5 Largest Abandoned Cities in the World 

I'll be honest the loss of that bread museum makes me sad. I love bread! I love museums! Together they are a mighty super power!

Pompeii is such a scary sight to see those castings of the dead, seeing their final positions in agony, protecting those they loved, but unable to do so, so sad and so tragic... :(

2:00 - Chapter 1 - Agdam 5:05 - Chapter 2 - Pripyat 8:05 - Chapter 3 - Petra 11:05 - Chapter 4 - Pompeik 14:15 - Chapter 5 - Hashima Island

You should make a video about the abandoned underground cities in central Turkey, most of them are in Cappadocia region and date back around two thousand years. The largest are up to eight levels deep and could have housed thousands of people.

I always find it impressive when Simon talks about subjects he hates, dislikes or has absolutely no interest in and manages to make himself sound genuine, like talking about the Football club in number one.

The Library of Alexandria, and the Chernobyl disaster are two disasters that I wish never happened in this universe...

There's a number of decent documentaries on Centralia. There's still a couple people who still live there. They said because of the high grade coal and how much of it was under the town it's going to burn for at least the next 200 years. The firefighters and town ran out of money to put it out right before they could get it out. Ultimately the government decided it would be cheaper to buy everyone's property and abandon (I think it was about 25 million to do that at the time) opposed to spending 200 million trying to put out the fire and save the town. Crazy stuff.

Great Episode. Needs a part 2 with there being more abandoned places with cool histories around them; Nicossia/Kokkina in Cyprus, Tikal (or any other Mayan city) in Mexico, and Bayou Corne in Louisiana.

I live about 2 hours from Centralia, and have been through the town a few times over the years. It is certainly strange. They had to rebuild roads to avoid the main coal seems to prevent cave-ins and make it harder to get into town. I know a few still live in town, but otherwise it is completely abandoned.

Fascinating - though I'm a teeeeeny bit sad you didn't give some links or at least a brief mention on the fact that you've covered several of these places in depth on other channels. The video on Petra was SO good, as was the look you took at Hashima... Great video and script, once again!

you forgot to mention the dude in Pompeii that was cranking one out when he died

Interesting, I wonder how Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Asur would list out? And let's not forget Angkor Wat, the cities of Maya and the cities devastated by Genghis Khan and the Mongols.

I swear I would listen to Simon read the assembly instructions for ikea furniture

You might want to include Bonanza, Colorado, in the United States. Founded in 1881, it grew rapidly from discoveries of gold and silver, to a peak population of around 30,000. There were even smaller "suburbs" that sprang up around other mines! It was served by a railroad, and even had a visit from US President Grover Cleveland. There were numerous saloons, hotels, shops and such as well as a city government and schools - but oddly, never a church. When the mines shut down, the population moved away, and is currently listed as somewhere between 1 and 17 - depending on time of year. It's still an actual town, with a few buildings still standing, as well as some of the structures from the mines. It does have this little problem of such waste products from mining in the late 19th-early 20th centuries including arsenic and cyanide. Other than that, it's a lovely area.

You might say the bread museum was toasted.

simon really does have a near perfect speaking voice, IDK i imagine him in a pub with friends, discussing his writings, like a 21st century JRR tolkein

I know you did an episode on that, but as a bonus in the end, talking about the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane would be a plus. The village has been purposely left as it was when the Nazis killed nearly all inhabitants. Today Oradour was rebuilt, but next to the old village. The old one is a memorial for all people that were butchered that day.

It was in late April of 1986, when I was 19, that a faculty member from the physics department of the University of North Texas (back then North Texas State University) and I met in a common area on campus. He had a time piece and a Geiger counter.... I knew the fellow, I was a student and his son was dating my sister.... and so he allowed me to take part in observing when the radiation from across the globe would get there... I think he and some colleagues had a wager. I don't remember too many details but he was about 3 seconds off too early.

When plaster molds and artifacts from Pompeii were brought to a city nearby, I went to the exhibit. I couldn't pass it up. Amazing stuff. Treat yourself to things like that when you can. It's really an experience!

Love all your channels….I work 12 hr shifts at night and I learn something new everynight. Thanks for the videos. Btw are you just the face and voice or do you do the research and editing?

50,000 people use to live in Pripyat. Now it's a ghost town. Never seen anything like it.

I guess it's too much to hope for that the Bread Museum would have been dedicated to that soft-rock '60s-'70s band. Oh, well. In the end, it don't matter to me.

From Vegas, we would visit Ghost Towns(mining towns). Extremely dangerous open pit mines are everywhere. Bring a metal detector and you'll have fun!

