Simulpocalypse #2- The age of Many Modern Ruins
Even without the dreaded nuclear apocalypse, a combination of technological, economic, and social trends have led to thousands of abandoned buildings across the U.S. in recent decades
A broken down limo being used as a bedroom and storage space, outside of a homeless group’s “home,” at a Park n’ ride turned Park n’ Live,” during the pandemic. San Fernando Valley, California, 2021. #steveemigphotos
Disclaimer:
Simopocalypse (SIGH-mole-pock-a-lips)- This is a word I coined for today’s world, where we have a growing number of post-apocalyptic-looking buildings and areas, while everyday society goes on as usual, simultaneously.
For nearly all of the roughly 10,000 years of known human civilization, there have ruins of earlier buildings and villages that had been abandoned for some reason. Some people have been exploring ruins of previous eras of civilization for thousands of years. But in the last 40 or 50 years in particular, a combination of changing technological, economic, and social trends has led to a drastically increased number of modern ruins. A Google search told me Detroit has over 78,000 vacant buildings, and that Gary, Indiana has over 13,000. That’s just two cities, both incredibly hard hit by the decline of American factories, since the late 1970’s. So many of these post-apocalyptic looking places now exist, that exploring them has become a hobby for many people in the younger generations. They call it urban exploring, or usually just urbex, sometimes UE.
A wave of factory closures in the U.S. in the late 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s led to hundreds of large, abandoned, industrial properties all over the country, particularly in the Midwest, Eastern seaboard, and the South. So many properties were left vacant as manufacturing was moved to new locations, that the Midwest is now called the Rust Belt.
I grew up in a family that moved around often, bouncing around small and mid-sized towns in Ohio and Indiana in the 1970’s. I’m 58 now, one of the older members of Generation X, and like others of similar background, I remember when those Midwest factories were thriving. Many major manufacturing plants were running two or even three 8 hour shifts of workers when I was a kid. The had millions of good paying low and mid skilled jobs then. My family moved west, because of an expected plant closure, following my dad’s new job, after my 8th grade year, 1979-80. We kept moving farther west for the next several years.
These thousands of U.S. factory closings led to mass migrations away from the old industrial cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and other major cities of the Great Lakes region. Generally speaking, a lot of people moved west and south across the U.S. during that era. As all those abandoned factories began the gritty, rusty process of urban decay, the internet rose up as a new communication tool in the 1990’s. Average people around the world could suddenly communicate virtually for free, and explore all kinds of mutual interests. The internet aided the explorers of those modern ruins in finding each others, and finding other sites to explore. In the 2000’s, individuals and small groups of younger people explored and began to extensively document many of the post-apocalyptic appearing urban ruins. A new wave of urban explorers, and the term urbex, rose slowly into public awareness.
This is an actual tree house and storage place that was really well hidden, across the street from a large homeless encampment, during the pandemic. Every day people walked right under this tree, on the sidewalk, never noticing all the stuff hidden above them. It happened to be right in front of my storage unit at the time, and I saw a shopping cart below the tree one day, and looked up. The guy slept in the tree once in a while, but mostly used it for storage. San Fernando Valley, California, 2021. #steveemigphotos
There are tens of thousands of vacant and fully abandoned properties in the United States at this point, with office buildings now being added to the list of factories, dead malls, homes, and other buildings and urban infrastructure. Here are links to videos about some of the best known and most unusual abandoned places in the United States.
Packard plant- Detroit Michigan
Detroit’s abandoned buildings in the early 2000’s
Rolling Acres Mall- Akron, Ohio Rolling Acres became the poster mall for the “dead mall” trend in about 2013 or 2014, with an iconic photo of the dilapidated escalators beneath shot out skylights. This dead mall, in particular, caught my attention when I first saw photos of it. My grandparents lived in nearby Wadsworth, and I know my family visited Rolling Acres Mall when I was a kid, though I don’t specifically remember it. In addition, I was born within 20 miles of this mall, though we moved out of the area when I was about three. Rolling Acres stands as the most iconic dead mall to me. Actually, it doesn’t stand anymore, it has been demolished.
Six Flags Amusement Park, New Orleans
Oceanview Plaza/”L.A. graffiti towers”
Salton Sea region in California- The Salton Sea is a huge lake that was accidentally formed when a levee broke in 1905-1907. By the 1940’s, it had become a recreation destination for people of L.A., including many Hollywood movies stars. Then the lake began to evaporate, and become more salty, combined with toxic fertilizer runoff from nearby farms. Eventually the lake became really toxic, birds and fish died off by the thousands, and the resort towns around the huge lake were mostly abandoned.
Drunk and passed out street penguin, San Fernando Valley, California. This poor penguin was roughly molested the night before by a tweeker’s horny Chihuahua. #steveemigphotos
The rise in urbex enthusiasts, documenting and often making short documentaries about abandoned locations is one aspect of the Simulpocalypse. Their photos and videos help tell the story of many of these places that have been abandoned, and give the rest of us a look at these buildings and areas. Urbex enthusiasts are telling some of the history of this growing trend in real time, as some buildings get rebuilt and find new life, and other buildings are abandoned elsewhere. As the Simulpocalypse of unused buildings continues, many properties will be explored, documented, and some will have their stories told by the urbex explorers and YouTube/video producers. Urbex enthusiasts witness this part of our history, and play a role in this much larger series of trends that led to these major economic, technological, and social changes of our times.
There are no paid links in this post.
