Closed Cities: Secret Towns Kept Off Your Maps

The majority of human beings currently live in urban areas -- and this trend seems set to continue. According to the most recent estimates, two-thirds of humanity will live in urban areas by 2050. However, not all cities are created equally. In fact, countries throughout the world are home to cities that, in one sense or another, do not officially exist. So what exactly are these secret, closed cities. What goes on there? Why are these areas hotbeds of the stuff they don't want you to know?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back

(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
I got a confession for you, Matt. I did my
quarterly dive into our podcast reviews about every three months.

(00:48):
I do that. I notice your Twitter request for reviews, Yeah,
and follow me on Twitter. Yeah yeah, I just saw
it through their conspiracy stuff. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I
wanted to thank everybody who took the time to make
to write a review, whether whether good or bad or

(01:08):
simply middling. We really do appreciate it, and shout out
to our long time listeners, many of whom I recognize
just based on the way you talk in the review.
Especially Uh. There were a couple of great ones where
someone said, Hey, I hope this gets you guys one
step further away from being fired, and I thought, wow,

(01:29):
you have been listening a long time. People have great
stuff to say about you, Matt, and about NOL and
about you as well, Paul Mission Control decands. So thanks
to everybody sincerely who checked in and and gave us
a rating, even the people who, for one reason or
another gave us one star because our the facts that

(01:52):
we presented about a specific issue did not jibe with
their opinions. Thank you for taking the time. It just
feels like two dudes at a bar picking it one star.
That sounds terrible? Did you full of up? Are you
reading what? Yeah? No, seriously, I mean without spending too
much time on it. It's uh. We're very fortunate for

(02:14):
every listener, and we're grateful for your time. I have
to ask, and this is something that you and I
have talked about. I think a little bit before off air.
I have to ask, Matt, are you, in your personal
life a fan of maps, cartography stuff like that? Yeah?
I mean my wall is just covered with maps of

(02:35):
video game worlds. Really yeah, But but you know, in
the real world it's for some reason not as appealing
to me, though I do love knowing, let's say, within
the world of sky Rim, like where particular towns are
with relation to the Giant Mountain. This is so ridiculous.
I've been playing. I'm at the level of Skyrim on

(02:56):
my replay where I am just trying to find every location.
Oh yeah, no, I you have to do that. Have
you found every location? I don't know if I have
every so often, like the numbers don't jive up yet. Yeah,
I remember taking that. It's not an achievement. What is
it called the skill or whatever at some point where

(03:19):
it reveals all locations on the map to you. That
was one of my first playthroughs, though in Skyram. I
think it is Skyra. Maybe it's a different one. I
don't know. I've played so many at this point. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know if it's on Skyrim, but if it is,
I am excited. I'm also Fallout. That's a Fallout. That's
a Fallout thing, but still Bethesda, right, Uh yeah, I

(03:41):
like you. I'm a fan of maps, a fan of cartography,
and I think a lot of our fellow listeners are
as well. I'm one of those people who has you know,
at my house, I have a world map where I
can put the little pins in. Shout out to Mitch
Hedberg for his brilliant world map joke, which I will
not in personally here. I'm also a fan of very

(04:02):
old maps. I have prints of the Peri Rees map
that you and I covered in a previous episode. And
I have a collection of out of date globes which
are also very interesting. Once you get to uh, the
Middle East, once you get to Russia, the Balkan areas
and so on. You you are a fascinating person. Ben,

(04:25):
What do you mean, well, we have some of those uh,
some of those globes still here in the office today. Uh.
It's it's an interesting way to look at the story
of humanity. And regardless of what kind of trends we
see in maps and own globes over time, we do
see one specific trend which has never been violated, as

(04:48):
never abated. It is the trend of our species to
construct increasingly larger, debt, more dense urban areas. As we
record today's episode, humanity is officially an urban species, right, Yeah,
we are. We We moved towards those places, even if

(05:10):
it's on the outskirts, in the suburban areas as. Often
more than four billion people uh lived in these things
that we would consider to be urban areas. And there
are only three point four billion people living in what
we would consider to be rural areas outside of these
bigger established places. Oh and we should, uh, we should

(05:32):
retroactively say this is the here are the facts part
of the show. Everything that you're hearing for this part
of for this act of today's episode is indeed true.
You're absolutely right, Matt, as there are already more people
living in cities than there were in rural areas. This
explosive migrational trend is set to continue by twenty fifty,

(05:57):
assuming we don't blow ourselves up or encounter like a pandemic, right,
assuming that we don't find ourselves in the midst of
a catastrophic water war. We will. But well, but let's
let's pretend like, okay, let's be let's be a little
bit naive about it, so everything goes okay until if

(06:19):
everything goes more or less all right, then by twenty fifty,
two thirds of our species will live in urban areas,
technically about sixty percent. So, whether you love them or
whether you hate them, it seems cities are set to
become one of humanity's most popular inventions. And it's interesting
to think of a city as an invention. We we

(06:41):
don't because it's so normalized, it's so ancient. City is
now just a place. But at some point people invented it,
you know what I mean. Yeah, the concept of having
one centralized area where people can co exist generally with
you know, some kind of castle or stronghold. There's something

(07:05):
to protect near the center, right, or at least somewhere
strategically within that place, and then the homes and everything
in the places of business all shoot up around it, right, yeah, exactly.
And this this is uh, this is an interesting distinction too,
because what is the difference between you know, uh, an

(07:26):
agglomeration of longhouses and a town or a town and
a village or a village and the course it's bigcausin
the city, regardless of how you want to classify city
or an urban area, and there are a couple of
different definitions out there. We do have enough of a
grasp on this phenomenon that we can describe it on

(07:49):
a global scale. Currently, the North American continent is the
most industrialized out of all the continents. As of eighteen,
about eighty two cent of this continence population lives in
an urbanized area. A d two percent. So if you
are listening to this show and you happen to not

(08:11):
be living in one of those dense agglomerations, and congratulations,
because you are an increasingly rare person generally speaking on
this continent. Yeah. Well, and then if let's say you're
living in Latin America or somewhere in the Caribbean, you
are not far behind, only one percent less at uh.

