Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning with a classic episode this evening,
Speaker 1: a true story. A while back, we looked around the
Speaker 1: world and we realized we mentioned this on the show
Speaker 1: in episodes or even strange news or listener mail or
Speaker 1: interviews earlier. The majority of human beings now live in
Speaker 1: urban areas. Most people live in cities. That trend is
Speaker 1: probably going to continue. But you can't go to every city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Not all cities are created equal. In fact,
Speaker 2: countries throughout the world are home to cities that, in
Speaker 2: one way or another, don't exist.
Speaker 1: One of these is Oakridge, Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention that because it is in the United States,
Speaker 1: these are not as far flung nor as rare as
Speaker 1: one might assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's explore hidden cities that you can't go
Speaker 2: to in this classic episode of Stuff they Don't want
Speaker 2: you to Know.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben we are joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer, Paul Mission Control Decond. Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Got a confession for you, Matt.
Speaker 1: All right, I did my quarterly dive into our podcast
Speaker 1: reviews about every three months. I do that.
Speaker 4: I noticed your Twitter request for reviews.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and following me on Twitter.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, No, I just saw it through the conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I wanted to thank everybody who
Speaker 1: took the time to make or to write a review,
Speaker 1: whether good or bad or simply middling. We really do
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and shout out to our longtime listeners, many
Speaker 1: of whom I recognize just based on the way you talk.
Speaker 1: In the review especially, there were a couple of great
Speaker 1: ones where someone said, hey, I hope this gets you
Speaker 1: guys one step further away from being fired, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: you have been listening a long time. People like great
Speaker 1: stuff to say about you, Matt, and about Noel, and
Speaker 1: about you as well, Paul Mission Control Decands. So thanks
Speaker 1: to everybody sincerely who checked in and gave us a rating,
Speaker 1: even the people who for one reason or another gave
Speaker 1: us one star because the facts that we presented about
Speaker 1: a specific issue did not jibe with their opinions. Got you,
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 4: Just feels like two dudes at a bar kicking it
Speaker 4: one star. That sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: Did you pull them up? Are you reading what?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, seriously, I mean, without spending too much time on it.
Speaker 1: It's uh, We're very fortunate for every listener, and we're
Speaker 1: grateful for your time. I have to ask, and this
Speaker 1: is something that you and I have talked about, I
Speaker 1: think a little bit before off air. I have to ask, Matt,
Speaker 1: are you, in your personal life a fan of maps,
Speaker 1: cartography stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean my wall is just covered with maps
Speaker 4: of video game worlds. Really yeah, But you know, in
Speaker 4: the real world it's for some reason not as appealing
Speaker 4: to me, though I do love knowing, let's say, within
Speaker 4: the world of Skyrim, like where particular towns are with
Speaker 4: relation to the Giant Mountain.
Speaker 1: This is so ridiculous. I have been playing. I'm at
Speaker 1: the level of Skyrim on my replay where I am
Speaker 1: just trying to find every location.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, I you have to do that.
Speaker 1: Have you found on every location?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have every so often, like
Speaker 1: the numbers don't jive up yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember taking that it's not an achievement. What
Speaker 4: is it called the skill or whatever? At some point
Speaker 4: where it reveals all locations on the map to you.
Speaker 4: That was one of one of my.
Speaker 1: First playthroughs, though in Skyrim.
Speaker 4: I think it is Skyrim. Maybe it's a different one.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I've played so many at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's on Skyrim, but if
Speaker 1: it is, I am excited.
Speaker 4: I'm also fallout. That's a fallout.
Speaker 1: That's a Fallout thing, but still Bethesda, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like you. I'm a fan of maps, a fan of cartography,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of our fellow listeners are
Speaker 1: as well. I'm one of those people who has you know.
Speaker 1: At my house, I have a world map where I
Speaker 1: can put the little pins in. Shout out to Mitch
Speaker 1: Hedberg for his brilliant world map joke, which I will
Speaker 1: not impersonate here. I'm also a fan of very old maps.
Speaker 1: I have prints of the Perie Reese map that you
Speaker 1: and I covered in a previous episode, and I have
Speaker 1: a collection of out of date globes which are also
Speaker 1: very interesting once you get to the Middle East, once
Speaker 1: you get to Russia, the Balkan areas and so on.
Speaker 4: You you are a fascinating person.
Speaker 1: Ben, What do you mean, Well, we have some of
Speaker 1: those some of those globes still here in the office today.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: Sure, it's an interesting way to look at the story
Speaker 1: of humanity. And regardless of what kind of trends we
Speaker 1: see in maps and on globes over time, we do
Speaker 1: see one specific trend which has never been violated, as
Speaker 1: never abated. It is the trend of our species to
Speaker 1: construct increasingly larger, more dense urban areas. As we record
Speaker 1: today's episode, humanity is officially an urban species.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we are. We move towards those places, even
Speaker 4: if it's on the outskirts, in the suburban areas. As
Speaker 4: of twenty sixteen, more than four billion people lived in
Speaker 4: these things that we would consider to be urban areas,
Speaker 4: and there are only three point four billion people living
Speaker 4: in what we would consider to be rural areas outside
Speaker 4: of these bigger, established places.
Speaker 1: Oh, and we should we should retroactively say this is
Speaker 1: the here are the facts part of the show. That's right,
Speaker 1: Everything that you're hearing for this part of for this
Speaker 1: act of today's episode is indeed true. You're absolutely right, Matt.
Speaker 1: As of twenty sixteen, there are already more people living
Speaker 1: in cities than there were in rural areas. This explosive
Speaker 1: migrational trend is set to continue by twenty fifty, assuming
Speaker 1: we don't blow ourselves up or encounter like a pandemic, right,
Speaker 1: assuming that we don't find ourselves in the midst of
Speaker 1: a catastrophic water war.
Speaker 4: We will, but let's pretend.
Speaker 1: Let's pretend, Okay, let's be let's be a little bit
Speaker 1: naive about it. So everything goes okay until twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: If everything goes more or less alright, then by twenty
Speaker 1: to fifty, two thirds of our species will live in
Speaker 1: urban areas, technically about sixty eight percent. So, whether you
Speaker 1: love them or whether you hate them, it seems cities
Speaker 1: are set to become one of humanity's most popular inventions.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think of a city as an invention.
