WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.800 You know, I was looking at a map of the American 00:00:01.800 --> 00:00:05.480 West this morning, just scrolling through the 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:08.900 satellite view of Nevada, and I realized something 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:11.140 a little unsettling. Oh, yeah. What was that? 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.960 We tend to think of cities as permanent fixtures. 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.620 You know, you build a house, you pour concrete, 00:00:17.800 --> 00:00:20.899 you lay down pipes. It feels like a statement 00:00:20.899 --> 00:00:24.309 of forever. Right. It feels like a promise that 00:00:24.309 --> 00:00:26.690 civilization has planted a flag that won't be 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:29.510 moved. Exactly. But when you zoom in on some 00:00:29.510 --> 00:00:31.410 of these grids out in the desert, you see the 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:34.369 streets, you see the outlines of foundations, 00:00:34.869 --> 00:00:37.509 maybe a crumbling wall. But the people are gone. 00:00:37.670 --> 00:00:39.450 The people are gone. The roofs are gone. It's 00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:43.229 a skeleton. Today, we are doing a deep dive into 00:00:43.229 --> 00:00:46.369 the phenomenon of the ghost town. And I want 00:00:46.369 --> 00:00:48.270 to be clear right off the bat, we aren't doing 00:00:48.270 --> 00:00:50.710 this spooky campfire story version of this. We 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.149 aren't, you know, hunting for poltergeists. No, 00:00:53.250 --> 00:00:56.189 absolutely not. Well, the aesthetic is, well, 00:00:56.250 --> 00:00:58.909 it's compelling. The swinging saloon doors, the 00:00:58.909 --> 00:01:01.090 creeping vines, the dust blowing through a break 00:01:01.090 --> 00:01:03.549 -in window. The real story here is much more 00:01:03.549 --> 00:01:06.230 clinical and, frankly, much more frightening. 00:01:06.629 --> 00:01:09.370 It's a story about economics, environmental collapse, 00:01:09.650 --> 00:01:13.170 and the ruthlessness of human decision -making. 00:01:13.530 --> 00:01:16.010 So it's a study of failure on a communal scale. 00:01:16.269 --> 00:01:18.609 That's it. Exactly. It's a postmortem. We are 00:01:18.609 --> 00:01:20.790 performing an autopsy on settlements that died. 00:01:20.969 --> 00:01:24.549 Okay. So to start this autopsy, we have to look 00:01:24.549 --> 00:01:27.090 at the single weirdest outlier in your research 00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:29.909 notes. Because I usually think of a ghost town 00:01:29.909 --> 00:01:32.510 as a dusty relic of the 1800s, something firmly 00:01:32.510 --> 00:01:35.310 in the past. Right. But you found a ghost town 00:01:35.310 --> 00:01:38.650 that is currently legally the capital city of 00:01:38.650 --> 00:01:41.129 a modern political territory. Sounds like a riddle, 00:01:41.150 --> 00:01:43.739 doesn't it? Is the story of Plymouth. Montserrat. 00:01:43.859 --> 00:01:46.459 And it challenges almost every assumption we 00:01:46.459 --> 00:01:48.420 have about how a government is supposed to function. 00:01:48.719 --> 00:01:51.140 OK, so just to orient everyone, Montserrat is 00:01:51.140 --> 00:01:53.500 a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:56.200 Correct. And if you look at the official government 00:01:56.200 --> 00:01:59.540 documents for Montserrat today, Plymouth is the 00:01:59.540 --> 00:02:01.459 seat of government. It is the capital. It is 00:02:01.459 --> 00:02:03.439 where the power resides. But if you actually 00:02:03.439 --> 00:02:05.500 go there. If you actually go there, you are entering 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:08.099 a modern day Pompeii. Because of the Soufriere 00:02:08.099 --> 00:02:12.080 Hills volcano. That's the one. In 1995, after 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:13.960 being dormant for centuries, the mountain woke 00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:16.460 up. And it didn't just puff out some smoke. It 00:02:16.460 --> 00:02:19.180 buried the southern half of the island in pyroclastic 00:02:19.180 --> 00:02:24.500 flows and just heavy, heavy ash. Plymouth, the 00:02:24.500 --> 00:02:27.699 city, was totally evacuated. Today, the town 00:02:27.699 --> 00:02:30.879 is buried under meters of hardened volcanic mud. 00:02:31.120 --> 00:02:33.719 So you can't even see the streets. In places, 00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:36.919 no. The Georgian -era buildings are filled up 00:02:36.919 --> 00:02:39.590 to the second floor with rock. The silence is 00:02:39.590 --> 00:02:42.090 absolute, apart from the wind. But, and this 00:02:42.090 --> 00:02:44.289 is the part I got stuck on, they never moved 00:02:44.289 --> 00:02:47.530 the capital. Officially. Not legally. The government 00:02:47.530 --> 00:02:49.430 operates out of a village called Braids in the 00:02:49.430 --> 00:02:51.689 North, which is the de facto capital. So that's 00:02:51.689 --> 00:02:53.889 where the actual work gets done. Right. They 00:02:53.889 --> 00:02:55.650 built temporary administrative buildings there. 00:02:55.789 --> 00:02:57.650 Yeah. But they never formally stripped Plymouth 00:02:57.650 --> 00:02:59.750 of the title. So you have this ghostly buried 00:02:59.750 --> 00:03:02.710 city that still holds the legal weight of a capital. 00:03:02.830 --> 00:03:05.539 That's bizarre. It creates this bizarre administrative 00:03:05.539 --> 00:03:08.460 stasis where the heart of the territory is a 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:09.979 place that would kill you if you stayed there 00:03:09.979 --> 00:03:12.099 too long without a mask. It really challenges 00:03:12.099 --> 00:03:15.319 the definition of what a town actually is. Is 00:03:15.319 --> 00:03:18.979 a town the buildings? Is it the legal charter? 00:03:19.659 --> 00:03:22.120 Or is it just the people? I mean, that's the 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:24.580 core question, isn't it? In Plymouth, the charter 00:03:24.580 --> 00:03:26.979 remains, the buildings remain, more or less. 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:30.030 Buried. Buried. But the people are gone. And 00:03:30.030 --> 00:03:31.949 that brings us to the core definition we need 00:03:31.949 --> 00:03:33.909 to settle on before we get into the heavy stuff. 00:03:34.110 --> 00:03:36.330 Okay. Historians argue about this constantly. 00:03:36.909 --> 00:03:40.229 T. Lindsay Baker, who's a heavyweight in this 00:03:40.229 --> 00:03:43.389 field, offers a definition that I find incredibly 00:03:43.389 --> 00:03:46.349 poignant. He says a ghost town is a town for 00:03:46.349 --> 00:03:48.569 which the reason for being no longer exists. 