(08:35):
People within those populations live in something you know called
an urban area. And you know what makes sense, interestingly
enough in in places in the Caribbean, because if you
think of the amount of land mass that you actually
have their UM, you can imagine how people would would

(08:56):
just end up moving towards some of the more populated areas.
That's a really good point. And for especially for the
types of businesses that exists in a lot of in
a lot of those areas, um you need other people
to be around to sell things too. Yeah, that's a
really good point. And uh, surprisingly, only about seventy percent

(09:17):
of Europeans can say the same, which shocked me because
the you know, the rise of industry began earlier in
Europe than it did in the US. It's just surprising
the only sevent I guess because of the circumstances of
my travels in Europe, I've always seen it as a

(09:38):
place with little wilderness, and I know that's not true,
especially the further east you go. Yeah, well, you know,
all of this is it's not discounting, but it's not
taking into account micro trends that occur, you know, within
like one city, some people migrating away from that city,
or more people um than then like for a period

(10:01):
of time and then getting an injection. I'm thinking of
a place like Detroit exactly, the depopulation of Detroit. Yeah,
but then then kind of a repopulation in certain areas
of Detroit, and then as that's gonna you know, hopefully
flourish in the coming decades. Yeah, here's hoping. I would
I would love to see the rise of Detroit, you know,
a reboot of the city. But people will also tell

(10:25):
you that rumors of Detroit's demise have been greatly exaggerated,
you know, sometimes the terrible things we see on the
news or just purposely made to be terrible things, because
that's what keeps people's attention. Right. Yeah, I don't have
much to add on that, agreed. I feel like we're
on the same page with that one. But we may

(10:47):
also surprise you go into your earlier statement, Matt, it
may surprise some of our listeners to know that about
sixty eight percent of Oceanica's population is urbanized. And there,
you know, I think, I think back to what you're
saying about the Caribbean archipelagoes in the islands. You know,
it's a matter of scarcity of land in Oceania at

(11:07):
least yea, and yeah, the the natural wonders of a
lot of those places you want to protect as well,
So you end up just kind of squashing together in
one major area that makes sense. And now, of course,
for our finale in this in this list, we have
to mention the two biggest populated continents, Asia and Africa.

(11:33):
They come in second and last place, respectively. Around half
of Asia's population lives in cities. Forty three percent of
Africa's population live in urban areas. And as you know,
we like to point out, both Asia and Africa are huge,
huge places filled with this incredible variety of ethnicity, of community,

(11:59):
of culture, or it's beyond apples and oranges, you know
what I mean. So these these numbers only count as
a cohesive thing. If we're looking at the metric of
just people on a continent, Yeah, it's about seventeen U
full fruit stands worth, right per per continent. Yeah, Matt

(12:20):
did the math on this, the fruit math. So obviously
this is not a static number. And it shouldn't surprise
anybody to learn that those last two continents we named
Asia and Africa are also projected to experience the largest
growth in urbanization as we approach twenty fifty. And this

(12:43):
leads us, This leads us back to you, our hypothetical
but hopefully real listener who has grown up in or
has moved to a rural area. We have to ask
what is the future of these increasingly abandoned rural areas.
That's a story for another day, but today we're going
to give you this look at cities across the world

(13:04):
as a way of approaching another question. As we hurtled
towards the extinction of privacy, the normalization of mass surveillance,
and a future where opulence may well be defined is
simply having a decent view from your apartment or a
small backyard with a garden. It seems we will soon
live in a world without strangers a crowded cognitive space

(13:25):
where everything is public, everything is urban, and the maps
of the future show us small concentrations of humanity, islands
of concrete and steel, separated by vast gulfs of what
would appear to be nothing to a city dweller. Of course,
will be biodiversity. Hopefully there will be agriculture things of
that nature. Yeah, it's gonna be wastes of fire and

(13:48):
acid water, right, I'm digging it right, But the domes
over the cities will protect us, at least temporarily. All
praised the dome. Yeah, yeah. Um. Well, here's the thing, though,
there are all those maps that were like talking about

(14:10):
that we're thinking about in the future. They're gonna have
the big places. You know, you're gonna your your London's
are still going to be on there. Uh you know
your you know for sure your Mumbai's, all all your
different places that are massive known entities will be there.

(14:30):
But there's one thing that probably won't be on your
on your maps then even twenty five years, a thousand
years in the future, well maybe in a thousand years,
but in the future, there are still going to be
places that will never make it to a map. Places
that would be considered an urban area, a city even,

(14:53):
but won't show up. That's right, there's a bit of
a bait and switch. We're not talking about normal cities.
What are we talking about. We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. That's correct,

(15:14):
As conspiratorial as it may sound, the world is full
of secret cities, and attempting to enter these cities may
cost you your life. Picture this. There are entire cities,
like metropolis level cities that are not villages. They're not
puttering communes where everybody follows one person who had some

(15:37):
sort of purported spiritual experience. We're talking about large collections
of multiple story buildings, huge buildings that are just somewhere
in the middle of nowhere, with populations of hundreds of
thousands of people. In some cases, these are cities that
do not officially exist in one capacity or another. And

(15:58):
what's more, we've been building these cities for longer than
you might want to think. Some cities started off as secrets,
only to be classified later. Others remain close to the
majority of humanity as we record today. Let's let's start
with a safe kind of um bucolic historic example. Uh,

