A the extreme south tip of Cape Romano island in Florida, you can encounter what looks like monsters from space walking towards the ocean. There are in fact a set of abandoned constructions. Thank you to Kristen Mancuso for sending this cool discovery and their accompanying photos.
Photo credit- Kristen Mancuso
What the story of the white domes?
The structures were built in 1982, but are slowly slipping in to the Gulf of Mexico now.
They survived Hurricane Wilma. It seems they were originally several hundred yards off shore but Hurricane Wilma washed away a considerable amount of shore and severely damaged them.
Photo credit- Kristen Mancuso
Photo credit- Kristen Mancuso
coordinates : 25°50'42.68"N 81°40'52.30"W
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pictures sources : 1 & Kristen Mancuso
text source : 1 & Kristen Mancuso
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The World Discoverer was a cruise ship dedicated to explore polar regions, it was abandoned in 2000 on Nggela Island, (Solomon Islands) after hitting a reef. I want to thank Lucas E. who contacted me to have the World explorer included on AO, not only did he send me all the information he gathered but he also wrote the entry on Wikipedia.
The following text is a shortened version of his article:
"The vessel was originally built in 1974. The ship was subsequently resold to many different owners along the years, and renamed as many times. The vessel has a double hull construction allowing for periodic voyages to Antarctic Peninsula region for its passengers to observe ice floe movements and protection for any iceberg impacts. The ship carries of fleet of inflatable dinghies allowing passenger to move closer to ice floes for observation.
The ship conducts cruises near the Southern Hemisphere and visits places like Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Chile, Ushuaia, Argentina. During the period between March and May, the ship cruises the South Pacific Islands. It also cruises this area between the months of August and October. And finally, between the months of June and August, the ship around the Alaskan region and also near the Russian border around the Bering sea. Very few vessels have been constructed for exclusive cruising expeditions near or around icebergs. The double hulled construction could allowed impact with glaciers while sustaining very little damage to the ship or crew. The World Discoverer also has a 8,000 mile cruising range allowing the ship to be the first ship to ever transit the Northwest Passage.
On April 30, 2000, The ship struck a large uncharted rock or reef on the Sandfly Passage, Solomon Islands. A passenger ferry was dispatched to the ship where all passenger were then transported to safety. The captain then brought the ship into Roderick Bay after the ship began to list 20 degrees and grounded the ship to avoid sinking. The ship has remained in Roderick Bay ever since. The World Discoverer still sits in Roderick Bay on Nggela Island with a 46 degree list."
coordinates : 9°01'23.49"S 160°07'23.34"E
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pictures sources : 1 2 3 4
text source : 1
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Great Isaac Cay is a small Bahamian island located about 20 miles NNE of the Bimini Islands. It is accessible only by boat. And it is so small that it's not visible on google map or google earth. The most prominent feature of the island is its lighthouse, which was erected in 1859.
In the late 19th century local lore tells of a ship wreck on the island with one survivor, an infant. The child’s distraught mother, known as the Grey Lady, is said to haunt the island to this very day, wailing in sorrow during the full moon.
On August 4, 1969, the station was discovered to have been abandoned by its two keepers, who were never found. The keepers’ house, cistern, and assorted buildings are crumbling into ruins. The Lighthouse look abandoned but is actually still in use, fully automated.
coordinates : 26°02'0"N 79°06'0"W
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pictures sources : 1 2 3 4
text source : 1
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the explosion crater : 2000 m wide
This is the story of the biggest atomic bomb tested by the USA, the second biggest atomic bomb ever as well as the story of a design mistake that provoked a massive nuclear accident. And I knew nothing about it...
Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first U.S. test of a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, by the United States. Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States, with a yield of 15 Megatons. That yield, far exceeding the expected yield of 4 to 6 megatons, combined with other factors to produce the worst radiological accident ever caused by the United States.
