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Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning with a classic episode this evening,

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Speaker 1: a true story. A while back, we looked around the

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Speaker 1: world and we realized we mentioned this on the show

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Speaker 1: in episodes or even strange news or listener mail or

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Speaker 1: interviews earlier. The majority of human beings now live in

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Speaker 1: urban areas. Most people live in cities. That trend is

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Speaker 1: probably going to continue. But you can't go to every city.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Not all cities are created equal. In fact,

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Speaker 2: countries throughout the world are home to cities that, in

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Speaker 2: one way or another, don't exist.

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Speaker 1: One of these is Oakridge, Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted

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Speaker 1: to mention that because it is in the United States,

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Speaker 1: these are not as far flung nor as rare as

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Speaker 1: one might assume.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's explore hidden cities that you can't go

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Speaker 2: to in this classic episode of Stuff they Don't want

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Speaker 2: you to Know.

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Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is

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Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 4: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

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Speaker 1: They call me Ben we are joined as always with

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Speaker 1: our super producer, Paul Mission Control Decond. Most importantly, you

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Speaker 1: are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Got a confession for you, Matt.

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Speaker 1: All right, I did my quarterly dive into our podcast

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Speaker 1: reviews about every three months. I do that.

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Speaker 4: I noticed your Twitter request for reviews.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and following me on Twitter.

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Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, No, I just saw it through the conspiracy stuff.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I wanted to thank everybody who

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Speaker 1: took the time to make or to write a review,

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Speaker 1: whether good or bad or simply middling. We really do

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Speaker 1: appreciate it, and shout out to our longtime listeners, many

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Speaker 1: of whom I recognize just based on the way you talk.

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Speaker 1: In the review especially, there were a couple of great

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Speaker 1: ones where someone said, hey, I hope this gets you

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Speaker 1: guys one step further away from being fired, and I thought, wow,

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Speaker 1: you have been listening a long time. People like great

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Speaker 1: stuff to say about you, Matt, and about Noel, and

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Speaker 1: about you as well, Paul Mission Control Decands. So thanks

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Speaker 1: to everybody sincerely who checked in and gave us a rating,

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Speaker 1: even the people who for one reason or another gave

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Speaker 1: us one star because the facts that we presented about

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Speaker 1: a specific issue did not jibe with their opinions. Got you,

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Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time.

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Speaker 4: Just feels like two dudes at a bar kicking it

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Speaker 4: one star. That sounds terrible.

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Speaker 1: Did you pull them up? Are you reading what?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: No, seriously, I mean, without spending too much time on it.

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Speaker 1: It's uh, We're very fortunate for every listener, and we're

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Speaker 1: grateful for your time. I have to ask, and this

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Speaker 1: is something that you and I have talked about, I

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Speaker 1: think a little bit before off air. I have to ask, Matt,

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Speaker 1: are you, in your personal life a fan of maps,

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Speaker 1: cartography stuff like that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean my wall is just covered with maps

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Speaker 4: of video game worlds. Really yeah, But you know, in

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Speaker 4: the real world it's for some reason not as appealing

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Speaker 4: to me, though I do love knowing, let's say, within

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Speaker 4: the world of Skyrim, like where particular towns are with

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Speaker 4: relation to the Giant Mountain.

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Speaker 1: This is so ridiculous. I have been playing. I'm at

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Speaker 1: the level of Skyrim on my replay where I am

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Speaker 1: just trying to find every location.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, I you have to do that.

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Speaker 1: Have you found on every location?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I have every so often, like

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Speaker 1: the numbers don't jive up yet.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember taking that it's not an achievement. What

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Speaker 4: is it called the skill or whatever? At some point

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Speaker 4: where it reveals all locations on the map to you.

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Speaker 4: That was one of one of my.

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Speaker 1: First playthroughs, though in Skyrim.

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Speaker 4: I think it is Skyrim. Maybe it's a different one.

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Speaker 4: I don't know. I've played so many at this point.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's on Skyrim, but if

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Speaker 1: it is, I am excited.

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Speaker 4: I'm also fallout. That's a fallout.

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Speaker 1: That's a Fallout thing, but still Bethesda, right, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: like you. I'm a fan of maps, a fan of cartography,

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Speaker 1: and I think a lot of our fellow listeners are

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Speaker 1: as well. I'm one of those people who has you know.

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Speaker 1: At my house, I have a world map where I

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Speaker 1: can put the little pins in. Shout out to Mitch

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Speaker 1: Hedberg for his brilliant world map joke, which I will

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Speaker 1: not impersonate here. I'm also a fan of very old maps.

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Speaker 1: I have prints of the Perie Reese map that you

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Speaker 1: and I covered in a previous episode, and I have

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Speaker 1: a collection of out of date globes which are also

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Speaker 1: very interesting once you get to the Middle East, once

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Speaker 1: you get to Russia, the Balkan areas and so on.

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Speaker 4: You you are a fascinating person.

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Speaker 1: Ben, What do you mean, Well, we have some of

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Speaker 1: those some of those globes still here in the office today.

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Speaker 4: Oh.

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Speaker 1: Sure, it's an interesting way to look at the story

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Speaker 1: of humanity. And regardless of what kind of trends we

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Speaker 1: see in maps and on globes over time, we do

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Speaker 1: see one specific trend which has never been violated, as

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Speaker 1: never abated. It is the trend of our species to

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Speaker 1: construct increasingly larger, more dense urban areas. As we record

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Speaker 1: today's episode, humanity is officially an urban species.

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Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we are. We move towards those places, even

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Speaker 4: if it's on the outskirts, in the suburban areas. As

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Speaker 4: of twenty sixteen, more than four billion people lived in

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Speaker 4: these things that we would consider to be urban areas,

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Speaker 4: and there are only three point four billion people living

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Speaker 4: in what we would consider to be rural areas outside

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Speaker 4: of these bigger, established places.

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Speaker 1: Oh, and we should we should retroactively say this is

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Speaker 1: the here are the facts part of the show. That's right,

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Speaker 1: Everything that you're hearing for this part of for this

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Speaker 1: act of today's episode is indeed true. You're absolutely right, Matt.

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Speaker 1: As of twenty sixteen, there are already more people living

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Speaker 1: in cities than there were in rural areas. This explosive

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Speaker 1: migrational trend is set to continue by twenty fifty, assuming

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Speaker 1: we don't blow ourselves up or encounter like a pandemic, right,

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Speaker 1: assuming that we don't find ourselves in the midst of

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Speaker 1: a catastrophic water war.

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Speaker 4: We will, but let's pretend.

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Speaker 1: Let's pretend, Okay, let's be let's be a little bit

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Speaker 1: naive about it. So everything goes okay until twenty fifty.

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Speaker 1: If everything goes more or less alright, then by twenty

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Speaker 1: to fifty, two thirds of our species will live in

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Speaker 1: urban areas, technically about sixty eight percent. So, whether you

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Speaker 1: love them or whether you hate them, it seems cities

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Speaker 1: are set to become one of humanity's most popular inventions.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think of a city as an invention.

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Speaker 1: We don't because it's so normalized, it's so ancient. A

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Speaker 1: city is now just a place, But at some point

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Speaker 1: people invented it, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the concept of having one centralized area where people

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Speaker 4: can coexist generally with you know, some kind of castle

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Speaker 4: or stronghold or something to protect near the center, right,

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Speaker 4: or at least somewhere strategically within that place, and then

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Speaker 4: the homes and everything in the places of business all

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Speaker 4: shoot up around it.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. And this is this is an interesting

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Speaker 1: distinction too, because what is the difference between you know,

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Speaker 1: an agglomeration of longhouses and a town or a town

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Speaker 1: and a village or a village. And of course it's

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Speaker 1: big because in the city, regardless of how you want

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Speaker 1: to classify a city or an urban area, and there

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Speaker 1: are a couple of different definitions out there, we do

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Speaker 1: have enough of a grasp on this phenomenon that we

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Speaker 1: can describe it on a global scale. Currently, the North

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Speaker 1: American continent is the most industrialized out of all the continents.

