Abandoned Engineering
S06E10 - The Human Zoo
Research into why and how large projects were built, the financial and social costs of their failure, and the consequences for the environment. Experts present plans to make something new from the ruins.
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The Italian Dam Disaster
An abandoned concrete wall... five strange deserted structures. A lost escape route from nuclear Armageddon... A submerged link to D-day... Once they were at the cutting edge of design and construction, now they lie disused, contaminated and dangerous. But who built them? And why were they abandoned?
The Abandoned Nazi Railway
The Abandoned Nazi Railway
The Canfranc Railway Station is an elaborate abandoned Nazi railway station built near a town of only 500 people in the Pyrenees in Spain. But why was it built there and what secrets does it hold? Also examined in this episode is the Salton Sea Navy Base in California - a military post in the middle of the desert in the American west, the Kola Superdeep borehole - a wrecked record-holding Arctic facility in Russia that goes deep, deep underground, and a huge tower looming over an industrial area in Belgium. All of these extraordinary places and objects were at the cutting edge of design and construction, but now they stand disused, sometimes contaminated and sometimes dangerous.
America's Jungle City
America's Jungle City
This week, find out why Fordlandia Rubber Town, a symbol of the American dream first established by Henry Ford in the 1920s, is now left rotting in the Amazonian rainforest. Also, what secrets do the enormous monoliths scattered across a secret forest complex in Eastern Poland hold? And what secrets does a fortified corridor of death with a Cold war past stretching for miles across Hötensleben, Germany hold? And a bizarre structure in South Western France built to speed trade was once at the forefront of design, now lies disused and abandoned, but why?
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Research into why and how large projects were built, the financial and social costs of their failure, and the consequences for the environment. Experts present plans to make something new from the ruins.