Abandoned Places: Hashima Island

     Continuing with our look at the forgotten places of the world, we now turn to something that is pretty unique: Hashima Island. It is perhaps better known by it's colloquial name, "Battleship Island". The concept of an abandoned island city it indeed a romantic one for the urban explorer or abandoned site enthusiast. But, like many of the places left behind, it has an overwhelmingly dark history.

     The island serves as a singularly perfect microcosm of Japan's hurried progress during the industrial revolution. When coal suddenly became an in-demand resource the owners of the island wasted no time in getting a rudimentary mining operation running. Over time, with the help of foreign advisers and merchants, the island both enjoyed and suffered the ravages of extreme progress without forethought or regard for the human side of business.

     All of the workers on the island were subjected to poor conditions and insanely crowded conditions. In point of fact, workers suffered through living in the most densely populated area in recorded history. 83,500/km² people lived in each square kilometer. To compare, the current population density of downtown New York is 10,429.6/km²

     Forcibly recruited workers toiled under conditions so horrible that many decided to kill themselves rather than continue to work. by August of 1945 over 1,300 workers had perished on the island. The operation continued to function until 1974. The Japanese government has decided to re-open a small portion of the island to tourists by constructing a walkway from which the interior of the island can be viewed. The structures within are considered too unsafe to allow people back inside.


For links with a full account of the fascinating history of the island as well as pictures and first hand accounts, click "Read More".

Abandoned Places: Okpo Land

I'm usually entranced by abandoned places. I love to see the pictures and imagine being there, surrounded by vengeful overgrowth and lingering ghosts of happy families or bustling industry. Most the of the time these places were left behind because of simple economics or a changing world. It makes sense and there's nothing eerie about it other than the emptiness of a once busy place.

Okpo land is different. This South Korean "fun park" was quite successful in its time. There was, however, a tragic accident that claimed the life of at least one guest of which we're aware. This was not the accident that closed the park. In fact, according to Wikipedia, no apology was ever issued and the ride continued to operate without interruption. Then, in 1999, another patron was killed on the same ride. This time it was a young girl. The owner of the park, again, never issued an apology nor gave any money to the victim's family. The park was simply closed and left to rot.

Check the links after the break to see the duck ride that claimed the lives of two (and maybe more) people.

Click "Read More" to find links to more information and plenty of pictures.

Squirm!

Or... The moment that makes you queasy.

      Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an amazing and uniquely entertaining show. Squirm (Jeff Lieberman, 1976) is a terrible movie. A match made in heaven. I have watched every single episode of MST3K ever produced. Well, actually, I've watched all of the episodes after Joel left. He was a good host but those episodes just seemed boring. Mike Nelson will always be THE host for me, but I digress. I was watching the guys lambast Squirm in their usual style when something unusual happened. The movie actually made me uncomfortable. In the safest, most secure viewing environment possible, a single shot in the movie made me, well, squirm in my seat.

      It comes near the end of the film: The secondary antagonist, Roger Grimes (the worms are obviously the main antagonists), has gone insane with worm fever and is chasing down the protagonists. In the process, he falls into a literal sea of worms and is instantly pulled under the surface. The effect was shoddily done, cut to just a second or two, and utterly silly looking. I knew all of that and yet, for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't stop imagining thousands and thousands of worms wriggling their way into your flesh and devouring you in tiny pieces. It's horrifying in every sense of the word. On a certain level the visceral is almost secondary to the more cerebral part of the effect: that will happen to you. You will die, and you will be devoured by worms and insects afterwards. There is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid that. The fact that a B movie that was over thirty years old when I watched it made me actually consider my own mortality is... impressive. Not so much on the part of the film, but on the part of the genre in general. Even when a horror movie is terrible it can make you think.

Clinical Trials

Clinical trials are a bit of an oddity. In such a civilized and advanced culture as ours, it seems out of place to have an entire industry revolving around the mistreatment of volunteers. People are paid (usually miniscule amounts of money, by the way) to be injected with random crap by doctors who assume no liability for what happens to them as a result. Let's say you start having uncontrollable bowel movements after a trial. Now let's say that they never stop. In either case, you won't be helped in any way by the people who gave you the drug. You knew what you were signing up for, basically.

With all of this horribleness on the surface, I have to imagine that there are even worse things underneath. Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that any time there is a public perception of something (no matter how awful the public perception is) there is always a darker underbelly. After the break is a handful of articles about people who died doing clinical trials.

Videogame Deaths

Sorry again for my absence. Today I bring you a few video-game related deaths. To my knowledge, no one has ever died from playing a video game other than from exhaustion or murder. Still, it brings us to one of the more animalistic aspects of humanity that we will literally murder each other over fictional items.

Links to the news stories after the break.

Dyatlov Pass

This is a pretty classic story that has been circled around the internet many times. It's the account of how a group of skiers in Russia disappeared and then were found with bizarre circumstances surrounding their deaths. Gruesome details aside, there are a number of plausible solutions for the 'mystery' that I won't go into here. It's been pretty thoroughly debunked over the last fifty years but the events leading up to the hikers' deaths are still fascinating.

There is a link to the Wikipedia article on this after the break.

Dix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv8qWPCMaaM

An experimental short by French directors Jules Janaud, Fabrice Le Nezet and Francois Roisi as a collaborative effort. Entitled 'Dix', it is an interesting look into the fears that go along with obsessive or compulsive behaviors.

I think I might mainly use this blog for posting the random odd things that I find in my internet travels. I do find a lot of them.