Here's one of the many videos on YouTube looking at a handful of the abandoned places across the U.S.. There are literally MILLIONS of vacant houses in this country, and tens of thousands of abandoned commercial buildings, dilapidated factories, vacant stores, dead malls, recently vacant office buildings, and post-apocalyptic looking places in the United States. There are many more around the world.
Simulpocalypse- (SIGH-mole-pock-a-lips) is a word I coined to describe how the United States has a growing number of vacant and abandoned buildings, and post-apocalyptic looking locations, while normal, everyday society goes on simultaneously, as if it isn't happening.
Kids from the 1960's and 1970's, late Baby Boomers and Gen X kids like myself, grew up being told that a worldwide nuclear apocalypse could wipe out civilization at any time. That's a thought that can put a damper on your vision of the future. We saw a growing number of post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies as we grew up, ranging from the original Planet of the Apes movie from 1968, to the early Mad Max movies, and films like Damnation Alley, which featured the coolest RV ever. As kids then, we regularly had drills where we had to get under our school desks, which is what we were supposed to do if a nuclear missile was about to destroy our town. Really. Yes, we realized the school desk wouldn't really help, we would all be blown to smithereens, but no one seemed to care.
Now it's the year 2025, us Gen Xers are middle aged, about 50 years into "the future" of our childhood selves. Guess what, we have never had a full scale, worldwide nuclear apocalypse. That's a good thing. Yet... somehow... we have thousands of places in the U.S. alone that are abandoned, or now look post-apocalyptic. Places like this, and this, and even this. How the hell did that happen?
Why do we have so many post-apocalyptic looking places if we've never had a nuclear apocalypse? Or any apocalypse? Most of these individual locations are now abandoned for financial reasons, and some are abandoned because of environmental events, or a combination of both. Most people don't realize just how many of these places there are. There are over 12 million vacant houses in the U.S. at any given time. That number includes vacation homes, second homes, and houses that are for sale or are short term rentals currently empty. But there are lots of completely abandoned houses as well.
Detroit has over 70,000 abandoned buildings according to Google search results. Flint, Michigan has 24,000 according to Google. Gary, Indiana has over 10,000 abandoned buildings, and Youngstown, Ohio has 740. Gary only has a population of 69,000 people these days, and Youngstown has 60,000 people. These are four cities, all in the Midwest, that were hit exceptionally hard by the factory closings of the late 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. But not all the abandoned places in the United States are in old, rundown industrial towns and cities in the Midwest and The South. I live in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. This is high priced real estate in Southern California. There's a recently closed Guitar Center store a couple of blocks from me right now, and an abandoned small office building next to it. That office building has been vacant for a couple of years, or more. There's a dead mall, almost entirely abandoned, a few miles from here. This is really expensive commercial real estate. Even here, in dramatically high priced SoCal, there are plenty of vacant and abandoned buildings. Obviously, the huge areas devastated by the recent Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena fires in this region have added 12,000 more burned buildings to the list.
When I write about the Simulpocalypse, I'm not talking about these recent tragedies, most of which will ultimately be rebuilt. I'm talking about the thousands of other vacant and abandoned factories, dead malls, empty houses, vacant office buildings, and other dilapidated buildings all over our country. There are so many of these places, that Millennials and Gen Z people started exploring and documenting them, a hobby and movement called Urban Exploring or UrbEx.
On my Substack site, where I write in more depth about a variety of subjects, I've started a series of posts about the Simulpocalypse. I'm looking into the different aspects of this phenomenon, coming at the subject from many different angles. Why are these places abandoned? Why is this happening now? What kinds of places have been abandoned? What forces led to all these empty spaces? Are any of these places being re-imagined and rebuilt? If this sounds interesting to you, take a look. The first three posts are up now, and you can check them out at the links below.
There are no paid links in this post.
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