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How Abandoned Cities Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
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Speaker 1: consumer Guy at Automotive we make carbine easier. Hi, and
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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, is staff writer
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Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works dot Com. With me again
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Speaker 1: after a long absence is my former editor Chris Pallette.
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Speaker 1: How are you doing? Chris? Doing great on the effects
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Speaker 1: of the cryogenic freeze are starting to wear off? Fantastic? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and your hair looks magnificent to still and Chris, I
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Speaker 1: want to say congratulations on the birth of your second child.
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Speaker 1: Way to do absolutely nothing. Thanks. Yeah, Well, let's get
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Speaker 1: to it, shall we. Speaking of, uh of absolutely nothing,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about abandoned city today, yes, and specifically modern
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Speaker 1: abandoned cities. So, I mean, there's such thing as ghost towns,
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Speaker 1: and there's one, uh, a legitimate ghost town out in
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Speaker 1: California called Body, California. Um. It was a old gold
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Speaker 1: mining boom town and they've got the old saloon and
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Speaker 1: you know that kind of thing. Um. But the thing is,
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Speaker 1: when you go there, you can imagine um, guns slingers
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Speaker 1: drinking sasaparilla at the bar, but you can't really relate
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Speaker 1: to them. I find modern abandoned cities much more fascinating.
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Speaker 1: Note to you. Yeah, and in a way, it's it's
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Speaker 1: even creepier because you can relate to the people when
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Speaker 1: you see the things that are left behind by these people. Uh,
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Speaker 1: you can relate to it a lot better than you
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Speaker 1: could with the Old West, because we've never lived that
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Speaker 1: that lifestyle, right exactly. I mean I've been a gun slinger,
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Speaker 1: but it wasn't in the Old West, you know, I mean,
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Speaker 1: give me a break. So one of the things when
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Speaker 1: I was researching this article was that there's all sorts
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Speaker 1: of different reasons why cities become abandoned. Um it can
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Speaker 1: be a disaster, Um, it can be because they're they've
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Speaker 1: outlived their usefulness. Um, there's all sorts of reasons why. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Like take Prepia, Ukraine, for instance, that this was this
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Speaker 1: was an abandoned city because well, it was right next
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Speaker 1: to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when Chernobyl helted down
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Speaker 1: the number four reactor in nineteen six, and this is
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Speaker 1: actually the company town for the nuclear power plants, So
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Speaker 1: they were right there, a lot of people died, and
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Speaker 1: they had to evacuate the city and I think within
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Speaker 1: sixty hours after the meltdown, so um, everything was just
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Speaker 1: left behind. Yeah, I've seen I've seen pictures, uh, that
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Speaker 1: were taken by people who had snuck into the government
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Speaker 1: controlled area. And it's, um, that's sort of what I
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Speaker 1: meant by by the creepy because you go in and
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Speaker 1: you see all the stuff that people left behind in
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Speaker 1: a hurry, and so you see all these modern artifacts,
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Speaker 1: you know, pieces of of these people's lives that they
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Speaker 1: just that they had to leave behind as they ran
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Speaker 1: as fast as they could away from the radiation. And
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Speaker 1: and like you said, it's a lot easier to relate
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Speaker 1: to because these are things in our lives as well.
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Speaker 1: It makes it a lot more haunting, I think, yeah. Um.
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Speaker 1: And and then there's other cases like Detroit. Now Detroit
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Speaker 1: is not an abandoned city, but there are entire sections
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Speaker 1: of it that are basically abandoned. And it's it's it.
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Speaker 1: He can become abandoned or partially abandoned just from an
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Speaker 1: economic downturn, which is the case of Detroit, right right,
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Speaker 1: So I mean, have you been on forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I've been there before. Um, it's it's pretty fascinating, especially
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Speaker 1: because these areas are right next to places that are
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Speaker 1: still inhabited. Um, but they're they're bordered there like a
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Speaker 1: world away, boarded up that's just natural light coming in.
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Speaker 1: And again, like you said, modern artifacts is kind of
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Speaker 1: scattered throughout right. It's amazing to think that a city
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Speaker 1: that I think of is one of the largest cities
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Speaker 1: in North America, you know, just has these huge sections
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Speaker 1: where you know, people are the population has receded enough
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Speaker 1: to become you know, create little pockets of abandoned city, right,
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Speaker 1: And Detroit's hardly alone. I drove to Alabama recently and
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Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many dying towns I drove through,
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Speaker 1: and they have these fantastic ornate downtowns that are all
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Speaker 1: just boarded up and unused. And there was a heyday
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Speaker 1: there and it was fairly recently, like the forties or
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Speaker 1: fifties or sixties. But the populations dying off there's there.
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Speaker 1: The economy can't support it any longer. So these towns
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Speaker 1: are slowly becoming abandoned. Oh sure. And there you know,
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Speaker 1: the roads get rerouted when the interstate system, you know,
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Speaker 1: changed the way people traveled around the country. Yeah, that's
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Speaker 1: pretty much like instant death for a town. You know. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's true. Oh, speaking of a town that no longer
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Speaker 1: has roads leading to it, of your number one that
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Speaker 1: you chose for the articles. For those of you who
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Speaker 1: who are unfamiliar with it, it's a a city that
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Speaker 1: was a coal mining Uh you know had coal mining
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Speaker 1: is one of its major um staples. Well it was.
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Speaker 1: It was what gave Centralia life, but it also killed
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Speaker 1: it too, didn't it true. Well, you know, they ignited
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Speaker 1: that underground coal fire, and of course it's sitting on
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Speaker 1: a massive amount of coal, so you know, this is
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Speaker 1: burning underground, giving off toxic fumes, uh, you know, causing sinkholes,
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Speaker 1: people falling in. Yes, some some twelve year old kid
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Speaker 1: um almost got sucked into a hundred and fifty ft
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Speaker 1: sinkhole that suddenly erupted neath his feet. That's when people
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Speaker 1: started moving out. But there's still about a dozen people left.
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Speaker 1: And despite the fact that the government has taken away
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Speaker 1: the roads using eminent domain. Actually the government also took
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Speaker 1: away their lands and these people are now squatting in
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Speaker 1: their homes. So if you haven't caught the drift that
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Speaker 1: abandoned cities are pretty interesting. Look up five modern abandoned
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Speaker 1: cities on how stuff works dot com. It will creep
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