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Speaker 1: As of twenty eighteen, about eighty two percent of this

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Speaker 1: continent's population lives in an urbanized area. Eighty two percent.

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Speaker 1: So if you are listening to this show and you

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Speaker 1: happen to not be living in one of those dense agglomerations,

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Speaker 1: and congratulations, because you are an increasingly rare person generally

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Speaker 1: speaking on this continent.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and then if let's say you're living in

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Speaker 4: Latin America or somewhere in the Caribbean, you are not

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Speaker 4: far behind, only one percent less at eighty two percent

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Speaker 4: people within those populations live in something you know called

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Speaker 4: an urban area. And you know what makes sense, interestingly

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Speaker 4: enough in places in the Caribbean, because if you think

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Speaker 4: of the amount of land mass that you actually have there,

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Speaker 4: you can imagine how people would just end up moving

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Speaker 4: towards some of the more populated areas.

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Speaker 1: That's a really good point.

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Speaker 4: And for especially for the types of businesses that exist

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Speaker 4: in a lot of in a lot of those areas,

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Speaker 4: you need other people to be around to sell things too.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. And surprisingly, only about

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Speaker 1: seventy four percent of Europeans can say the same, which

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Speaker 1: shocked me because the you know, the rise of industry

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Speaker 1: began earlier in Europe than it did in the US.

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Speaker 1: It's just surprising that only seventy four percent. I guess

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Speaker 1: because of the circumstances of my travels in Europe, I've

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Speaker 1: always seen it as a place with little wilderness, and

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Speaker 1: I know that's not true, especially the further east you go.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, all of this is it's not discounting,

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Speaker 4: but it's not taking into account micro trends that occur,

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Speaker 4: you know, within like one city, Oh yeah, some people

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Speaker 4: migrating away from that city or more people then like

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Speaker 4: for a period of time and then getting an injection.

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Speaker 4: I'm thinking of a place like Detroit.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, the depopulation of Detroit.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but then then kind of a repopulation in certain

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Speaker 4: areas of Detroit, and then as that's gonna you know,

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Speaker 4: hopefully flourish in the coming decades.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, here's hoping. I would love to see the rise

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Speaker 1: of Detroit, you know, a reboot of the city. But

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Speaker 1: people will also tell you that rumors of Detroit's demise

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Speaker 1: have been greatly exaggerated. You know, sometimes the terrible things

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Speaker 1: we see on the news are just purposely made to

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Speaker 1: be terrible things because that's what keeps people's attention, right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't have much to add on that, agreed.

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Speaker 1: I feel like we're on the same page with that one.

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Speaker 1: But it may also surprise you go into your earlier statement, Matt,

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Speaker 1: it may surprise some of our listeners to know that

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Speaker 1: about sixty eight percent of Oceana's population is urbanized and

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Speaker 1: there you know, I think back to what you were

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Speaker 1: saying about the Caribbean archipelagoes and islands. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: a matter of scarcity of land in Oceana at least.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, the natural wonders of a lot of

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Speaker 4: those places you want to protect as well. So you

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Speaker 4: end up just kind of squished together in one major area.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense. And now, of course, for our finale

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Speaker 1: in this in this list, we have to mention the

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Speaker 1: two biggest populated continents, Asia and Africa. They come in

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Speaker 1: second and last place, respectively. Around half of Asia's population

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Speaker 1: lives in cities, forty three percent of Africa's population live

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Speaker 1: in urban areas. And as you know, as we like

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Speaker 1: to point out, both Asia and Africa are huge, huge

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Speaker 1: places filled with this incredible variety of ethnicity, of community,

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Speaker 1: of culture. It's beyond apples and oranges, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. So these numbers only count as a cohesive

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Speaker 1: thing if we're looking at the metric of just people

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Speaker 1: on a continent.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about seventeen full fruit stands worth, right, per

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Speaker 4: per continent.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Matt did the math of this, The fruit.

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Speaker 4: Math worked it out.

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Speaker 1: So obviously this is not a static number, and it

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Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise anybody to learn that those last two continents,

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Speaker 1: renamed Asia and Africa, are also projected to experience the

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Speaker 1: largest growth in urbanization as we approach twenty fifty. And

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Speaker 1: this leads us, This leads us back to you, our

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Speaker 1: hypothetical but hopefully real listener, who has grown up in

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Speaker 1: or has moved to a rural area. We have to ask,

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Speaker 1: what is the future of these increasingly abandoned rural areas.

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Speaker 1: That's a story for another day, but today we're going

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Speaker 1: to give you this look at cities across the world

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Speaker 1: as a way of a pro another question. As we

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Speaker 1: hurtle toward the extinction of privacy, the normalization of mass surveillance,

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Speaker 1: and a future where opulence may well be defined as

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Speaker 1: simply having a decent view from your apartment or a

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Speaker 1: small backyard with a garden. It seems we will soon

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Speaker 1: live in a world without strangers, a crowded cognitive space

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Speaker 1: where everything is public, everything is urban, and the maps

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Speaker 1: of the future show us small concentrations of humanity, islands

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Speaker 1: of concrete and steel, separated by vast gulfs of what

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Speaker 1: would appear to be nothing to a city dwell er.

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Speaker 1: Of course it will be biodiversity. Hopefully there will be

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Speaker 1: agriculture things of that nature.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to be wastes of fire and acid water, right,

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Speaker 4: I'm digging it right, But the domes over the cities

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Speaker 4: will protect us at least temporarily.

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Speaker 1: All praise the dome m h yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Well here's the thing though, there are all those

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Speaker 4: maps that we're like talking about, that we're thinking about

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Speaker 4: in the future. They're gonna have the big places. You know,

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Speaker 4: you're gonna your your London's are still going to be

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Speaker 4: on there.

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Speaker 1: Uh, you know, your your Mumbais.

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Speaker 4: You know for sure your Mumbais, all all your different

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Speaker 4: places that are massive known entities will be there. But

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Speaker 4: there's one thing that probably won't be on your on

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Speaker 4: your maps then even twenty five years, thousand years in

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Speaker 4: the future. Mill maybe in a thousand years, but in

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Speaker 4: the future, there are still gonna be places that will

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Speaker 4: never make it to a map, places that would be

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Speaker 4: considered an urban area, a city even but won't show up.

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Speaker 1: That's right, there's a bit of a bait and switch.

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Speaker 1: We're not talking about normal cities. Now, what are we

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Speaker 1: talking about. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. That's correct, as conspiratorial as

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Speaker 1: it may sound, the world is full of secret cities,

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Speaker 1: and attempting to enter these cities may cost you your life.

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Speaker 1: Picture this. There are entire cities, metropolis level cities that

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Speaker 1: are not villages. They're not puttering communes where everybody follows

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Speaker 1: one person who had some sort of purported spiritual experience.

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Speaker 4: We're talking about large collections of multiple story buildings, huge

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Speaker 4: buildings that are just somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

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Speaker 1: With populations of hundreds of thousands of people. In some cases,

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Speaker 1: these are cities that do not officially exist in one

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Speaker 1: capacity or another. And what's more, we've been building these

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Speaker 1: cities for longer than you might want to think. Some

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Speaker 1: cities started off as secrets, only to be classified later.

