Urban Exploring Abandoned Tanks Around the World

URBAN EXPLORING HUNDREDS OF ABANDONED TANKS AROUND THE WORLD
WITH PIX AND VID
By Shuk Yee Tsang
Check out these incredible clips of an urban explorer discovering various abandoned tanks around the world.
Urban explorer and animator Bob Thissen from Born, Netherlands, has travelled far and wide in search of hundreds of derelict military machinery from France and Belgium to the forests of the United States, the Atacama Desert in Chile, Taiwan’s coastline, and even the disputed buffer zone of Cyprus.
On these expeditions, Bob has come across entire tank graveyards: M60 Pattons, AMX-30s, M113 APCs, French EBRs, and other armoured giants left to rust in silence.
In southern France, Bob explored an overgrown testing site filled with armoured vehicles like the AMX-13 light tank and the AMX-30 battle tank. Many of the machines had been used for explosives testing their turrets blown off, hatches missing, and armour scorched from impact.
On the Chilean coast, Bob uncovered rust-covered tanks near an abandoned training area in the Atacama Desert. With no rain and blazing sun, the vehicles looked frozen in time more like a museum exhibit than scrap metal.
Many of the tanks still have remnants of the crews who once operated them, ration tins, spent shells, and graffiti etched into the metal by soldiers long gone.
Bob’s videos show how nature reclaims even the most brutal machines, with moss growing over tracks and weeds sprouting through open hatches.
Some sites were former military zones, while others are simply forgotten relics too large to move, too damaged to restore, and too old to matter to anyone but explorers like Bob.
In one eerie location in the U.S., Bob found rows of Cold War-era M60 tanks camouflaged in NATO colours and scattered among pine trees. Some had gaping holes in their hulls now used as target practice while others still bore markings from their military service.
Bob said: “These tanks were once a key part of U.S. firepower.
”Now they’re just sitting here, forgotten in the woods, slowly falling apart.
“They’re like ghosts of war, machines designed for destruction, now destroyed themselves."
Further afield in Taiwan, Bob ventured into the remains of a coastal military base, where old M41 Walker Bulldog tanks were rusting away on a windswept cliff edge, once positioned to repel a Chinese invasion. Some still pointed out to sea.
He said: “They haven’t been moved in decades,” “You can almost feel the tension of what these places were preparing for.”
And on Cyprus, Bob explored the Green Line the UN buffer zone dividing the island where a handful of derelict tanks sit behind sandbags and rusting barbed wire, untouched since 1974.
Bob explained: “What makes these places so unique is the combination of history, decay, and the feeling of time standing still.
“You're not just looking at a vehicle. You're looking at a story that ended decades ago and nobody bothered to clean up.
“It’s not just about the tanks. It’s about what they represent the politics, the fear, the power, and now, the silence.
“These are the scars of history. And they’re fading fast.”
END