Ready for a wild tour of the world’s most extreme cities? From icy Alaskan towers to an entire oil city built offshore, discover how and why people call these places home! You won’t believe the lengths some go to for gold, coal, or just a loophole. Subscribe for more mind-blowing tales, and let us know in the comments which city amazed you the most! #travel #cities #history #adventure #documentary
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Introduction: Surviving Extreme Places
1:33 - Life Inside Whittier, Alaska
3:51 - Underground Living in Coober Pedy
6:11 - High Altitude Survival in La Rinconada
8:59 - Floating Community of Makoko
11:26 - Life on Crowded Hashima Island
14:28 - Kowloon Walled City: Extreme Urban Density
17:37 - Neft Dashlari: City in the Caspian Sea
22:14 - Why People Settle Harsh Places & Conclusions
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Introduction: Surviving Extreme Places
1:33 - Life Inside Whittier, Alaska
3:51 - Underground Living in Coober Pedy
6:11 - High Altitude Survival in La Rinconada
8:59 - Floating Community of Makoko
11:26 - Life on Crowded Hashima Island
14:28 - Kowloon Walled City: Extreme Urban Density
17:37 - Neft Dashlari: City in the Caspian Sea
22:14 - Why People Settle Harsh Places & Conclusions
Category
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TravelTranscript
00:00in the morning it reaches 18 degrees celsius the wind speed is at 80 kilometers per hour hour
00:07there is a 14 story building by the sea here in alaska 272 people wake up every day
00:16this is not a hotel and it's not a military barracks but an entire city inside a single
00:23building the residents take the elevator to the store go to the doctor and bring their children
00:28to school through an underground tunnel outside the wind is strong and the surroundings are covered
00:36in snow up to the waist this city is called whittier this is the first place we will visit
00:43today all of these places are located in areas that can be extremely cold and hard to endure
00:50extremely hot or where there is almost no solid land to live on memes finally we will go
00:58to a community in the middle of the sea 86 kilometers thousands of people live there
01:04even though there wasn't a single meter of land beneath their feet what drove people to choose
01:10a place to live that seems to have been made by nature not to be inhabited the answer is the
01:17same
01:17for all seven cities and we will find out at the very end but before we begin if you're new
01:23to our
01:23channel please click the subscribe button and also hit the notification bell so you'll always be updated
01:30with our new videos whittier is located on the southern coast of alaska about a hundred kilometers from
01:38anchorage if measured directly it's almost the same distance as from moscow to tula but you can only reach
01:46whittier by land through a four kilometer tunnel that goes through the mountain
01:53this tunnel allows vehicles to pass in one direction at a time and is completely closed at night
02:02if you don't make it before it closes you'll have to spend the night outside or wait until morning
02:09the american military began building a military port here during the second world war
02:15they needed a deep harbor protected by mountains from possible air attacks
02:22in 1950 the military built a 14-story barracks called the hodge building
02:30when the military left the building was turned over to the residents and its name was changed to bagage
02:36towers today 272 people live in whittier and almost all of them live in this building
02:45inside bigot towers there is a grocery store a post office and a police station on another floor
02:52there is a small clinic a baptist church and an indoor children's playground there is a heated and
02:59enclosed walkway from the building to the school so that the children don't have to go outside in the
03:04strong winds why is it that almost everyone is in one building the area receives up to five meters of
03:11snow
03:11and rain each year one of the highest amounts for cities in the united states for half the year it's
03:19almost all snow and the strong winds during winter reach up to 96 kilometers per hour are
03:27a resident named brenda thomann takes care of two reindeer one day the snow near the fence reached over
03:34four meters high because of this the reindeer simply went over the fence and went to the mountains
03:42the city's principle is simple if you can't endure the weather stay inside a sturdy building and live
03:49there for many years but what if the problem outside isn't the cold but extreme heat what if it's so
03:57hot that even the walls of an ordinary house can no longer keep the heat out in australia in the
04:05desert town of cooper petty in january the temperature reached 53.9 degrees celsius in this kind of heat an
04:13aluminum cup gets extremely hot and is painful to touch on a typical summer day the temperature in the
04:20shade reaches 40 to 45 degrees celsius above the city there is always red dust coming from decades of
04:28mining while hundreds of white ventilation pipes can be seen sticking out of the ground instead of the
04:33usual rooftops in 1915 a young boy named willie hutcheson discovered an opal the stone turned out to