(16:19):
something relatively innocuous nowadays, and it will be close to
home for a lot of our fellow listeners. That is
a little place called oak Ridge, Tennessee. Oh yes, oak
Ridge that has connections to New York in some weird way.
We'll get to that in a moment um. So, about
seventy five years ago, the government in these here United States,

(16:41):
they took possession of around sixty thousand acres in East Tennessee.
Now officially this occurred on September nineteenth, nineteen forty two.
There was a kernel of air Leslie Groves. This guy
just kind of looked at the map, maybe took it,
had some people take a trip out, and it said, yeah,
this is it, this is what we want. And there

(17:03):
wasn't anything you know, particularly extraordinary about this area, this
huge swath of land. Um even today, you know, if
you're looking back you're reading about this, historians try and
figure out exactly like what what this guy saw, but
they're still unsure. Yeah, they can make a couple of guesses.

(17:25):
We know that this site and what would become Oakridge, Tennessee,
was chosen out of a short list of several other
sites across the contiguous US. Our guesses tend to be
things like, well, we needed maybe a source of water,
We needed a rural area that was removed from the

(17:45):
hustle and bustle of a city. Because at the time,
if you wanted something spooky done, and you wanted something
done in secret, you could just go to the great
wilds of the United States. But you still needed to
to have access to infrastructure and shipping if you needed
it right, right, so you would want to be able

(18:07):
to contact the rest of the world when necessary. Anyhow,
whatever the logic was, that's that's what General Groves chose.
Sixty thousand acres there in East Tennessee. The area started
out with a few different names and the relatively sparse
official documentation. Sometimes it was called Site X, great name

(18:28):
for a town. Other times it was referred to as
Clinton Engineering Works. That is, as far as we can find,
not a reference to the uh later Clinton political dynasty. Yeah,
it is like a like a company name that just
stood for a location. Yeah, there was a town named
Clinton nearby near Knoxville, Tennessee, and that's what they were

(18:52):
named at naming this thing after. But eventually it became
oak Rich and while the name of this place may
have undergone some iteration, its purpose was always crystal clear
to those in the know. You see, Colonel Grooves was
overseeing what we call the Manhattan Project today, that's the
New York connect right, and uh. And the town that

(19:13):
would become oak Ridge was built for the express purpose
of helping Uncle Sam build the first atomic bomb. Oh yeah,
And we have some information here coming from the Center
for Oak Ridge Oral History residents there on the land
of people who actually lived in Oak Ridge. A lot
of the families lived in the area really on just

(19:36):
in poverty or on the brink of poverty for generations.
And then all of a sudden, when this land was purchased,
all of them we're just kicked out just by you
have to leave. The government is moving in apologies, but
not really just get out. And uh. The the Feds

(19:56):
came through the federal government and they condemned the land
and they pay the residents like really nothing, just to
get them the heck out of there as quickly as possible. Right.
According to the New Hope Center, one resident at the
time received nine hundred dollars for forty acres of land.
That's about twenty two dollars and fifty cents per acre.
If that's crazy. If we ad just for inflation, that's

(20:18):
about fourteen thousand, a hundred and seventy seven dollars total, oh,
which works out to about three d fifty four dollars
and forty three cents breaker today. Talk about a steal,
you know what I mean. So let's keep the timeline
here too. If you look into the Center for Oakridge
Oral History, you'll see stories from people recalling that as children,

(20:42):
the principal called everybody into the school and told them
they had received a special report or special contact from
the federal government. It was September ninety two. They all
had to be out by December two. Uproot your entire
life right, and the logic here is solid and did
is also ruthless. It's very important to again emphasized this

(21:04):
happened in the United States not very long ago. Yeah,
you have to imagine what the residents were going through,
what their lives were like, in order to really understand right. First,
a lot of the rural residents would doubtlessly accept this
lump sum of cash. It's a windfall, you know, it
could literally be a life changing amount of scratch for

(21:27):
a population where running water and indoor plumbing were often
a pipe dream. Terrible choice awards on the level of
science fiction. But there's a there's a second, more disturbing
fact that played too well. Yeah, a lot of the
folks living around there didn't have um the education, let alone,

(21:49):
you know, someone with enough money to come through and
mount any kind of legal protest or action against what
the federal government was doing to them. And it was
very clear that no matter what, the federal government was
moving in and you could either essentially take the money
or just leave right, You're gonna take the money leave
or you're just gonna leave right. They you know, this

(22:13):
is this is kind of an eminent domain thing, too right.
They could say for the greater good, you have to
leave this place. We'll give you a little bit of money.
You have to leave this place. And being impoverished, they
simply do not have the recourse to legal action, even
if they could find someone who would represent them. It

(22:34):
is all happening, by the way, under strict secrecy, so
there's not going to be any kind of public trial.
It will get quashed. Just a few years later, Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
has seventy five thousand people living and working in the area.
Very few of those seventy thousand people knew the ultimate

(22:54):
purpose of the secret city. Many had no idea what
they were working on until the Nineted States dropped the
first atomic bomb on Japan and the local paper said,
you know, oak Ridge delivers something to the Japanese. Yeah,
exactly what I've just mentioning there that seventy five thou

(23:14):
people lived and lived in the area. It's not you know,
we were talking about cities. We set this whole episode
up talking about cities. Oak Ridge was not like one
big facility where everyone went to work every day and
then everybody just left the area. They built a city. Yeah, yes, schools,
post office, shops, movie theater and some of the people

(23:37):
who were originally kicked out by the FEDS managed to
get jobs later at oak Ridge, and they didn't know
what they were doing. They did not know that they
were processing and enriching uranium. Today, if you wish, you
can visit oak Ridge. It's still processes uranium today. And
while this is one of the more popular examples of