Speaker 1: We don't because it's so normalized, it's so ancient. A
Speaker 1: city is now just a place, But at some point
Speaker 1: people invented it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the concept of having one centralized area where people
Speaker 4: can coexist generally with you know, some kind of castle
Speaker 4: or stronghold or something to protect near the center, right,
Speaker 4: or at least somewhere strategically within that place, and then
Speaker 4: the homes and everything in the places of business all
Speaker 4: shoot up around it.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. And this is this is an interesting
Speaker 1: distinction too, because what is the difference between you know,
Speaker 1: an agglomeration of longhouses and a town or a town
Speaker 1: and a village or a village. And of course it's
Speaker 1: big because in the city, regardless of how you want
Speaker 1: to classify a city or an urban area, and there
Speaker 1: are a couple of different definitions out there, we do
Speaker 1: have enough of a grasp on this phenomenon that we
Speaker 1: can describe it on a global scale. Currently, the North
Speaker 1: American continent is the most industrialized out of all the continents.
Speaker 1: As of twenty eighteen, about eighty two percent of this
Speaker 1: continent's population lives in an urbanized area. Eighty two percent.
Speaker 1: So if you are listening to this show and you
Speaker 1: happen to not be living in one of those dense agglomerations,
Speaker 1: and congratulations, because you are an increasingly rare person generally
Speaker 1: speaking on this continent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and then if let's say you're living in
Speaker 4: Latin America or somewhere in the Caribbean, you are not
Speaker 4: far behind, only one percent less at eighty two percent
Speaker 4: people within those populations live in something you know called
Speaker 4: an urban area. And you know what makes sense, interestingly
Speaker 4: enough in places in the Caribbean, because if you think
Speaker 4: of the amount of land mass that you actually have there,
Speaker 4: you can imagine how people would just end up moving
Speaker 4: towards some of the more populated areas.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point.
Speaker 4: And for especially for the types of businesses that exist
Speaker 4: in a lot of in a lot of those areas,
Speaker 4: you need other people to be around to sell things too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. And surprisingly, only about
Speaker 1: seventy four percent of Europeans can say the same, which
Speaker 1: shocked me because the you know, the rise of industry
Speaker 1: began earlier in Europe than it did in the US.
Speaker 1: It's just surprising that only seventy four percent. I guess
Speaker 1: because of the circumstances of my travels in Europe, I've
Speaker 1: always seen it as a place with little wilderness, and
Speaker 1: I know that's not true, especially the further east you go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, all of this is it's not discounting,
Speaker 4: but it's not taking into account micro trends that occur,
Speaker 4: you know, within like one city, Oh yeah, some people
Speaker 4: migrating away from that city or more people then like
Speaker 4: for a period of time and then getting an injection.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of a place like Detroit.
Speaker 1: Exactly, the depopulation of Detroit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but then then kind of a repopulation in certain
Speaker 4: areas of Detroit, and then as that's gonna you know,
Speaker 4: hopefully flourish in the coming decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's hoping. I would love to see the rise
Speaker 1: of Detroit, you know, a reboot of the city. But
Speaker 1: people will also tell you that rumors of Detroit's demise
Speaker 1: have been greatly exaggerated. You know, sometimes the terrible things
Speaker 1: we see on the news are just purposely made to
Speaker 1: be terrible things because that's what keeps people's attention, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't have much to add on that, agreed.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're on the same page with that one.
Speaker 1: But it may also surprise you go into your earlier statement, Matt,
Speaker 1: it may surprise some of our listeners to know that
Speaker 1: about sixty eight percent of Oceana's population is urbanized and
Speaker 1: there you know, I think back to what you were
Speaker 1: saying about the Caribbean archipelagoes and islands. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a matter of scarcity of land in Oceana at least.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, the natural wonders of a lot of
Speaker 4: those places you want to protect as well. So you
Speaker 4: end up just kind of squished together in one major area.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. And now, of course, for our finale
Speaker 1: in this in this list, we have to mention the
Speaker 1: two biggest populated continents, Asia and Africa. They come in
Speaker 1: second and last place, respectively. Around half of Asia's population
Speaker 1: lives in cities, forty three percent of Africa's population live
Speaker 1: in urban areas. And as you know, as we like
Speaker 1: to point out, both Asia and Africa are huge, huge
Speaker 1: places filled with this incredible variety of ethnicity, of community,
Speaker 1: of culture. It's beyond apples and oranges, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So these numbers only count as a cohesive
Speaker 1: thing if we're looking at the metric of just people
Speaker 1: on a continent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about seventeen full fruit stands worth, right, per
Speaker 4: per continent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Matt did the math of this, The fruit.
Speaker 4: Math worked it out.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is not a static number, and it
Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise anybody to learn that those last two continents,
Speaker 1: renamed Asia and Africa, are also projected to experience the
Speaker 1: largest growth in urbanization as we approach twenty fifty. And
Speaker 1: this leads us, This leads us back to you, our
Speaker 1: hypothetical but hopefully real listener, who has grown up in
Speaker 1: or has moved to a rural area. We have to ask,
Speaker 1: what is the future of these increasingly abandoned rural areas.
Speaker 1: That's a story for another day, but today we're going
Speaker 1: to give you this look at cities across the world
Speaker 1: as a way of a pro another question. As we
Speaker 1: hurtle toward the extinction of privacy, the normalization of mass surveillance,
Speaker 1: and a future where opulence may well be defined as
Speaker 1: simply having a decent view from your apartment or a
Speaker 1: small backyard with a garden. It seems we will soon
Speaker 1: live in a world without strangers, a crowded cognitive space
Speaker 1: where everything is public, everything is urban, and the maps
Speaker 1: of the future show us small concentrations of humanity, islands
Speaker 1: of concrete and steel, separated by vast gulfs of what
Speaker 1: would appear to be nothing to a city dwell er.
Speaker 1: Of course it will be biodiversity. Hopefully there will be
Speaker 1: agriculture things of that nature.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to be wastes of fire and acid water, right,
Speaker 4: I'm digging it right, But the domes over the cities
Speaker 4: will protect us at least temporarily.
Speaker 1: All praise the dome m h yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well here's the thing though, there are all those
Speaker 4: maps that we're like talking about, that we're thinking about
Speaker 4: in the future. They're gonna have the big places. You know,
Speaker 4: you're gonna your your London's are still going to be
Speaker 4: on there.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, your your Mumbais.
Speaker 4: You know for sure your Mumbais, all all your different
Speaker 4: places that are massive known entities will be there. But
Speaker 4: there's one thing that probably won't be on your on
Speaker 4: your maps then even twenty five years, thousand years in
Speaker 4: the future. Mill maybe in a thousand years, but in
Speaker 4: the future, there are still gonna be places that will
Speaker 4: never make it to a map, places that would be
Speaker 4: considered an urban area, a city even but won't show up.
Speaker 1: That's right, there's a bit of a bait and switch.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about normal cities. Now, what are we
Speaker 1: talking about. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. That's correct, as conspiratorial as
Speaker 1: it may sound, the world is full of secret cities,
Speaker 1: and attempting to enter these cities may cost you your life.
Speaker 1: Picture this. There are entire cities, metropolis level cities that
Speaker 1: are not villages. They're not puttering communes where everybody follows
Speaker 1: one person who had some sort of purported spiritual experience.
