Nine Places on Earth That Sound Made Up
A town where almost everyone lives in one building, a fire that has burned since 1962, a river hot enough to kill, and a patch of land no country wants.
All nine are on the map, and you can visit most of them. A couple you should not.
Whittier, Alaska — a town in one building
Nearly all of Whittier's residents live in Begich Towers, a former army barracks that also holds the shop, the church, the health clinic and the police station. The only road in runs through a single-lane tunnel shared with the railway, which switches direction by timetable and closes at night. In winter, children can get from home to school without going outside.
Centralia, Pennsylvania — a town on fire
A coal seam under Centralia caught alight in 1962 and has been burning ever since. Roads buckled, carbon monoxide seeped into cellars, and in 1984 the government bought the town out. A handful of residents stayed. The fire has enough coal to keep going for another couple of centuries.
Darvaza, Turkmenistan — the Door to Hell
A Soviet drilling rig hit a gas pocket here and the ground gave way. The crater has been alight since the 1970s — roughly 70 metres across, visible for miles at night, and hot enough that you feel it well before you reach the lip.
Bir Tawil — the land nobody claims
Egypt and Sudan disagree about where their border runs, and the two versions of the line mean that claiming Bir Tawil would mean giving up the much larger and more useful Hala'ib Triangle. So neither claims it. It is one of the only habitable places on land that no state wants.
Socotra, Yemen — the island that went its own way
Cut off for millions of years, roughly a third of Socotra's plants grow nowhere else, including the dragon's blood tree, which looks like an umbrella blown inside out and bleeds red sap. Botanists reach for the word "alien" every time, and it is hard to argue.
Lake Natron, Tanzania — the lake that turns animals to stone
Natron is so alkaline it can reach a pH near 10.5, and salt-laden enough that animals which die in it are coated and preserved rather than rotting. The photographs that go round online are of real calcified birds, though they were posed for the camera after being found.
Shanay-timpishka, Peru — the boiling river
A four-mile stretch of this Amazon tributary runs at around 86°C, hot enough to kill anything that falls in. It is not volcanic. The best explanation is water that fell as rain a long way off, worked its way deep, got hot and came back up through a fault.
Hashima Island, Japan — the abandoned city block
A coal island the size of a few football pitches, Hashima once held over 5,000 people and was among the most densely populated places on Earth. The mine closed in 1974 and everybody left within weeks. It is now a ruin of concrete apartment blocks, and from the sea it looks like a battleship — which is what its nickname, Gunkanjima, means.
Point Nemo — the furthest you can get from land
In the South Pacific there is a spot about 1,450 nautical miles from the nearest land in any direction. The closest humans are usually the crew of the International Space Station passing overhead, and space agencies use the area to drop spacecraft at the end of their lives.