WEBVTT - The Ruins of the Present 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.480 Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.239 that looks at the future and says I'm fixing a 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.600 hole where the rain gets in. I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.239 I'm Lauren Bolcabama and our regular host Jonathan Strickland is 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:27.960 not with us today. He is out prowling the grounds 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.440 of cs or he might actually be on an airplane 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:34.400 at the moment, coming back home, arresting from his journalistic 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.960 predatory technology right. It is well deserved ressed. I think 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.400 he has been working his little heart out out there. 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.880 But anyway, today we're joined by a special guest co host, 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:50.600 our friend and co worker, Christian. Christian introduce yourself. Hey guys, 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:53.680 I'm Christian Sager. I'm a writer and host here at 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.600 How Stuff Works. I started out working on Stuff of Genius, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.440 one of our shows, and I'm currently a writer with 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:05.320 these guys on both Brain Stuff and What the Stuff. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.319 Those are two of our video shows video shows. It 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.560 is a distinct pleasure to have you with us today. Christian. Thanks, 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:13.600 I'm happy to be here, especially since we're going to 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:18.319 be talking about various features of destruction and decay, and 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.160 that's actually what we think about when we think of you. 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:24.160 It's what I associate mostly with your face. It makes sense. No, 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:28.520 not in plock marks and the age. No no, no, 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.679 no no no, not not your face as a decaying thing. 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.240 But like um, next to those concepts sort of in 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.480 the dictionary, there's the idea of Christian Sager. That's accurate. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.440 You are pretty metal, so I'm probably I mean, I 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:45.000 don't want to put myself on the back, but I'm 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.760 probably the most metal person at out stuff works. Well, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:50.600 we are glad that we could have you here to 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:55.600 to talk about ruins and the future of ruins, right, ruins. 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.480 I mean, usually we don't get to talk about ruins 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.000 on a podcast about the future because ruins are something 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.440 we associate with the past. But since we are talking 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.160 about ruins, I thought it would be the only occasion 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.720 I ever get to read Percy Biss Shelley on the 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.480 Forward Thinking podcast. So we will begin with a short 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:20.760 reading of Ozzymandias by P. B. Shelly. Do it. I 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.360 met a traveler from an antique land who said, two 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.720 vast and trunkless legs of stones stand in the desert 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.040 near them on the sand, half sunk, A shattered visage 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.320 lies who's frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command? 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.600 Tell that it's sculptor. Well dos passions read? Which yet survives? 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.520 Stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.280 in the heart that fed on the pedestal, these words appear. 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.680 My name is Ozzymandias, King of kings. Look on my works, 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:58.959 he mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains round the decay 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.760 of that colossal wreck, boundless and bear the loan and 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:08.839 level sands stretched far away. He's nicely done. Thank you 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.519 for that won the poetry slam. And I also that 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:17.359 if Shelley was alive today, he would totally be the 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:19.400 singer in a black metal band. I know it is 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:24.600 very black metal. It's like it's very serious and death 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:29.679 and destruction and time watches everything away. But it's also 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.280 got a kind of great, cheesy dust in the wind 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:37.880 quality to it. Yeah, so yes, part black metal, part Kansas. Yeah. Yeah, well, 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.440 and I like the schadenfreud to it too, like it's 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.240 it's very much like like let's suck a look at 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.880 that guy. Well, I like how the line look on 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.840 my works you mighty, and despair takes on an ironic 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.800 double meaning, I believe in the way the king. I 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.800 think he's referring to the Egyptian King Ramsey's the second, 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.280 also known as Ozzy Mandius. Uh. He's sang at the 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.480 other kings like, look at this stuff I've built you stuff. Yeah, 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:08.600 you can't build anything like this. You should despair. But really, 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.360 to the reader, it starts to take on the idea 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.200 of time. We're all going to look on his works 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.360 in despair because this happens to all of us, everybody 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:22.039 in the Yeah, the loan and level sands where we 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.040 get brought down by time. Now, this may sound like 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.000 kind of a bleak place to begin a podcast about 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.360 the future, and so it's not going to be all 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.279 death and destruction. We wanted to look at the physical 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:38.880 features of civilization and imagine what they're going to look 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:43.080 like in the future. What what will the cities of 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.800 today look like in five hundred years, a thousand years, 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.320 two thousand years from the present. What will future humans 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.440 see if they visit the ruins that are to them, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:58.320 What the ruins of ancient Rome are to us? Yeah, 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:02.039 and so how would you like to start with that, Joe. First, 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.440 let's limit the scope a little bit of what we're 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.680 talking about here, Like, let's let's put out some definitions. Okay, 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:09.919 So if we're going to try to imagine the future 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.760 ruins of modern civilization, we should sort of define our terms. 