00:03:48.750 --> 00:03:51.530 The reason for being. That implies a town is 00:03:51.530 --> 00:03:54.430 a tool. It has a function. Exactly. A town isn't 00:03:54.430 --> 00:03:56.849 an accident. It's a solution to a problem. Yeah. 00:03:56.969 --> 00:03:59.159 We need to sleep near the mine. Or we need to 00:03:59.159 --> 00:04:01.800 water the train here. Or we need a port for these 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:04.080 ships. And when the problem is solved or when 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:06.180 the problem changes. The town loses its purpose. 00:04:06.280 --> 00:04:08.419 It becomes a discarded tool. But does it have 00:04:08.419 --> 00:04:10.419 to be completely empty? Because I've been to 00:04:10.419 --> 00:04:12.759 places called ghost towns that definitely had 00:04:12.759 --> 00:04:15.520 a gift shop and a guy selling soda. Right. And 00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:17.720 that's the spectrum of abandonment. In archaeological 00:04:17.720 --> 00:04:20.519 terms, if there's nothing left but like bumps 00:04:20.519 --> 00:04:23.040 in the grass, that's a deserted settlement. I 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.439 see. A ghost town usually implies visible remains. 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:29.779 Tangible decay, if you will. Another author, 00:04:29.879 --> 00:04:32.220 Lambert Florin, calls it a shadowy semblance 00:04:32.220 --> 00:04:34.980 of a former self. A shadowy semblance. That's 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:37.399 poetic. It is, and it allows for the hangers 00:04:37.399 --> 00:04:40.480 -on. You often find a ghost town has a population 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:44.680 of six or twelve. Really? Oh, yeah. Usually elderly 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:47.519 residents who refuse to leave, living amidst 00:04:47.519 --> 00:04:51.540 500 empty houses, they are... Part of the ghostliness. 00:04:51.660 --> 00:04:53.839 They're living in the after image of the community. 00:04:54.079 --> 00:04:56.680 So if a town is a tool that has lost its use, 00:04:56.839 --> 00:04:59.939 let's look at the most common tool. The moneymaker. 00:05:00.180 --> 00:05:02.939 The economic pulse. The boom and bust cycle. 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.759 This is the Wild West archetype. The gold rush. 00:05:06.060 --> 00:05:08.060 I think we all have that mental image of the 00:05:08.060 --> 00:05:10.639 prospector and the mule. But mechanically, how 00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:13.589 does a town go from boom to ghost so fast? Is 00:05:13.589 --> 00:05:16.149 it just that the gold literally runs out? Rarely. 00:05:16.149 --> 00:05:18.269 It almost never just runs out completely. It 00:05:18.269 --> 00:05:20.250 comes down to the fragility of a single source 00:05:20.250 --> 00:05:22.670 economy. Okay, so give me an example. Let's look 00:05:22.670 --> 00:05:25.970 at Bodie, California. In the late 1870s, this 00:05:25.970 --> 00:05:28.209 wasn't a village. It was a metropolis of the 00:05:28.209 --> 00:05:31.569 Sierras. We're talking 10 ,000 people. 10 ,000, 00:05:31.569 --> 00:05:36.410 wow. 65 saloons, a mile long main street. It 00:05:36.410 --> 00:05:38.889 had its own Chinatown, its own red light district. 00:05:39.350 --> 00:05:42.639 It was there for one reason, gold. And when the 00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:45.060 gold is gone, the people leave. Well, it's actually 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:48.459 more nuanced than the gold is gone. Rarely does 00:05:48.459 --> 00:05:51.199 a mine run literally dry, where you hit bedrock 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:52.899 and there's nothing left. So what happens? What 00:05:52.899 --> 00:05:56.319 happens is the marginal cost of extraction exceeds 00:05:56.319 --> 00:05:58.839 the market price of the resource. You might still 00:05:58.839 --> 00:06:00.420 have gold on the ground, but if it costs you 00:06:00.420 --> 00:06:02.899 $100 to get an ounce out, and you can only sell 00:06:02.899 --> 00:06:05.600 that ounce for $80. The mine closes. It's just 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:07.720 a business decision. It's just a business decision. 00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:12.079 The spread kills the town. And because body had 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:14.620 no other industry, no agriculture, no manufacturing, 00:06:14.779 --> 00:06:17.079 no river trade, the moment the mine whistle stopped 00:06:17.079 --> 00:06:19.980 blowing, the town's value dropped to zero. The 00:06:19.980 --> 00:06:22.959 reason for being evaporated. And body is fascinating 00:06:22.959 --> 00:06:25.579 because of how it was preserved. It wasn't demolished. 00:06:25.639 --> 00:06:27.360 It was just left. They call it arrested decay. 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:29.540 That's the state policy for body. They don't 00:06:29.540 --> 00:06:32.040 fix it up to look new, but they shore it up so 00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:33.860 it doesn't fall down. So you can still see it 00:06:33.860 --> 00:06:36.079 as it was. You can walk up to a window in body 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:39.550 today and see a table set for dinner. with dust 00:06:39.550 --> 00:06:42.970 from 1940 on it. It's a time capsule. It's amazing 00:06:42.970 --> 00:06:45.250 that California has so many of these. They actually 00:06:45.250 --> 00:06:48.370 had to, what, categorize them? They did. It was 00:06:48.370 --> 00:06:51.089 a battle of the ruins. You had Bodie and you 00:06:51.089 --> 00:06:53.970 had Calico, another famous mining town. Both 00:06:53.970 --> 00:06:57.290 wanted the title of Steet Ghost Town. A political 00:06:57.290 --> 00:07:00.209 fight over ruins. So the legislature, in a very 00:07:00.209 --> 00:07:02.990 bureaucratic compromise, split the baby. Bodie 00:07:02.990 --> 00:07:05.610 is the official gold rush ghost town, and Calico 00:07:05.610 --> 00:07:08.189 is the official silver rush ghost town. It's 00:07:08.189 --> 00:07:10.149 good to know that even in death, there's bureaucracy. 00:07:10.470 --> 00:07:11.990 But you mentioned something in the notes about 00:07:11.990 --> 00:07:14.069 Australia that I found really smart, but also 00:07:14.069 --> 00:07:17.410 kind of sad. They basically engineered the ghost 00:07:17.410 --> 00:07:19.750 town out of existence. The fly -in, fly -out 00:07:19.750 --> 00:07:23.370 model. FIFO. How does that work? Well, mining 00:07:23.370 --> 00:07:25.490 companies learned a hard lesson from places like 00:07:25.490 --> 00:07:27.709 Boddy or their own Wittenum, which we'll get 00:07:27.709 --> 00:07:31.180 to. Building a town is expensive. Right. Schools, 00:07:31.220 --> 00:07:35.079 hospitals, sewage. It's a massive sunk cost for 00:07:35.079 --> 00:07:37.660 a mine that might only last 20 years. Yeah. So 00:07:37.660 --> 00:07:40.920 now in Western Australia, they don't build towns. 00:07:40.980 --> 00:07:44.819 They build camps. Modular housing, like trailers. 