What would happen if all the humans on Earth disappeared tomorrow?
Well these real life ghost towns, which have all been abandoned for various reasons, give
a glimpse into what life would be like when nature is left to reclaim man-made places.
First up is Hashima Island.
Commonly referred to as Battleship Island, due to its resemblance to a Japanese battleship.
On a side note, why do Japanese battleships look so darn creepy!
This abandoned island is one of 505 uninhabited islands off the south-west coast of Japan.
What makes this island different from it's 504 other neighbouring islands is that Hashima
Island used to be a thriving mining community.
In 1887, during the industrialisation of Japan this island was setup as an undersea coal
mining facility.
Many of the miners lived on the island all year round so the island functioned as an
offshore city, including living quarters and all the conveniences of a regular city.
Thousands of people lived and worked on the island during its 87 years of operation.
Hitting a peak population of 5,259 people in 1959.
However, in 1974 the mine was closed down and all the residents left the island.
Due to years of neglect and a lack of maintenance the island is now in ruins.
Nature has reclaimed many of the building, which are now highly unstable and many of
them have collapsed.
The whole island is like an eerie, post-apocalyptic nightmare.
Speckled with the faintest memories of miners who spent their lives there.
It has since become somewhat of a tourist attraction in Japan but tourists should be
wary, as it's a dangerous place that has seen no maintenance and the buildings could easily
crumble at any moment.
Ah Disney World, Florida - full of happiness and smug little kids.
Surely nothing bad could happen here?
On the contrary!
You wouldn't think it, but Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, is home to one of the
most bone-chilling, abandoned places on Earth.
In 1965 Walt Disney bought an island in the middle of Bay Lake at the Orlando based Disney
World Resort.
He originally named it Treasure Island but later changed it to Discovery Island, to stop
people digging up the soil.
The island was officially opened to guests in 1974.
Discovery Island was a wildlife attraction where guests could observe rare species such
as Scarlet Ibises, Galapagos tortoises, lemurs and many others.
All was going well, until July 9th, 1999 when the island was suddenly closed to the public
and all the animals were hastily relocated to zoos away from the island.
It isn't known why the Discovery Island attraction was closed but many rumours have suggested
that a bacterium capable of killing humans called amoeba was discovered in the waters
surrounding the island.
Oops!
The island was simply abandoned and was left to be taken over by the wild.
Very few have stepped foot on the island ever since, and today it's an eerie reminder of
the fun park attraction that once was.
The island is full of abandoned buildings and attractions, all engulfed by nature.
The island is now home to a family of highly aggressive vultures as well as some other
bizarre items such as preserved snakes in jars.
This derelict and potentially life-threatening island still sits, undisturbed and quietly
concealing its mysteries, right in the middle of the bright lights and commercial perfection
that is Disney World Florida.
It was the early 21st century in Ireland and the country was in the middle of a housing
bubble.
Houses were selling like hot cakes and property development was happening at an unprecedented
rate.
But then the luck of the Irish ran out and in 2008 the housing market crashed.
Thousands of houses that were still in the middle of development were simply never finished
and were abandoned due to a lack of funds and falling demand.
These abandoned residential estates were given highly optimistic names such as "Paradise
Valley", however, today, they're nothing of the sort.
They're extremely creepy to witness and are reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic Desperate
Housewives.
Man that would be a good show!
They have since come to be known as the "Ghosts Estates" of Ireland.
Somewhere that looks this creepy just has to be haunted.
Seeing these makes you think how strange our world would appear if all the humans suddenly
disappeared.
Just a splattering of human life makes all the difference between a cosy, welcoming home
and this unnerving scene.
During World War II the British Navy built an array of sea forts just off the southeast
coast of England called the Maunsell Forts, also commonly referred to as the Red Sands
Sea Forts.
They may look like AT-AT Walkers but their purpose was not to attack, but to defend the
United Kingdom, against German air raids.
Following the war, they were decommissioned in the 1950s.
Shortly afterwards they were used as pirate radio stations to broadcast illegal radio
waves across the United Kingdom.
Until they were shut down by the British government in 1967.
Ever since, the forts have been abandoned and now stand as an eerie reminder of a truly
horrific part of history.
There is however, a dispute going on over who actually owns these forts.
A man named Paddy Roy Bates purchased the nearby Rough Sands Fort in 1964 and lived
in it.
He decided to declare the fort as his own country, named the "Principality of Sealand".
He then told all the other countries in Europe that Sealand was an official principality...
and they all said "no, no it's not".
Bates however was adamant that Sealand should be an officially recognised nation and to
prove his point he claimed the Maunsell Forts as official land and property of Sealand.
Yeah, that’ll show em!
Erm, no.
England basically said, "I don’t think so old chap, they're ours!
Give them back you freewheeling pirate".
The debate over their ownership and whether the Principality of Sealand even exists, still
goes on to this day.
Just to clarify things, it totally doesn't exist.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states, "Artificial islands, installations
and structures do not possess the status of islands.
They have no territorial sea of their own."
Yeah, sorry about that Sealand.
Next up is this UFO like structure called Buzludzha.
First opened in 1981, it was the home of the Bulgarian Communist Party during the Soviet
Era.
