Siberian Nearly-Abandoned & "Ghost" Cities Could Be the Worst Halloween Scare Ever
We'd like to call them "ghost towns", but they are clearly not abandoned. Amazingly, people still live in them, go to work in the harshest possible conditions (paradoxically making it the richest and mightiest industrial area in Russia) and then come "home" to relax in inhuman weather, non-existing infrastructure, in dangerously dilapidated buildings...
Truly, this is an "abandoned, terrifying, ruined environment", multiplied to the N-th degree! Judge for yourself:
Just in time for Halloween: no skeletons, witches, or giant spiders - instead, something real and more terrifying - witness the life in Cherepovetz City (the name loosely translates as "City of Skulls"), the center of the Russian North-West SeveroStal industrial zone:
The average life expectancy in Norilsk is 46-48 years... Here is why (this is not a complete list, by any means):
- minus 10 degrees Celsius is considered "warm weather" - this city is built on permafrost, so buildings deteriorate quickly and most are in crumbling conditions - the city was originally built by prisoners (untold numbers of them died), so it is very probably haunted... (no, of course not, just kidding) - the industrial pollution is on par with the worst towns in China - it's officially one of the ten most polluted cities in the world - there are no homeless people, because nobody can survive minus 56 degrees Celsius. - they have literally 45 days of night - the depressing, miserable Arctic night - the city often endures severe punishing winds, up to 25 meters per second
The ecology around Norilsk is so atrocious that trees can spontaneously ignite from industrial chemicals in the ground - and so only burned sticks are left:
Some apartments still stand, while others have already fallen apart, their basements plundered for concrete by locals to build garages and more shaky housing:
This permafrost makes any building's foundation unstable, which presents huge problems for long-term construction. In time, some areas begin to look like an earthquake disaster zone:
Note the broken pipe leaking poisonous gases (right image):
"Welcome to Norilsk" is written in bizarre block letters, indicating the harsh realities ahead. A visitor is also greeted by strange do-it-yourself SUVs:
When winter comes, people are shuttled to work in buses... but it gets even more surreal inside:
Missing the bus could be a life-threatening situation:
Help does not come quickly:
This statue of Lenin points to a bright future, and a gaudy billboard proclaims a "Peace to All Children on Earth", but... happiness is a rare commodity in this terrifying place. See more pictures of Norilsk on GoogleMaps here.
When the power lines fail, this town seems to become a perfect setting for a "30 Days of Night" movie sequel:
Leaving Norilsk, we finally encounter a pleasing sight: the picture of a beautiful girl on a billboard. Which only reminds us of another billboard - a travel destination from The Truman Show - another surreal town "of no escape"...
Kadykchan: The City of Broken Dreams (and a glorious Soviet past?)
Only 300 citizens remain in this city, once a powerful resource center and a thriving coal mining community. Here is how it looked during the Soviet times:
And here is how it looks today (most buildings were abandoned in 1983, but there are still people who live in this ghastly environment):
Approaching the city, the atmosphere of abandonment and decay is palpable:
Um, they said Kadakchan has 300 residents and linked to the source. There are three towns shown in those pictures.
That having been said, major geography fail nonetheless. If living on permafrost and/or tundra and in places where it's dark all winter is horribly dangerous, I've been doing it wrong for years! The article makes it sound like this weather is something the Soviets created... unlike the pollution or terrible working conditions, which really are something no one would want to live with if they had better options.
I was born in Norilsk. The story about it here is almost a complete bullshit. It's really cold in there and ecology is quite bad, but the photos are taken from abandoned places and industrial areas. Same stuff could be posted about US if someone would go to bad areas of Detroit.
I was born in Norilsk. The story about it here is almost a complete bullshit. It's really cold in there and ecology is quite bad, but the photos are taken from abandoned places and industrial areas. Same stuff could be posted about US if someone would go to bad areas of Detroit."
fair enough, and I'll grant you that this quite likely won't make the Norilsk Travelers Guide, but none the less, I'm viewing it on Google Earth, and viewing the posted images there. It's a shiat whole, no matter how you rose color the viewfinder. ___
Ive been to Norilsk and Siberian plains 2 years ago. It is nothing like on the pics (although it looks impressive :) There are some abandoned areas like in every industrial city and the pollution is indeed quite strong. However, you can not feel it in the air like in Beijing sometimes for example, so the whole thing is a bit exaggerated.. Shithole is a tin shed pavellas in Rio or a crackhouse in Laos! (both of which Ive seen) Norilsk is just a workers city with soviet era architecture build on permafrost. It is pretty harsh and ugly sometimes, takes time to adapt but definitely not a shithole..