00:07:45.079 --> 00:07:47.699 Shipping containers converted into luxury suites, 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:50.600 essentially. Workers fly in from Perth, work 00:07:50.600 --> 00:07:53.060 two weeks on, fly home for one week off. And 00:07:53.060 --> 00:07:55.000 when the mine closes. They put the buildings 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:57.759 on flatbed trucks and drive them away. So it's 00:07:57.759 --> 00:08:00.439 a ghost town preemptively erased. There's nothing 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:02.879 left behind. It's efficient. But sociologists 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:04.959 argue it strips the region of any development. 00:08:05.800 --> 00:08:08.360 You extract the wealth, but you leave nothing 00:08:08.360 --> 00:08:11.079 behind. No infrastructure, no community history. 00:08:11.259 --> 00:08:13.279 It's a transactional geography. That's a great 00:08:13.279 --> 00:08:14.860 way to put it. You treat the land as a vending 00:08:14.860 --> 00:08:16.939 machine rather than a place to live. That's a 00:08:16.939 --> 00:08:19.720 heavy phrase. Transactional geography. We use 00:08:19.720 --> 00:08:21.930 the land and then we discard it. But sometimes 00:08:21.930 --> 00:08:24.410 the town doesn't die because the resource runs 00:08:24.410 --> 00:08:26.589 out. Sometimes the world just changes direction. 00:08:26.769 --> 00:08:29.670 The bypassed phenomenon. This is where geography 00:08:29.670 --> 00:08:32.210 loses its value because of technology. The classic 00:08:32.210 --> 00:08:35.539 example here is Route 66, the Mother Road. It 00:08:35.539 --> 00:08:37.980 is. And we need to understand what Route 66 was. 00:08:38.139 --> 00:08:40.980 It wasn't just a road. It was an economy. Before 00:08:40.980 --> 00:08:43.019 the interstates, if you drove from Chicago to 00:08:43.019 --> 00:08:45.659 L .A., you had to drive through the towns. No 00:08:45.659 --> 00:08:47.980 choice. No choice. You stopped at the traffic 00:08:47.980 --> 00:08:50.799 lights in Oatman, Arizona. You bought gas in 00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:53.879 Amboy, California. You bought a burger in Tucumcari. 00:08:54.419 --> 00:08:56.799 You were a captive audience. The highway literally 00:08:56.799 --> 00:09:00.080 funneled money into Main Street. Precisely. The 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:02.870 town's export was service to travelers. But in 00:09:02.870 --> 00:09:05.549 the 1950s and 60s, the U .S. Interstate Highway 00:09:05.549 --> 00:09:08.610 Act changed the philosophy of travel. From connecting 00:09:08.610 --> 00:09:12.190 communities to... To bypassing friction. We built 00:09:12.190 --> 00:09:15.830 I -40 and I -44. Which are massive, limited access 00:09:15.830 --> 00:09:18.929 freeways. No stoplights, no slowdowns. And they 00:09:18.929 --> 00:09:20.830 were often built just five or ten miles away 00:09:20.830 --> 00:09:22.990 from the old road. So you had these towns in 00:09:22.990 --> 00:09:24.909 Arizona where the residents could literally hear 00:09:24.909 --> 00:09:27.350 the traffic on the new highway. Thousands of 00:09:27.350 --> 00:09:29.629 cars an hour. But nobody was taking the exit. 00:09:29.879 --> 00:09:32.059 It's like a severed artery. The blood is flowing 00:09:32.059 --> 00:09:34.159 right there, but it's not reaching the limb. 00:09:34.379 --> 00:09:37.220 That is the perfect analogy. Oatman, Arizona, 00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:40.779 lost its primary customer base overnight. It 00:09:40.779 --> 00:09:43.120 didn't run out of water. It ran out of relevance. 00:09:43.460 --> 00:09:46.700 The geography of the route shifted, and the town 00:09:46.700 --> 00:09:48.879 was left in the cul -de -sac of history. And 00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:50.659 this wasn't the first time. The notes mention 00:09:50.659 --> 00:09:53.100 that railroads did the exact same thing to canal 00:09:53.100 --> 00:09:56.190 towns. Oh, absolutely. Technology is a serial 00:09:56.190 --> 00:09:58.850 killer of towns. Look at the steam era. Steam 00:09:58.850 --> 00:10:01.309 trains are thirsty. They need water. A lot of 00:10:01.309 --> 00:10:04.210 water. They need to stop every, say, 20 miles. 00:10:04.350 --> 00:10:06.830 So you had a whole network of water stop towns. 00:10:06.929 --> 00:10:09.389 That was their only job. Refill the boiler. That 00:10:09.389 --> 00:10:11.750 was their reason for being. Then comes diesel. 00:10:12.029 --> 00:10:14.330 Diesel and electric trains don't need to stop 00:10:14.330 --> 00:10:17.549 for water. Those towns became obsolete the moment 00:10:17.549 --> 00:10:20.139 the engine technology switched. It's a reminder 00:10:20.139 --> 00:10:21.919 that many settlements are just infrastructure 00:10:21.919 --> 00:10:24.980 support systems in disguise. And when the infrastructure 00:10:24.980 --> 00:10:27.419 changes, the support system is abandoned. Now, 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:30.220 there is a weird inversion of this economic death. 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:33.200 Usually we think build town, people come, economy 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:35.919 fails, people leave. Right. But you have a section 00:10:35.919 --> 00:10:39.059 here on paper ghost towns. This is building the 00:10:39.059 --> 00:10:41.440 ghost town on purpose. Well, not on purpose, 00:10:41.500 --> 00:10:44.559 but by speculation. This is speculative urbanization. 00:10:44.860 --> 00:10:48.080 This is the if you build it, they will come logic. 00:10:48.340 --> 00:10:51.139 Correct. And sometimes they don't come, or they 00:10:51.139 --> 00:10:53.440 don't come fast enough. We saw this in the Spanish 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:56.480 property bubble around 2008. Developers built 00:10:56.480 --> 00:11:00.220 massive suburban estates. Valdez is a famous 00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:03.080 one near Madrid, planning for thousands of commuters. 00:11:03.220 --> 00:11:05.860 And the bubble burst? The 2008 financial crisis 00:11:05.860 --> 00:11:08.659 hit. The banks collapsed. Construction stopped. 00:11:08.980 --> 00:11:11.539 So you had these brand new... gleaming apartment 00:11:11.539 --> 00:11:14.960 blocks paved streets street lights that turn 00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:17.360 on every night and nobody lives there nobody 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:20.720 it feels more eerie than a ruin a ruin has a 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:23.539 history a brand new empty city feels like a glitch 00:11:23.539 --> 00:11:25.919 in the simulation it's distinctively uncanny 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:28.590 now We often hear about Chinese ghost cities 00:11:28.590 --> 00:11:30.409 in this context. You've probably seen the headlines. 00:11:30.669 --> 00:11:32.970 Yeah, giant cities in Inner Mongolia with zero 00:11:32.970 --> 00:11:35.470 people is a huge viral story a few years ago. 00:11:35.610 --> 00:11:37.210 We do need to be careful with that narrative, 00:11:37.269 --> 00:11:39.309 though. The source material references academic 00:11:39.309 --> 00:11:41.429 Kerry Brown, who points out that this is often 00:11:41.429 --> 00:11:43.789 a Western misunderstanding of the Chinese planning 00:11:43.789 --> 00:11:46.129 model. So it's not a failure. Not in the same 00:11:46.129 --> 00:11:49.529 way. In the West, we build as the demand rises 00:11:49.529 --> 00:11:53.019 organic growth. In China, the urbanization drive 00:11:53.019 --> 00:11:55.580 is so massive, moving hundreds of millions of 00:11:55.580 --> 00:11:58.100 people to cities that they build the capacity 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:01.340 first. So it's a pre -town, not a ghost town. 