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Speaker 1: Others remain closed to the majority of humanity as we

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Speaker 1: record today. Let's start with a safe, kind of bucolic

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Speaker 1: historic example, something relatively innocuous nowadays, and it'll be close

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Speaker 1: to home for a lot of our fellow listeners. That

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Speaker 1: is a little place called oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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Speaker 4: Oh yes, oak Ridge, that has connections to New York

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Speaker 4: in some weird way. We'll get to that in a moment. So,

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Speaker 4: about seventy five years ago, the government in these here

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Speaker 4: United States, they took possession of around sixty thousand acres

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Speaker 4: in East Tennessee. Now officially this occurred on September nineteenth,

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Speaker 4: nineteen forty two. There was a kernel there Leslie Groves.

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Speaker 4: This guy just kind of looked at the map, maybe

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Speaker 4: took it, had some people take a trip out, and

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Speaker 4: then said, yeah, this is it, this is what we want.

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Speaker 4: And there wasn't anything, you know, particularly extraordinary about this area,

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Speaker 4: this huge swath of land. Even today, you know, if

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Speaker 4: you're looking back, you're reading about this, historians try and

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Speaker 4: figure out exactly like what this guy saw, but they're

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Speaker 4: still unsure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they can make a couple of guesses. We know

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Speaker 1: that this site and what would become Oakridge, Tennessee, was

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Speaker 1: chosen out of a short list of several other sites

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Speaker 1: across the contiguous US. Our guesses tend to be things like, well,

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Speaker 1: we needed maybe a source of water, we needed a

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Speaker 1: rural area that was removed from the hustle and bustle

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Speaker 1: of a city. Because at the time, if you wanted

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Speaker 1: something spooky done, or you wanted something done in secret.

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Speaker 1: You could just go to the great wilds of the United.

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Speaker 4: States, but you still needed to have access to infrastructure

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Speaker 4: and shipping if.

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Speaker 1: You needed it right, right, so you would want to

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Speaker 1: be able to contact the rest of the world when necessary. Anyhow,

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Speaker 1: whatever the logic was, that's what General Groves chose sixty

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Speaker 1: thousand acres there in East Tennessee. The area started out

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Speaker 1: with a few different names and the relatively sparse official documentation.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it was called Site X, great name for a town.

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Speaker 1: Other times it was referred to as Clinton Engineering Works.

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Speaker 1: That is, as far as we could find, not a

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Speaker 1: reference to the later Clinton political dynasty.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it is like a company name that just stood

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Speaker 4: for a location.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a town named Clinton nearby near Knoxville, Tennessee,

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Speaker 1: and that's what they were named at naming this thing after.

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Speaker 1: But eventually it became oak Ridge. And while the name

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Speaker 1: of this place may have undergone some iterations, its purpose

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Speaker 1: was always crystal clear to those in the No. You see,

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Speaker 1: Groves was overseeing what we call the Manhattan Project today,

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Speaker 1: that's the New York connect right, Yeah. Yeah, And the

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Speaker 1: town that would become oak Ridge was built for the

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Speaker 1: express purpose of helping Uncle Sam build the first atomic bomb.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And we have some information here coming from

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Speaker 4: the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History resonance there on

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Speaker 4: the land. The people who actually lived in Oak Ridge,

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Speaker 4: A lot of the families lived in the area really

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Speaker 4: on just in poverty or on the brink of poverty

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Speaker 4: for generations, and then all of a sudden, when this

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Speaker 4: land was purchased, all of them were just kicked out

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Speaker 4: just by you have to leave. The government is moving

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Speaker 4: in apologies, but not really just get out. And the

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Speaker 4: Feds came through the federal government and they condemned the

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Speaker 4: land and they paid the residents like really nothing, just

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Speaker 4: to get them the heck out of there as quickly

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Speaker 4: as power possible.

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Speaker 1: Right According to the New Hope Center, one resident at

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Speaker 1: the time received nine hundred dollars for forty acres of land.

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Speaker 1: That's about twenty two dollars and fifty cents per acre.

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Speaker 4: That's crazy.

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Speaker 1: If we adjust for inflation, that's about fourteen one hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy seven dollars total, which works out to about

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Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty four dollars and forty three cents

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Speaker 1: per acre today. Talk about a steal. You know what?

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, so let's keep the timeline here too.

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Speaker 1: If you look into the Center for Oakridge Oral History,

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Speaker 1: you'll see stories from people recalling that as children, the

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Speaker 1: principal called everybody into the school and told them they

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Speaker 1: had received a special or special contact from the federal government. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was September nineteen forty two. They all had to

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Speaker 1: be out by December nineteen forty two. Uproot your entire life, right,

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Speaker 1: and the logic here is solid and it is also ruthless.

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Speaker 1: It's very important to again emphasize this happened in the

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Speaker 1: United States not very long ago.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to imagine what the residents were going through,

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Speaker 4: what their lives were like, in order to really understand.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: First, a lot of the rural residents would doubtlessly accept

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Speaker 1: this lump sum of cash. It's a windfall, you know,

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Speaker 1: it could literally be a life changing amount of scratch

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Speaker 1: for a population where running water and indoor plumbing were

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Speaker 1: often a pipe dream. Terrible choice of words. Wow on

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Speaker 1: the level of science fiction. But there's a second, more

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Speaker 1: disturbing fact it played too well.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of the folks living around there didn't

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Speaker 4: have the education, let alone. You know, someone with enough

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Speaker 4: money to come through and mount any kind of legal

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Speaker 4: protest or action against what the federal government was doing

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Speaker 4: to them. And it was very clear that no matter what,

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Speaker 4: the federal government was moving in and you could either

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Speaker 4: essentially take them money or just leave. Right, You're gonna

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Speaker 4: take the money and leave, or you're just gonna leave right.

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Speaker 1: They you know this is this is kind of an

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Speaker 1: eminent domain thing too, right. They could say for the

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Speaker 1: greater good, you have to leave this place. Yeah, we'll

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Speaker 1: give you a little bit of money, you have to

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Speaker 1: leave this place. And being impoverished, they simply do not

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Speaker 1: have the recourse to legal action, even if they could

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Speaker 1: find someone who would represent them. This is all happening,

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Speaker 1: by the way, under strict secrecy, so there's not going

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Speaker 1: to be any kind of public trial. It will get quashed.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen forty five, just a few years later, Oakridge, Tennessee,

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Speaker 1: has seventy five thousand people living and working in the area.

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Speaker 1: Very few of those seventy five thousand people knew the

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Speaker 1: ultimate purpose of the secret city. Many had no idea

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Speaker 1: what they were working on until the United States dropped

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Speaker 1: the first atomic bomb on Japan and the local paper said,

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Speaker 1: you know Oakridge delivers something to the Japanese.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly what I've just mentioning there that seventy five

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Speaker 4: thousand people lived in the area. It's not you know,

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Speaker 4: we were talking about cities. We set this whole episode

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Speaker 4: up talking about cities. Oakridge was not like one big

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Speaker 4: facility where everyone went to work every day and then

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Speaker 4: everybody just left the area. They built a city there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, schools, post office, shops, movie theater and some

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Speaker 1: of the people who were originally kicked out by the

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Speaker 1: Feds managed to get jobs later at Oakridge. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they didn't know what they were doing. They did not

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Speaker 1: know that they were processing and enriching uranium. Today, if

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Speaker 1: you wish, you can visit Oakridge. It still processes uranium today.