If this is what the communists call a "workers paradise", I would hate to see what the alternative was. Remember that each of these "apartments" housed up to three families. The reason that life expectancy is 48 . . . . vodka - lots of vodka. I think I would also drink myself to death if this was my life.
These cities look a lot like some of the cities in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Alaska, haha.. Oh, except we don't even have buses where I live. So Siberia may just be more advanced than us!
comment from inside: those buildings and whole towns are created from 80-s and thru 90-s, which is from 'era of USSSR';in 90-s there a series of financial defaults and political of course do not help these small cities in remote regions to maitain Itself and pepole leave them and this not unusual.Worst climate conditions? Not bad than famous 'Chyrnobyl' in ukraine (radiation is not compare with ANY weather).Cherepovetz City, it's just a 'industrial city from 80-s' and you just try compare him with modern industrial towns(imho,the ufa is ALOT clean) sorry for my english, it's not my default language(Guess, what my language native anyway^_^ ) btw welocome to my LJ - http://fima-007.livejournal.com/
I'm sure people look on those photos with shock and horror. But folks, here in the West, we're not a world away from this scenario. America is bought and paid for by foreign interests, and many of us feel we have an incompetent clown/puppet in office instead of someone with some real balls. (shock horror: someone with an opinion, a racist, an extremist omg omg). What I am saying is, the American economy creates places like this..and the way things are going, it looks like this kind of thing is going to be the norm. To stem this demise they let countless illegals into the country, which only serves to perpetuate the problem and create even more extremes of poverty and hardship.
This may be the other side of the world, but it's not a world away in the real sense. Ask people who live in the US and UK, they will be able to tell of places similar to this.
The guys who say Norilsk is a shithole judging by a few pics, STFU. Whenever I read somebody call any city a shithole I cringe. Yeah, you can find shit on NYC for example, but you can also find so much good stuff. Same could probably be said about Norilsk. At least people don't shit there on the street like in Africa.
I also know people from Norilsk. Norilsk is a city of middle to upper class by Russian standards. unlike the rest of Russia, people in Norilsk are actually happy, open (at least to a point of being Russian permits them). So think all you want. a few pictures of broken buses and abandoned street don't prove shit.
Hello. In this collection the bottom photo - mine. This is a dead city "Kadykchan" - located in the "heart" of the former empire GULAG. Here is a fresh photo - summer 2011: http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=51
Here's another of those places something interesting: dead town "Petushki" - on the River Kolyma http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=74
That's real uranium mine GULAG "Lazo" near the village Sejmchan - http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=53 Listen
You seem to have forgotten to talk about the ingenious construction of "Slip forming" of the concrete legs themselves-- (From Wikipedia):
The platform stands on the sea floor 303 metres (994 feet) below the surface of the sea and each of the continuous-slip-formed concrete cylindrical legs has an elevator that takes over nine minutes to travel from the platform above the waves to the sea floor. The walls of Troll A's legs are over 1 metre thick made of steel reinforced concrete formed in one continuous pour -"Slip forming) and each is a mathematically joined composite of several conical cylinders that flares out smoothly to greater diameters at both the top and bottom, so each support is somewhat wasp-waisted viewed in profile and circular in any cross-section. The concrete legs must be able to withstand intense pressure so are built using a continuous flow of concrete, a lengthy process that takes 20 minutes per 5 cm laid.
The four legs are joined by a "Chord shortener", a reinforced concrete box interconnecting the legs, but which has the designed function of damping out unwanted potentially destructive wave-leg resonances by retuning the leg natural frequencies. Each leg is also sub-divided along its length into compartments a third of the way from each end which act as independent water-tight compartments. The legs use groups of six 40 m vacuum-anchors holding it fixed in the muck of the sea floor.
They have huge chains for towing (I think). I'm not quite sure myself how it moves over the seabed, but the "pods" you see at the bottom in the Eiffel tower comparison are basically suction cups. They open up valves on the top and let the structure sink into the murky seabed. Then they close off the valves which will anchor the structure to the ground (try to lift it and a vacuum will be generated, sucking it to the floor).
The band that is halfway up the legs is specifically tailored to change the resonance frequency of the platform. This is to prevent the platform from "breaking" due to the frequency generated by wave action (resonance is what causes bridges to "flail" about violently; in that case due to wind action).
I was actually offshore in September doing commissioning work on the Gjøa platform (the semi-submersible with green legs), and this summer I enjoyed 10 days of warm weather on a boat laying in between Statfjord A and B some hundred meters away :) will hopefully get to visit Troll A and the other massive condeeps later on as well (I'm a rookie petroleum engineer from Norway ;)
The "3 meter waves" has got to be a typo :P that's probably somewhere in between 10-15 meters. 4-5 meter waves is common during the autumn and winter.