(23:59):
his secret city, it is far from the only case
of one. There are more closed cities and they remain
closed today will give an honorable mention to Mercury, Nevada,
which spoiler alert, I'd like to save for another episode. Well,
then we won't say anything else about it. Thank you
for you know, glancing across this episode, Mercury, Nevada. We

(24:23):
look forward to seeing you again soon. Radioactive ships in
the night. Well, you know we're we're mentioning, yes, but
we're talking about Oakridge and just it had a hand
in the Manhattan Project. And I don't know if I
want to spoil too much. We talked we made an
episode on the Manhattan Project not too long ago, I believe,
didn't we Maybe we didn't. Maybe it's just that other

(24:45):
secret project we're working on. Yeah, or maybe we're both
remembering forward again. I hate um. Oh, it's interesting that
we're hitting Oakridge, Tennessee in the United Dates. Um, kind
of in the heartland where the Manhattan Project was being
carried out, where nuclear testing in the first atomic bombs

(25:09):
were developed. Uh, in the United States, that we're hitting
that first. Knowing where we're going in this episode, that's right,
Where are we going? Indeed, where in the world will
we find our next forbidden city? Will tell you after
a word from our sponsor. In what should not be

(25:33):
a stunning plot twist to anybody was listened to this
show in the past, we are of course headed to Russia,
Soviet Russia. Yes, like the US, the Soviet Union was
also scrambling to event new terrifying weapons of war, and
like the US, they decided secret cities were the best

(25:54):
way to carry out their work. So there were several
of actually numerous conspiratorial communities, communities that were off the books,
forbidden secret. A little bit of the you know what
would be considered the iron dome, the iron veil that
keeps information from leaking out, was was lifted. When these

(26:18):
places were officially called they get they were given a
name Closed Administrative Territorial Entities UM, and that translates to
if you if you take the crillic you translated, it's
z A t O or ze to. I was in
my hand for some reason ast but I think it's
just because it seems like a cool name for someone

(26:39):
to have. Is my friend. It's very similar to a
kittie cat in Spanish. Yeah, that's I don't know, that's
that's where my head goes. But before then, before. If
you look at any government census, both in the so

(27:00):
Viet Union and Russia proper and different members of the
Soviet Union, you will see that these cities and the
hundreds of thousands of people living and working in them
simply do not exist. Closed cities were not marked on maps,
and there were no road marks that could lead some
ignorant uh naive traveler to the secret settlement. It was

(27:22):
built such that you couldn't just accidentally be there and say, oh,
look look at me. Well, especially if you were taking
any kind of public transportation like a train or a
bus or anything like that, you would not be able
to find them. You would have to get in a
vehicle and then like just explore until you got to
the gates where generally they say attention, stay out, like

(27:45):
you cannot come in here. Um. And and it's crazy
where you know, we we talked about this, this concept
of the city itself was secret, so it was hidden
away um, which is kind of mind blowing thinking about
large buildings and everything being secret. But then also that
the human beings that occupied the cities were taken, like

(28:07):
you said, literally taken off of the census and families
like when you have a child and you live in
one of these places, that child is ostensibly doesn't exist
outside of the books for that closed city, right, exactly,
so strange and you can see that, you can see
the problem here. It's it sets up a slippery slope.

(28:27):
That's similar to, uh, the problem that the government of
China is having with unregistered births. Right when they had
the one child policy. What ended up happening because a
lot of parents you know, of course want to have
the children that they were going to have. Uh, there's
there's been this rise of a population of of human beings,

(28:53):
female people in China who are unregistered, so they have
no rights, they have no access to you know, healthcare, education, medicine.
It's a terrible, terrible situation. It's all because of a
couple of pieces of paper. How often does that happen
with our species? You know, other animals don't do that.
I'm not saying other animals are better than our brand

(29:14):
of animal, but I don't see, even though nature's brutal,
I don't see a lot of other intelligent creatures, you know,
committing such horrific acts over paperwork. Yeah. Um, we could
really get into this if you want to but that's uh,
that's an intense discussion to have right there. Then, the

(29:35):
just the concept that a small paper that either proves
that you are who you are or from a certain area,
he has life, life or death consequences throughout time. Like
when we did that earlier, we definitely did a video
in this The concept of statelessness, people who do not

(29:57):
have a country of origin so strange. But in this case,
the people in these closed cities in the U. S.
S r As will come to find they did not
have a huge problem with living life as ghost people.
According to the bureaucracy and actually according to some reporting
that's come out fairly recently, uh, from and and interviews

(30:20):
from people who have lived inside these places because they
got perks. Yeah, they had a pretty good There's a
documentary we'll talk about a little bit later where you
can see some of these quotes. And there there are
people who say, we got everything that we wanted for
the rest of our lives for staying here, so of
course we would stay here. Don't screw this up for

(30:42):
us outsiders. Residents of these close cities were given private apartments,
right and this is during the era of communisms. It's
a big get for them, uh decent healthcare, and they
had jobs for life, They had job security. And at
a time when the much of the rest of the
USSR was having a difficult time coming by the most

(31:04):
basic of staples, you know what I mean, wheat, milk, eggs,
stuff like that, residents of these close cities were getting
things that were exotic for the time, like bananas, condensed milk.
They had a lot of meat products. They could eat. Literally,
caviare was available. Literally caviare. Yes, yes, literally caviare, although
you probably would not want to eat the caviare, which

(31:26):
is a spoiler depending on the city. So even today,
here's the thing, even today, most residents of these close
cities consider themselves incredibly fortunate to be living in a
zato area. They're not bothered by the barbed wire fencing
that surrounds them, or the cognitive fencing and bureaucratic fencing
that also surrounds them. They're very mission oriented. Instead of