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.679 In many cases, yes. A city that looked empty 00:12:04.679 --> 00:12:08.559 in 2010 might be fully populated in 2025. It 00:12:08.559 --> 00:12:10.200 was just waiting for the population transfer. 00:12:10.600 --> 00:12:13.559 So unlike the Spanish example, which was a market 00:12:13.559 --> 00:12:15.940 failure, the Chinese examples are often just 00:12:15.940 --> 00:12:18.500 a lag in a massive central plan. OK, so that 00:12:18.500 --> 00:12:21.049 covers the natural causes of death. economic 00:12:21.049 --> 00:12:24.409 failure, old age, irrelevance. But then we have 00:12:24.409 --> 00:12:27.210 the murders. The towns that didn't fail but were 00:12:27.210 --> 00:12:30.049 executed. Forced eviction. This is where the 00:12:30.049 --> 00:12:32.889 story gets incredibly dark. I was shocked by 00:12:32.889 --> 00:12:35.090 the drowned towns. I knew we built dams, but 00:12:35.090 --> 00:12:36.909 I guess I never did the math on what happened 00:12:36.909 --> 00:12:38.570 to the people living in the valley before the 00:12:38.570 --> 00:12:40.590 water rose. It is a utilitarian calculation. 00:12:41.009 --> 00:12:43.309 A government decides we need electricity for 00:12:43.309 --> 00:12:45.889 a million people in the city or water for irrigation. 00:12:46.289 --> 00:12:48.590 There are 500 people living in this valley. Sorry, 00:12:48.710 --> 00:12:50.889 but you have to go. And the scale of this is 00:12:50.889 --> 00:12:54.250 global. Truly. Let's look at St. Thomas, Nevada. 00:12:54.750 --> 00:12:57.389 This was a Mormon settlement established in 1865, 00:12:57.649 --> 00:13:00.830 a real community with a school, a post office, 00:13:00.970 --> 00:13:04.350 farms. Then the Hoover Dam was authorized in 00:13:04.350 --> 00:13:07.950 the 1930s. To create Lake Mead. Exactly. The 00:13:07.950 --> 00:13:09.769 engineers calculated that the water was going 00:13:09.769 --> 00:13:12.169 to rise 70 feet above the highest roof in St. 00:13:12.230 --> 00:13:14.590 Thomas. So the government bought the residents 00:13:14.590 --> 00:13:17.090 out often for pennies on the dollar and told 00:13:17.090 --> 00:13:19.759 them to leave. Did they go? Quietly? Mostly, 00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:23.559 yes. But the story goes that one resident, Hugh 00:13:23.559 --> 00:13:26.259 Lord, stayed until the water was lapping at his 00:13:26.259 --> 00:13:29.360 front porch. He set his house on fire and then 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:31.799 rode away in a boat as it flooded. That is cinematic. 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:35.059 But St. Thomas isn't gone, right? It comes back. 00:13:35.179 --> 00:13:37.840 That's the haunting part. It's underwater, but 00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:40.940 in the desert, preservation is high. During extreme 00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:42.860 droughts, like we've seen recently in the American 00:13:42.860 --> 00:13:46.019 West, the water level of Lake Mead drops. The 00:13:46.019 --> 00:13:48.360 ruins of St. Thomas reemerge. You can walk there. 00:13:48.399 --> 00:13:50.120 You can hike down the mudflats and walk through 00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:52.299 the foundations of the schoolhouse. You can see 00:13:52.299 --> 00:13:54.860 the stumps, the trees they cut down. It's a town 00:13:54.860 --> 00:13:57.039 that refuses to stay drowned. And we saw the 00:13:57.039 --> 00:13:59.100 same thing in Spain recently with the village 00:13:59.100 --> 00:14:01.740 of Aceredo. Oh, those photos were stunning. You 00:14:01.740 --> 00:14:04.799 look like a skeleton rising from the grave. In 00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:08.159 2022, The reservoir dropped to 15 % capacity. 00:14:08.580 --> 00:14:11.820 The entire village appeared. And because it was 00:14:11.820 --> 00:14:14.919 stone, the walls were still standing. Former 00:14:14.919 --> 00:14:17.100 residents actually went back to walk through 00:14:17.100 --> 00:14:19.779 their old homes. Imagine that emotion standing 00:14:19.779 --> 00:14:22.220 in the living room you were evicted from 30 years 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:25.919 ago, smelling the mud and the rot. It's powerful. 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:28.139 Yeah. But it's not just the loss of property, 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:31.139 though. It's the loss of culture. The notes mention 00:14:31.139 --> 00:14:34.279 a Welsh village, Cappel Celyn. This one feels 00:14:34.279 --> 00:14:37.779 political. Highly political. This was 1965. Liverpool, 00:14:38.179 --> 00:14:40.779 a major English industrial city, needed water. 00:14:41.059 --> 00:14:43.840 They identified the Triwarren Valley in Wales 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:45.940 as the perfect spot for a reservoir. But there 00:14:45.940 --> 00:14:48.179 was a village there. There was. And Capel Celyn 00:14:48.179 --> 00:14:49.960 was one of the few remaining communities that 00:14:49.960 --> 00:14:53.039 was 100 % Welsh -speaking. It was a stronghold 00:14:53.039 --> 00:14:54.740 of the culture. And the English government flooded 00:14:54.740 --> 00:14:57.559 it anyway. Despite massive protests, every single 00:14:57.559 --> 00:14:59.620 Welsh member of parliament voted against it. 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:02.220 But they were outnumbered by the English MPs. 00:15:02.639 --> 00:15:05.220 The valley was flooded. So the ghost town became 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:07.860 a martyr. It fueled the Welsh nationalist movement 00:15:07.860 --> 00:15:11.440 for decades. You still see the graffiti Kofitch 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:14.600 Drywarren, remember Drywarren, painted on walls 00:15:14.600 --> 00:15:17.919 all over Wales today. It's a ghost town that 00:15:17.919 --> 00:15:21.379 functions as a political rallying cry. It symbolizes 00:15:21.379 --> 00:15:24.080 the idea that a small community shouldn't be 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:26.080 sacrificed for the convenience of a large one. 00:15:26.320 --> 00:15:28.559 Sometimes, though, the government doesn't want 00:15:28.559 --> 00:15:31.139 the water. They want the silence. Or rather, 00:15:31.279 --> 00:15:33.100 they want to make a lot of noise and they don't 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:35.159 want anyone complaining about it. The buffer 00:15:35.159 --> 00:15:38.379 zone concept. This is an eminent domain on steroids. 