04:43be valuable and there was a lot of it in this area from different parts of the world people searching
04:49for opal arrived and they quickly realized that it was impossible to live comfortably above ground
04:55so they used the old mine shafts and started living underground they dug rooms into the sides of the
05:04hills and made corridors the locals call these kinds of homes dugouts inside the dugouts the temperature
05:12stays around 24 degrees celsius all year round even without air conditioning the walls are made of
05:19sandstone which absorbs noise and dust and buffers against sudden temperature changes
05:26today the population of cooper petty is about 2500 people more than half of them live underground
05:34the city's serbian orthodox church is entirely carved into the rock
05:39inside there are icons an altar and lights parishioners go down here as if they're entering a mine
05:47there is an underground hotel in the city an underground museum and even an underground cemetery
05:56a three-bedroom house costs almost the same as a regular house above ground but it doesn't have high
06:02electricity bills when it's extremely hot in the desert above it's cool and quiet underground but what if
06:12the enemy of man is not heat not cold and not even the ground he stands on what if it's
06:19the very air he
06:20breathes in a city in the mountains of the andes only half the usual amount of oxygen is in the
06:27air
06:27yet tens of thousands of people still live there the city is called la larenconada it is located at the
06:36foot of a mountain near a glacier in peru the city's elevation is 5 100 meters above sea level it
06:42is higher
06:43than almost every place in the alps except for the very peak of mont blanc at this kind of altitude
06:49there
06:49is only about half as much oxygen in the air compared to sea level on the first day tourists
06:56may experience severe headaches and vomiting for the body to adjust and to be able to walk normally
07:02it may take almost a month of acclimatization the locals who were born there have more red blood cells
07:10in their blood compared to peruvians who live in lower areas and even so an estimated 30 000 to 50
07:18000
07:19people permanently live in this city what drives them to live in this cold and thin air underground
07:28near the city there is a large deposit of gold from 2001 to 2009 the price of gold almost tripled
07:39because of this gold seekers from different parts of peru flocked here in just over 10 years the
07:46population more than doubled no one planned the city houses and small huts were gradually built on
07:53the mountainside near the glacier in la rinconada there is no proper sewage system water supply or public
08:00waste facilities electricity only arrived in 2000 and it still isn't connected everywhere there is a unique
08:09payment system in the mines called kachoreo a miner works for 30 days without pay on the 31st day
08:17he is allowed to take home as much ore as he can carry no one knows in advance how much
08:25gold is in
08:26that ore it's like a lottery that could cost your health and sometimes even your life
08:32the soil in the city is contaminated with mercury which is used to separate gold from ore in the
08:39simple mining process even the groundwater is contaminated the average life expectancy of a
08:45miner in la rinconada is estimated to be around 30 to 35 years this is lower compared to the average
08:52life expectancy in peru the residents know this but they still continue to go there to work
08:59the extreme altitude leaves humans without enough air and in the next city there really isn't any
09:06solid ground beneath their feet in lagos the largest city in nigeria there is a community called makoko
09:14it is located near a bridge that connects lagos island to the mainland on the left side of the bridge
09:20you can see the skyscrapers and luxury yachts of the wealthy parts of ikoyi on the right side there
09:26are wooden houses standing on stilts driven directly into the lagoon according to various
09:32estimates there are about 85 000 to 300 000 people who may be living in the area the community was
09:40established by fishermen from the egon people in the 19th century so they could be closer to areas
09:46with abundant fish now in the part of makoko that is above the water there are no more normal roads
09:53instead the pathways are waterways that are about one and a half meters deep children ride canoes to
10:01go to school this is their regular school bus on the water you can also see vendors selling bread
10:08vegetables and drinking water under the houses there are boats floating with plastic containers used for
10:15delivering gasoline there is also a floating school in makoko designed by the architect kunle admi
10:22there really is no sewerage system in the area so all the waste ends up in the same lagoon where
10:28the
10:29residents fish electricity runs through hanging wires directly above the roofs and the water only seven
10:37percent of makoko residents have legal rights to the land they live on the authorities in lagos have long
10:44been trying to demolish this area the first demolition happened in 2005 and the second in 2012.