(31:50):
diving into uh, the numerous the numerous Cold War era
close cities that we know about to a and speculating
on the fifteen or twenty that are more or less
certain to exist but remain secret, let's just look at
a few like high level examples. What do you think? Oh, yeah, absolutely,

(32:11):
And you know, each of these that we're going to
talk about coming up are their own thing. Everything we've
been talking about before this in relation to these zeto areas, Um,
it's similar, very similar. But each one of these is
going to have its own tail. And so let's take
you to a place called I'm gonna try and pronounce
this Zeleno Gorsk. Yeah, we are not Russian. Please send in,

(32:39):
dear Russian speakers in the audience, please send in the
correct pronunciations here. We would always prefer to be correct
rather than comfortable. So Zelenos is located in Russia by
the Khan River k A and was built in the
forties fifties era as part of the Soviet dry I

(33:00):
to enrich uranium for the uss are nuclear program. Like
oak Ridge, this city at a population of thousands, and
although it existed for decades, it was not on official
maps until nineteen two. Imagine trying to get mail. Oh,
by the way, when these things are in full swing
and some of them still operate this this way today. Uh,

(33:22):
these cities are not as you said, Matt on training
bus routes they're only known by a postal code, a name,
and a number. So what it would be like it
would be like a decade forty seven or something. Yeah, yeah,
exactly with that with that postal code. And the other
thing here is just like oak Ridge. We're kind of

(33:43):
comparing these two places. They this place still supplies a
good amount of the uranium, uh for for Russia's production
there it Um, it's no, it's twenty of the enrichment
capacity that exists within Russia. So the actual place with
center fugees that are enriching uranium, that's crazy to think, um,

(34:05):
but even sends uranium to other countries, including the United States,
just because you know, you need a little extra uranium.
Sometimes oak Ridge can't do all the production. You get
by with a little help from your friends. Yeah, exactly. Um,
And we're we're continuing with that trend here of a
lot of these closed off cities were specifically meant to

(34:27):
to create or at least assist in the creation of
weapons of war, like massive weapons of war, new technologies
that could be used to establish dominance or at least
hopefully right. Let's go to one of the most famous examples,
a town called Ozersk, also known as City forty Osirisk,

(34:48):
is located in the Ural Mountains. It was founded in
nineteen seven. First it was known as Chilia Binsk forty,
then Chillia Bank sixty five. Like other clothes cities, as
you said, Matt, Osarsk was built to aid the Soviet
nuclear program. Unlike some other forbidden cities, Osarsk has received

(35:09):
a great deal of media attention, notably in a documentary
called City forty, which we highly recommend. Yeah, seriously check
it out if you possibly can, or at least read
up on the contents of it, because there are so
many fascinating stories and humans involved, and it is a
tragic story. So the citizens of this place of City

(35:32):
forty have a fairly unique dilemma, and I quite like
the way the Guardian put it in an article on
the on the closed city. It's this Their water is contaminated,
their mushrooms and berries are poisoned, and their children may
be sick. Ozarsk in the surrounding region is one of
the most contaminated places on the planet, referred to by

(35:52):
some as the graveyard of Earth. Yet most of City
forties residents do not want to leave they take pride
in their community. They still have that attitude of um
feeling that they have received immense privilege. Yes, and they
and they have in a lot of ways, and their

(36:16):
families have benefited from that privilege. But their families have
also in most cases a family member or two or
more have died because they have lived in that place. Right. Yeah,
they were heavily contaminated by industrial pollution from the nearby
Mayact plutonium plant from the what the late nineteen forties on,

(36:39):
This was an ongoing thing. This plant was one of
the largest producers of weapons grade plutonium for the Soviet
Union during a lot of the Cold War, particularly during
the atomic bomb program. And uh, it was built with
once again the greater good in my and you got

(37:00):
to break a few eggs. We want to get some
atomic omelets, said the Soviet government. You know what I mean,
What's what's a couple of people in the great balance
of life? You know what I mean, the Kuna matata,
et cetera, they said, And then they built this with
no regard for safety. Well, yeah, that's that's the crazy thing.

(37:20):
It's um. There have been several one major disaster that
occurred at one of the major plants there that ended
up irradiating. I think it was like two hundred thousand
people or something like that, or it was a crazy
number of people in villages that just lived, you know,
upstream or away from the actual plant. Because these they

(37:45):
were dumping radioactive waste directly into the water, into that
into that river that we keep talking about there, and
we're dumping solid waste, liquid waste, gashes matter, all radioactive,
and we're doing this for more for not more than,
but for around a decade from seven. Yeah. And here's

(38:08):
here's the part that was mind blowing for me as
I was learning about it. You know, when you and
when you imagine a um, a nuclear accident or a disaster,
what comes to mind Chernobyl, right island Chernobyl. Chernobyl always
is at the top of the list. And over all
this time when the waste was being dumped, the sum

(38:30):
of contamination of radioactive contamination is has been estimated to
be two to three times the release from the Chernobyl
accident explosions. Now here's the deal. Chernobyl kind of occurred, exploded,
your your radioactive waste is you know, gone into the
air and is spread out across a wide area. But

(38:51):
for this they're literally pumping out the radioactive waste continually
for a decade. In nine, and this reaches ahead, the
Mayac plant is the site of an enormous disaster. An
underground tank of highly irradiated liquid nuclear waste explodes and

(39:12):
it contaminates thousands of square kilometers of territory. Nowadays, it's
known as the Eastern You're All Radioactive Trace or the
r TO e U r T. The problem is that
this disaster is quietly, efficiently and ruthlessly covered up and
very very few people inside or outside of the USSR