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Speaker 1: And while this is one of the more popular examples

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Speaker 1: of a secret city, it is far from the only

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Speaker 1: case of one. There are more closed cities and they

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Speaker 1: remain closed today. Will give an honorable mention to Mercury, Nevada,

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Speaker 1: which spoiler alert I'd like to save for another episode.

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Speaker 4: Well then we won't say anything else about it. Thank

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Speaker 4: you for you know, glancing across this episode Mercury Nevada.

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Speaker 4: We look forward to seeing you again soon.

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Speaker 1: Radioactive ships in the night.

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Speaker 4: Well, you know we're mentioning this, yes, but we're talking

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Speaker 4: about Oakridge and just it had a hand in the

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Speaker 4: Manhattan Project, And I don't know if I want to

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Speaker 4: spoil too much. We talked we made an episode on

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Speaker 4: the Manhattan Project not too long ago, I believe, didn't

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Speaker 4: we Maybe we didn't. Maybe it's just that other secret

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Speaker 4: project we're working on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe we're both remembering forward again.

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Speaker 4: I hate well, all right, Well, it's interesting that we're

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Speaker 4: hitting Oakridge, Tennessee in the United States, kind of in

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Speaker 4: the heartland where the Manhattan probably was being carried out,

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Speaker 4: where nuclear testing in the first atomic bombs were developed

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Speaker 4: in the United States, that were hitting that first and

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Speaker 4: knowing where we're going in this episode.

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Speaker 1: That's right, where are we going? Indeed, where in the

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Speaker 1: world will we find our next forbidden city? We'll tell

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Speaker 1: you after a word from our sponsor. In what should

431
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Speaker 1: not be a stunning plot twist to anybody was listened

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Speaker 1: to this show in the past, we are of course

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Speaker 1: headed to Russia.

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Speaker 4: Soviet Russia.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, like the US, the Soviet Union was also

436
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: scrambling to event new terrifying weapons of war, and like

437
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: the US, they decided secret cities were the best way

438
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: to carry out their work.

439
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:58,760
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so there were several of actually numerous conspiratorial communities,

440
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 4: communities that were off the books, forbidden secret. In nineteen

441
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 4: ninety three, a little bit of the you know what

442
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,199
Speaker 4: would be considered the iron dome, the iron veil that

443
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 4: keeps information from linking out, was lifted. When these places

444
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,120
Speaker 4: were officially called they get they were given a name

445
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 4: closed administrative territorial entities, and that translates to if you,

446
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 4: if you take the cyrilliki translate it, it's Zato or Zato.

447
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: I was in my head for some reason as Zatto,

448
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,199
Speaker 1: but I think it's just because it seems like a

449
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,679
Speaker 1: cool name for someone to have. Is my friend Zatto.

450
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 4: It's very similar to a kiddi kat in Spanish.

451
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: Oh gotto.

452
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, that's where my head goes.

453
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: But before then, before nineteen ninety three, if you look

454
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: at any government census, both in the Soviet Union and

455
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: Russia proper and different members of the Soviet Union, you

456
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 1: will see that these cities and the hundreds of thousands

457
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: of people living and working in them simply do not exist.

458
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 1: Closed cities were not marked on maps, and there were

459
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: no road marks that could lead some ignorant, naive traveler

460
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: to the secret settlement. It was built such that you

461
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,120
Speaker 1: couldn't just accidentally be there and say, oh my god,

462
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: look at me.

463
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 4: Well, especially if you were taking any kind of public

464
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:29,160
Speaker 4: transportation like a train or a bus or anything like that,

465
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:30,840
Speaker 4: you would not be able to find them. You would

466
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 4: have to get in a vehicle and then like just

467
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 4: explore until you got to the gates where generally they

468
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 4: say attention, stay out, like you cannot come in here.

469
00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 4: And it's crazy were you know, we talked about this

470
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 4: concept of the city itself was secret, so it was

471
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 4: hidden away, which is kind of mind blowing thinking about

472
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 4: large buildings and everything being secret. But then also that

473
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 4: the human beings that occupied the cities were taken, like

474
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 4: you said, literally taken off of the census and families

475
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 4: like when you have a child and you live in

476
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 4: one of these places, that child ostensibly doesn't exist outside

477
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:14,480
Speaker 4: of the books for that closed city.

478
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 1: Right exactly, so strange and you can see that you

479
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: can see the problem. Here's it sets up a slippery

480
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: slope that's similar to the problem that the government of

481
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: China is having with unregistered births. Right when they had

482
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: the one child policy. What ended up happening because a

483
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: lot of parents you know, of course, want to have

484
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: the children that they were going to have. There's been

485
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: this rise of a population of human beings, female people

486
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: in China who are unregistered, so they have no rights,

487
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: they have no access to you know, healthcare, education, medicine.

488
00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: It's a terrible, terrible situation and it's all because of

489
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: a couple the pieces of paper. How often does that

490
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: happen with our species? You know, other animals don't do that.

491
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: I'm not saying other animals are better than our brand

492
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: of animal, but I don't see, though nature's brutal, I

493
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of other intelligent creatures, you know,

494
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: committing such horrific acts over paperwork.

495
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can really get into this if you want to,

496
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 4: but that's that's an intense discussion to have right there.

497
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 4: Just the concept that a small paper that either proves

498
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 4: that you are who you are or from a certain

499
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 4: area has life or death consequences throughout time.

500
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: Like what we did that earlier. We definitely did a

501
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: video in this the concept of statelessness. Yeah, people who

502
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: do not have a country of origin, so strange. But

503
00:30:55,840 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: in this case, the people in these closed cities in

504
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: the USSR, as we'll come to find, they did not

505
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: have a huge problem with living life as ghost people,

506
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: according to the bureaucracy.

507
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 4: And actually according to some reporting that's come out fairly

508
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 4: recently from and interviews from people who've lived inside these places,

509
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 4: because they got.

510
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:24,720
Speaker 1: Perks, Yeah, they had a pretty good There's a documentary

511
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about a little bit later where you

512
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: can see some of these quotes, and there are people saying,

513
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: we got everything that we wanted for the rest of

514
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:35,920
Speaker 1: our lives for staying here. So of course we would

515
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: stay here. Don't screw this up for us outsiders. Residents

516
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: of these close cities were given private apartments, right, and

517
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: this is during the era of communism, so it's a

518
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: big get for them. Decent healthcare, and they had jobs

519
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: for life, they had job security. And at a time

520
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: when the much of the rest of the USSR was

521
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: having a difficult time coming by the most base of staples,

522
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, wheat, milk, eggs, stuff like that,

523
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 1: residents of these close cities were getting things that were

524
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: exotic for the time, like bananas, condensed milk. They had

525
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: a lot of meat products they could eat. Literally, caviar

526
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: was available, literally caviar, yes, yes, literally caviar egg, although.

527
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 4: You probably would not want to eat the caviar.

528
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: Which is a spoiler depending on the city. So even today,

529
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Even today, most residents of these close

530
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: cities consider themselves incredibly fortunate to be living in a

531
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:35,360
Speaker 1: zoto area. They're not bothered by the barbed wire fencing

532
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: that surrounds them or the cognitive fencing and bureaucratic fencing

533
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: that also surrounds them. They are very mission oriented. Instead

534
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 1: of diving into the numerous the numerous Cold War era

535
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 1: closed cities that we know about today and speculating on

536
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 1: the fifteen or twenty that are more or less certain

537
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 1: to exist but remain secret, let's just look at a few,

538
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: like high level examples.