At New Years Eve 1995 a freak wave of 25.6 meters (84 ft!)/significant wave height ~18.5 m, hit the Draupner field. I can't even imagine seeing that. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave)
Note that in the photos where they're moving her, she towers over the ships around her. Compare that to the photos where she's in place - when she's being moved, she's multiple hundred feet taller. I suspect that she has ballast tanks in those huge legs - when they're full of air, she floats high and can be towed about, but when they're flooded, she sinks until she comes to rest on the bottom.
It's probably worth mentioning that the "shave the baby" thing is not actually some wacky real toy, but an art project thing, and not mass produced. http://www.raster.art.pl/gallery/artists/libera/prace.htm http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-facts-behind-you-can-shave-baby.html
Sniper bait: it is in amsterdam on the day 7 may in 1945 Amsterdam was already liberated. Lots of folk was celebtrating on a large square (The Dam) when suddenly Germans started firing. More on http://gerard45.bloggertje.nl/note/7278/7-mei-1945-de-ware-feiten.html (In Dutch but lots of pics)
Parenting kids who are very much active, so we say as the wild ones is kind of difficult but somewhat priceless. Nothing beats the joy and fun that you get to share with your kids. Fresh parents who find it hard controlling their kids could check some parenting tips online.
You guys can check ChildUp.com, they offer an Online Parenting Class there wherein you could get the best ideas regarding child behavior management.
Please note that QWERTY has been possibly designed that way to help sale the typewriters. When you type TYPEWRITER, you use only the top row of letters, and that was supposedly helping salesmen to sell them: "Look, let's type something! Let's type TYPEWRITER! See, how fast and easy it is?" - could be a very commonly used phrase by tradesmen.
Actually, the QWERTY layout was designed, or intended, to put consecutively typed characters far apart on the little levers, so they wouldn't whack into one another. Anyone who has ever used a mechanical typewriter knows that can happen.
""" ...otherwise users would type faster than the machine could handle, thus jamming the keys. So QWERTY was created to keep that from happening: to keep the machine happy.... """
Alright, let's assume this argument is true. The conclusion, "...at the cost of typist efficiency." is still wrong... It is WAY more efficient to type slowly and carefully than it is to have to stop and un-jam the keys every few seconds.
Just a fun fact, technically the images are less than 8 bit :) They use 6 colors only, so it's actually only 3 bit! Yes, three bits of information. Talk about efficiency.
Sure, the guy keeps slamming the overhead compartment to make the contents fit. As he gives up, he looks over to discover that he's killed the guy to his left with the repeated slamming. Not really funny.
I am more of a fan of the Ferrari 330 P4, a contemporary of the Alfa. The 330 to me has better proportions and conveys a sense of power that the Alfa cannot.
Think about the 68 Dodge Charger big block, brute horsepower plenty of room , fantastic looks , can kick most cars butt except a parking lot race (who races parking lots)"top end unlimited"drive all day and not cramped up, FUN
inspitLots of great ones and no doubt it has t picks, buto be he Jaguar E Type. Nuff said by many many people plus almost all the most famous car designers and other design icons.
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30 Comments:
I don't see any images???
I don't understand... wikipedia doesn't seem to confirm this account, in particular it says there are 300,000 residents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherepovets
Woah. Its like something out of Fallout.
uhh yeah so this whole description is a complete lie, for one thing cherepovets has 100 time the people living in it. nice try tho, real spooooooky!
The only population number they mentioned was for Kadykchan.
You realize that this article is about three different cities, right?
You read it before you started typing didn't u?
Um, they said Kadakchan has 300 residents and linked to the source. There are three towns shown in those pictures.
That having been said, major geography fail nonetheless. If living on permafrost and/or tundra and in places where it's dark all winter is horribly dangerous, I've been doing it wrong for years! The article makes it sound like this weather is something the Soviets created... unlike the pollution or terrible working conditions, which really are something no one would want to live with if they had better options.
Nice try, liar!
Pretty awesome post.
seriously...
fuck this
wow, these are creepily cool photos.
I was born in Norilsk. The story about it here is almost a complete bullshit. It's really cold in there and ecology is quite bad, but the photos are taken from abandoned places and industrial areas. Same stuff could be posted about US if someone would go to bad areas of Detroit.
Anyone who believes it looked that good during the Soviet era is living in a dream world.
That image is so heavily airbrushed it's ridiculous.
Russia!!! Hell Yeah.