I can't get over that thieves went to Pripyat after a nuclear meltdown? How desperate were people to make a quick buck that they'd go to potentially get radiation poisoning?

What about a video on the race for recovering rare earth metals (for use in battery production and the move to a green energy) vs the enviromental impact on the mining.

Herculaneum is well worth adding to this list as Herculaneum has more and better preserved artifacts than does Pompeii.

Worked with a guy that was part of the initial cleanup crew for Chernobyl, he never talked about it much outside of the safety briefing we did for drills (nanotech research company, not dangerous but did have some stuff that would be a building clearer).

Many of my acquaintances think Petra is what actually is just the treasury of Petra. I blame that Indiana Jones movie for this.

Simon, very happy to have found your channel...love how you focus on the weird, forgotten, or obscure but fascinating. Quality stuff, brother. If I had a Simon Whistler wish list for possible subjects it would be: "Mind-Destroying Revelations from Underwater Deepsea Drones."

Petra is incredible! One of my favorite places ive ever visited! Its sad though, the tourists are making it erode/disintigrate quickly. The royal family is trying to save it though

Honestly the bread museum sounds amazing so sad it’s gone : (

16:35 It would have been nicer if you'd mentioned that the Japanese government has so far failed to implement the promises they'd made to China and Korea. The UNESCO agreed in 2018 that it was problematic how the Japanese government handled this whole situation, so they set up an independent committee to look into the matter. To no one's surprise, the committee found out that Japan's efforts to remember the victims were unsatisfactory. The UNESCO asked the Japanese government to honor their promises, but as I mentioned above, the Japanese government is still being very reluctant to deliver on those promises.

Any chance you'd consider a video on the remains of the trenches of world war I?

I just knew Pripyat was going to be one of these five places, going into this video. That place has been forever immortalized by a nation (the Soviet Union) that no longer exists. It is truly a relic of darker times.

Kinda weird to think that wax tablets could have survived Pompeii. Given everything, they must've been in the perfect places.

I’ve been to Petra as a kid and Pompeii as well…both are amazing. Idk if it’s ethical to visit them now, but if so I recommend

"... it was initially situated..." Pretty sure it hasn't moved since.

Actually Pripyat has people living there now, many moved back into their old residences.

As an introvert with autism and adhd, these places seem like a real version of heaven

Fascinating. Thank you.

I think Agdam is the city I saw in the distance when driving around Artsakh in a taxi. It looked SO big, and yet, all rubble. Blew my mind.

USSR: there were no accident there Putins Russia: its not a war

Good video 👍

1:12 when you copy and paste the same house all over in Minecraft

Great vid, Simon.

FINALLY someone that doesn't just say that it was a nuclear explosion, but gives the actual cause.

Hashima Island remains a sore point. Yes, South Korea and China withdrew their opposition once Japan had agreed to their conditions. However, once the UNESCO World Heritage status was given, subsequent Japanese politicians dithered on adhering to the conditions, and till this day it is a point of aggrievement.

This was a really good one, Simon you LEGEND!! Thank you.

My wife's cousins lived there when Chernobyl happened. Her cousin was pregnant at the time. Their daughter was born deformed. 😢 A friend of mine in Cleveland and his family adopted a family displaced by Chernobyl. They go to visit them every year.

Always interesting, informative and entertaining 👍 team 👍

what about Angkor? Maybe up to a million people lived there until it fell.

There's a healthy amount added in the last 60 yrs. The Salton Sea, or Gary, Indiana, Raqqa, Khan Younis, the city near Fukushima that have an extremely tiny amount of people left.

Do one on the Mount Athos religious complex in Greece! They don't allow women anywhere inside the territory.

Purely saying this with no bias and ignorance to the politics... 3:44 - that is beautiful and well-kept

Two others worth a look: Varosha, Cyprus Windhoek, Namibia.

Yasssssssss... Centralia. I'm from Pa and have been to Centralia 4 times. Going there at night time is straight up reminiscinet of Silent Hill

Love your work and the evolving back drop. That dark doorway to your living room could be used for spooky brain imagery / "fake" nasa telescope photoshops and the like...

A little piece of trivia regarding the city of Petra. That carved structure most used in identifying Petra has always been a front. The doorway leads to a very small chamber within, but that's it. It's a dead-end. Though it is a magnificent site, it never was a real structure. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade took quite a few liberties with that carving.

This is the best vidoe I watched today! subbed and liked ! you are wonderful. a fellow creator

I've long wondered whether the consistent heat in Centralia could be used to generate electricity.

One of the most interesting episodes!

Detroit is the 6th largest abandoned city.