539
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 4: What do you think, Oh yeah, absolutely, And you know,

540
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 4: each of these that we're going to talk about coming

541
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 4: up are their own thing. Everything we've been talking about before,

542
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 4: this in relation to these Zato Zeto areas, it's similar,

543
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 4: very similar, but each one of these is going to

544
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 4: have its own tail and So let's take you to

545
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 4: a place called I'm gonna try and pronounce this.

546
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: Zelenogorsk, Zelenogorsk, Zelenogorsk. Yeah, we are not Russian. Please send in,

547
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: dear Russian speakers in the audience, please send in the

548
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 1: correct pronunciations here we would always prefer to be correct

549
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: rather than comfortable. So. Zelenogorsk is located in Russia by

550
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: the Khan river Ka n It was built in the

551
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: forties fifties era as part of the Soviet drive to

552
00:33:55,640 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: enrich uranium for the USSR nuclear program. Like Oakra, this

553
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: city had a population of thousands, and although it existed

554
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: for decades, it was not on official maps until nineteen

555
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: ninety two. Imagine trying to get mail. Oh, by the way,

556
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:15,239
Speaker 1: when these things are in full swing, and some of

557
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: them still operate this way today. These cities are not

558
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:21,479
Speaker 1: as you said, Matt on trade and bus routes. They're

559
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: only known by a postal code, a name, and a number.

560
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: So what it would be like It would be like

561
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: decad forty seven or something.

562
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:35,879
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly with that postal code. And the other

563
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 4: thing here is just like oak Ridge. We're kind of

564
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 4: comparing these two places. They this place still supplies a

565
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 4: good amount of the uranium for Russia's production there. It's no,

566
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 4: it's twenty nine percent of the enrichment capacity that exists

567
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 4: within Russia. So the actual places with centrifugias that are

568
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 4: enriching uranium. That's crazy to think, but even sends uranium

569
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 4: to other countries, including the United States, just because you

570
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 4: know you need a little extra uranium. Sometimes Unkridge can't

571
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 4: do all the production.

572
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: You get bye with a little help from your friends.

573
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And we're continuing with that trend here of

574
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 4: a lot of these closed off cities were specifically meant

575
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 4: to create or at least assist in the creation of

576
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 4: weapons of war, like massive weapons of war, new technologies

577
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,839
Speaker 4: that could be used to establish dominance or at least

578
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:36,320
Speaker 4: hopefully right.

579
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: Let's go to one of the most famous examples, a

580
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: town called Ozersk, also known as City forty. Oz Ersk

581
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: is located in the Ural Mountains. It was founded in

582
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. First was known as Chileabinsk forty, then

583
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:56,720
Speaker 1: Chileabinsk sixty five. Like other closed cities, as you said, Matt,

584
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:01,280
Speaker 1: Ozersk was built to aid the Soviet nuclear probe. Unlike

585
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 1: some other forbidden cities, Osairsk has received a great deal

586
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: of media attention, notably in a documentary called City forty,

587
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: which we highly recommend.

588
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, seriously check it out if you possibly can, or

589
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,720
Speaker 4: at least read up on the contents of it, because

590
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,760
Speaker 4: there are so many fascinating stories and humans.

591
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 1: Involved, and it is a tragic story. Yeah. So the

592
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: citizens of this place of City forty have a fairly

593
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:32,280
Speaker 1: unique dilemma, and I quite like the way the Guardian

594
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: put it in an article on the closed city. It's

595
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: this Their water is contaminated, their mushrooms and berries are poisoned,

596
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: and their children may be sick. Ozersk and the surrounding

597
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:46,720
Speaker 1: region is one of the most contaminated places on the planet,

598
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: referred to by some as the graveyard of Earth. Yet

599
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 1: most of City forty's residents do not want to leave.

600
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: They take pride in their community. They still have that

601
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 1: attitude of feeling that they have received immense privilege.

602
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 4: Yes, and they have in a lot of ways, and

603
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:14,840
Speaker 4: their families have benefited from that privilege. But their families

604
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 4: have also in most cases, a family member or two

605
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,640
Speaker 4: or more have died because.

606
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 1: They have lived in that place, right, Yeah, they were

607
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: heavily contaminated by industrial pollution from the nearby Mayak plutonium

608
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: plant from the what the late nineteen forties on, this

609
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: was an ongoing thing. This plant was one of the

610
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: largest producers of weapons grade plutonium for the Soviet Union

611
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: during a lot of the Cold War, particularly during the

612
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: atomic bomb program, and it was built with once again

613
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: the greater good in mind. You got to break a

614
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,399
Speaker 1: few eggs. We want to get some atomic omelets, said

615
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: the Soviet government. You know what I mean, what's a

616
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: couple people in the great balance of life? You know

617
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: what I mean? Hakuna matata, et cetera, they said, And

618
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: then they built this with no regard for safety.

619
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's that's the crazy thing. It's there have

620
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,800
Speaker 4: been several one major disaster that occurred at one of

621
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 4: the major plants there that ended up irradiating I think

622
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 4: it was like two hundred thousand people or something like that,

623
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 4: or it was a crazy number of people in villages

624
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 4: that just lived, you know, upstream or away from the

625
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 4: actual plant. Because these they were dumping radioactive waste directly

626
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,280
Speaker 4: into the water into that river that we keep talking

627
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 4: about there and we're.

628
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: Dumping solid waste, liquid waste, gaseous matter, all radioactive. And

629
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: then we're doing this for more for not more than,

630
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: but for around a decade, from nineteen four five to

631
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: fifty seven.

632
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, and here's here's the part that was mind blowing

633
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 4: for me as I was learning about it. You know,

634
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 4: when you imagine a nuclear accident or a disaster, what

635
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 4: comes to mind. Chernobyl, right through that island is first,

636
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 4: though Chernobyl always is at the top of the list.

637
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 4: And over all this time when the waste was being dumped,

638
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:30,320
Speaker 4: the sum of contamination of radioactive contamination has been estimated

639
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,680
Speaker 4: to be two to three times the release from the

640
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:38,759
Speaker 4: Chernobyl accident explosions. Now here's the deal. Chernobyl kind of occurred, exploded,

641
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 4: Your your radioactive waste is you know, gone into the

642
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 4: air and is spread out across a wide area. But

643
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 4: for this they're literally pumping out the radioactive waste continually

644
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:53,240
Speaker 4: for a decade.

645
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:57,800
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, this reaches ahead the MAAC plant

646
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,880
Speaker 1: is the site of an enormous disaster. An underground tank

647
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: of highly irradiated liquid nuclear waste explodes and it contaminates

648
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: thousands of square kilometers of territory. Nowadays, it's known as

649
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: the Eastern Eural Radioactive Trace or the urt EURT. The

650
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 1: problem is that this disaster is quietly, efficiently and ruthlessly

651
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: covered up, and very very few people inside or outside

652
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: of the USSR we're aware of what actually happened until

653
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: at least nineteen eighty and this has also been called

654
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 1: the Kishtom disaster specifically, you know, this is September twenty ninth.

655
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate what you're pointing out here, Matt,

656
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: because we're all familiar with your noble, especially in the

657
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 1: world of fiction in the recent day and age, because

658
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:02,959
Speaker 1: there was a masterful miniseries done that I think aired

659
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: on HBO, but it didn't really address this. And can

660
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 1: you imagine living here and you've been told that you

661
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:15,799
Speaker 1: are the sword and shield to save the world. Right,

662
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: that's why you and your family are working and this

663
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: great project to make this new weapon of war. You're

664
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 1: not doing it to sow chaos. You're doing it to

665
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: guarantee peace.