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:16.000 And one of the first things I want to get 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.039 out of the way is the definition of civilization, because 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.960 sometimes the word civilization can take on a value judgment connotation, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.920 like a thing that is civilized is good. A thing 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:32.640 that's uncivilized is like impolite or improper. You know, you'd say, Oh, 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.720 my friend Johnny, he's always urinating in public. That's uncivilized behavior. 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:39.279 Or oh she doesn't serve that kind of tea in 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:43.479 her home, how uncivilized, right right? Or as Henry Rollins 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.719 has been known to say, you're so civilized, do you 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:51.640 get brutalized? Yes, that is not at all the way 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.159 we mean the word here. We mean civilization more in 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:59.400 the historical or archaeological sense, which has a lot of connotations, 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:05.279 but overall denotes a settled lifestyle in densely populated urban areas, 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.479 or in word cities city life, and in fact, the 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.800 English words city and civilization. I think both have their 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:17.480 root in the same Latin terms like civitatum or civitas, which, 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:19.600 from what I can tell it has kind of an 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.400 abstract and complex definition. But it has to do with 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.840 being a citizen or the citizen ry. And what does 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.840 that have to do with ruins? Well, most, though certainly 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.599 not all, ruins as we experience them today, come from 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.720 these larger civilizations as opposed to the less populous and 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.279 less civilized in this sense, cultures, cultures that don't build 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:46.760 large monuments or large buildings, you know, right, certainly functional 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.880 or artistic either one. Um and you know by which 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.200 we what we really mean is that it's easier for 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.760 people to kind of trip across a four fifty foot 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.520 tall pyramid UM than even very complex systems of roads 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.839 or eerie aation that might be buried under a few 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.039 layers of sediment in a dessert somewhere. UM. And we 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:07.640 are getting better at the ladder, by the way, And 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.920 there's some really interesting research going into that through like 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.800 new satellite imaging techniques and other technologies. But that is 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.000 a subject for an entirely different podcast. Yeah, that's interesting 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.400 that it brings up the issue of that there's sort 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:24.160 of a differential survival rate for different physical remnants of society. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.320 So you have some things that we build in our 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.200 cities that are still easily visible hundreds of years in 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:32.840 the future, and other things that you might be able 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.120 to find evidence of if you're really looking for, but 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.840 the average person wouldn't necessarily notice it. Yeah, depending on 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.960 the maintenance of those artifacts, on maintenance, and also on 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.520 just the climate and other other surroundings. But we will 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:52.239 get into those in a minute. Let's define what ruins 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.560 are the same way we define what civilization is. Yeah, 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.240 there are actually a lot of interesting theories of ruins 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.120 of you know, ruination theory. That'd be a wonderful like 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.880 sub specialization that you could study. I wish I could 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.760 say I was an expert on ruination. I'm not, though, 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.600 if I could go back and start my education over, 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.280 I might go down that path. But anyway, in the 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.880 general sense, ruins are sort of what's left behind when 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:22.240 human made structures are partially destroyed or they just fall 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.000 out of the cycle of use and maintenance. So if 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.160 if a building is very old but you're still using 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:30.800 it daily and living and working and shopping in it, 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.800 and you're making repairs, fixing cracks, maybe replacing parts of it, 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:37.840 You probably wouldn't call that an example of ruins, even 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:42.000 if it's very old. Yeah, the other hand, ruins tend 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.560 to be things that people might visit, but they don't 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:49.360 remain in use and kept up through maintenance. So there's 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.520 this piece that I came across when we were doing 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:56.080 our research, which was in National Geographic and they did 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:00.400 a trio blog posts called a Dialogue of Civilizations conference. 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.520 It was in Guatemala, and so apparently it was like 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:08.240 their notes based on the conference, and they talked. They 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.160 had a whole section that was all about the ancient 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.760 past as a window to the future, looking at ruins 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.760 and thinking about this very concept. And one of the 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:18.800 things that they came up within that was that they 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.280 think of ruins as being emblems of our vanity. They 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.880 are basically, uh, but not just that, but that they 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:31.240 are also signs of whatever civilization they represent, part of 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.440 their identity or their ideology. So I think it's important 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.400 to keep in mind as we're talking about ruins today, 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.600 like or the ruins of the future in particular, how 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.160 are the emblematic of our vanity as a culture or 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.240 