00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:41.740 The most striking example is the John C. Stennis 00:15:41.740 --> 00:15:44.000 Space Center in Mississippi. This is the NASA 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:47.039 testing ground. Right. In the 1960s, for the 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.600 Apollo program, they needed to test the Saturn 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:52.350 V rockets. These are the most powerful machines 00:15:52.350 --> 00:15:54.750 ever built. The noise must have been incredible. 00:15:54.990 --> 00:15:58.029 The noise generated by a static fire test is 00:15:58.029 --> 00:16:00.490 so loud it can physically damage buildings and 00:16:00.490 --> 00:16:03.070 rupture eardrums miles away. So they couldn't 00:16:03.070 --> 00:16:05.289 just build a fence. They needed an acoustic buffer. 00:16:05.549 --> 00:16:09.649 A huge one. 34 square miles. And there were five 00:16:09.649 --> 00:16:13.470 towns inside that circle. Gainesville, Logtown, 00:16:13.730 --> 00:16:17.110 Napoleon, Santa Rosa, Wistonia. And NASA just 00:16:17.110 --> 00:16:20.370 deleted them. Acquired. is the euphemism. They 00:16:20.370 --> 00:16:22.889 moved 700 families. They didn't bulldoze everything, 00:16:23.070 --> 00:16:24.889 though. They just removed the people. So what's 00:16:24.889 --> 00:16:26.929 left? If you get clearance to go into the buffer 00:16:26.929 --> 00:16:29.549 zone today, you can drive down the old paid streets 00:16:29.549 --> 00:16:31.889 of Logtown. The street signs are gone. The houses 00:16:31.889 --> 00:16:35.049 are gone. But the grid is there, overgrown with 00:16:35.049 --> 00:16:37.720 Mississippi vines. There's a one -room schoolhouse 00:16:37.720 --> 00:16:40.100 still standing in the silence. It's a ghost town 00:16:40.100 --> 00:16:42.700 held in stasis inside a high -security government 00:16:42.700 --> 00:16:45.620 facility. That is wildly dystopian. It shows 00:16:45.620 --> 00:16:48.320 the absolute priority of national interest over 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:51.179 local community. The moonshot was more important 00:16:51.179 --> 00:16:53.200 than lockdown. And I guess the ultimate national 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:56.120 interest is war. We have a whole category here 00:16:56.120 --> 00:16:58.320 of towns that died not because they were bombed, 00:16:58.340 --> 00:17:00.039 but because the army needed target practice. 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:02.730 The tragedy of Tynem. England, this one breaks 00:17:02.730 --> 00:17:05.990 your heart, is 1943. World War II is raging. 00:17:06.190 --> 00:17:08.529 The British army needs a place to train for the 00:17:08.529 --> 00:17:11.190 invasion of Europe D -Day. So they requisitioned 00:17:11.190 --> 00:17:14.190 Tynan in the surrounding valley. But they told 00:17:14.190 --> 00:17:16.230 the villagers it was temporary. We just need 00:17:16.230 --> 00:17:19.109 to borrow your homes to save the world. Explicitly. 00:17:19.329 --> 00:17:21.869 The villagers left a pinned note on the church 00:17:21.869 --> 00:17:25.390 door. It's a famous text. It said, please treat 00:17:25.390 --> 00:17:28.119 the church and houses with care. We have given 00:17:28.119 --> 00:17:30.200 up our homes where many of us lived for generations 00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:33.380 to help win the war to keep men free. We shall 00:17:33.380 --> 00:17:35.279 return one day and thank you for treating the 00:17:35.279 --> 00:17:37.900 village kindly. We shall return, but they didn't. 00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:40.440 They never returned. After the war, the army 00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:42.240 decided they still needed the training ground. 00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:45.140 The temporary eviction became permanent. So the 00:17:45.140 --> 00:17:47.039 village is still there. Still there, crumbling 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:50.500 away, surrounded by danger. Unexploded ordinance 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:52.839 signs. That's the betrayal. It's one thing to 00:17:52.839 --> 00:17:54.559 lose your home. It's another to lend it to your 00:17:54.559 --> 00:17:56.619 country and have them steal it. It creates a 00:17:56.619 --> 00:17:59.359 very specific kind of ghost town. One born of 00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:02.839 patriotism and betrayal. Ember on the Salisbury 00:18:02.839 --> 00:18:05.559 Plain suffered the exact same fate. So we've 00:18:05.559 --> 00:18:07.980 had economic death and government mandated death. 00:18:08.299 --> 00:18:11.519 Now let's look at the sudden violent death, disaster. 00:18:12.279 --> 00:18:15.519 The times when nature just decides. You cannot 00:18:15.519 --> 00:18:18.440 live here anymore. Catastrophe is a major creator 00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:21.680 of ghost towns. And nature has a lot of weapons 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:23.759 in its arsenal. The first one in the notes is 00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:26.660 Krakow, Italy. Now, if you've seen a movie in 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:28.920 the last 20 years, Quantum of Solace, The Passion 00:18:28.920 --> 00:18:31.700 of the Christ, you've seen Krakow. It's the ultimate 00:18:31.700 --> 00:18:35.380 spooky hilltop village. It's medieval, dramatic, 00:18:35.700 --> 00:18:38.599 beautiful. But why is it empty? It looks like 00:18:38.599 --> 00:18:40.980 a fortress. It was built on a steep hill for 00:18:40.980 --> 00:18:43.559 defense in the Middle Ages. But what makes for 00:18:43.559 --> 00:18:46.839 good defense often makes for bad geology. In 00:18:46.839 --> 00:18:50.759 1963, a massive landslide occurred. The very 00:18:50.759 --> 00:18:53.559 hill the town was perched on began to fail. So 00:18:53.559 --> 00:18:56.380 the ground literally rejected the town. Essentially. 00:18:56.500 --> 00:18:58.759 The population was evacuated to a new town in 00:18:58.759 --> 00:19:01.559 the valley, Cruco Pichera. But the old town remains, 00:19:01.759 --> 00:19:03.980 perched up there like a crown of thorns, slowly 00:19:03.980 --> 00:19:06.670 sliding down the hill. It's a museum of medieval 00:19:06.670 --> 00:19:08.549 architecture that you enter at your own risk. 00:19:08.710 --> 00:19:11.210 And then you have Armero in Colombia. If Krakow 00:19:11.210 --> 00:19:13.589 is a slow failure, Armero was an apocalypse. 00:19:14.250 --> 00:19:17.450 Armero is a site of immense sorrow. In 1985, 00:19:17.910 --> 00:19:21.250 the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. It wasn't 00:19:21.250 --> 00:19:23.349 just ash, the heat melted the glacier at the 00:19:23.349 --> 00:19:26.789 summit. This triggered lahars, massive high -speed 00:19:26.789 --> 00:19:29.849 flows of mud. rock, and debris. It's like a concrete 00:19:29.849 --> 00:19:32.710 tsunami. That is an accurate description. It 00:19:32.710 --> 00:19:34.650 slammed into the town of Armero in the middle 00:19:34.650 --> 00:19:37.009 of the night. Approximately 23 ,000 people died. 00:19:37.190 --> 00:19:39.109 It wiped the town off the map. And they never 00:19:39.109 --> 00:19:42.630 rebuilt. No. How could you? It was declared Holy 00:19:42.630 --> 00:19:46.089 Land by Pope John Paul II. It isn't a ghost town 00:19:46.089 --> 00:19:48.509 in the sense of empty buildings waiting for residents. 