666
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 4: Well and also be triumphant over those who want to

667
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 4: do harm.

668
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: Right exactly, because everyone is a war of defense. Da

669
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 1: da da da da da da. But didn't mean to

670
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:40,800
Speaker 1: sound so dismissive. I just don't believe it when people

671
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: say that anymore, you know. But the kicker is imagine

672
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:52,240
Speaker 1: being that person. So you're ideologically on board, probably, And.

673
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 4: You learn.

674
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: Weeks after the fact, very least weeks after the fact,

675
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: that you and your children have been irradiated, and you

676
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:11,959
Speaker 1: can't find anything about it, even in the news, even

677
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,359
Speaker 1: in the secret city newspaper it's supposed to give you

678
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 1: one of the inner circle. You know what happened. Why

679
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: are you only seeing these vague reports, and why don't

680
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: they jibe with the first hand sightings you're hearing of

681
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: of people with skin falling off their faces, their body

682
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:34,239
Speaker 1: parts being exposed, their hair falling out along with their toenails,

683
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 1: and so on.

684
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me quickly paint a scenario, just for all

685
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 4: of us sitting here and listening. Let's imagine that we're

686
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 4: one of the minority few who live out somewhere in

687
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 4: a rural area. And let's say we live in Russia.

688
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 4: It's nineteen fifty seven, and our small family own some

689
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 4: farmland and lots and lots of livestock, or at least

690
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:04,320
Speaker 4: enough livestock, you know, to survive as well as a

691
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 4: lot of crops, and we're just hanging out. We're doing

692
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 4: all the strenuous work we have to do every day

693
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,800
Speaker 4: to maintain what we have, which is still very little,

694
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden, you know, we don't

695
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:21,760
Speaker 4: notice anything. Really. We heard maybe about a big bang,

696
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 4: a large bang that occurred somewhere, you know, southwest of

697
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 4: here a couple of days ago, but that's all we've

698
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 4: really heard about. There were some weird clouds that came over,

699
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 4: like appeared to be smoke or something. We haven't thought

700
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,400
Speaker 4: about any of that stuff since that day. Well, a

701
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 4: big truck rolls through with a lot of our you know, countrymen,

702
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 4: our military people. They're just coming through and they happen

703
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 4: to stop by our farm and they let us know

704
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 4: that today we have to slaughter all of our cattle.

705
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 4: We have to uproot and then bury all of our crops.

706
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 4: Then we have to plow all that over, and then

707
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 4: we have to get the heck out because they're going

708
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 4: to purchase our farm for almost nothing.

709
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 1: They're also wearing containment suits. Yeah, then they did not

710
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: bring spares.

711
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:16,279
Speaker 4: Yeah, just letting us know. And here's the other thing.

712
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:20,480
Speaker 4: Let's say that occurs and then years later after you

713
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:24,879
Speaker 4: know that went down, you know what's occurred. Nobody has

714
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,760
Speaker 4: put any record of this down. Nobody is talking about

715
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 4: all the other farms like that were just in this

716
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 4: giant line that I can look at a map and see,

717
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 4: like I know, people lived in this line and they

718
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 4: all had to sell their houses, their farms, but nobody's

719
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 4: talking about it.

720
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: There's a beauty, the dark beauty to the brutal logic there.

721
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:51,959
Speaker 1: So the same way that rural people in the US

722
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:56,240
Speaker 1: could not fight back against the lad been taken, people

723
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: who do not officially exist have no legal recourse because

724
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:06,320
Speaker 1: they are ghosts. It just now reached a point where

725
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:11,279
Speaker 1: their physical condition matched the condition of the paperwork, which

726
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 1: is just insidious. I mean, it is unclean to do

727
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: that to people. But I see the logic of it,

728
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: and there are plenty, plenty more. We could probably do

729
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: an episode per city on close cities in Russia, but

730
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 1: we don't want to just stay in the Cold War

731
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 1: in the US and Russia or the USSR. Excuse me,

732
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:36,400
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick look at other cities, some of

733
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 1: which might surprise you. In the mainland of China, there

734
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 1: is a place called the nuclear town. It is in

735
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert in the western part of Gansu Province. Officially,

736
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: it's called the number four oh four Factory of China

737
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: National Nuclear Corporation. I love that it's called four oh four, right,

738
00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 1: pretty it's such a bad internet joke.

739
00:45:59,040 --> 00:45:59,720
Speaker 4: It's unknown.

740
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: I hope someone did it on purpose. It's not found

741
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,719
Speaker 1: yash so it's built back in nineteen fifty eight. So

742
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: probably not a good joke unless the people who did

743
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: four h four on the Internet were making a sideways

744
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: reference to this fact. Probably not. Probably not. The world's

745
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: not that convenient nor well written.

746
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 4: I say we go that until someone tells us it's

747
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 4: for something else.

748
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,359
Speaker 1: And then let's accuse them of covering it up. That's right, Well,

749
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 1: that sounds like a plan in that. So this is

750
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 1: the biggest nuclear industry base in the country that we

751
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:37,280
Speaker 1: know of. It's the country's first military nuclear reactor. Eighty

752
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:41,320
Speaker 1: percent of China's nuclear bomb core components are built there.

753
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:45,680
Speaker 1: For twenty years it was completely closed to outsiders. And

754
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 1: that's not the only case in China. There are a

755
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: couple of other more remote places where you have to

756
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: apply for what's called an alien travel document. In advance

757
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: to visit, and you have to report to the police

758
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 1: as soon as like your accommodations as soon as you

759
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:05,400
Speaker 1: stay somewhere, And if you don't follow everything to the letter,

760
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:08,359
Speaker 1: you get the boot. They will immediately take you out

761
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: of the country.

762
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, just get the heck out, man, We've got this

763
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 4: running thing. We're gonna come back to it in the conclusion.

764
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 4: But just if you're going to create facile material to

765
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 4: be weaponized for any reason, or just let's say it's

766
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 4: just to run a power plant, it's a lot of

767
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 4: people that are doing that, are making these weird, hidden,

768
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 4: creepy cities.

769
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out to maybe be the best way

770
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,879
Speaker 1: to go about this, right because if you have because

771
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:45,280
Speaker 1: you can control more variables, if you have the entire

772
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 1: city purpose built like we have. You know, we have

773
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 1: military armament manufacturers that are based in or near large

774
00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: urban areas, but they no matter how well they secure

775
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:09,399
Speaker 1: their grounds, they cannot control the millions of people who

776
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: live like you know, across the river or get through

777
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: the woods, I don't know, whatever you want to say. Yep.

778
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 1: So this is a very common trend, and these secret

779
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: cities are still around today and in some cases, Yes,

780
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 1: the people who live in them do not technically exist

781
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:30,399
Speaker 1: on paper. We want to do one more example as

782
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:35,240
Speaker 1: something that is completely different. It's a closed city, closed

783
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: part of a city that does not exist for nuclear

784
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: research and does not exist for some kind of human

785
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 1: rights abuse or concentration camp thing. Right, So let's travel

786
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. You've heard it before. This

787
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 1: is not the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KSA should not

788
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 1: be a new thing to any of our life listeners.

789
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 1: It is a unique country in the world of geopolitics

790
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, and its most famous close

791
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 1: city is no different. Unlike the majority of secret cities

792
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: we've mentioned today, Mecca is not closed due to top

793
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:18,240
Speaker 1: secret military or industrial research. Instead, it's a partially closed

794
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: city because every year millions and millions and millions of

795
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: people visit and you can too, as long as you

796
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: like them. Are a practitioner of Islam. Because only Muslims

797
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 1: are allowed in Mecca, it is the holiest, most important

798
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:38,320
Speaker 1: city in the religion. It has off limits under any

799
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: circumstances to any non Muslims. Don't even try.

