Are there any real life wastelands were you live?

I remember a thread like this a while back in the Fallout: 3 forums that was quite interesting.

Sadly where I live we don't have any interesting wastelands or abandoned towns, closest thing we have are fields that stretch for miles.

So I'm interested to hear about your local wastelands...

Ha!
Welcome to Detroit....now go home!
Search youtube for "Detroit ghetto"...and be amazed and bewildered. Inner city blight is a graphic art form to some...sadly.

Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6WKMNmFsxM

I live 25 miles from here and could see it in person....I'll pass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk0xbjamHt0

For real western wasteland.

Up here in Canadia our ghettos are called Native Reserves. People go to Detroit ghettos for crack, Canadians go to Canadian ghettos for cigarettes.

O.O
I thought our local rough suburb was bad... Well they did find a charred body in the middle of street there. Did I mention the name of the suburb is "Ravenswood"

There was a large bomb crater next to my cousin's house where their neighbours used to live; we used to play in it when we were kids. Does that count? I remember various other bombed out ruins in my youth though they've since been pulled down and new houses built. There was also a large meadow in front of our house with a swamp at the bottom that looked very Stalker-ish. Various of our local group would fall into it (sometimes with a little help) when we were younger, though that's also been filled in and built on, sadly. No really major ruins anywhere I've lived that I recall offhand, though, unless you count the random remains of ancient windmills and farmhouses and things that might have once been castles, all of which invariably smell like all the wildlife for miles around use them as toilets.

It's not all like that, but there is a good percentage that is very dilapidated. They're working on tearing down many of the old buildings because it does attract the criminal element....but it's a big city.

There's a lot of abandone and crumbling farmhouses around me, but they're more TES than fallout. I did used to take a shortcut through an abandoned industrial estate to get to Uni, that was very Fallouty.

I'll never forget arriving by bus downtown to go to a casino and seeing a tree growing in the roof of the abandoned building across the street from the bus station. Not a weed, a tree. Still, Detroit is attempting to revive downtown and has had a few successes such as people moving into renovated loft apartments. It'll never be the city it was, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk

No trees grow within 48km of its heavy-metal smelter complex.


(Not somewhere I would want to live, obviously - so not a "local" wasteland...)

Deserts?
Northern Russia?
Marshal Islands?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/12/14621199_903b38c0cc.jpg

You know, the Japanese have invested, heavily, into the clean up of Azerbaijan. Can anyone guess why?

Real estate needs to be livable before anyone will buy a house there?

as for the op's question, unless you consider Congress a wasteland of human thought, then no, can't think of any nearby wastelands.

I watched a video of a guy on a trip there, he got out the car to record a video then stopped a minute later, said the air was hurting him whenever he took a breathe. (I think this vid was shot about 6 - 8 yrs ago, and I think he was at the heart of the industrial sector in Sumgayit)

I think the investments has to do with energy. You know, Japan being a small country and all.

Under many cities the network of train and sewage tunnels forms a labyrinthe very similiar to the metro in Fallout 3.

Outside of the service tunnels with the weird mechanical doors, I'd say that F3's depiction of D.C's metro felt very authentic.

Ditto. It doesn't surprise anyone round here when you go for a walk and find the crumbling ruins of some old castle or fort. Its just an everyday thing.

Small town North Carolina. Every other building is decrepit and abandoned.

Just yesterday I was wandering through an abandoned school in West Virginia with a few people, and I have to say, if it wasn't for the cars that sometimes drove by I would have felt like it was post-apocalyptic.

In fact, I did feel like it was the aftermath of some disaster at a few points, as nearly everything was left in the school was left when it was abandoned, though years of neglect and vandalism have left a major mark on the place. Still, it was rather spooky walking through the abandoned halls, with some still-locked lockers lining the walls, vines growing through the broken windows, papers and flakes of paint and broken glass lining the floors. It was rather eerie.

Oh, and there was asbestos lying around, so that was nice. :mellow:


Which town? Perhaps I've been there. I live near Sanford, the place that just got hit with a tornado.

Just listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVjpQIXdDbo and everything feels like a wasteland.

Yes I live in a wasteland called northern ontario. In northern canada. Although it isnt really a wasteland.

Emz...you should invest in a good metal detector...there are so many who envy you in that locale. You have no idea of what you could be stepping over, just laying there for centuries waiting to be dug up.

Whoa, it's weird how wastelands like that come to be...

Anything expensive I'd ever dig up probably belongs to the queen anyway. *le sigh*

I thought finders could generally claim it if it wasn't of some sort of unique historical significance... though I know little about the subject and probably shouldn't randomly pontificate.

I've a book about the subterranean city in (I think) your neck of the woods. Interesting stuff, and slightly scary for those of us of that disposition!