How Abandoned Cities Work

Cities can become abandoned for a number of reasons, from economic meltdowns to nuclear catastrophes. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about modern abandoned cities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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consumer Guy at Automotive we make carbine easier. Hi, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, is staff writer
here at how Stuff Works dot Com. With me again

(00:20):
after a long absence is my former editor Chris Pallette.
How are you doing? Chris? Doing great on the effects
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,

(00:43):
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

(01:06):
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,

(01:28):
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.

(01:50):
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

(02:11):
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

(02:31):
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

(02:53):
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

(03:16):
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

(03:39):
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.

(04:02):
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

(04:23):
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

(04:44):
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.

(05:04):
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,

(05:25):
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