5. Prypiat, Ukraine
On April 26, 1986, an explosion occurred at the No. 4 reactor of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, in the then-Soviet state of Ukraine. It was the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy production. The radiation spread by the explosion resulted in thousands of deaths in Ukraine, Russia and surrounding nations by 2006 [source: Greenpeace]. Soviet officials were criticized for not moving quickly enough to warn residents of the danger. Cit
ies were eventually evacuated, and the government constructed an 18-mile exclusion zone -- a closed-off area surrounding the decommissioned power plant [source: New Scientist].
The town where most of the employees of the Chernobyl plant lived, Prypiat, falls well within the exclusion zone. The city of 44,000 people is located less than 3 miles from the site of the disaster, and it was evacuated within 60 hours of the accident [source: New Scientist]. It looks like Prypiat will remain abandoned for some time to come; it’s estimated that the area won’t be safe for human habitation for hundreds of years due to radiation [source: BBC].
A few intrepid souls have ignored the dangers that lie within the exclusion zone and entered Prypiat. They recorded and reported on the sights, and some have even looted the town. Prypiat’s become overgrown with vegetation: The soccer stadium has been replaced by a forest. Wildlife like bears and deer wander inside crumbling buildings. Prypiat looks like it’s frozen in time. Beds are still made with sheets, desks crowd old school rooms and decorations for a May Day celebration still adorn the town [source: Spiegel]. Prypiat was once a fairly bustling city, with high-rise buildings and an amusement park. Today, the Ferris wheel stands still, and bumper cars rust. Vegetation is reclaiming the area that was once covered by concrete and humans.
4. Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chile
With the need for mined nitrate diminished, the towns of Humberstone and Santa Laura began to decline alongside the industry they were built on. The towns suffered a slow demise, taking three decades to become completely abandoned. It wasn’t until 1961 that the factory offices (which had continued to support a handful of residents) shut down completely.
The towns were left to sit as they were when the last residents left, the dry sand from the encroaching desert drifting through the abandoned school and the theater. At the factories, the machinery remains and the workers’ houses are around today, although a bit worse for the wear. The Humberstone hotel's swimming pool is drained now, but its diving board is still in place [source: Rough Guides].
Both Humberstone and Santa Laura will eventually see new life, this time as a vast museum. Although the towns were abandoned, the spirit of the society that lived in them hasn't been forgotten. In Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chilean unionization gathered new strength, and the towns' contribution to the development to global agriculture is incalculable. What’s more, the very fact that the townspeople were able to carve an existence from the harsh desert is reason enough to commemorate the towns, as far as the Chilean government is concerned.
In 1970, the government of Chile declared both of the towns as national monuments. And in 2005, they were declared World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which should protect the towns from destruction or development and help ensure their future preservation [source: Nuestro].
3. (Parts of) Detroit, Mich.
Some modern abandoned cities are actually parts of functioning cities. Perhaps the best example of an abandoned district is found within Detroit. The Motor City gets its name from its former role as the world’s seat of the automotive industry. Henry Ford’s refinement of the assembly line led to cheaper, mass-produced cars and trucks in the 1920s, and the city expanded quickly. By the 1950s, Detroit, with its two million residents, was America’s third-largest city [source: University of Michigan].
With employment rates and income high in the area, opulent buildings began to dot downtown Detroit’s skyline. Ornately detailed architecture adorned the city’s theaters and office buildings. It was a bustling city, and its buildings reflected the power and the wealth the automobile industry accumulated.
By the 1970s and '80s, however, the American auto industry entered a decline. Detroit, inextricably attached to car manufacturing, reflected this downturn. In 1979, Detroit’s Big Three carmakers (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) produced 90 percent of all of the vehicles sold in the U.S.; by 2005, that figure was down to 40 percent [source: The Guardian]. Since Detroit was something of a boomtown -- based on cars, not gold -- it couldn’t help but suffer when car manufacturers faced competition from overseas automakers.
But it wasn’t only competition from foreign car manufacturers that led to the demise of downtown Detroit. Suburbanization played a role as well; as people began moving out of the city, their money went with them. The same holds true for the carmakers. Automotive factories became bigger as the car boom went on. With land in the city at a premium, car companies built newer, bigger facilities in the suburbs. Whole sections of Detroit were left abandoned, while in other cases, slumping buildings sat empty alongside struggling buildings that remained open.
Detroit began to crumble. Building owners simply left their investments to decay once they found they couldn’t lease or sell them. Others tried to revitalize or redevelop buildings into new businesses; for example, some stage theaters found new lives as movie theaters. Ultimately, a lack of customers caused many buildings to simply be abandoned. For years, office buildings, hotels, churches, theaters, homes, factories and stores were boarded up and left to rot. Vandals broke windows, spray painted messages and picked mementos from the architecture. Within these buildings, sunlight streams through cracks. Old furniture is overturned in unused hotel rooms. Desks still stand in empty offices. Even the city’s old train depot -- a massive, 18-story transportation hub -- has been abandoned, its intricate shell a reminder of its past importance.