Speaker 4: We're talking about large collections of multiple story buildings, huge
Speaker 4: buildings that are just somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: With populations of hundreds of thousands of people. In some cases,
Speaker 1: these are cities that do not officially exist in one
Speaker 1: capacity or another. And what's more, we've been building these
Speaker 1: cities for longer than you might want to think. Some
Speaker 1: cities started off as secrets, only to be classified later.
Speaker 1: Others remain closed to the majority of humanity as we
Speaker 1: record today. Let's start with a safe, kind of bucolic
Speaker 1: historic example, something relatively innocuous nowadays, and it'll be close
Speaker 1: to home for a lot of our fellow listeners. That
Speaker 1: is a little place called oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, oak Ridge, that has connections to New York
Speaker 4: in some weird way. We'll get to that in a moment. So,
Speaker 4: about seventy five years ago, the government in these here
Speaker 4: United States, they took possession of around sixty thousand acres
Speaker 4: in East Tennessee. Now officially this occurred on September nineteenth,
Speaker 4: nineteen forty two. There was a kernel there Leslie Groves.
Speaker 4: This guy just kind of looked at the map, maybe
Speaker 4: took it, had some people take a trip out, and
Speaker 4: then said, yeah, this is it, this is what we want.
Speaker 4: And there wasn't anything, you know, particularly extraordinary about this area,
Speaker 4: this huge swath of land. Even today, you know, if
Speaker 4: you're looking back, you're reading about this, historians try and
Speaker 4: figure out exactly like what this guy saw, but they're
Speaker 4: still unsure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can make a couple of guesses. We know
Speaker 1: that this site and what would become Oakridge, Tennessee, was
Speaker 1: chosen out of a short list of several other sites
Speaker 1: across the contiguous US. Our guesses tend to be things like, well,
Speaker 1: we needed maybe a source of water, we needed a
Speaker 1: rural area that was removed from the hustle and bustle
Speaker 1: of a city. Because at the time, if you wanted
Speaker 1: something spooky done, or you wanted something done in secret.
Speaker 1: You could just go to the great wilds of the United.
Speaker 4: States, but you still needed to have access to infrastructure
Speaker 4: and shipping if.
Speaker 1: You needed it right, right, so you would want to
Speaker 1: be able to contact the rest of the world when necessary. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: whatever the logic was, that's what General Groves chose sixty
Speaker 1: thousand acres there in East Tennessee. The area started out
Speaker 1: with a few different names and the relatively sparse official documentation.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was called Site X, great name for a town.
Speaker 1: Other times it was referred to as Clinton Engineering Works.
Speaker 1: That is, as far as we could find, not a
Speaker 1: reference to the later Clinton political dynasty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is like a company name that just stood
Speaker 4: for a location.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a town named Clinton nearby near Knoxville, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and that's what they were named at naming this thing after.
Speaker 1: But eventually it became oak Ridge. And while the name
Speaker 1: of this place may have undergone some iterations, its purpose
Speaker 1: was always crystal clear to those in the No. You see,
Speaker 1: Groves was overseeing what we call the Manhattan Project today,
Speaker 1: that's the New York connect right, Yeah. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: town that would become oak Ridge was built for the
Speaker 1: express purpose of helping Uncle Sam build the first atomic bomb.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And we have some information here coming from
Speaker 4: the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History resonance there on
Speaker 4: the land. The people who actually lived in Oak Ridge,
Speaker 4: A lot of the families lived in the area really
Speaker 4: on just in poverty or on the brink of poverty
Speaker 4: for generations, and then all of a sudden, when this
Speaker 4: land was purchased, all of them were just kicked out
Speaker 4: just by you have to leave. The government is moving
Speaker 4: in apologies, but not really just get out. And the
Speaker 4: Feds came through the federal government and they condemned the
Speaker 4: land and they paid the residents like really nothing, just
Speaker 4: to get them the heck out of there as quickly
Speaker 4: as power possible.
Speaker 1: Right According to the New Hope Center, one resident at
Speaker 1: the time received nine hundred dollars for forty acres of land.
Speaker 1: That's about twenty two dollars and fifty cents per acre.
Speaker 4: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: If we adjust for inflation, that's about fourteen one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy seven dollars total, which works out to about
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty four dollars and forty three cents
Speaker 1: per acre today. Talk about a steal. You know what?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, so let's keep the timeline here too.
Speaker 1: If you look into the Center for Oakridge Oral History,
Speaker 1: you'll see stories from people recalling that as children, the
Speaker 1: principal called everybody into the school and told them they
Speaker 1: had received a special or special contact from the federal government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was September nineteen forty two. They all had to
Speaker 1: be out by December nineteen forty two. Uproot your entire life, right,
Speaker 1: and the logic here is solid and it is also ruthless.
Speaker 1: It's very important to again emphasize this happened in the
Speaker 1: United States not very long ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to imagine what the residents were going through,
Speaker 4: what their lives were like, in order to really understand.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: First, a lot of the rural residents would doubtlessly accept
Speaker 1: this lump sum of cash. It's a windfall, you know,
Speaker 1: it could literally be a life changing amount of scratch
Speaker 1: for a population where running water and indoor plumbing were
Speaker 1: often a pipe dream. Terrible choice of words. Wow on
Speaker 1: the level of science fiction. But there's a second, more
Speaker 1: disturbing fact it played too well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of the folks living around there didn't
Speaker 4: have the education, let alone. You know, someone with enough
Speaker 4: money to come through and mount any kind of legal
Speaker 4: protest or action against what the federal government was doing
Speaker 4: to them. And it was very clear that no matter what,
Speaker 4: the federal government was moving in and you could either
Speaker 4: essentially take them money or just leave. Right, You're gonna
Speaker 4: take the money and leave, or you're just gonna leave right.
Speaker 1: They you know this is this is kind of an
Speaker 1: eminent domain thing too, right. They could say for the
Speaker 1: greater good, you have to leave this place. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of money, you have to
Speaker 1: leave this place. And being impoverished, they simply do not
Speaker 1: have the recourse to legal action, even if they could
Speaker 1: find someone who would represent them. This is all happening,
Speaker 1: by the way, under strict secrecy, so there's not going
Speaker 1: to be any kind of public trial. It will get quashed.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty five, just a few years later, Oakridge, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: has seventy five thousand people living and working in the area.