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
I was born in Norilsk. The story about it here is almost a complete bullshit. It's really cold in there and ecology is quite bad, but the photos are taken from abandoned places and industrial areas. Same stuff could be posted about US if someone would go to bad areas of Detroit."
fair enough, and I'll grant you that this quite likely won't make the Norilsk Travelers Guide, but none the less, I'm viewing it on Google Earth, and viewing the posted images there. It's a shiat whole, no matter how you rose color the viewfinder.
___
i cant help but think of stalker and fallout! nice pics
Ive been to Norilsk and Siberian plains 2 years ago. It is nothing like on the pics (although it looks impressive :) There are some abandoned areas like in every industrial city and the pollution is indeed quite strong. However, you can not feel it in the air like in Beijing sometimes for example, so the whole thing is a bit exaggerated..
Shithole is a tin shed pavellas in Rio or a crackhouse in Laos! (both of which Ive seen) Norilsk is just a workers city with soviet era architecture build on permafrost. It is pretty harsh and ugly sometimes, takes time to adapt but definitely not a shithole..
It's looks like clouds over the mordor
Why would Santa Claus live in Russia?
He lives in "Korvatunturi" in Finland.
Looks like Silent Hill. Very scary
If this is what the communists call a "workers paradise", I would hate to see what the alternative was. Remember that each of these "apartments" housed up to three families. The reason that life expectancy is 48 . . . . vodka - lots of vodka. I think I would also drink myself to death if this was my life.
The US has one similar town ... Whittier Alaska.
There is nothing shittier than a day in Whittier.
The town is an incredibly ugly conglomeration of government built housing set in one of the prettiest places in Alaska.
Only ways in or out are by sea or driving through the train tunnel to the port ... and they make you pay to leave through it. Heh.
That "poisonous gas" is steam from the district heating pipes.
Getting snow on the windows spoils the view but insulates well from the cold.
Anonymous said...
"I was born in Norilsk. [...] Same stuff could be posted about US if someone would go to bad areas of Detroit."
Here are photos from the "dead city of Detroit"
http://goroda-prizraki.narod.ru/detroyt.html
Get Out Of Here, Stalker!
well it seems as pity/ forsaken environments, bt are there for sale?
These cities look a lot like some of the cities in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Alaska, haha.. Oh, except we don't even have buses where I live. So Siberia may just be more advanced than us!
comment from inside: those buildings and whole towns are created from 80-s and thru 90-s, which is from 'era of USSSR';in 90-s there a series of financial defaults and political of course do not help these small cities in remote regions to maitain Itself and pepole leave them and this not unusual.Worst climate conditions? Not bad than famous 'Chyrnobyl' in ukraine (radiation is not compare with ANY weather).Cherepovetz City, it's just a 'industrial city from 80-s' and you just try compare him with modern industrial towns(imho,the ufa is ALOT clean)
sorry for my english, it's not my default language(Guess, what my language native anyway^_^ )
btw welocome to my LJ - http://fima-007.livejournal.com/
I'm sure people look on those photos with shock and horror. But folks, here in the West, we're not a world away from this scenario. America is bought and paid for by foreign interests, and many of us feel we have an incompetent clown/puppet in office instead of someone with some real balls. (shock horror: someone with an opinion, a racist, an extremist omg omg). What I am saying is, the American economy creates places like this..and the way things are going, it looks like this kind of thing is going to be the norm. To stem this demise they let countless illegals into the country, which only serves to perpetuate the problem and create even more extremes of poverty and hardship.
This may be the other side of the world, but it's not a world away in the real sense. Ask people who live in the US and UK, they will be able to tell of places similar to this.
The guys who say Norilsk is a shithole judging by a few pics, STFU. Whenever I read somebody call any city a shithole I cringe. Yeah, you can find shit on NYC for example, but you can also find so much good stuff. Same could probably be said about Norilsk. At least people don't shit there on the street like in Africa.
I also know people from Norilsk. Norilsk is a city of middle to upper class by Russian standards. unlike the rest of Russia, people in Norilsk are actually happy, open (at least to a point of being Russian permits them). So think all you want. a few pictures of broken buses and abandoned street don't prove shit.
Hello.
In this collection the bottom photo - mine. This is a dead city "Kadykchan" - located in the "heart" of the former empire GULAG.
Here is a fresh photo - summer 2011: http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=51
Here's another of those places something interesting: dead town "Petushki" - on the River Kolyma http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=74
That's real uranium mine GULAG
"Lazo" near the village Sejmchan - http://www.shintop.ru/phototrophy/user_photo.php?action=gallery&id=53
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