I've thoroughly enjoyed researching these strange and unusual places across the Earth and hope that you have enjoyed reading about them just as much! This article will be my final in this series unless you really do want more of them in which case comment below this article. For the finale to this little series I've decided to research abadoned areas, ghost towns effectively. These places may not be as ghostly as some of the previous locations considered but are most likely more dangerous which is why they were abandoned in the first place. It is incredible to see how spooky a place can look abandoned of people however, and these following locations live up to that idea!
Pripyat, Ukraine
Pripyat was once home to nearly 50,000 people but was completely abandoned after the nearby disaster at Chernobyl's Nuclear Plant, causing radiation to flood the area. The radiation is estimated to remain there for thousands of years to come so it is not safe to return and the once busy city is now controlled by nature. Children's dolls, furniture and gasmasks litter the abandoned city, a memory of the peopel who were rushed from their homes to avoid the radiation sweeping in from Chernobyl. One of the most famous images of Pripyat is its Ferris Wheel and dodgems in an old abandoned carnival aswell as the rusted and disused swimming pool and fitness centre nearby. The popular action game Call of Duty 4 featured extremely accurate recreations of Pripyat after the Chernobyl disasterin its mission 'All Ghillied Up' where the player fights as an SAS sniper spying on a nuclear weapons deal between Russian terrorists. Pripyat is now like something out of an apocalypse movie, and the terrifying thing is that mankind's experimentation with atomic power caused it, not aliens or some foreign invader. This was the fault of man medelling with nature's power and now nature has reclaimed the city.
Hashima Island, Japan
Hashima Island in Japan was once the home of over 5000 miners when Coal was a key resource for the Japanese but once Petrol replaced it as the main source of fuel the Island was abandoned and today stands alone, a place of shadows and memories. Abandoned in 1974 the island's tall concrete apartment buildings stand virtually untouched as a symbol from across the water of the abandoned town and there are now guided tours avilable around the island. There were once over 5000 workers crammed into the highrise apartment buildings on the small island all digging for coal for the Mitsubishi company and so there are many who called the now abandoned wreck their home for years. Mitsubishi gave the island to Nagasaki City in 2002 and it was opened as a tourist port to see the old Coal mine and the now abandoned island town with the tales it has to tell of the workers who left memories behind. However the island was not maintained for many years and so some buildings are in a state of disrepair and may collapse whilst others already have. The Nagasaki council must work to restore it before tourists can be truly safe there but they must try to do so without removing the abandoned and desolate feel of the island. This final location is not particularly ominous or as undesirable as previous places we have seen, but it is nevertheless dangerous to visit and its isolationism from the mainland adds to the feeling of loneliness and madness if one were to be trapped there without a boat to the mainland.
IMAGE 1: http://www.listofimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Pripyat-Ukraine-Window-Ferris-wheel.jpg - A piece of concept art of how Pripyat now looks in its abandoned state, based on a picture taken from a highrise flat window.
IMAGE 2: http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/f55fd5799f254bc4e155bd96ff121563.jpg - An image of the abadoned concrete apartment buildings on Hashima Island in disrepair (you can see the sea in the background).
0 Comment:
Be the first one to comment on this article.