(39:34):
we're aware of what actually happened until at least nineteen
eighty and this has also been called the Kishtom disaster. Specifically,
you know, this is September twenty nine. And I really
appreciate what you're pointing out here, Matt, because we're all

(39:54):
familiar with your noble, especially in the world of fiction
in the in the recent day and age, because there
was a masterful mini series done that I think aired
on HBO, but it didn't really address this. And can
you imagine living here and you've been told that you

(40:16):
are the sword and shield uh to save the world. Right,
that's why you and your family are working and this
this great project to make this new weapon of war.
You're not doing it two so chaos. You're doing it
to um guarantee peace well and also be triumphant over
those who want to do harm. Right, exactly because everywhere

(40:38):
is a war of defense. Da da da da da
da da da. But UH didn't mean to sound so dismissive.
I just don't believe it when people say that anymore,
you know. But the the kicker is imagine being that person.
So you're ideologically on board, probably, and you learn weeks

(41:03):
after the fact, at the very least weeks after the fact,
that you're you and your children have been irradiated, and
you can't find anything about it, even in the news,
even in the secret city newspaper that's supposed to give
you one of the inner circle. You know what what happened?
Why are you only seeing these vague reports and why

(41:25):
don't they jibe with the first hand sightings you're hearing
of people with skin falling off their faces, their body
parts being exposed, their hair falling out along with their toenails,
and so on. Yeah, let me quickly paint a scenario
just for all of us sitting here and listening. Let's

(41:46):
imagine that we are one of them, uh minority few
who live out somewhere in a rural area. And let's
say we live in Russia. It's nine and our small
family owned some farmland and lots and lots of live stock,
or at least enough livestock to you know, to survive,

(42:08):
as well as a lot of crops, and we're just
hanging out. We're doing all the strenuous work we have
to do every day to maintain what we have, which
is still very little, and then all of a sudden,
you know, we don't notice anything. Really. We heard maybe
about a big bang, a large bang that occurred somewhere,

(42:29):
you know, southwest of here a couple of days ago,
but that's all we've really heard about. There were some
weird clouds that came over, like appeared to be smoked
or something, but we haven't thought about any of that
stuff since that day. Well, a big truck rolls through
with a lot of our you know countrymen are our
military people. They're they're just coming through and they happen

(42:52):
to stop by our farm, and they let us know
that today we have to slaughter all of our cattle.
We have to uproot and then bury all of our crops.
Then we have to plow all that over, and then
we have to get the heck out because they're going
to purchase our farm for almost nothing. They're also wearing

(43:12):
containment suits. Uh. Then they did not bring spares, just
letting us know. And here's the other thing. Um, let's
say that occurs, and then years later, after you know
that went down, you know what's occurred. Nobody has put
any record of this down. Nobody is talking about all
the other farms like that. We're just in this giant

(43:37):
line that I can look at a map and see,
Like I know people lived in this line and they
all had to sell their houses, their their farms, but
nobody's talking about it. There's a beauty, the dark beauty
to the brutal logic there. It's the same way that
rural people in the US could not fight back against

(43:58):
this and being taken. Uh. People who do not officially
exist have no legal recourse because they are ghosts. It
just now reached a point where their physical condition matched
the condition of the paperwork, which is in just insidious.
I mean it is it is unclean to do that

(44:22):
to people. But I see the logic of it, and
there are plenty, plenty more. We could probably do an
episode per city on closed cities in Russia, but we
don't want to just stay in the Cold War in
the US and Russia or the U. S. S R.
Excuse me, Let's take a quick look at other cities,
some of which might surprise you. In the mainland of China,

(44:45):
there is a place called the Nuclear Town. It is
in the Gobi Desert in the western part of Gonsu Province. Officially,
it's called the Number four or four Factory of China
National Nuclear Corporation. I love that it's called World four right,
for it's such a bad Internet joke. It's unknown. I
hope someone did it on purpose. It's not found gosh,

(45:08):
so it's built back in So probably not a good
joke unless the people who did four oh four and
the Internet we're making a sideways reference to this fact.
Probably not. Probably not. The world is not that convenient
nor well written. I say we. I say we go
with it until someone tells us it's for something else,
and then let's accuse them of covering it up. Well,

(45:30):
that sounds like a plan of that. So this is
the biggest nuclear industry base in the country that we
know of. It's the country's first military nuclear reactor. Eight
percent of China's nuclear bomb core components are built there.
For twenty years, it was completely closed to outsiders. And

(45:50):
that's not the only case in China. There are a
couple of other more remote places where you have to
apply for what's called an alien travel document in advance
to visit, and you have to report to the police
as soon as like your accommodations as soon as you
stay somewhere, and if you don't follow everything to the letter,
you get the boot. They will immediately take you out

(46:13):
of the country. Yeah, just get the heck out, man,
We've got this running thing. We're gonna come back to
it in the conclusion. But just if you're going to
create facile material to be weaponized for any reason, or
just let's say it's just to run a power plant,

(46:33):
it's a lot a lot of people that are doing that,
are making these weird, hidden, creepy cities. Yeah, it turns
out to maybe be the best way to go about this,
right because if you have because you can control more variables,
if you if you have the entire city purpose built
like we have. Um. You know, we have military armament

(46:58):
manufacturers that are based in or near large urban areas,
but they no matter how how well they secure their grounds,
they cannot control the millions of people who live like
you know, across the river or through the woods. I

(47:18):
don't know whatever you want to say. So this is
this is a very common trend, and these secret cities
are still around today, and in some cases, yes, the
people who live in them do not technically exist on paper.
We want to do one more example is something that
is completely different. It's a closed city, close part of