800
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you do attempt, and you don't meet all

801
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 4: of those requirements, you will immediately be deported and that

802
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:52,719
Speaker 4: will be it. Thank you for trying to come in,

803
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:55,840
Speaker 4: but we don't appreciate you. Why No, I'm just kidding.

804
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 4: It's not that harsh, but you would definitely get deported immediately.

805
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the penalty in practice maybe much harsher

806
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 1: than deportation, And a lot of it depends on what

807
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: kind of person who are your country of origin? Right, yes,

808
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:12,720
Speaker 1: and it could go up to and including assault, torture, murder.

809
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: You just you don't know. And as a personal message

810
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: to anybody else who enjoys traveling to the edges of

811
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:24,720
Speaker 1: the maps, to the places where normal people don't take vacation,

812
00:50:25,719 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: I definitely want to warn every non Muslim person against

813
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: trying to sneak into Mecca. It's not like taking a

814
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:38,240
Speaker 1: quick illicit trip across the poorest Midwestern or Alaskan border

815
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,280
Speaker 1: between Canada and the US. Your chances of being caught

816
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 1: are extremely high. If you feel that you must go

817
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: to Mecca, you genuinely must go there. The most rational

818
00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: choice is to convert to Islam beforehand, actually do it.

819
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,439
Speaker 1: Attempting to fake a conversion will also by the way

820
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 1: in all likelihood fail. I know that there are photographs

821
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: of plenty of someone who said, like, oh, it's not

822
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 1: getting a mecca or whatever. There was a recent story

823
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:13,760
Speaker 1: about a guy who I think acquired his Israeli citizenship

824
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, and he visited and he said that

825
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: it was on the up and up. But I have

826
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:27,359
Speaker 1: a tough time believing him. And also, you know, inherently

827
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: it's the most important city in this religion, the millions

828
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 1: of people follow. I don't know, man, this is a

829
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: personal take. I want your opinion too, Matt. Should people

830
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: be able to do that? I feel like, personally would

831
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:46,479
Speaker 1: be disrespectful for me to say, well, I don't care

832
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:51,279
Speaker 1: about your core belief system. I need some selfies, you

833
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That just feels I don't know.

834
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, yeah, it certainly doesn't feel like a good

835
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 4: eye idea. I'm trying to find it, like something that

836
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,839
Speaker 4: would be the equivalent, But I don't know if there's

837
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 4: anything in the world that's as close to that. There

838
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 4: are I mean trying to imagine the whaling Wall or

839
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 4: but it's not like it's restricted.

840
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:22,359
Speaker 1: Well, in some religions in the West, like the Church

841
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: of Latter day Saints, don't they not allow some people

842
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: into the temple like people are not.

843
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, or scientology or any you know,

844
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:34,880
Speaker 4: a lot of these belief systems would have closed off areas,

845
00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 4: closed off things, right, that's like micro understandings. But a

846
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:43,960
Speaker 4: large place like Mecca, it's it's interesting, hmm. I'm trying

847
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 4: to imagine for some Well, no, it's not the same.

848
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: Someone started a religion and it was based in Detroit. Yeah,

849
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: and they said you can't go to Detroit unless you

850
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:55,400
Speaker 1: follow this religion.

851
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 4: Say, well, Detroit's pretty big.

852
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 1: Detroit is really no, no, no, no, no, that that

853
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:06,879
Speaker 1: callback just working live. You know, not all of these

854
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:10,920
Speaker 1: are going to be one hundred Sali goldhad no.

855
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 4: But it is. I think the core of what you're

856
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 4: saying in that it's a bad idea to undermine this

857
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 4: this rule that's in place, you know, for a reason,

858
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 4: for a very popular belief system. That's probably a bad idea.

859
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:35,200
Speaker 4: But then, you know, I always imagine the spycraft that

860
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 4: occurs in a place like Mecca, or in a place

861
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:44,680
Speaker 4: like Jerusalem or the Vatican. You know, there's probably fascinating

862
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:49,000
Speaker 4: deep spycraft occurring in all of those places from varying

863
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:54,800
Speaker 4: countries with varying interests, you know. And that's just me assuming,

864
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 4: but that's what I'm imagining when you're talking about something

865
00:53:57,960 --> 00:53:59,480
Speaker 4: as closed off as Mecca is.

866
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:06,319
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And of course you know, we have we

867
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners who are very close to

868
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:12,759
Speaker 1: their faith, you know what I mean, and art and

869
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: practitioners thereof just just to me, and again this is

870
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: just my opinion. I do. I feel like it's completely

871
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 1: okay to say, hey, out of respect for our belief system,

872
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: just sorry, this one part of the world doesn't have

873
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: to be yours. I think that's perfectly okay. Like Aluru

874
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,799
Speaker 1: or airs Rock as it's sometimes called in Australia, the

875
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,840
Speaker 1: native population said, this is very important to us. Please

876
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:50,759
Speaker 1: just stop having yourself aggrandizing tourist adventures here.

877
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 4: The only problem is the moment you say you can't

878
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 4: go here. I mean it's that old thing like don't

879
00:54:57,560 --> 00:54:58,719
Speaker 4: touch that button.

880
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 1: Don't think of pink elephants, know, yeah, I.

881
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:04,320
Speaker 4: Mean psychologically that that occurs in many of us.

882
00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm no different. Obviously.

883
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:10,360
Speaker 4: What would be better is if you just kept it

884
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:12,920
Speaker 4: off the map. Nobody knew about it. You just had

885
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:16,319
Speaker 4: a postal code if you if you were aware of

886
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:18,920
Speaker 4: you know, Mecca. But that's it.

887
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, yeah, there's the other part too. I

888
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: would go on record saying that it's completely different if

889
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: someone says, Okay, we have founded our new city or

890
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:36,920
Speaker 1: our new religion or belief system, and everybody who was

891
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,920
Speaker 1: living here before either convert or GTFO, I think that's

892
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: very different.

893
00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 4: Yes, you know what I mean. I agree I'm making

894
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to make light of out that situation.

895
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,239
Speaker 4: It's just anyway trying to make a callback that I

896
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 4: think didn't work.

897
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:56,840
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Well, instead of calling back, maybe let's call forward.

898
00:55:56,920 --> 00:55:59,919
Speaker 1: Because it seems the story continues for all of these

899
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 1: places we just mentioned. In the case of Russia, currently,

900
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,880
Speaker 1: it's estimated they are about forty four closed cities in existence,

901
00:56:08,600 --> 00:56:11,760
Speaker 1: about one point five million people live in these total,

902
00:56:13,080 --> 00:56:16,319
Speaker 1: and there are also, according to rumors, around fifteen other

903
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:20,800
Speaker 1: closed cities that exist without their whereabouts or their names

904
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: being disclosed by the government. If you would like to

905
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 1: visit a closed city, I'm very excited about giving this

906
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:32,000
Speaker 1: a shot one day. You are welcome to give it.

907
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:36,400
Speaker 1: The old college try getting into these places. Is if

908
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:39,880
Speaker 1: you look at the spectrum of difficult entries and exits,

909
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:45,120
Speaker 1: it's easier than entering North Sentinel Island, but it's still

910
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:48,720
Speaker 1: tougher than getting into a place like the DPRK North Korea.