10:52from december 2025 to february 2026 the authorities demolished hundreds of houses built on stilts
11:01under police protection floating excavators were used to demolish the wooden houses without prior warning
11:08according to human rights activists approximately 30 million people lost their homes in just two
11:15months when there is no solid ground beneath their feet people create their own places to live and they
11:23keep building even with excavators around the next city on the other hand has the opposite problem
11:30it only has 4.5 hectares of land for five million people about 15 kilometers from nagasaki in the east
11:38china
11:39sea there is a small rocky outcrop it is 480 meters long and about 160 meters wide because of its
11:48shape which
11:49resembles a japanese warship the island was called gunkanjima while its official name is hashima in 1890 mitsubishi
11:58bought the island from the imperial government of japan a coal deposit was discovered beneath the
12:04island which at that time was one of the main fuels for industry the mines extended under the sea reaching
12:11hundreds of meters deep in fact there was almost no space left to build structures because the entire
12:18island was less than 10 hectares so mitsubishi took a step that had never been taken before in japan in
12:251916 engineers built the country's first multi-story reinforced concrete residential building it was
12:33used as both a hotel and barracks at the same time by 1950 the island had become extremely crowded and
12:40almost all you could see were concrete buildings the buildings were very close to each other and the gaps
12:46stairs and walkways between them were very narrow in 1950 the island's population reached its highest
12:54number with 5259 people the population density was approximately 83 000 people per second core
13:04kilometer this was many times higher compared to modern tokyo there was a school a hospital and a movie
13:11theater there as well as a public bath house two temples and several bars the island didn't have its
13:17own freshwater source so water was brought in from the mainland using an underwater pipe
13:23there was also hardly any soil for plants so residents would bring soil in pots up to the rooftops and
13:30make
13:30small gardens in january 1974 mitsubishi announced the closure of the mine at that time japan had
13:39completely shifted from coal to oil so the mine was no longer profitable just three months later all the
13:47residents left the island they left behind their furniture toys and plates inside their homes between
13:55the buildings there were very narrow spaces so sunlight could hardly reach the lower floors and streets
14:03now no one lives in hashimah little by little the concrete walls are crumbling and parts of the buildings
14:11are falling onto the narrow streets inside the former city tourists are only allowed to go on a specially
14:18protected viewing path the city that once held the record for the highest population density has become
14:24one of the most densely packed clusters of ruins in the world it seems impossible to surpass the density of
14:30hashimah but there is another city that is more than 15 times denser it's not in japan but in hong
14:38kong
14:38itself in the 19th century britain took hong kong from china as a result of the opium wars but a
14:46small
14:47part of the land remained under chinese control that's where the former military fortress of kowloon was
14:53located it measured only about 210 by 210 meters an area slightly larger than 2.5 hectares or roughly equivalent
15:03to five football fields after world war ii refugees from mainland china began to flock to this small area
15:13they couldn't be evicted by the british police because of a jurisdiction issue with china and the chinese
15:19police police wouldn't enter the british zone because of this it became a small area that was largely
15:26uncontrolled and the refugees began to build there they built one house on top of another without
15:32architects permits or plans by 1980 there were about 350 buildings crowded inside the fortress with
15:41interconnected roofs and passageways residents could walk on the upper floors without touching the ground
15:47for several days by 1987 the population reached about 33 000 and the population density was approximately
15:571 million 255 000 people per second quarter kilometer this was estimated to be about 200 times denser than
16:07modern tokyo and became the highest population density ever recorded in the history of cities inside the
16:14kowloon walled city there were almost no laws there were illegal workers working their unlicensed
16:21businesses unlicensed dentists and noodle factories there were also factories for illegal goods places for
16:30illegal vices and martial arts schools sunlight barely reached the lower floors the corridors were open all
16:39day and night so the fluorescent lamps were always on water flowed down the walls from countless homemade
16:45pipes that were installed without proper engineering the canadian photographer greg gerard and the britain
16:53ian langman spent many years documenting the kowloon walled city they created a photo book entitled city of
17:01darkness which became an important record of this place in 1987 the hong kong government decided to
17:09demolish the fortress the government allocated a total of 2.7 billion hong kong dollars as compensation for
17:17the residents the demolition began in march 1993 and was completed in april 1994 the approximately 350
