What happens to abandoned villages and how they got that way in the first place is simply amazing. There are hundreds of abandoned villages throughout the world, each with its unique tale of how it came to be that way. Some may have been abandoned due to natural reasons, while others may have been abandoned because they no longer provided anything useful to the inhabitants.
Here is a list of some of the most intriguing abandoned locations.
Chaiten, Chile; South America
A volcano erupted in 2008, destroying the village of Chaiten. To make matters worse, the Blanco River flooded the whole town, rendering the residents unable to return. Almost 9,000 years before this devastation, the village was in the path of another volcanic explosion. The government was able to reconstruct the town a few miles away from the original location, but it was still too near to the volcano. There are destroyed houses and twisted telephone cables; otherwise, there are little signs that anyone ever lived there.
Oradour-sur-Glance, France
Some abandoned areas were natural, while others were man-made. This French hamlet was devastated in 1944 when a German Waffen-SS company slaughtered approximately 600 residents.
Berlin, Nevada
Many cities in the American West were abandoned when miners extracted all of the gold they could find, moving on to the next city with a gold mining potential. Many of the communities still exist today and are famous tourist destinations.
Pripyat, Ukraine