our particular ideologies. Right, you can you can feel almost 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:54.000 the desire to be worshiped emanating from many of the 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.160 monuments and ruins of old you see, like the Pyramids 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.559 of Giza. At least for me, when I look at 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:04.560 something like that, it radiates this sense of somebody wanting 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.480 to be seen as powerful. It's the idea of immortality 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:15.160 through uh through an artifact longer than you will, or 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.760 even your legacy. Yeah, and so whatever it is that's 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:19.840 so important to you that you want to make it 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.120 big enough to last. So if you think about the 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:25.840 modern day equivalent of something like a pyramid or the 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.760 Arc de Triumph, for something that shows off the power, 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:35.000 the splendor, the glory of the civilization, what is that today? Well, 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:36.920 I mean, just off the top of my head. We 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.280 we are in Atlanta right now, and looking out the window, 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:45.160 what I see are skyscrapers and malls and public transportation hubs, 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.560 a lot of cars, a lot of highways. These are 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.480 the things that we seem to venerate nowadays. They're not 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:55.440 necessarily built to last in the way that the pyramids were. 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.760 Um maybe like for Atlanta in particular, one of the 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:01.960 things I always think about is the stuff that they've 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.920 built downtown when the Olympics were here in the nineties. 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.400 So there's stuff like that that is probably meant to last. 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.440 But what else, what do you guys think? You know, 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.120 what I think of is I think of uh, public 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:20.560 use areas like sports stadiums, yeah, yea, and things like that. 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:23.080 Those to me shout a kind of and and I 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.480 don't know if the way in which they're physically constructed 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:29.560 means they'll actually last longer than any other type of building. 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.240 They might or not, but they at least speak to 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:37.280 me like this is a it seems to embody values 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.960 and to scream power projection of the Colosseum of our time. 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.240 Yeah yeah, I mean also also very lart, like we've 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:49.160 got a six Flags just outside of Atlantic there. Uh yeah. 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.199 Roller coasters, they're they're beautiful. I don't know if you've 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.440 ever seen any of the images from Coney Island, but 0:11:55.640 --> 0:12:01.400 I have been to Coney Island and Countists. So the 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.600 Cyclone is the world's maybe the world. It might just 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:09.520 be the United States most oldest roller coaster and uh 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:14.920 most oldest you know, yeah yeah, yeah, uh, And it's terrifying. 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.880 I've written on it. It's just wood and nails. Well, 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:20.360 how do you ride on it? Now? They just put 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:22.200 you in a paper bag and push you down the 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:26.320 top hill. Yeah, well they just draped whales to your 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:32.200 arms and legs. It's but yeah, no, it's it's really scary. Yeah. Um. 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:36.240 Another thing that seems to be suggested by the idea 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:40.840 of ruins is something about decline. Because with lots of 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.400 the structures we have, I mean, on their own, they 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.360 could fall into disrepair and become ruins, but we keep 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:51.200 them up. So what leads to people not being able 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.160 to keep up their structures? Well, it assumes I think, 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.280 like one of two things probably that we can boil 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.320 it down to that there is either the civil zation 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:04.000 has either gotten to a point where it's mismanaging it's 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:08.760 structures so much that it's neglecting them, or there's some 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.640 kind of external force that has come in and it 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.640 has done damage to it, like in war for instance. 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:19.200 And perhaps there's been some kind of event that has 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.280 forced the population to move to a new area, something 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:25.520 climate related perhaps. Sure. Yeah, that's the other thing that 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:27.400 sort of touches on what I wanted to add to 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.240 complicate this. I don't think it's necessarily always mismanagement, though 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:33.120 that can be part of it, because there can also 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.200 be just the fact that people don't care about certain 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.800 things up and leaving the stuff. Yeah yeah. Or perhaps 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:45.280 for example, when coal production fell to oil production, a 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:47.920 lot of a lot of places were kind of abandoned 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.000 because those factories were not or there's mining towns were 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.400 not necessary. And we're going to jump ahead because one 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:55.720 of these places that we're going to talk about is 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.160 exactly that. Now we'll save it fort well, we'll save it, yeah, 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:01.520 we can. We can reference back in a second spoilers. 