Speaker 1: Very few of those seventy five thousand people knew the
Speaker 1: ultimate purpose of the secret city. Many had no idea
Speaker 1: what they were working on until the United States dropped
Speaker 1: the first atomic bomb on Japan and the local paper said,
Speaker 1: you know Oakridge delivers something to the Japanese.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly what I've just mentioning there that seventy five
Speaker 4: thousand people lived in the area. It's not you know,
Speaker 4: we were talking about cities. We set this whole episode
Speaker 4: up talking about cities. Oakridge was not like one big
Speaker 4: facility where everyone went to work every day and then
Speaker 4: everybody just left the area. They built a city there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, schools, post office, shops, movie theater and some
Speaker 1: of the people who were originally kicked out by the
Speaker 1: Feds managed to get jobs later at Oakridge. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they didn't know what they were doing. They did not
Speaker 1: know that they were processing and enriching uranium. Today, if
Speaker 1: you wish, you can visit Oakridge. It still processes uranium today.
Speaker 1: And while this is one of the more popular examples
Speaker 1: of a secret city, it is far from the only
Speaker 1: case of one. There are more closed cities and they
Speaker 1: remain closed today. Will give an honorable mention to Mercury, Nevada,
Speaker 1: which spoiler alert I'd like to save for another episode.
Speaker 4: Well then we won't say anything else about it. Thank
Speaker 4: you for you know, glancing across this episode Mercury Nevada.
Speaker 4: We look forward to seeing you again soon.
Speaker 1: Radioactive ships in the night.
Speaker 4: Well, you know we're mentioning this, yes, but we're talking
Speaker 4: about Oakridge and just it had a hand in the
Speaker 4: Manhattan Project, And I don't know if I want to
Speaker 4: spoil too much. We talked we made an episode on
Speaker 4: the Manhattan Project not too long ago, I believe, didn't
Speaker 4: we Maybe we didn't. Maybe it's just that other secret
Speaker 4: project we're working on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe we're both remembering forward again.
Speaker 4: I hate well, all right, Well, it's interesting that we're
Speaker 4: hitting Oakridge, Tennessee in the United States, kind of in
Speaker 4: the heartland where the Manhattan probably was being carried out,
Speaker 4: where nuclear testing in the first atomic bombs were developed
Speaker 4: in the United States, that were hitting that first and
Speaker 4: knowing where we're going in this episode.
Speaker 1: That's right, where are we going? Indeed, where in the
Speaker 1: world will we find our next forbidden city? We'll tell
Speaker 1: you after a word from our sponsor. In what should
Speaker 1: not be a stunning plot twist to anybody was listened
Speaker 1: to this show in the past, we are of course
Speaker 1: headed to Russia.
Speaker 4: Soviet Russia.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, like the US, the Soviet Union was also
Speaker 1: scrambling to event new terrifying weapons of war, and like
Speaker 1: the US, they decided secret cities were the best way
Speaker 1: to carry out their work.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so there were several of actually numerous conspiratorial communities,
Speaker 4: communities that were off the books, forbidden secret. In nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety three, a little bit of the you know what
Speaker 4: would be considered the iron dome, the iron veil that
Speaker 4: keeps information from linking out, was lifted. When these places
Speaker 4: were officially called they get they were given a name
Speaker 4: closed administrative territorial entities, and that translates to if you,
Speaker 4: if you take the cyrilliki translate it, it's Zato or Zato.
Speaker 1: I was in my head for some reason as Zatto,
Speaker 1: but I think it's just because it seems like a
Speaker 1: cool name for someone to have. Is my friend Zatto.
Speaker 4: It's very similar to a kiddi kat in Spanish.
Speaker 1: Oh gotto.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, that's where my head goes.
Speaker 1: But before then, before nineteen ninety three, if you look
Speaker 1: at any government census, both in the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: Russia proper and different members of the Soviet Union, you
Speaker 1: will see that these cities and the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people living and working in them simply do not exist.
Speaker 1: Closed cities were not marked on maps, and there were
Speaker 1: no road marks that could lead some ignorant, naive traveler
Speaker 1: to the secret settlement. It was built such that you
Speaker 1: couldn't just accidentally be there and say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at me.
Speaker 4: Well, especially if you were taking any kind of public
Speaker 4: transportation like a train or a bus or anything like that,
Speaker 4: you would not be able to find them. You would
Speaker 4: have to get in a vehicle and then like just
Speaker 4: explore until you got to the gates where generally they
Speaker 4: say attention, stay out, like you cannot come in here.
Speaker 4: And it's crazy were you know, we talked about this
Speaker 4: concept of the city itself was secret, so it was
Speaker 4: hidden away, which is kind of mind blowing thinking about
Speaker 4: large buildings and everything being secret. But then also that
Speaker 4: the human beings that occupied the cities were taken, like
Speaker 4: you said, literally taken off of the census and families
Speaker 4: like when you have a child and you live in
Speaker 4: one of these places, that child ostensibly doesn't exist outside
Speaker 4: of the books for that closed city.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, so strange and you can see that you
Speaker 1: can see the problem. Here's it sets up a slippery
Speaker 1: slope that's similar to the problem that the government of
Speaker 1: China is having with unregistered births. Right when they had
Speaker 1: the one child policy. What ended up happening because a
Speaker 1: lot of parents you know, of course, want to have
Speaker 1: the children that they were going to have. There's been
Speaker 1: this rise of a population of human beings, female people
Speaker 1: in China who are unregistered, so they have no rights,
Speaker 1: they have no access to you know, healthcare, education, medicine.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible, terrible situation and it's all because of
Speaker 1: a couple the pieces of paper. How often does that
Speaker 1: happen with our species? You know, other animals don't do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying other animals are better than our brand
Speaker 1: of animal, but I don't see, though nature's brutal, I
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of other intelligent creatures, you know,
Speaker 1: committing such horrific acts over paperwork.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can really get into this if you want to,
Speaker 4: but that's that's an intense discussion to have right there.
Speaker 4: Just the concept that a small paper that either proves
Speaker 4: that you are who you are or from a certain
Speaker 4: area has life or death consequences throughout time.
Speaker 1: Like what we did that earlier. We definitely did a
Speaker 1: video in this the concept of statelessness. Yeah, people who
Speaker 1: do not have a country of origin, so strange. But
Speaker 1: in this case, the people in these closed cities in
Speaker 1: the USSR, as we'll come to find, they did not
Speaker 1: have a huge problem with living life as ghost people,
Speaker 1: according to the bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: And actually according to some reporting that's come out fairly
Speaker 4: recently from and interviews from people who've lived inside these places,
Speaker 4: because they got.
Speaker 1: Perks, Yeah, they had a pretty good There's a documentary
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about a little bit later where you
Speaker 1: can see some of these quotes, and there are people saying,
Speaker 1: we got everything that we wanted for the rest of
Speaker 1: our lives for staying here. So of course we would
Speaker 1: stay here. Don't screw this up for us outsiders. Residents
Speaker 1: of these close cities were given private apartments, right, and
Speaker 1: this is during the era of communism, so it's a
Speaker 1: big get for them. Decent healthcare, and they had jobs
Speaker 1: for life, they had job security. And at a time
Speaker 1: when the much of the rest of the USSR was
Speaker 1: having a difficult time coming by the most base of staples,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, wheat, milk, eggs, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: residents of these close cities were getting things that were
Speaker 1: exotic for the time, like bananas, condensed milk. They had
Speaker 1: a lot of meat products they could eat. Literally, caviar
Speaker 1: was available, literally caviar, yes, yes, literally caviar egg, although.