Because a rectangular building is far too capitalist.
This impressive piece of soviet architecture sits in the Central Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria.
It was this ominous building where some of the most infamous and controversial politics
originated from during the Cold War.
But when the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, marking the end of the Soviet regime, the Buzludzha
was completely abandoned.
What was once a political powerhouse and a global symbol of communism is now just a chilling
piece of history.
Left to succumb to the whims of the snow and ice.
The building is now completely in ruins and stepping inside it feels like entering some
kind of communist alien spacecraft, if that's even a thing.
I wonder if they do have communism in space.
The Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is not as totally abandoned as
the other locations on this list, but that doesn't change the fact that it's bloody creepy!
Construction of this monolithic ode to failed communism began in 1987.
When North Korea was looking somewhat prosperous and was expecting an influx of tourists to
witness the self-styled "greatest nation on Earth".
"Build it and they will come" someone told Kim Il-sung.
But in the end, no one came.
The Soviet Union fell and in 1992 North Korea ceased construction due to lack of funds.
You’ve got to give it to them; they don’t do things by halves.
If North Korea wants to build a tourist hotel, they’re gonna build a bloody big one.
This 105-floor giant has stood completely empty ever since.
It's now, no more than an overwhelming monument to the utopia that North Korea has tried ever
so hard to achieve, but for the poor, unfortunate residents of the country, has sadly, failed.
Things started to appear hopeful in 2008, when North Korea announced that they had resumed
work on the hotel.
Then in 2011 the exterior was eventually completed with glass panels.
It now looks slightly less intimidating.
Although the excitement was short lived, North Korea couldn't muster up enough funds to complete
the interior.
So all they actually achieved was polishing their monumental, empty turd.
The opening of the hotel has been scheduled numerous times in recent years, but every
time, it has been postponed.
Probably due to the fact that if you step inside the hotel it's still a completely empty
shell.
At least that's what some sources say.
After all North Korea is an extremely secretive place.
Who knows what's actually going on inside there, they could be building North Korea's
very own Disneyland for all we know.
Or more likely, concealing a missile factory.
In the Zhejiang province of Eastern China sits a large lake that holds an underwater
secret.
The lake is called Qiandao Lake, which translates as "Thousand Island Lake".
At the bottom of this enormous body of water sits a forgotten ancient city called Shi Cheng,
which means "Lion City".
The underwater city of Shi Cheng is basically like the lost city of Atlantis, except we
know where this one is.
Also Shi Cheng was never actually lost in the first place.
It was simply flooded and abandoned.
At one time Shi Cheng was the centre of economics and politics in Eastern China.
It was a huge, beautiful city, full of dazzling white temples and arches, paved roads and
thousands of houses.
The city is steeped in heritage and culture; built 1,300 years ago, this large, ancient
city covered an area of approximately 62 football fields.
But the Chinese Government was obviously more concerned with energy revenues than preserving
cultural heritage.
Because in 1959, the Chinese government flooded the valley that Shi Cheng sits in, to make
a new, artificial lake.
For what purpose?
Well they decided a new hydroelectric power station was required and this would be the
ideal location.
Makes sense; a country with nearly a million square kilometres of land, which is mostly
uninhabited and they decided to flood a city with incredible cultural significance to make
room for it.
This gigantic man-made reservoir, which has been named Qiandao Lake, now hides, what was
once, and in some respects still is, one of the most beautiful cities that China has ever
known.
And lastly we have the radioactive city of Pripyat.
On the 26th April 1986 at reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine,
an argument broke out between two senior nuclear engineers.
Over whether or not they should run a potentially dangerous test on the reactor.
They ended up running the test and the nuclear reactor core malfunctioned and tragically
exploded.
Over the following weeks many tonnes of highly radioactive Caesium-137 was leaked into the
atmosphere from the still-burning reactor core.
The nuclear fallout from the disaster covered much of Europe.
One of the worst affected areas was the nearby city of Pripyat, which was built to house
workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
In total 350,400 people from Pripyat and from other towns several miles around the disaster
area, were permanently evacuated from their homes.
An area covering 1,000 square miles around the Chernobyl Plant was completely abandoned
due to it being contaminated with fatal levels of radiation.
This area, known as the "exclusion zone" or "zone of alienation", is now the most severely
abandoned place on Earth.
Nature has taken over, and animals, heavily disfigured by radiation, run wild.
With no human competition, these mutant animals have claimed the exclusion zone as their own.
It's like an alien landscape crossed with post-apocalyptic desolation.
If it weren’t so radioactive it would be the perfect spot for a game of paintball.
The trees in a 4 square mile area, surrounding the reactor core, received a severely large
dose of radiation and were subsequently killed.
The radiation caused them to turn an eerie reddish-brown colour.
Because of this the area has been given the name of the "Red Forest".
The Red Forest is one of the most radioactive places in the world today.
Scientists say the exclusion zone will not be safe enough for humans to re-inhabit for
another 20,000 years.
Until then it serves as a huge, living laboratory for scientists to measure the effects of radiation
poisoning on animals and wildlife.
As well as a memorial to the worst nuclear tragedy that has ever happened.