00:19:49.089 --> 00:19:52.680 It's a graveyard. The ruins that remain are headstones. 00:19:52.859 --> 00:19:55.539 On a slightly less lethal but equally relentless 00:19:55.539 --> 00:19:57.819 note, there's Pattinsburg, Missouri. This feels 00:19:57.819 --> 00:20:00.599 like a story about human stubbornness. Pattinsburg 00:20:00.599 --> 00:20:03.400 is the town that refused to move until it had 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:05.740 no choice. It was built on the flood plains of 00:20:05.740 --> 00:20:08.319 the Grand River. Since its founding in 1845, 00:20:08.619 --> 00:20:10.779 it was flooded more than 30 times. 30 times. 00:20:10.839 --> 00:20:12.940 At what point do you say, maybe the river wants 00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:15.680 this spot? This is the sunk cost fallacy in action. 00:20:16.160 --> 00:20:17.819 We've already built the bank here. We've already 00:20:17.819 --> 00:20:20.599 built the school. But after the great flood of 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:23.380 1993, which was devastating across the Midwest, 00:20:23.740 --> 00:20:26.099 the residents finally broke. So what did they 00:20:26.099 --> 00:20:29.359 do? With government help, the entire town decided 00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:31.940 to pick up and move three miles away to higher 00:20:31.940 --> 00:20:34.839 ground. So the old site is a ghost town, but 00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:38.059 the community survived by migrating. Yes. If 00:20:38.059 --> 00:20:40.839 you go to Old Battensburg today, it's just foundations 00:20:40.839 --> 00:20:43.910 and stop signs in a field. But the people are 00:20:43.910 --> 00:20:46.210 safe up the hill. It's a rare success story of 00:20:46.210 --> 00:20:48.269 retreat. That leads to a weird category. The 00:20:48.269 --> 00:20:50.869 anticipated disaster. Towns that were abandoned 00:20:50.869 --> 00:20:53.170 before something happened. The town of Lemieux, 00:20:53.349 --> 00:20:56.329 Ontario. Lemieux. That means the better in French, 00:20:56.349 --> 00:20:59.769 right? Ironically, yes. In 1991, soil testing 00:20:59.769 --> 00:21:02.349 revealed the town was built on unstable Lidoclay. 00:21:02.549 --> 00:21:05.210 This is a type of soil that is prone to liquefaction. 00:21:05.269 --> 00:21:07.549 A meaning. If it gets wet enough or shaken, it 00:21:07.549 --> 00:21:09.769 turns from solid to liquid instantly. That sounds 00:21:09.769 --> 00:21:12.450 terrifying. The engineers realized the town was 00:21:12.450 --> 00:21:15.109 sitting on a ticking time bomb. The government 00:21:15.109 --> 00:21:17.529 bought out the residents and demolished the buildings 00:21:17.529 --> 00:21:20.470 to prevent a tragedy. And were they right? Did 00:21:20.470 --> 00:21:23.529 anything happen? Chillingly so. Two years after 00:21:23.529 --> 00:21:26.210 the last building was demolished, a massive landslide 00:21:26.210 --> 00:21:29.289 occurred. 17 hectares of the former town site 00:21:29.289 --> 00:21:31.829 collapsed and swept into the South Nation River. 00:21:32.089 --> 00:21:34.210 Wow. If people had still been there, it would 00:21:34.210 --> 00:21:36.630 have been a catastrophe. Instead, it was just 00:21:36.630 --> 00:21:39.549 a geological event in an empty field. Good call, 00:21:39.630 --> 00:21:42.410 engineers. Usually we wait for the disaster to 00:21:42.410 --> 00:21:44.990 happen, but then we have the disasters we make 00:21:44.990 --> 00:21:48.089 ourselves, the man -made environmental catastrophes. 00:21:48.210 --> 00:21:50.329 Centralia, Pennsylvania is the poster child for 00:21:50.329 --> 00:21:53.369 this. The forever fire. This is the inspiration 00:21:53.369 --> 00:21:55.410 for the Silent Hill of video games and movies, 00:21:55.569 --> 00:21:59.869 isn't it? It is. In 1962, a trash fire in a landfill... 00:22:00.140 --> 00:22:02.140 Some say it was the town trying to clean up for 00:22:02.140 --> 00:22:05.500 Memorial Day ignited an exposed vein of anthracite 00:22:05.500 --> 00:22:08.920 coal. And coal burns hot and slow. Very. Once 00:22:08.920 --> 00:22:10.799 it got into the labyrinth of mines beneath the 00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:12.960 town, it was impossible to put out. And it's 00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:15.380 still burning. Still burning today. It's expected 00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:18.940 to burn for another 250 years. As the fire spread 00:22:18.940 --> 00:22:21.400 underground, the ground above became hot to the 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:24.599 touch. Sinkholes opened up, swallowing backyards 00:22:24.599 --> 00:22:27.079 and spewing carbon monoxide. So the government 00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:29.480 had to step in. They condemned the town. They 00:22:29.480 --> 00:22:32.259 revoked the zip code. Today, only a handful of 00:22:32.259 --> 00:22:35.019 people remain fighting the eviction. But mostly, 00:22:35.160 --> 00:22:37.119 it's a grid of streets where nature is taking 00:22:37.119 --> 00:22:39.920 over, and smoke still curls up from cracks in 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:42.099 the asphalt. And, of course, the nuclear option. 00:22:42.420 --> 00:22:45.240 Chernobyl and Pripyat. This is the ultimate ghost 00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:48.819 town. Following the 1986 reactor explosion, nearly 00:22:48.819 --> 00:22:51.539 200 towns in Ukraine and Belarus were evacuated 00:22:51.539 --> 00:22:54.259 due to radiation. But Pripyat is the famous one. 00:22:54.559 --> 00:22:56.819 It was a model city, wasn't it? It was a Soviet 00:22:56.819 --> 00:22:59.609 atom grad. A city built for the workers. It had 00:22:59.609 --> 00:23:02.049 50 ,000 people, amusement parks, swimming pools, 00:23:02.269 --> 00:23:04.750 high -rise apartments. It was the future. And 00:23:04.750 --> 00:23:07.609 now it's a time capsule of 1986. It represents 00:23:07.609 --> 00:23:10.269 the ultimate failure of technology. The forest 00:23:10.269 --> 00:23:12.509 is reclaiming the city. There are wolves hunting 00:23:12.509 --> 00:23:14.829 in the city square. It shows how quickly nature 00:23:14.829 --> 00:23:16.990 returns when we leave, even if the place is poisoned. 00:23:17.269 --> 00:23:20.630 There is also the invisible enemy. Disease and 00:23:20.630 --> 00:23:22.730 contamination. We aren't just talking about radiation. 