Speaker 4: You probably would not want to eat the caviar.
Speaker 1: Which is a spoiler depending on the city. So even today,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Even today, most residents of these close
Speaker 1: cities consider themselves incredibly fortunate to be living in a
Speaker 1: zoto area. They're not bothered by the barbed wire fencing
Speaker 1: that surrounds them or the cognitive fencing and bureaucratic fencing
Speaker 1: that also surrounds them. They are very mission oriented. Instead
Speaker 1: of diving into the numerous the numerous Cold War era
Speaker 1: closed cities that we know about today and speculating on
Speaker 1: the fifteen or twenty that are more or less certain
Speaker 1: to exist but remain secret, let's just look at a few,
Speaker 1: like high level examples.
Speaker 4: What do you think, Oh yeah, absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 4: each of these that we're going to talk about coming
Speaker 4: up are their own thing. Everything we've been talking about before,
Speaker 4: this in relation to these Zato Zeto areas, it's similar,
Speaker 4: very similar, but each one of these is going to
Speaker 4: have its own tail and So let's take you to
Speaker 4: a place called I'm gonna try and pronounce this.
Speaker 1: Zelenogorsk, Zelenogorsk, Zelenogorsk. Yeah, we are not Russian. Please send in,
Speaker 1: dear Russian speakers in the audience, please send in the
Speaker 1: correct pronunciations here we would always prefer to be correct
Speaker 1: rather than comfortable. So. Zelenogorsk is located in Russia by
Speaker 1: the Khan river Ka n It was built in the
Speaker 1: forties fifties era as part of the Soviet drive to
Speaker 1: enrich uranium for the USSR nuclear program. Like Oakra, this
Speaker 1: city had a population of thousands, and although it existed
Speaker 1: for decades, it was not on official maps until nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. Imagine trying to get mail. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: when these things are in full swing, and some of
Speaker 1: them still operate this way today. These cities are not
Speaker 1: as you said, Matt on trade and bus routes. They're
Speaker 1: only known by a postal code, a name, and a number.
Speaker 1: So what it would be like It would be like
Speaker 1: decad forty seven or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly with that postal code. And the other
Speaker 4: thing here is just like oak Ridge. We're kind of
Speaker 4: comparing these two places. They this place still supplies a
Speaker 4: good amount of the uranium for Russia's production there. It's no,
Speaker 4: it's twenty nine percent of the enrichment capacity that exists
Speaker 4: within Russia. So the actual places with centrifugias that are
Speaker 4: enriching uranium. That's crazy to think, but even sends uranium
Speaker 4: to other countries, including the United States, just because you
Speaker 4: know you need a little extra uranium. Sometimes Unkridge can't
Speaker 4: do all the production.
Speaker 1: You get bye with a little help from your friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And we're continuing with that trend here of
Speaker 4: a lot of these closed off cities were specifically meant
Speaker 4: to create or at least assist in the creation of
Speaker 4: weapons of war, like massive weapons of war, new technologies
Speaker 4: that could be used to establish dominance or at least
Speaker 4: hopefully right.
Speaker 1: Let's go to one of the most famous examples, a
Speaker 1: town called Ozersk, also known as City forty. Oz Ersk
Speaker 1: is located in the Ural Mountains. It was founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. First was known as Chileabinsk forty, then
Speaker 1: Chileabinsk sixty five. Like other closed cities, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: Ozersk was built to aid the Soviet nuclear probe. Unlike
Speaker 1: some other forbidden cities, Osairsk has received a great deal
Speaker 1: of media attention, notably in a documentary called City forty,
Speaker 1: which we highly recommend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, seriously check it out if you possibly can, or
Speaker 4: at least read up on the contents of it, because
Speaker 4: there are so many fascinating stories and humans.
Speaker 1: Involved, and it is a tragic story. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: citizens of this place of City forty have a fairly
Speaker 1: unique dilemma, and I quite like the way the Guardian
Speaker 1: put it in an article on the closed city. It's
Speaker 1: this Their water is contaminated, their mushrooms and berries are poisoned,
Speaker 1: and their children may be sick. Ozersk and the surrounding
Speaker 1: region is one of the most contaminated places on the planet,
Speaker 1: referred to by some as the graveyard of Earth. Yet
Speaker 1: most of City forty's residents do not want to leave.
Speaker 1: They take pride in their community. They still have that
Speaker 1: attitude of feeling that they have received immense privilege.
Speaker 4: Yes, and they have in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 4: their families have benefited from that privilege. But their families
Speaker 4: have also in most cases, a family member or two
Speaker 4: or more have died because.
Speaker 1: They have lived in that place, right, Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: heavily contaminated by industrial pollution from the nearby Mayak plutonium
Speaker 1: plant from the what the late nineteen forties on, this
Speaker 1: was an ongoing thing. This plant was one of the
Speaker 1: largest producers of weapons grade plutonium for the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: during a lot of the Cold War, particularly during the
Speaker 1: atomic bomb program, and it was built with once again
Speaker 1: the greater good in mind. You got to break a
Speaker 1: few eggs. We want to get some atomic omelets, said
Speaker 1: the Soviet government. You know what I mean, what's a
Speaker 1: couple people in the great balance of life? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Hakuna matata, et cetera, they said, And
Speaker 1: then they built this with no regard for safety.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's that's the crazy thing. It's there have
Speaker 4: been several one major disaster that occurred at one of
Speaker 4: the major plants there that ended up irradiating I think
Speaker 4: it was like two hundred thousand people or something like that,
Speaker 4: or it was a crazy number of people in villages
Speaker 4: that just lived, you know, upstream or away from the
Speaker 4: actual plant. Because these they were dumping radioactive waste directly
Speaker 4: into the water into that river that we keep talking
Speaker 4: about there and we're.
Speaker 1: Dumping solid waste, liquid waste, gaseous matter, all radioactive. And
Speaker 1: then we're doing this for more for not more than,
Speaker 1: but for around a decade, from nineteen four five to
Speaker 1: fifty seven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and here's here's the part that was mind blowing
Speaker 4: for me as I was learning about it. You know,
Speaker 4: when you imagine a nuclear accident or a disaster, what
Speaker 4: comes to mind. Chernobyl, right through that island is first,
Speaker 4: though Chernobyl always is at the top of the list.