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:05.600 We're gonna talk about Cole. Just one more distinction that 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.720 might be interesting is the difference between what we would 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:13.600 often call ruins and then something more like monuments, and 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:15.800 they can sort of leed together. But I just wanted 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.400 to think about the fact that you wouldn't always look 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.160 at something like the Pyramids of Giza and call that ruins, 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.120 right because nobody lived there, right. Well, I mean people 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:29.440 might have camped out there, I don't know, but generally 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.320 meant is like a thing to behold about some of 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:34.600 these other ones that like we think of as wonders 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:36.880 of the world, so the pyramid is one of them, right, 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.600 What about like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Well, as 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.760 far the funny thing about that is, I think it's 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.720 disputed whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon actually existed from 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.160 whatever call. But yeah, there are plenty of monuments and 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.800 things like you could look at, like Mount Rushmore or 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.640 things like that. If if after a long time Mount 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:01.080 Rushmore becomes sort of eroded and it's not maintained, would 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.760 you call that a ruin? I don't really, but you'd 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:08.200 call Machu Picchu a ruin, right, certainly? Sure? Or um 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:11.120 if for some reason everyone had to flee Paris and 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:13.960 and um Notre Dame was still standing, you could call 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.480 that a ruin. Yeah. So I don't know exactly what 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:18.760 the dividing line is there, but I think today we 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:20.320 want to talk about both. I mean, we want to 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.920 talk about monuments and the things you'd more traditionally call ruins, 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:29.360 the structures we build that without maintenance can fall into disrepair. 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.080 Although it is certainly anthropologically interesting that these days some 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.280 of our largest and most impressive structures are not something 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.480 of religious and cultural significance, like the pyramids, but rather 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:45.520 something of practical cultural significance, like the Hoover Dam. Yeah, 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.920 that's true, right, Like also like the Golden Gate Bridge. 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.240 That's probably one of the things that will although we'll 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:54.400 talk about this later how long bridges will last after 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.560 humans are stopped taking care of them, But that's probably 0:15:57.600 --> 0:15:59.760 something that people would look back on as being a 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.880 ruin or relic of humanity. Yeah. And then there are 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.880 there are, of course structures that are not really lived 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:11.400 in spaces, but they're also not really monuments of symbolic significance, 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:13.360 or at least not entirely that they have some kind 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:16.680 of practical use, like say the Roman aqueducts or the 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.000 Great Wall of China. I think, Christian, you've actually been 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:20.800 to the Great Wall of China, haven't. Yeah, it was 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.200 a long time ago, over twenty years ago, but yeah, 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:28.320 I spent some time in Beijing when I was younger. Uh, 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.640 And the Great Walls fascinating because it was essentially designed 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.920 as like a defense mechanism against different invaders. Heard it 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.680 didn't work very well, right, well, and then you know 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.840 it was multiple walls that, over the course of various 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:45.200 empires were redesigned and linked up together, etcetera. Etcetera. But uh, 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.400 you know, it's been neglected for over three hundred years 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:52.480 now and a lot of it's in disrepair. However, at 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.640 the same time, because it is I don't know, necessarily 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.520 that's a ruin, but because it's a monument, it's one 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.120 of those things that is a tour attraction as well, 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.800 and the tourism industry that comes to the Great Wall 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.760 of China helps in the deterioration of it. I myself, 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.640 twenty years ago, uh, when I was but a boy, 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:17.280 carved my initials in the Great Wall of China. It's 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.880 not the kind of decision I would make today. That's 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:21.680 good to hear. I probably would have done something like 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.720 that when I was a kid. I was there. What's 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.720 wrong with us? We all want to leave our market, 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:31.800 which is really what all of this podcast is about. 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.320 U though, though I would argue that that stuff like 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.760 tourism um, although it does degrade these structures at a 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.520 certain point just through normal wear and tear, in addition 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.119 to things like vandalism, you also wind up having governments 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:50.199 um looking at these structures as being a useful monetary 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:53.880 agent and therefore having you know, making the decision to 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:58.240 to restore and repair them to at least protect them. Yes, yes, 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:03.920 crime do you do what A and the funds from 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.320 the tourism industry would probably go into their restoration, whereas 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.920 if people weren't visiting it, there wouldn't there wouldn't be 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.280 that fun. Yeah, okay, Well, let's transition from thinking about 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:18.280 these ancient to modern ruins to thinking about modern ruins 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.920 that got their ruinations started really recently. Yeah, because there 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.280 are a few places on this planet, as populated as 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.000 it tends to be, that that we can call ruins 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:31.840 like right now today that we're created less than a 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.440 century ago. Okay, And I want to start with one 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.640 that if you've never looked at pictures of Prepriot Ukraine, 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.439 go pause this and go google it right now that 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:47.040 that's that's the Chernobyl site. Yes, okay, are you back? So? 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.520 Prepriot Ukraine was a city that was evacuated due to 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.440 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in nineteen six when 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:59.480 they had a major melt down and lots of dangerous radiation. 