In terms of TNT tonnage equivalence, Castle Bravo was about 1,200 times more powerful than the atomic bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Fallout from the detonation—intended to be a secret test—poisoned the islanders who inhabited the test site, as well as the crew of Daigo Fukuryū Maru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5"), a Japanese fishing boat, and created international concern about atmospheric thermonuclear testing.
remains of the bunker on the island
When Bravo was detonated, it formed a fireball almost four and a half miles (roughly 7 km) across within a second. This fireball was visible on the Kwajalein atoll over 250 miles (450 km) away. The explosion left a crater of 6,500 feet (2,000 m) in diameter and 250 feet (75 m) in depth. The mushroom cloud reached a height of 47,000 feet (14 km) and a diameter of 7 miles (11 km) in about a minute; it then reached a height of 130,000 feet (40 km) and 62 miles (100 km) in diameter in less than 10 minutes and was expanding at more than 6 kilometers (4 miles) per minute.
Unanticipated fallout and radiation also affected many of the vessels and personnel involved in the test, in some cases trapping them in bunkers. Sixteen crew members of the aircraft carrier USS Bairoko received beta burns and there was a greatly increased cancer rate. Radioactive contamination also affected many of the testing facilities built on other islands of the Bikini atoll system.
The fallout spread traces of radioactive material as far as Australia, India and Japan, and even the US and parts of Europe. Though organized as a secret test, Castle Bravo quickly became an international incident, prompting calls for a ban on the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear devices.
The following pictures are remains of various ships wrecked during atomic bomb test in the Bikini Atoll, some by accident, some on purpose : USS Saratoga ,USS Lamson, USS Anderson, USS Apogon. Some of the most beautiful underwater pictures you could ever see.
coordinates : 11°41'46.57"N 165°16'21.17"E
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pictures sources : 1 2 34 5 6
text source : 1 2 3 4 5
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This collection of rusted anchors, also called the cemetery of anchors is located on the island of Tavira, near Barril beach in the region of Algarve, Portugal. As you can see from their perfect alignment, they were not abandoned, but rather put in this place on purpose.
A story exists to explain their presence. It's the story of an active tuna fishing activity who sustained hundred of families for centuries, along with all the plants that go wit such activity.
At a certain point the resource was over fished, and couldn't sustain the fishing activity anymore. The tuna fishermen and the fishing industry is long gone now, it's been replaced by hotels and tourists. This strange cemetery is now a reminder of the past, when tunas were a living resource.
coordinates : 37°05'12.17"N 7°39'41.26"W
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pictures sources : 1 2 3
text source : 1 2
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What you see on the picture above is just what the title says... a massive concrete lid to a 107 m diameter nuclear waste trash can on a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Was it really necessary to damage so much those environments for the sake of testing useless nuclear weapons?
(On the left the concrete dome covering a explosion crater, on the right another explosion crater.)
After WW2 the residents were evacuated, often involuntarily, and the atoll was used for nuclear testing as part of the U.S. Pacific Proving Grounds.
Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) of radioactive soil and debris from from 43 atomic and thermonuclear explosions on Bikini and Rongelap atolls between 1948 and 1958. The dome covers the 30-foot (9 meter) deep, 350-foot (107 meter) wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test.
The people began returning in the 1970s, and on May 15, 1977, the U.S. government directed the military to decontaminate the islands. This was done by mixing the contaminated soil and debris from the various islands with Portland cement and burying it in one of the blast craters.
The U.S. government declared the islands safe for habitation in 1980.
The concrete dome during its construction.
coordinates : 11°33'09.10"N 162°20'50.21"E
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pictures sources : 1 2 3
text source : 1 2 3 4
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Opened in 1856, this smallpox hospital on the southern tip of Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island) was part of a multitude of public institutions to care for New York City's unfortunate and destitute.
The island sits between Queens and Manhattan, and was easily accessible by ferry; it was home to a prison, insane asylum, and other similar facilities.As of 1872, an annual number of 7,000 patients were treated, with an average of 450 deaths.
The island was renamed Welfare Island in 1921, and in the 1950s many of the institutions on the island became obsolete and were abandoned.
coordinates : 40°45'05.89"N 73°57'34.50"W
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pictures sources : 1 2 3 4
text source : 1