(47:40):
a city that does not exist for nuclear research and
does not exist for some kind of um human rights
abuse or concentration camp thing. Right, so let's travel to
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, you've heard it before. This is

(48:00):
not a The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Kasa should not
be a new thing to any of our listeners. It
is a unique country in the world of geopolitics for
a number of reasons, and its most famous close city
is no different. Unlike the majority of secret cities we've
mentioned today, Mecca is not closed due to top secret
military or industrial research. Instead. It's a partially closed city

(48:23):
because every year millions, millions and millions of people visit
and you can too, as long as you like them
or a practitioner of Islam, because only Muslims are allowed
in Mecca. It is the holiest, most important city in
the religion. It has off limits under any circumstances to

(48:44):
any non Muslims. Don't even try. If you do attempt
and you don't meet all of those requirements, you will
immediately be deported and that will be it. Thank you
for trying to come in, but we don't appreciate you.
Why No, I'm just kidding. It's not it's not that harsh,
but you would definitely get deported immediately. Well, you know,
the penalty and practice maybe much harsher than deportation, And

(49:07):
a lot of it depends on what kind of person
you are, your country of origin, ryes uh, and it
could go up to and including assault, torture, murder. You
just you don't know. And as a personal message to
anybody else who enjoys traveling to the edges of the maps,
to the places where normal people don't take vacation, I

(49:30):
I definitely want to warn every non Muslim person against
trying to sneak into Mecca. It's not like taking a
quick illicit trip across the poorous Midwestern or Alaskan border
between Canada and the US. Your chances of being caught
are extremely high. If you feel that you must go

(49:51):
to Mecca, that you genuinely must go there. The most
rational choice is to convert to Islam beforehand, actually do it.
Attempting to fake conversion will also, by the way, in
all likelihood fail. Now, I know that there are photographs
of plenty of someone who said, like, it's nucketting a

(50:11):
Mecca or whatever. There was a recent story about a
guy who I think acquired his Israeli citizenship in fourteen
UH and he visited UH and he said that it
was on the up and up. But I have a
tough time believing him. And and also you know, inherently

(50:33):
it's the most important city in this religion. The millions
of people follow And I don't know, Man, this is
a personal take. I kind of I want your opinion
to Matt. Should people be able to do that? I
feel like personally would be disrespectful for me to say, well,
I don't care about your core belief system. I need

(50:54):
some selfies, you know what I mean that that just
feels I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it certainly doesn't feel
like a good idea. Um. I'm trying to find a
like something that would be the equivalent. But I don't
know if there's any thing in the world that's as

(51:15):
close to that. There are I mean, it's trying to
imagine the whaling wall or but it's not like it's restricted.
Well in in some religions in the West, like the
Church of Latter day Saints, don't they not allow some
people into the temple like people are not Yeah, I
mean yeah, we're scientology or any you know, a lot

(51:36):
of a lot of these belief systems would have closed
off areas, closed off things. Right, that's like micro understandings,
but a large place, um like Mecca. It's it's interesting,
um hmmm, trying to imagine for some Well, no, it's
not the same. Someone started a religion and it was
based in Detroit. Yeah, and they said you can't go

(51:57):
to Detroit unless you follow this relation. Let me say, well,
Detruit it's pretty big, very bad. No. No, no, that
that call back just working live, you know, told Gold No,
But but it is I think the core of what

(52:19):
you're saying in that it's a bad idea to undermine
this this rule that's in place, you know, for a reason,
for a very popular belief system. That's probably a bad idea.
But then you know, I'm I always imagine the spycraft

(52:39):
that occurs in a place like Mecca or in a
place like Jerusalem or the Vatican. You know, there's probably
fascinating deep spycraft occurring in all of those places from
varying countries, for with varying interests, you know. Um, And
that's just me assuming, but that's what I'm imagining when

(53:01):
you're talking about something as closed off as Mecca is. Yeah. Yeah,
And of course you know, we have we have a
lot of listeners, um, who are who are very close
to their faith, you know what I mean, and ardent
practitioners thereof Just just to me, and again this is

(53:21):
just my opinion. I do. I feel like it's completely
okay to say, hey, out of respect for our belief system,
just sorry, this one part of the world doesn't have
to be yours. I I think that's perfectly okay. Like
a luru or airs rock, because it's sometimes called in Australia,

(53:45):
the native population said, that's very important to us. Please
just stop having your self aggrandizing tourist adventures here. The
only problem is the moment you say you can't go here.
I mean, it's it's that old thing like don't touch
that button. I don't think of pink elephants, you know. Yeah,

(54:05):
I mean psychologically that that occurs in many of us. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I'm no different. Obviously. What would be better
is if you just kept it off the map, nobody
knew about it. You just had a postal code, if
you if you were aware of you know, Mecca. But
that's it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, there's the other part. Two.

(54:28):
I would go on record saying that it's completely different
if someone says, okay, we have founded our new city
or our new religion or belief system, and everybody who
was living here before either convert g T F O.
I think that's very different. Yes, you know what I mean.
I agree, I'm making I'm not trying to make light

(54:49):
of anyway, trying to make a call back that I
think didn't work. Oh gosh, well, uh, instead of calling back,
maybe let's call forward. Because it seems the story continues
for all of these places we just mentioned. In the
case of Russia, currently it's estimated they're about forty four

(55:10):
closed cities in existence, about one point five million people
living these total, and there are also, according to rumors,
around fifteen other closed cities that exist without their whereabouts
or their names being disclosed by the government. If you
would like to visit a closed city, I'm very excited

(55:32):
about giving this a shot one day. You are welcome
to give it the old college. Try getting into these
places is if you look at the spectrum of difficult
entries and exits, it's easier than entering North Sentinel Island,
but it's still tougher than getting into a place like
the DPRK North Korea. Non residents who want to visit