911
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:52,920
Speaker 1: Non residents who want to visit closed cities have to

912
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 1: get a special pass from the Russian Security Service, the

913
00:56:56,840 --> 00:57:02,080
Speaker 1: secret police essentially. So if you Matt, and you Paul,

914
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:05,719
Speaker 1: and I'm you listening, if we all, if we all

915
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: got together and we requested these passes, depending on the city,

916
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:14,319
Speaker 1: and you know, Hinji, on the fact that we are

917
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: not Russian nationals, we would almost certainly be rejected. And

918
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: that's not that's not all. Applying for one of these things.

919
00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 1: Even if you are a Russian national and you are

920
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:30,080
Speaker 1: related to someone who lives in a close city, applying

921
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 1: for one of these things, whether or not you were accepted,

922
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:35,480
Speaker 1: puts you on a list with Russian intelligence for the

923
00:57:35,480 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: rest of your life.

924
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:39,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what else, guess you on that list?

925
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 4: What's that listening to an episode with the metadata Zato

926
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 4: and Russia Secret Cities.

927
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:47,720
Speaker 1: Oh no, it is in the metadata.

928
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:48,920
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure.

929
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: I had a depressing conversation with some of my old uh,

930
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 1: some of my old colleagues about which countries can get

931
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: into and out of, like the stands are pretty much

932
00:58:01,960 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: no goes for me and my friends who were working

933
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: in the PRC. We're saying, well, you know, it's okay.

934
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:16,320
Speaker 1: I guess as long as your podcast isn't it Mandarin whoa?

935
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:18,840
Speaker 1: And you know it makes you think, like what happened

936
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 1: with those with those folks for Radio Free America? Did

937
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:23,040
Speaker 1: you hear about this?

938
00:58:23,440 --> 00:58:23,680
Speaker 4: I did?

939
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: We did? We talk about this here?

940
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 4: I don't know if we talked about on a conversations.

941
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so some weager journalists that we're working with

942
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:38,400
Speaker 1: Radio Free America, which is a US supported propaganda network,

943
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:42,240
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it's one hundred percent wrong all

944
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: the time. Their families have been threatened, and there's an

945
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: intense debate going on now about the situation western China,

946
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: which we should report on more soon. We we got

947
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: there a little bit before it broke international news. Anyhow,

948
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: if you want to visit this and if it is

949
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 1: worth being on a list with Russian intelligence for the

950
00:59:05,160 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: rest of your life not necessarily a bad thing, I guess,

951
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're more than welcome to apply. But keep

952
00:59:10,440 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: in mind passes are only given to those who have

953
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 1: relatives and closed cities, or people are traveling to closed

954
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:19,760
Speaker 1: cities on a business trip. So for like ay, maybe

955
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: we use different names, you know, like hey, I'm Johnny

956
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 1: America and I'm Dimmy big Bucks and we're here for

957
00:59:30,040 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: oil I don't know, the new kind of roller blade.

958
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:40,120
Speaker 1: Then maybe we can get in. But even then access

959
00:59:40,200 --> 00:59:43,240
Speaker 1: isn't guaranteed. You can try to get a permanent pass,

960
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:46,240
Speaker 1: but it's more challenging. There are two ways to get them.

961
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:49,520
Speaker 1: Basically you have to have been born there, yeah, or

962
00:59:49,560 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: you have to work in one of the enterprises they

963
00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:54,680
Speaker 1: need so be a nuclear scientist or be born.

964
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 4: There yeah, and get irradiated. Well, you hang out in

965
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:01,360
Speaker 4: City forty just like everybody else. So this is something

966
01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 4: I know we're wrapping up here, but really quickly something

967
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:09,840
Speaker 4: that struck me. We talked about that disaster that officially

968
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:14,120
Speaker 4: didn't occur within City forty, at least for a long time,

969
01:00:14,200 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 4: it was not disclosed that that actually happened and that

970
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:20,600
Speaker 4: amount of radiation was released into the wild. It makes

971
01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 4: me think about Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the place where

972
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 4: the United States, you know, started its nuclear industry. Really,

973
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 4: it makes me wonder if anything has occurred within that

974
01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 4: area that was never reported and was just covered up,

975
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 4: and people and livestock and crops were dosed beyond you know,

976
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 4: any sane amount and we just never found out about it,

977
01:00:54,320 --> 01:00:56,720
Speaker 4: because if we were to find out about it, there

978
01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:01,360
Speaker 4: would be such an uproar. I just it makes me wonder.

979
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed.

980
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:05,320
Speaker 4: Now, there's a side of me that says, if something

981
01:01:05,360 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 4: like that did occur at Oak Ridge, then there's no

982
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 4: way they could completely cover that up. Some paper somewhere,

983
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:15,520
Speaker 4: somebody would know, somebody would talk. But the other part

984
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 4: of me thinks it was a time of war, and

985
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 4: just like the people of City forty, we were told

986
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:25,439
Speaker 4: and we believed the people who lived there at the time,

987
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,040
Speaker 4: that we were fighting the good fight. This is all

988
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:31,080
Speaker 4: in the name of the United States victory, This is

989
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 4: all in the name of securing our family's futures, and

990
01:01:34,840 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 4: we'll go along with it. And then they all died

991
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 4: because they got dosed by radiation.

992
01:01:40,040 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, they died. They died to a terminal condition known

993
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:45,080
Speaker 1: as the greater Good.

994
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 4: But that's all fabricated from my mind.

995
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:52,000
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering. It's possible have occurred. Yeah, that's the

996
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 1: disturbing thing. It's possible, you know what I mean, Like

997
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:58,680
Speaker 1: the Villa incidents where the nuclear bomb was tested. Right,

998
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: these things happen. They may not happen in your backyard,

999
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:08,400
Speaker 1: but that doesn't make them any less terrifying. And now

1000
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:12,520
Speaker 1: it gets to our final question. How long will these

1001
01:02:12,600 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: closed cities stay closed? Some are Cold war relics, but

1002
01:02:17,240 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: a surprising amount of them are still manufacturing fissile material. Right,

1003
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 1: they're enriching uranium, they're making weapons grade plutonium. Business is booming,

1004
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:31,600
Speaker 1: Business is good. Those cities may well stay closed. And

1005
01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:33,280
Speaker 1: what about the ones that we don't know, the ones

1006
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: that are still off of the maps. And that's our

1007
01:02:41,160 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 1: classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear

1008
01:02:45,080 --> 01:02:46,640
Speaker 1: your thoughts. It's right, let us know what you think.

1009
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: You can reach.

1010
01:02:47,080 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 2: You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on

1011
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:53,920
Speaker 2: Facebook x and YouTube, on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy

1012
01:02:53,920 --> 01:02:54,439
Speaker 2: Stuff Show.

1013
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:56,720
Speaker 4: If you want to call us dial one eight three

1014
01:02:56,880 --> 01:03:02,000
Speaker 4: three STDWYTK that's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.

1015
01:03:02,040 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 4: Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if

1016
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:06,320
Speaker 4: we can use your name and message on the air.

1017
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:08,200
Speaker 4: If you got more to say than can fit in

1018
01:03:08,240 --> 01:03:11,040
Speaker 4: that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old

1019
01:03:11,080 --> 01:03:11,840
Speaker 4: fashioned email.

1020
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:15,000
Speaker 1: We are the entities that read every single piece of

1021
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:19,440
Speaker 1: correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the

1022
01:03:19,520 --> 01:03:41,640
Speaker 1: void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1023
01:03:41,840 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 4: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production

1024
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 4: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1025
01:03:48,600 --> 01:03:51,800
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.