Speaker 4: And over all this time when the waste was being dumped,
Speaker 4: the sum of contamination of radioactive contamination has been estimated
Speaker 4: to be two to three times the release from the
Speaker 4: Chernobyl accident explosions. Now here's the deal. Chernobyl kind of occurred, exploded,
Speaker 4: Your your radioactive waste is you know, gone into the
Speaker 4: air and is spread out across a wide area. But
Speaker 4: for this they're literally pumping out the radioactive waste continually
Speaker 4: for a decade.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, this reaches ahead the MAAC plant
Speaker 1: is the site of an enormous disaster. An underground tank
Speaker 1: of highly irradiated liquid nuclear waste explodes and it contaminates
Speaker 1: thousands of square kilometers of territory. Nowadays, it's known as
Speaker 1: the Eastern Eural Radioactive Trace or the urt EURT. The
Speaker 1: problem is that this disaster is quietly, efficiently and ruthlessly
Speaker 1: covered up, and very very few people inside or outside
Speaker 1: of the USSR we're aware of what actually happened until
Speaker 1: at least nineteen eighty and this has also been called
Speaker 1: the Kishtom disaster specifically, you know, this is September twenty ninth.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate what you're pointing out here, Matt,
Speaker 1: because we're all familiar with your noble, especially in the
Speaker 1: world of fiction in the recent day and age, because
Speaker 1: there was a masterful miniseries done that I think aired
Speaker 1: on HBO, but it didn't really address this. And can
Speaker 1: you imagine living here and you've been told that you
Speaker 1: are the sword and shield to save the world. Right,
Speaker 1: that's why you and your family are working and this
Speaker 1: great project to make this new weapon of war. You're
Speaker 1: not doing it to sow chaos. You're doing it to
Speaker 1: guarantee peace.
Speaker 4: Well and also be triumphant over those who want to
Speaker 4: do harm.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, because everyone is a war of defense. Da
Speaker 1: da da da da da da. But didn't mean to
Speaker 1: sound so dismissive. I just don't believe it when people
Speaker 1: say that anymore, you know. But the kicker is imagine
Speaker 1: being that person. So you're ideologically on board, probably, And.
Speaker 4: You learn.
Speaker 1: Weeks after the fact, very least weeks after the fact,
Speaker 1: that you and your children have been irradiated, and you
Speaker 1: can't find anything about it, even in the news, even
Speaker 1: in the secret city newspaper it's supposed to give you
Speaker 1: one of the inner circle. You know what happened. Why
Speaker 1: are you only seeing these vague reports, and why don't
Speaker 1: they jibe with the first hand sightings you're hearing of
Speaker 1: of people with skin falling off their faces, their body
Speaker 1: parts being exposed, their hair falling out along with their toenails,
Speaker 1: and so on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me quickly paint a scenario, just for all
Speaker 4: of us sitting here and listening. Let's imagine that we're
Speaker 4: one of the minority few who live out somewhere in
Speaker 4: a rural area. And let's say we live in Russia.
Speaker 4: It's nineteen fifty seven, and our small family own some
Speaker 4: farmland and lots and lots of livestock, or at least
Speaker 4: enough livestock, you know, to survive as well as a
Speaker 4: lot of crops, and we're just hanging out. We're doing
Speaker 4: all the strenuous work we have to do every day
Speaker 4: to maintain what we have, which is still very little,
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden, you know, we don't
Speaker 4: notice anything. Really. We heard maybe about a big bang,
Speaker 4: a large bang that occurred somewhere, you know, southwest of
Speaker 4: here a couple of days ago, but that's all we've
Speaker 4: really heard about. There were some weird clouds that came over,
Speaker 4: like appeared to be smoke or something. We haven't thought
Speaker 4: about any of that stuff since that day. Well, a
Speaker 4: big truck rolls through with a lot of our you know, countrymen,
Speaker 4: our military people. They're just coming through and they happen
Speaker 4: to stop by our farm and they let us know
Speaker 4: that today we have to slaughter all of our cattle.
Speaker 4: We have to uproot and then bury all of our crops.
Speaker 4: Then we have to plow all that over, and then
Speaker 4: we have to get the heck out because they're going
Speaker 4: to purchase our farm for almost nothing.
Speaker 1: They're also wearing containment suits. Yeah, then they did not
Speaker 1: bring spares.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just letting us know. And here's the other thing.
Speaker 4: Let's say that occurs and then years later after you
Speaker 4: know that went down, you know what's occurred. Nobody has
Speaker 4: put any record of this down. Nobody is talking about
Speaker 4: all the other farms like that were just in this
Speaker 4: giant line that I can look at a map and see,
Speaker 4: like I know, people lived in this line and they
Speaker 4: all had to sell their houses, their farms, but nobody's
Speaker 4: talking about it.
Speaker 1: There's a beauty, the dark beauty to the brutal logic there.
Speaker 1: So the same way that rural people in the US
Speaker 1: could not fight back against the lad been taken, people
Speaker 1: who do not officially exist have no legal recourse because
Speaker 1: they are ghosts. It just now reached a point where
Speaker 1: their physical condition matched the condition of the paperwork, which
Speaker 1: is just insidious. I mean, it is unclean to do
Speaker 1: that to people. But I see the logic of it,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty, plenty more. We could probably do
Speaker 1: an episode per city on close cities in Russia, but
Speaker 1: we don't want to just stay in the Cold War
Speaker 1: in the US and Russia or the USSR. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick look at other cities, some of
Speaker 1: which might surprise you. In the mainland of China, there
Speaker 1: is a place called the nuclear town. It is in
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert in the western part of Gansu Province. Officially,
Speaker 1: it's called the number four oh four Factory of China
Speaker 1: National Nuclear Corporation. I love that it's called four oh four, right,
Speaker 1: pretty it's such a bad internet joke.
Speaker 4: It's unknown.
Speaker 1: I hope someone did it on purpose. It's not found
Speaker 1: yash so it's built back in nineteen fifty eight. So
Speaker 1: probably not a good joke unless the people who did
Speaker 1: four h four on the Internet were making a sideways
Speaker 1: reference to this fact. Probably not. Probably not. The world's
Speaker 1: not that convenient nor well written.
Speaker 4: I say we go that until someone tells us it's
Speaker 4: for something else.
Speaker 1: And then let's accuse them of covering it up. That's right, Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a plan in that. So this is
Speaker 1: the biggest nuclear industry base in the country that we
Speaker 1: know of. It's the country's first military nuclear reactor. Eighty
Speaker 1: percent of China's nuclear bomb core components are built there.