00:23:23.250 --> 00:23:26.549 No. Historically, the Black Death emptied hamlets 00:23:26.549 --> 00:23:29.460 in England. The Spanish flu depopulated towns 00:23:29.460 --> 00:23:32.579 in Arkansas. But the modern version is the toxic 00:23:32.579 --> 00:23:36.740 legacy. Look at Whitnum in Australia. This was 00:23:36.740 --> 00:23:39.980 an asbestos mining town. Blue asbestos. The most 00:23:39.980 --> 00:23:42.920 dangerous kind. The fibers get into your lungs 00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:46.299 and cause mesothelioma. The health risks became 00:23:46.299 --> 00:23:49.640 undeniable. The town was shut down in 1966. So 00:23:49.640 --> 00:23:51.579 it's just an abandoned town. It's worse than 00:23:51.579 --> 00:23:53.039 that. The government didn't just abandon it. 00:23:53.140 --> 00:23:55.480 They actively degazetted it. What does that mean? 00:23:55.799 --> 00:23:57.599 They removed it from the maps. They took down 00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.740 the road signs leading to it. They cut off the 00:23:59.740 --> 00:24:01.440 power grid. They wanted to make it disappear 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:03.660 because the very dust on the ground is lethal. 00:24:03.819 --> 00:24:06.660 If you go there, you are breathing poison. And 00:24:06.660 --> 00:24:08.960 we have similar stories in the U .S. Times Beach, 00:24:09.019 --> 00:24:11.480 Missouri, was evacuated due to dioxin contamination 00:24:11.480 --> 00:24:14.920 in the soil. And Pitcher, Oklahoma. Pitcher's 00:24:14.920 --> 00:24:17.920 the one with the chat piles, right? Yes. It was 00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:20.859 a lead and zinc mining hub. They left behind 00:24:20.859 --> 00:24:24.619 mountains of chat -crushed rock residue. The 00:24:24.619 --> 00:24:27.299 kids used to play on these hills like sand dunes. 00:24:27.319 --> 00:24:30.400 But the chat was full of lead. The groundwater 00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:34.079 was toxic. The EPA eventually declared it a Superfund 00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:36.480 site and bought everyone out. These are towns 00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:38.960 killed by their own industry. They were national 00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:42.160 sacrifice zones. It's a heavy list. But we have 00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:44.480 one more category of destruction before we get 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:47.339 to the redemption arc. War. War leaves scars. 00:24:47.480 --> 00:24:51.180 And sometimes those scars are entire towns. We 00:24:51.180 --> 00:24:53.259 mentioned the training grounds, but actual conflict 00:24:53.259 --> 00:24:55.920 creates ghost towns, too. Or a dorsal gland. 00:24:56.140 --> 00:24:58.000 In France, I remember seeing photos of this. 00:24:58.059 --> 00:24:59.799 It looks like it happened yesterday. That is 00:24:59.799 --> 00:25:03.160 intentional. On June 10, 1944, a German Waffen 00:25:03.160 --> 00:25:05.680 -SS company surrounded the village. They massacred 00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:09.059 642 inhabitants, men, women, and children. It 00:25:09.059 --> 00:25:11.640 was a brutal atrocity. And after the war? President 00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:13.819 Charles de Gaulle made a specific decision. He 00:25:13.819 --> 00:25:15.660 ordered that the ruins be preserved exactly as 00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:17.900 they were. They built a new village nearby for 00:25:17.900 --> 00:25:20.180 the survivors, but the old village stands as 00:25:20.180 --> 00:25:22.119 a permanent memorial. So the burned cars are 00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:25.000 still in the driveways? Yes. The sewing machines 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:28.000 are still in the windows. It's a ghost town that 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:30.839 serves as a witness. It forces you to look at 00:25:30.839 --> 00:25:33.740 the cost of hatred. Then there's Aghdam in Azerbaijan. 00:25:34.279 --> 00:25:36.500 This was a victim of the first Nagorno -Karabakh 00:25:36.500 --> 00:25:40.339 war in 1993. The population fled heavy fighting. 00:25:40.839 --> 00:25:43.920 Armenian forces seized the city, but they didn't 00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:47.480 just occupy it, they dismantled it. Over decades, 00:25:47.660 --> 00:25:49.839 the buildings were stripped of roofs, windows, 00:25:50.099 --> 00:25:52.859 bricks, and pipes to be used as building materials 00:25:52.859 --> 00:25:55.700 elsewhere. It became known as the Hiroshima of 00:25:55.700 --> 00:25:58.619 the Caucasus, not because of a bomb, but because 00:25:58.619 --> 00:26:01.039 of the sheer scale of the ruin. It's a skeleton 00:26:01.039 --> 00:26:03.380 city, picked clean. And there's a unique case 00:26:03.380 --> 00:26:07.059 in Africa, the Forbidden Zone. Namibia. This 00:26:07.059 --> 00:26:09.119 connects back to our resource discussion. In 00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:11.819 1908, diamonds were discovered. The German imperial 00:26:11.819 --> 00:26:14.200 government created the Spergebiet, the forbidden 00:26:14.200 --> 00:26:16.660 zone. To control the diamonds. Absolutely. They 00:26:16.660 --> 00:26:18.200 wanted to control the diamond mining completely, 00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:20.720 so they kicked everyone out. Well, they criminalized 00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:23.680 new settlements. Towns like Kolmanskop and Pomona 00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:25.660 thrived for a bit inside the zone, while the 00:26:25.660 --> 00:26:27.819 diamonds were easy to get, literally sitting 00:26:27.819 --> 00:26:30.660 on the sand. But as the diamonds depleted and 00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:33.069 the restrictions tightened... the towns died 00:26:33.069 --> 00:26:35.349 coleman's cup is the one with the sand dunes 00:26:35.349 --> 00:26:37.930 in the living rooms yes it's a photographer's 00:26:37.930 --> 00:26:41.329 dream the desert winds have blown sand through 00:26:41.329 --> 00:26:43.509 the windows filling the rooms halfway up the 00:26:43.509 --> 00:26:50.190 walls it's a beautiful surreal image we've covered 00:26:50.190 --> 00:26:52.930 a lot of death and destruction let's pivot Is 00:26:52.930 --> 00:26:55.450 there life after death for a ghost town? Surprisingly, 00:26:55.509 --> 00:26:58.509 yes. Resurrection is possible. And the most common 00:26:58.509 --> 00:27:01.309 lifeline is tourism. People like us wanting to 00:27:01.309 --> 00:27:03.630 see the ruins. The ruins corn phenomenon. Exactly. 00:27:03.690 --> 00:27:06.630 We have a fascination with decay. Walhalla in 00:27:06.630 --> 00:27:08.750 Australia is a great example. Gold mine closed 00:27:08.750 --> 00:27:11.849 in 1914. Town almost emptied. But today, it's 00:27:11.849 --> 00:27:14.430 booming because of heritage tourism. So people 00:27:14.430 --> 00:27:16.190 want to see the history. They want to walk the 00:27:16.190 --> 00:27:18.390 streets of the past. And you see it with Barkerville 00:27:18.390 --> 00:27:20.509 in Canada, too. It's preserved as a provincial 00:27:20.509 --> 00:27:23.410 museum. It's living history with actors and tours. 