that there's all sorts of different reasons why cities become abandoned. Um it can be a disaster, Um, it can be because they're they've

outlived their usefulness. Um, there's all sorts of reasons why. Uh. Like take Prepia, Ukraine, for instance, that this was this was an abandoned city because well, it was right next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when Chernobyl helted down the number four reactor in nineteen six, and this is actually the company town for the nuclear power plants, So they were right there, a lot of people died, and they had to evacuate the city and I think within

sixty hours after the meltdown, so um, everything was just left behind. Yeah, I've seen I've seen pictures, uh, that were taken by people who had snuck into the government controlled area. And it's, um, that's sort of what I meant by by the creepy because you go in and you see all the stuff that people left behind in a hurry, and so you see all these modern artifacts, you know, pieces of of these people's lives that they just that they had to leave behind as they ran

as fast as they could away from the radiation. And and like you said, it's a lot easier to relate to because these are things in our lives as well. It makes it a lot more haunting, I think, yeah. Um. And and then there's other cases like Detroit. Now Detroit is not an abandoned city, but there are entire sections of it that are basically abandoned. And it's it's it. He can become abandoned or partially abandoned just from an economic downturn, which is the case of Detroit, right right,

So I mean, have you been on forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah, I've been there before. Um, it's it's pretty fascinating, especially because these areas are right next to places that are still inhabited. Um, but they're they're bordered there like a world away, boarded up that's just natural light coming in. And again, like you said, modern artifacts is kind of

scattered throughout right. It's amazing to think that a city that I think of is one of the largest cities in North America, you know, just has these huge sections where you know, people are the population has receded enough to become you know, create little pockets of abandoned city, right, And Detroit's hardly alone. I drove to Alabama recently and I can't tell you how many dying towns I drove through, and they have these fantastic ornate downtowns that are all

just boarded up and unused. And there was a heyday there and it was fairly recently, like the forties or fifties or sixties. But the populations dying off there's there. The economy can't support it any longer. So these towns are slowly becoming abandoned. Oh sure. And there you know, the roads get rerouted when the interstate system, you know, changed the way people traveled around the country. Yeah, that's pretty much like instant death for a town. You know. Yeah,

that's true. Oh, speaking of a town that no longer has roads leading to it, of your number one that you chose for the articles. For those of you who who are unfamiliar with it, it's a a city that was a coal mining Uh you know had coal mining is one of its major um staples. Well it was. It was what gave Centralia life, but it also killed

it too, didn't it true. Well, you know, they ignited that underground coal fire, and of course it's sitting on a massive amount of coal, so you know, this is burning underground, giving off toxic fumes, uh, you know, causing sinkholes, people falling in. Yes, some some twelve year old kid um almost got sucked into a hundred and fifty ft sinkhole that suddenly erupted neath his feet. That's when people started moving out. But there's still about a dozen people left.

And despite the fact that the government has taken away the roads using eminent domain. Actually the government also took away their lands and these people are now squatting in their homes. So if you haven't caught the drift that abandoned cities are pretty interesting. Look up five modern abandoned cities on how stuff works dot com. It will creep you out. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how

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