Speaker 1: For twenty years it was completely closed to outsiders. And
Speaker 1: that's not the only case in China. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of other more remote places where you have to
Speaker 1: apply for what's called an alien travel document. In advance
Speaker 1: to visit, and you have to report to the police
Speaker 1: as soon as like your accommodations as soon as you
Speaker 1: stay somewhere, And if you don't follow everything to the letter,
Speaker 1: you get the boot. They will immediately take you out
Speaker 1: of the country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just get the heck out, man, We've got this
Speaker 4: running thing. We're gonna come back to it in the conclusion.
Speaker 4: But just if you're going to create facile material to
Speaker 4: be weaponized for any reason, or just let's say it's
Speaker 4: just to run a power plant, it's a lot of
Speaker 4: people that are doing that, are making these weird, hidden,
Speaker 4: creepy cities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out to maybe be the best way
Speaker 1: to go about this, right because if you have because
Speaker 1: you can control more variables, if you have the entire
Speaker 1: city purpose built like we have. You know, we have
Speaker 1: military armament manufacturers that are based in or near large
Speaker 1: urban areas, but they no matter how well they secure
Speaker 1: their grounds, they cannot control the millions of people who
Speaker 1: live like you know, across the river or get through
Speaker 1: the woods, I don't know, whatever you want to say. Yep.
Speaker 1: So this is a very common trend, and these secret
Speaker 1: cities are still around today and in some cases, Yes,
Speaker 1: the people who live in them do not technically exist
Speaker 1: on paper. We want to do one more example as
Speaker 1: something that is completely different. It's a closed city, closed
Speaker 1: part of a city that does not exist for nuclear
Speaker 1: research and does not exist for some kind of human
Speaker 1: rights abuse or concentration camp thing. Right, So let's travel
Speaker 1: to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. You've heard it before. This
Speaker 1: is not the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KSA should not
Speaker 1: be a new thing to any of our life listeners.
Speaker 1: It is a unique country in the world of geopolitics
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, and its most famous close
Speaker 1: city is no different. Unlike the majority of secret cities
Speaker 1: we've mentioned today, Mecca is not closed due to top
Speaker 1: secret military or industrial research. Instead, it's a partially closed
Speaker 1: city because every year millions and millions and millions of
Speaker 1: people visit and you can too, as long as you
Speaker 1: like them. Are a practitioner of Islam. Because only Muslims
Speaker 1: are allowed in Mecca, it is the holiest, most important
Speaker 1: city in the religion. It has off limits under any
Speaker 1: circumstances to any non Muslims. Don't even try.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you do attempt, and you don't meet all
Speaker 4: of those requirements, you will immediately be deported and that
Speaker 4: will be it. Thank you for trying to come in,
Speaker 4: but we don't appreciate you. Why No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4: It's not that harsh, but you would definitely get deported immediately.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the penalty in practice maybe much harsher
Speaker 1: than deportation, And a lot of it depends on what
Speaker 1: kind of person who are your country of origin? Right, yes,
Speaker 1: and it could go up to and including assault, torture, murder.
Speaker 1: You just you don't know. And as a personal message
Speaker 1: to anybody else who enjoys traveling to the edges of
Speaker 1: the maps, to the places where normal people don't take vacation,
Speaker 1: I definitely want to warn every non Muslim person against
Speaker 1: trying to sneak into Mecca. It's not like taking a
Speaker 1: quick illicit trip across the poorest Midwestern or Alaskan border
Speaker 1: between Canada and the US. Your chances of being caught
Speaker 1: are extremely high. If you feel that you must go
Speaker 1: to Mecca, you genuinely must go there. The most rational
Speaker 1: choice is to convert to Islam beforehand, actually do it.
Speaker 1: Attempting to fake a conversion will also by the way
Speaker 1: in all likelihood fail. I know that there are photographs
Speaker 1: of plenty of someone who said, like, oh, it's not
Speaker 1: getting a mecca or whatever. There was a recent story
Speaker 1: about a guy who I think acquired his Israeli citizenship
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, and he visited and he said that
Speaker 1: it was on the up and up. But I have
Speaker 1: a tough time believing him. And also, you know, inherently
Speaker 1: it's the most important city in this religion, the millions
Speaker 1: of people follow. I don't know, man, this is a
Speaker 1: personal take. I want your opinion too, Matt. Should people
Speaker 1: be able to do that? I feel like, personally would
Speaker 1: be disrespectful for me to say, well, I don't care
Speaker 1: about your core belief system. I need some selfies, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That just feels I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, yeah, it certainly doesn't feel like a good
Speaker 4: eye idea. I'm trying to find it, like something that
Speaker 4: would be the equivalent, But I don't know if there's
Speaker 4: anything in the world that's as close to that. There
Speaker 4: are I mean trying to imagine the whaling Wall or
Speaker 4: but it's not like it's restricted.
Speaker 1: Well, in some religions in the West, like the Church
Speaker 1: of Latter day Saints, don't they not allow some people
Speaker 1: into the temple like people are not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, or scientology or any you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of these belief systems would have closed off areas,
Speaker 4: closed off things, right, that's like micro understandings. But a
Speaker 4: large place like Mecca, it's it's interesting, hmm. I'm trying
Speaker 4: to imagine for some Well, no, it's not the same.
Speaker 1: Someone started a religion and it was based in Detroit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they said you can't go to Detroit unless you
Speaker 1: follow this religion.
Speaker 4: Say, well, Detroit's pretty big.
Speaker 1: Detroit is really no, no, no, no, no, that that
Speaker 1: callback just working live. You know, not all of these
Speaker 1: are going to be one hundred Sali goldhad no.
Speaker 4: But it is. I think the core of what you're
Speaker 4: saying in that it's a bad idea to undermine this
Speaker 4: this rule that's in place, you know, for a reason,
Speaker 4: for a very popular belief system. That's probably a bad idea.
Speaker 4: But then, you know, I always imagine the spycraft that
Speaker 4: occurs in a place like Mecca, or in a place
Speaker 4: like Jerusalem or the Vatican. You know, there's probably fascinating
Speaker 4: deep spycraft occurring in all of those places from varying
Speaker 4: countries with varying interests, you know. And that's just me assuming,
Speaker 4: but that's what I'm imagining when you're talking about something
Speaker 4: as closed off as Mecca is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And of course you know, we have we
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners who are very close to
Speaker 1: their faith, you know what I mean, and art and
Speaker 1: practitioners thereof just just to me, and again this is
Speaker 1: just my opinion. I do. I feel like it's completely
Speaker 1: okay to say, hey, out of respect for our belief system,
Speaker 1: just sorry, this one part of the world doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be yours. I think that's perfectly okay. Like Aluru
Speaker 1: or airs Rock as it's sometimes called in Australia, the
Speaker 1: native population said, this is very important to us. Please
Speaker 1: just stop having yourself aggrandizing tourist adventures here.
Speaker 4: The only problem is the moment you say you can't
Speaker 4: go here. I mean it's that old thing like don't
Speaker 4: touch that button.