(55:56):
closed cities have to get a special pass from the
Russia Security Service that the secret police. Essentially, So if
you Matt, and you Paul, and I am you listening,
if we all, if we all got together and we
requested these passes, depending on the city and you know, hinge,

(56:18):
on the fact that we are not Russian nationals, we
would almost certainly be rejected. And that's not that's not
all applying for one of these things. Even if you
are Russian national and you're related to someone who lives
in a close city, Applying for one of these things,
whether or not you were accepted, puts you on a

(56:38):
list with Russian intelligence for the rest of your life. Yeah.
You know what else gets you on that lists? That
listening to an episode with the metadata Z A T
O and Russia Secret cities. Oh no, it is. I'm
pretty sure I had a depressing conversation with um, some
of my old some of my old colleagues about out

(57:02):
which countries you can get into and out of, Like
the stands are pretty much no goes for me, and
UH and my friends were working in PRC. We're saying, well,
you know, it's okay, I guess, uh, as long as
your podcast isn't in Mandarin. Whoa. And you know, it

(57:22):
makes me think, like what happened with those um with
those folks for Radio Free America? Did you hear about this?
Did we Did we talk about this here? I don't
know if we talked about it, might have had as Yeah,
so some weaker journalists that we're working with Radio Free America,
which is a US supported propaganda network, but it doesn't

(57:44):
mean it's percent wrong all the time. Uh. Their families
have been threatened. And there's an intense debate going on
now about the situation western China, which we should report
on more soon. We we got there a little bit
before international news. Anyhow, if you want to visit this place,

(58:05):
and if it is worth being on a list with
Russian intelligence for the rest of your life, not necessarily
a bad thing, I guess, then yeah, you're more than
welcome to apply. But keep in mind passes are only
given to those who have relatives and closed cities or
people are traveling to close cities on a business trip.
So for like, hey, maybe we use different names, you know,

(58:26):
like um Johnny America, I'm and I'm dim me big
Bucks and we're here for oil I don't know. Then
the new new kind of uh rollerblade, then maybe we
can get in. But even then access isn't guaranteed. You

(58:46):
can try to get a permanent past, but it's more challenging.
You know, there are two ways to get them. Basically,
you have to have been born there, or you have
to work in one of the enterprises they need, so
be a nuclear scientist, or be born there and get
irradiated while you hang out in City forty, just like
everybody else. So this is something I know we're wrapping

(59:06):
up here, but really quickly something that struck me. We're
we talked about that disaster that officially didn't occur within
City forty, at least for a long time, it was
not disclosed that that actually happened and that amount of
radiation was released into the wild. It makes me think
about oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the place where the United States,

(59:30):
you know started it's it's nuclear industry. Really um, it
makes me wonder if anything has occurred within within that
area that was never reported and was just covered up,
and people and livestock and crops were dosed beyond you know,

(59:54):
any sane amount and we just never found out about
it because if we were to find out about it,
there would be such an uproar um. I just it
makes me wonder. Now, there's a side of me that says,
if something like that did occur at oak Ridge, then
there's no way they could completely cover that up. Some

(01:00:15):
paper somewhere, somebody would know, somebody would talk. But the
other part of me thinks it was at a time
of war and just like the people of City forty.
We were told, and we believed the people who lived
there at the time, that we were fighting the good fight.
This is all in the name of the United States victory,
This is all the name of securing our families futures,

(01:00:39):
and we'll go along with it. And then they all
died because they got dosed by radiation. Yeah, they died.
They died to a terminal condition known as the greater Good.
But that's all fabricated and from my mind, I'm just
wondering occurred. Yeah, that's the disturbing thing. It's possible, you
know what I mean, Like the villa in Sedents where

(01:01:01):
the nuclear bomb was tested. Uh, these things happen. They
may not happen in your backyard, but that doesn't make
them any less terrifying. And now it gets to our
final question. How long will these closed cities stay closed?
Some are Cold War relics, but a surprising amount of

(01:01:23):
them are still manufacturing facile material right there, enriching uranium.
They're making weapons, gray platonium. Business is booming, business is good.
Those cities may well stay closed. And what about the
ones that we don't know, the ones that are still
off of the maps. It's strange. It's strange to think about.

(01:01:43):
And here we hand it to you. Folks. Are there
any closed or restricted areas in your neck of the woods?
If so, what are they? What do you know about them?
Give us the scoop if you can. Do you live
in a closed city. If you do, congratulations on your
VPN bro nice one. Uh let us let us know

(01:02:06):
to the extent that you're able. What what your experiences
or your loved ones experiences living in this place. We
have so many ways for you to get in touch
with us. Yes, find us on Twitter or Facebook where
we are Conspiracy Stuff. We are at Conspiracy Stuff Show
on Instagram. Ben, what is your personal Instagram? I do
have one. You can see me do various things at

(01:02:31):
Ben Bolan on Instagram and I'm met Frederick Underscore. iHeart
good luck to you. You might find it. I've only
got like four or five posts on there. Who cares.
You're not gonna like it, don't look at it, but
it's there. Oh, that's some of the psychology you were
talking about earlier. Yeah, because your Instagram a closed city.
It is. But I'm but I'm telling you the postal code. No,

(01:02:55):
I'm not I'm telling you exactly what anyway that's that exists.
If you don't like any of that stuff, you can
give us a call. We are one eight three three
S T D W y t K. Leave a message
you might get on the air. We're gonna hear what
you say. The phone doesn't ring, so we just hear
your message. But it's fascinating for us, and we like

(01:03:16):
hearing from you that way. If you don't want to
do any of that stuff, the best way to contact
us is to send a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they

(01:03:46):
Don't Want You to Know is a production of i
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