If you count things that were never really inhabited in the first place and aren't technically an independent city but more of a "development area" off to one side of an existing city, then the entire list would be dominated by China's real-estate investment "housing" complexes. But I think those should be excluded, because "abandoned" doesn't really apply to things that weren't even built mainly for the purpose of being inhabited in the first place, but rather to be sold as investments. Nineveh seems like it ought to be on the list, if nothing else because in its day it may possibly have been the largest city in the world.

Wow......I hadn't even considered that a bread museum might exist. Surely the mold museum can't be far behind.

This town (toooown) is coming like a ghost town. All the clubs are being closed down.

1:30 Correction: Alexandria still remains very much unsubmerged. The sunken city close to Alexandria is called Heracleion. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleion It was a very large and important port city, but became lost and mostly forgotten for most of history since its Veniciation (not a real word, no). It was found relatively recently and is probably one of the absolute coolest places to go scuba diving. I don’t know if you’re allowed though, I have no experience with it.

Pretty sure that there are also squatter communities in the exclusion zone too. God love em, but hell no.

30 degrees Celsius is only 84.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Kinda warm for physical labor, but certainly not THAT bad

Unlikely that a pyroclastic flow reached 2500°C.

Petra is still active for tourists. I would love to visit and see the amazing carvings in the rocks there.....I learned this on a similar channel. No relation I'm sure.

You know... the funny part is, when humans left it was for the better. Nature took over and made place nice again (well some of them anyways).

I think my uncle was a POW in Hashima during WW2. He was there when the bomb went off in Nagasaki. My cousin and her kids have some health issues as a result because of the radiation my uncle was exposed to as a teenager. It's closer to Nagasaki than people realize.

There is a fantastic new documentary re: Pompeii on Curiosity Stream. It covers the first new dig there in decades, in 2019 just before the pandemic locked things down. An area needed to be excavated to prevent further water damage to the site and so there's a brand new area opened. It shows road repairs from the earthquakes that happened during the previous decade still ongoing. Sad, but absolutely fascinating.

While these cliff dwellings don't really count as cities, the ruins at Mesa Verde in Colorado are well worth seeing . They weren't destroyed by any natural disaster or wars, but abandoned by the Anasazi , probably because of drought. If you're ever in the 4 corners area, check 'em out.

Awesome!

30 degrees Celsius and 95% Humidity? - that's like every summer day in St Louis.

I've been to two of these places; Petra and Pompeii. Coincidentally both were during my return trip from the middle east when my ship was sent there.

I just see Simon's face and click without even looking at the channel. I really thought this one was on GeoGraphics before the SideProjects theme.

How is this dude on every youtube channel?

I'm addicted to these channels and stories

Centralia isn't entirely abandoned. There's about 4 or 5 residents and a post office for them. They were permitted to continue living there with the stipulation that when they die their property will be transferred to state ownership. As in they can't will it to their family or sell it.

god i love these. thanks

I'd like to see a flowchart connecting all of Simon's videos.

Heard about Pripyat from the lady who actually was on the lead of getting people out of there. She gave an interview to Yes Theory RU-vid channel on the video they made about Ukraine.

Hashima Island is also one of the major settings in the book "The Rising Seas" by Clive Cussler. In fact, it’s where the book's climax took place!

simon, can you level your into and outro like 50% its soo loud!!

Good episode.

I'm surprised Bralorne, B.C. Canada didn't make this list. Witha population of in excess of 250,000 at the turn of the century. It was one of the largest cities in North America at the time and was found marked on global maps. Currently the population is less than 400.

The reason why most of these places are abandoned are heartbreaking.

I'm amazed that you didn't include Kayaköy

30 degrees and 95% humidity is a normal day in Australia

There’s about 1,000 people living on the outskirts of Chernobyl today, not only wildlife. The way they live though is like the late 1800s early 1900s

>almost made up for the stifling condition in the mines which reached up to 30c and 95% humidity [LAUGHS IN NORTHERN AUSTRALIAN]

I love hearing Simon's accent change as his voice deepend been with you guys since 2016 he said zeb_ra and it cracked me up then I liked your content too I watch you more than the customers at work ! 😊

Awesome

15:07 so a really cold summer in Cairns, FNQ?

I think the exact date of Mount Vesuvius was August 23 73AD. 🤓 Some 1897 years later, came River Phoenix, whose life was cut tragically short... Aged 23! 😱

Crazy thought...IED are set off by pressure, yes? How about a giant concert speaker angled to vibrate pressure to explode them

When human habitation is more destructive to local wildlife than a nuclear exclusion zone

50000 people used to live here now it's a ghost town.