Speaker 1: Don't think of pink elephants, know, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean psychologically that that occurs in many of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm no different. Obviously.
Speaker 4: What would be better is if you just kept it
Speaker 4: off the map. Nobody knew about it. You just had
Speaker 4: a postal code if you if you were aware of
Speaker 4: you know, Mecca. But that's it.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, yeah, there's the other part too. I
Speaker 1: would go on record saying that it's completely different if
Speaker 1: someone says, Okay, we have founded our new city or
Speaker 1: our new religion or belief system, and everybody who was
Speaker 1: living here before either convert or GTFO, I think that's
Speaker 1: very different.
Speaker 4: Yes, you know what I mean. I agree I'm making
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to make light of out that situation.
Speaker 4: It's just anyway trying to make a callback that I
Speaker 4: think didn't work.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Well, instead of calling back, maybe let's call forward.
Speaker 1: Because it seems the story continues for all of these
Speaker 1: places we just mentioned. In the case of Russia, currently,
Speaker 1: it's estimated they are about forty four closed cities in existence,
Speaker 1: about one point five million people live in these total,
Speaker 1: and there are also, according to rumors, around fifteen other
Speaker 1: closed cities that exist without their whereabouts or their names
Speaker 1: being disclosed by the government. If you would like to
Speaker 1: visit a closed city, I'm very excited about giving this
Speaker 1: a shot one day. You are welcome to give it.
Speaker 1: The old college try getting into these places. Is if
Speaker 1: you look at the spectrum of difficult entries and exits,
Speaker 1: it's easier than entering North Sentinel Island, but it's still
Speaker 1: tougher than getting into a place like the DPRK North Korea.
Speaker 1: Non residents who want to visit closed cities have to
Speaker 1: get a special pass from the Russian Security Service, the
Speaker 1: secret police essentially. So if you Matt, and you Paul,
Speaker 1: and I'm you listening, if we all, if we all
Speaker 1: got together and we requested these passes, depending on the city,
Speaker 1: and you know, Hinji, on the fact that we are
Speaker 1: not Russian nationals, we would almost certainly be rejected. And
Speaker 1: that's not that's not all. Applying for one of these things.
Speaker 1: Even if you are a Russian national and you are
Speaker 1: related to someone who lives in a close city, applying
Speaker 1: for one of these things, whether or not you were accepted,
Speaker 1: puts you on a list with Russian intelligence for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what else, guess you on that list?
Speaker 4: What's that listening to an episode with the metadata Zato
Speaker 4: and Russia Secret Cities.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it is in the metadata.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: I had a depressing conversation with some of my old uh,
Speaker 1: some of my old colleagues about which countries can get
Speaker 1: into and out of, like the stands are pretty much
Speaker 1: no goes for me and my friends who were working
Speaker 1: in the PRC. We're saying, well, you know, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I guess as long as your podcast isn't it Mandarin whoa?
Speaker 1: And you know it makes you think, like what happened
Speaker 1: with those with those folks for Radio Free America? Did
Speaker 1: you hear about this?
Speaker 4: I did?
Speaker 1: We did? We talk about this here?
Speaker 4: I don't know if we talked about on a conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so some weager journalists that we're working with
Speaker 1: Radio Free America, which is a US supported propaganda network,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it's one hundred percent wrong all
Speaker 1: the time. Their families have been threatened, and there's an
Speaker 1: intense debate going on now about the situation western China,
Speaker 1: which we should report on more soon. We we got
Speaker 1: there a little bit before it broke international news. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: if you want to visit this and if it is
Speaker 1: worth being on a list with Russian intelligence for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life not necessarily a bad thing, I guess,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're more than welcome to apply. But keep
Speaker 1: in mind passes are only given to those who have
Speaker 1: relatives and closed cities, or people are traveling to closed
Speaker 1: cities on a business trip. So for like ay, maybe
Speaker 1: we use different names, you know, like hey, I'm Johnny
Speaker 1: America and I'm Dimmy big Bucks and we're here for
Speaker 1: oil I don't know, the new kind of roller blade.
Speaker 1: Then maybe we can get in. But even then access
Speaker 1: isn't guaranteed. You can try to get a permanent pass,
Speaker 1: but it's more challenging. There are two ways to get them.
Speaker 1: Basically you have to have been born there, yeah, or
Speaker 1: you have to work in one of the enterprises they
Speaker 1: need so be a nuclear scientist or be born.
Speaker 4: There yeah, and get irradiated. Well, you hang out in
Speaker 4: City forty just like everybody else. So this is something
Speaker 4: I know we're wrapping up here, but really quickly something
Speaker 4: that struck me. We talked about that disaster that officially
Speaker 4: didn't occur within City forty, at least for a long time,
Speaker 4: it was not disclosed that that actually happened and that
Speaker 4: amount of radiation was released into the wild. It makes
Speaker 4: me think about Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the place where
Speaker 4: the United States, you know, started its nuclear industry. Really,
Speaker 4: it makes me wonder if anything has occurred within that
Speaker 4: area that was never reported and was just covered up,
Speaker 4: and people and livestock and crops were dosed beyond you know,
Speaker 4: any sane amount and we just never found out about it,
Speaker 4: because if we were to find out about it, there
Speaker 4: would be such an uproar. I just it makes me wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 4: Now, there's a side of me that says, if something
Speaker 4: like that did occur at Oak Ridge, then there's no
Speaker 4: way they could completely cover that up. Some paper somewhere,
Speaker 4: somebody would know, somebody would talk. But the other part
Speaker 4: of me thinks it was a time of war, and
Speaker 4: just like the people of City forty, we were told
Speaker 4: and we believed the people who lived there at the time,
Speaker 4: that we were fighting the good fight. This is all
Speaker 4: in the name of the United States victory, This is
Speaker 4: all in the name of securing our family's futures, and
Speaker 4: we'll go along with it. And then they all died
Speaker 4: because they got dosed by radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they died. They died to a terminal condition known
Speaker 1: as the greater Good.
Speaker 4: But that's all fabricated from my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering. It's possible have occurred. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: disturbing thing. It's possible, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: the Villa incidents where the nuclear bomb was tested. Right,
Speaker 1: these things happen. They may not happen in your backyard,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't make them any less terrifying. And now
Speaker 1: it gets to our final question. How long will these
Speaker 1: closed cities stay closed? Some are Cold war relics, but
Speaker 1: a surprising amount of them are still manufacturing fissile material. Right,
Speaker 1: they're enriching uranium, they're making weapons grade plutonium. Business is booming,
Speaker 1: Business is good. Those cities may well stay closed. And
Speaker 1: what about the ones that we don't know, the ones
Speaker 1: that are still off of the maps. And that's our
Speaker 1: classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts. It's right, let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: You can reach.
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