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:03.280 Was least. They had to abandon the area and it 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.480 has been uninhabited by humans ever since. So that's been 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.439 like twenty nine years now, almost thirty years. Yeah, and 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.280 we're closing in on the thirty year mark. So what 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:15.080 happens in a place like that where there's been nobody 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:19.280 to keep up the repair, the maintenance, the weeding, the 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.760 all the things we need to do to keep a 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:26.399 city functioning like it normally. Does I think what happened? 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:28.600 The things that's fascinating about that from what I read 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.560 in the research is that despite the nuclear incident, that 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:37.159 there is still uh pervasive plant life there that is 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:41.960 growing through the structures and and and breaking them apart. Yeah, 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.160 I think it's very interesting. So we should think about 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.240 this place as a complete dead zone. It's been tainted 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:51.359 by nuclear radiation. You know, this should be just a 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.440 poisoned place that's become like the moon, at least we 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.080 would imagine that, But then when you actually look at it, 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.000 it's almost like a nature preserve out Yeah. The report 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.439 that lots of species have bounced back there, right, Like 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:06.359 one of the things that I was reading was that 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.600 you wouldn't normally see like particular species of wolves in 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:15.600 the civilized still populated areas around there, but that they're 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:20.040 very prevalent within the ruins of this town. That's funny. 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.080 It's like our presence is more poisonous than a radiation leak. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:27.600 Also certainly to to lots of parts of nature. Um, 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:30.800 but but humans are certainly not going to go back 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.400 in there any time, particularly soon. You can contrast that 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:37.120 with the kind of conditions that you see in other places, 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:40.720 like for example, Hashima Island a k A good Kanjima, 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.320 which is an island off of Japan that was kind 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.360 of famously used as a set piece for the most 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.920 recent James Bond movie, Skyfall. It was that creepy abandoned 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.720 city where the bad guys hanging out. Yeah, however your 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:56.760 bard m gets all up on Daniel Craig and one 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.840 of the buildings. Yeah, and what's fascinating about it in 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:04.240 real world, not in the film is that spoilers Here 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:07.840 we go. It was a coal mining production facility. So 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:13.840 this island was populated largely by Korean forced laborers, Korean 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:16.760 and Chinese forced laborers. And this was going on largely, 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.320 I believe, in the nineteen twenties through the fifties. I 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.800 think it was shut down circ of nineteen Yeah, I 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.200 think that the last people left the island in the 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.000 early seventies, I read, because petroleum had based basically taken 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.359 over the industry from coal and there was no longer 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.720 need for them to run the island the way they were. 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:39.000 So what do the structures actually look like now? Well, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.760 all the all the glasses gone, the concrete is kind 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.520 of starting to erode. All of the wooden bits that 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.240 were outsides of the structures forming um, and any kind 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.159 of like like lattice work or porches or things like 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:54.200 that have all fallen to the ground. Um. It's it's desolate. 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.720 It's also super dangerous from what I was reading, because, 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.679 like sky Fall, they actually only used exterior shots for 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.480 the stuff that they shot there because the production crew 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.240 deemed it too dangerous to shoot on the island. Yeah, 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:19.919 certainly with principal actors. Yeah, they recreated look to the extras. Um, No, 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.080 they they recreated one of the courtyards on on the 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:26.760 Pinewood Studio sets out in the UK in order to 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:30.920 to film the scenes that you see of them standing there. So, um, 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.640 Hollywood magic, y'all back to this island. Yeah, well that's 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:37.040 There's this really cool thing I want to mention about 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.320 the island is that there's a stairway within the ruins 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.600 that goes up to the highest point on the island, 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:46.040 which is like a rooftop shrine, and you can see 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.960 all of the ruined structures from there. The stairway is 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:53.520 called the Stairwood Hill. Yeah, and it requires like special permits, 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.040 Like they basically only let a very few people go 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:58.320 out to the island at all because it's so dangerous 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:00.560 and you have to have a second special permit to 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:03.600 climb the stairway to hell. All right, So before we 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.240 get into our our third example here, let's pause for 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.720 a second. How stoked would you guys be to go 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:12.440 to that island? So stoked? Like the most stoked I 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:15.320 would be would have your barden be there when they're there. 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:18.680 I mean, he'll drive the boat, but you don't, he's 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.760 not there with you. But also Chernobyl, I'm kind of 0:23:21.760 --> 0:23:24.439 fascinated by, Like I would totally. I mean, if I 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:26.639 could go there, yeah, yeah, if I could go there 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:28.880 relatively safely, then then it would be well. I mean, 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.439 I mean, Hashima Island is is a little bit of 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:35.399