00:27:23.690 --> 00:27:26.650 And Radicatorche in Mexico. A former mining town 00:27:26.650 --> 00:27:29.369 that found a second life as a movie set. The 00:27:29.369 --> 00:27:32.630 Mexican with Brad Pitt, Banditas, and now it's 00:27:32.630 --> 00:27:35.730 a major tourist spot. The ghost aspect became 00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:38.130 the commodity. The emptiness is what they're 00:27:38.130 --> 00:27:41.019 selling. But it's not just tourists. Real people 00:27:41.019 --> 00:27:43.940 are moving back into some of these places. Repopulation 00:27:43.940 --> 00:27:47.640 by new groups. Look at Rias in Italy. It was 00:27:47.640 --> 00:27:50.259 a dying medieval hill town, young people leaving 00:27:50.259 --> 00:27:53.420 for the cities. The mayor initiated a bold scheme 00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:55.779 to house refugees in the abandoned homes. That's 00:27:55.779 --> 00:27:58.420 a brilliant match. Empty houses, people needing 00:27:58.420 --> 00:28:01.490 homes. It revitalized the town. It kept the school 00:28:01.490 --> 00:28:04.390 open, brought life back to the streets, and gave 00:28:04.390 --> 00:28:06.990 the refugees a community. It showed that a town's 00:28:06.990 --> 00:28:09.910 purpose can change. And the pilgrims? Fonsebadan, 00:28:10.049 --> 00:28:12.069 in Spain. It was basically abandoned, just a 00:28:12.069 --> 00:28:14.490 mother and son left. But it's on the route of 00:28:14.490 --> 00:28:17.740 the Camino de Santiago. As the pilgrimage became 00:28:17.740 --> 00:28:20.680 popular again in the 90s and 2000s, the stream 00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:23.460 of walkers revived the village. So hostels opened, 00:28:23.640 --> 00:28:26.099 cafes opened. It found a purpose in serving the 00:28:26.099 --> 00:28:27.960 travelers again. And you have a long -term example 00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:30.400 that proves ghost status isn't always permanent. 00:28:30.859 --> 00:28:34.079 Alexandria, Egypt. Wait, the massive city? Today, 00:28:34.240 --> 00:28:37.819 yes. But we forget that Alexandria, once the 00:28:37.819 --> 00:28:39.839 greatest city in the ancient world, declined 00:28:39.839 --> 00:28:43.960 massively in the Middle Ages. By 1806, it had 00:28:43.960 --> 00:28:46.440 shrunk to a fishing town of about 5 ,000 people. 00:28:46.779 --> 00:28:49.940 It was a shadow. A ghost of an empire. But then 00:28:49.940 --> 00:28:52.640 it revived in the 19th century due to new trade 00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:56.220 routes and canals. Today, it has over 4 million 00:28:56.220 --> 00:28:59.279 people. It proves that cities can die and come 00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:01.480 back to life if the geopolitical or economic 00:29:01.480 --> 00:29:04.240 winds change. A ghost town is just a town that 00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:06.819 is currently failing. That's a great way to put 00:29:06.819 --> 00:29:08.640 it. Before we wrap up, we have to do the rapid 00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:11.640 fire round. the global curiosities, the places 00:29:11.640 --> 00:29:14.180 that are just weird. Let's go to the bottom of 00:29:14.180 --> 00:29:17.200 the world, Antarctica, Deception Island. Good 00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:20.000 name. It was a whaling station abandoned in 1931 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:22.779 during the Great Depression. Later, a volcano 00:29:22.779 --> 00:29:25.299 damaged it. So you have rusting industrial tanks, 00:29:25.500 --> 00:29:28.279 massive iron boilers sitting in a volcanic crater 00:29:28.279 --> 00:29:30.519 in Antarctica. It's incredibly stark. And grit 00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:33.000 vikings. South Georgia, another former whaling 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.349 station, but it has a museum curator. And they 00:29:36.349 --> 00:29:39.029 renovated the church and jetty for tourists visiting 00:29:39.029 --> 00:29:41.150 on cruise ships. It's a ghost town with a payroll. 00:29:41.329 --> 00:29:44.130 And an Oceania. To Wairoa in New Zealand. The 00:29:44.130 --> 00:29:46.609 Buried Village. Buried by the eruption of Mount 00:29:46.609 --> 00:29:49.990 Tarawera in 1886. It's an archaeological ghost 00:29:49.990 --> 00:29:52.490 town excavated so tourists can see the tops of 00:29:52.490 --> 00:29:55.049 the houses. And Port Craig. Also in New Zealand. 00:29:56.029 --> 00:29:58.230 Abandoned simply because the terrain was too 00:29:58.230 --> 00:30:01.369 inhospitable. Nature just said no. Nature saying 00:30:01.369 --> 00:30:03.569 no seems to be a recurring theme here. It is 00:30:03.569 --> 00:30:05.589 the ultimate zoning board. So what does this 00:30:05.589 --> 00:30:08.349 all mean? We've looked at gold rushes, floods, 00:30:08.609 --> 00:30:11.670 wars, and radiation. What's the takeaway? If 00:30:11.670 --> 00:30:14.069 we summarize the life cycle of settlements, we 00:30:14.069 --> 00:30:16.730 realize that towns are fragile organisms. We 00:30:16.730 --> 00:30:18.609 tend to think of our cities as concrete facts, 00:30:18.869 --> 00:30:21.670 but they are dependent on complex webs of economics, 00:30:22.009 --> 00:30:24.849 environment, and peace. And if you pull one thread... 00:30:24.960 --> 00:30:27.400 The mine closes, the river rises, the war starts, 00:30:27.480 --> 00:30:29.700 the town unravels. A ghost town isn't just a 00:30:29.700 --> 00:30:32.619 ruin, it's a snapshot. Exactly. It's a moment 00:30:32.619 --> 00:30:35.640 in history frozen by disaster or economic shift. 00:30:35.819 --> 00:30:38.960 It captures the day the music died. It preserves 00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:41.900 the way we lived at that exact moment. So here 00:30:41.900 --> 00:30:44.039 is the provocative thought to leave you with. 00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:47.559 We look at Bodie or Pompeii or Plymouth and think, 00:30:47.559 --> 00:30:50.019 wow, look at how they lived. But look around 00:30:50.019 --> 00:30:53.180 you. Look at the modern boom towns of today. 00:30:53.849 --> 00:30:57.509 We have cities entirely dependent on single industries, 00:30:57.849 --> 00:31:00.930 tech hubs, oil cities. We have coastal cities 00:31:00.930 --> 00:31:03.730 facing rising sea levels. We have regions that 00:31:03.730 --> 00:31:06.049 might become too hot to inhabit due to climate 00:31:06.049 --> 00:31:08.289 change. With remote work changing where we need 00:31:08.289 --> 00:31:11.109 to be and climate changing where we can be, which 00:31:11.109 --> 00:31:13.809 of our current bustling metropolises might be 00:31:13.809 --> 00:31:16.509 the tourist attraction ghost towns of the 22nd 00:31:16.509 --> 00:31:18.470 century? Will tourists be walking through the 00:31:18.470 --> 00:31:21.009 ruins of Miami or Las Vegas, wondering why we 00:31:21.009 --> 00:31:23.259 built there? It is a sobering question. History 00:31:23.259 --> 00:31:25.759 tells us that nothing is permanent. Every city 00:31:25.759 --> 00:31:27.779 is a ghost town in waiting. On that cheerful 00:31:27.779 --> 00:31:30.079 note. Look at your own city with fresh eyes today. 00:31:30.180 --> 00:31:32.579 You might be seeing history in the making. Thanks 00:31:32.579 --> 00:31:34.099 for diving deep with us. Take care.