17:27buildings that sprang up over half a century without a single master plan or engineer disappeared in just
17:3514 months all six cities we mentioned have one thing in common underneath them there is either soil rock
17:44or at least a shallow part of a lagoon
17:49but what would happen if someone decided to build a real city in a place where there isn't any land
17:55at all
17:56so only a vast sea with a depth of several meters and 39 kilometers from the nearest shore
18:05in 1948 soviet geologists conducted an in-depth exploration in the caspian sea about 86 kilometers
18:13from baku at a depth of approximately 20 meters they discovered a large oil deposit in november 1949
18:23the drilling team led by foreman mikail kavirokin extracted the first oil about 100 tons per dalton from
18:32a depth of one kilometer at first only a metal tower stood in the middle of the open sea
18:40to be able to continuously pump oil they needed a strong and large structure but at that time no one
18:47had ever built a large structure under the sea at a depth of 20 meters so the soviet engineers came
18:55up with a method that the global oil industry had never seen before they took seven old ships that were
19:02no longer in use and in 1950 they deliberately sank them in a chosen part of the sea the ships
19:11lay on the
19:11sea bed close to each other forming an artificial reef on top of this reef they placed soil rocks and
19:20scrap metal gradually a small platform was formed above the water the platform was surrounded by steel
19:28piles driven into the seabed and connected using steel bridges pumping stations were placed on the
19:34bridges and this is where the construction of the center of what would become the city called
19:40neft dashlari began after this the project expanded in a way that few had expected to see in the middle
19:48of the sea by 1958 there were already nine-story dormitories standing on stilts for the workers
19:57by the latter part of 1970 there was also a bakery a movie theater and a clinic a lemonade factory
20:05and
20:05a park with real trees also opened the soil for the park and football field was brought from the coast
20:12using barges one of the most impressive parts of the city was the roads between the platforms above the sea
20:21they built bridges that stood on steel piles in 1970 the total length of these roads above the
20:29water reached more than 300 kilometers imagine 300 kilometers of roads in the middle of the caspian sea
20:38if you connect them in a straight line it would reach from moscow all the way to briansk at the
20:45height
20:45of the city in 1960 about 5 000 people lived here drinking water was brought from the shore through two
20:53underwater pipes with a diameter of 350 millimeters the city also had its own mailing address and its
21:01own bus network that ran on elevated roads the swiss director mark wolfensberger spent eight years before
21:08he was granting permission to come here he made a documentary film and called oil rocks the eighth wonder of
21:16the world the city is still functioning to this day the state-owned company sokar extracts approximately
21:24one million tons of oil from here every year approximately 2 000 people work here taking turns
21:31on duty but little by little caspian sea is reclaiming the city after the soviet union collapsed very few
21:38people have been maintaining the 300 kilometers of bridges many platforms were abandoned and many sections
21:45of the elevated road collapsed and fell into the water on december 4 2015 a strong storm hit the area
21:53part of a residential building broke off and fell into the sea three socar employees went missing that
22:00night out of the 300 kilometers of roads only about 45 kilometers are still in use today the caspian sea
22:10is
22:10slowly reclaiming the things that people once took from it seven cities seven different places that seem
22:18impossible to live in a building against strong winds underground houses against the desert heat
22:24extreme heights against thin air stilts against the lagoon concrete buildings against the lack of land
22:31chaos against lawlessness and 300 kilometers of bridges against the vast sea itself but all these places have
22:39one thing in common they wouldn't have been built if there wasn't an important resource nearby
22:46coal is found beneath hashima opal and cuber petty gold in la rinconata and oil beneath the caspian sea
22:54a military port is the reason why whittier was established fish are the main reason for the
22:59settlement in makoko lagoon and a legal loophole paved the way for the creation of kowloon walled city
23:05a place that's hard to live in is never chosen without a reason people choose it when there's
23:12something important in that place and it's worth it for them to stay when the resource runs out or its
23:19value decreases the unique city begins to collapse hashima was completely abandoned in just three months
23:27the kowloon walled city was demolished in 14 months and now oil rocks is slowly sinking into the water
23:34one meter per second torm a city continues to live as long as people have a reason to stay there
23:41when the reason is gone all that's left are the sea the wind and empty concrete buildings
23:47if you found the video interesting share it with people who love unusual places we still have many
23:54stories about how people have gotten used to living in places that nature doesn't really consider suitable
23:59people for habitation