Revitalization efforts are reforming these districts of Detroit. Many of the abandoned areas are being leveled, with new buildings or parking lots built over their former foundations. And an unusual tradition has had an effect on the urban blight. In the 1970s, vandals adopted the custom of burning empty (and sometimes occupied) buildings downtown on Halloween Eve, a custom that came to be known as Devil’s Night. The ritual continued into the 1990s, but peaked in 1984, when more than 800 fires were set from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 [source: New York Times].
2. Hashima Island, Japan
Hashima Island is a small, 15-acre outcropping of rock off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. Although tiny in size, the island was important in magnitude: It was a major coal mining center for Japan for almost a full century. The island sits atop a coal deposit that descends well into the ocean floor beneath. Once it was tapped, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation purchased Hashima from the local families who owned it in 1890. That's when the heyday of Hashima Island began.
Since it’s located about 18 miles from Nagasaki, it made more sense for Mitsubishi to build housing on the island, rather than ferry its employees to and from the island every day. Squat concrete apartment blocks were constructed one at a time. Space was at a premium, so the buildings went up instead of out, and families were jammed together in cramped lodging, sharing bathrooms and kitchens.
Amenities like a movie theater, doctor’s office, arcades, restaurants and bars were added later, and the city became a thriving, microcosmic community. The entire complex was linked via underground tunnels. At its peak in 1959, Hashima Island was the most densely populated city on Earth, with 5,259 inhabitants on the small, rocky outcropping [source: Burke-Gaffney]. That’s 835 people for every 2.5 acres.
Not everyone who lived on Hashima Island did so by choice. During World War II, the Japanese government forced Chinese and Korean laborers to work on the island. As many as 122 of the 500 Koreans forced to work from 1939 to 1945 in the coal mines beneath Hashima Island died during their internment [source: Dong-A].
After World War II, employees found their lives on the island much improved. Modern luxuries like televisions, radios and the movie theater were introduced post-World War II. And the formerly unvegetated island sprang to life with rooftop gardens planted and maintained by the island’s employee-residents. The golden age of Hashima Island was pretty short-lived, however. In January 1974, with petroleum supplanting coal as the world’s preferred energy source, Mitsubishi revealed the mine would be closed. By the following April, the last of the island’s residents were ferried onto the mainland, and the island was permanently closed [source: Burke-Gaffney].
Left behind are the relics of what was once a densely populated city, built atop an uninviting slab of rock. The doctor’s office still contains an X-ray machine and examination chair with overhead lamp. Broken children’s toys can be found in empty residences within the apartment blocks. The tunnels that connected the city are passable, but now emblazoned with graffiti. Old television sets and stoves stands as evidence of the existence of their former owners.
The structures of the island are in remarkably good shape, considering their more than three decades of neglect. Some stone walls have caved and crumbled, but the concrete structures remain largely intact. Windows are broken and railings along the apartment’s balconied corridors are in a dangerous state of disrepair, but corridors within the company’s offices are surprisingly undamaged. The city continues to sit silently offshore, an abandoned ghost island, its only inhabitants stray cats and the occasional illegal visitor. The island may enjoy more visitors in the future, though. Japanese officials have applied to make Hashima Island a World Heritage Site [source: Dong-A].
1. Centralia, Penn.
At one time, the town of Centralia, Penn., supported almost 3,000 residents, with stores, churches, hotels and bars. It was a boomtown, established in 1866 and built from the profits of coal mined out of the Pennsylvania hillside. It was this same coal that led to Centralia’s almost complete demise.
City workers burning trash in an open pit in 1962 accidentally lit a vein of anthracite coal, part of the vast deposit that lay beneath the town [source: Washington Post]. Once lit, the coal carried the flames to adjacent veins and deposits, eventually causing a huge underground coal fire. The city tried for years to put the fire out. Techniques like mining burning coal, digging trenches to cut the fire off from the rest of the coal beds, and dousing the embers with water all failed to produce the desired effect. Officials concluded the best chance to save the town was to dig an extensive network of trenches to isolate the hot spots. The exorbitant cost of the undertaking kept the plan from ever coming to fruition.
In 1981, with the fire burning steadily for almost 20 years, the last straw came for most of the town’s residents. A 12-year-old found the ground beneath his feet had literally opened up. The boy managed to grab onto a root and was rescued by his cousin from the 150-feet deep sinkhole filled with poisonous carbon monoxide [source: Washington Post].
The federal government allocated $42 million for the relocation of Centralia’s residents in 1982, essentially declaring the town a lost cause [source: DeKok]. Most Centralians took the offer of help, leaving the town almost entirely abandoned. A few chose to stay; around 20 residents remain in Centralia as squatters in what were once their legitimately owned homes. The government closed the main egress into town, Route 61, detouring traffic, and effectively cutting off the burning town and its remaining inhabitants from the rest of the world. Those roads that haven’t been reclaimed by vegetation are buckled and cracked, with white noxious gas spewing from underground. Most of the buildings either caught fire or were leveled to keep them from burning. The town’s cemetery and a few houses, some still inhabited, remain.
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