70 Comments Posted by Raymond

Andrew, your post reminds me of Unit 731, the Japanese bioweapons unit that operated in China during the War of 1937-1945. App. 1 million people were used for the most brutal, and hideous of medical experiments there, such as pressure chambers, live dissection, and victims were used as test animals for plague organisms that the Japanese later dropped from warplanes over Chun'king, a city they failed to conquer because of the powerful Communist Army there.
Unit 731 headquarters were Harbin, in beautiful Heilungjjiang Province. In 1945, when the combination of the Chinese Red Army, the Soviet Army, and the North Korean guerillas overwhelmed the Japanese defenders and crushed into Harbin, the surviving members of Unit 731 dynamited most of their facilities, and machine-gunned over 36,000 prisoners still held in it's compounds. Of the 1 million who entered the facility, only 9 survived when they escaped.
The next day, a crack DPRK (North Korean) assault force entered Harbin, spearheaded by a column of T-34 tanks. They were followed by troops of the Democratic People's Anti-Japanese Alliance: Soviet Union and Chinese Communists. The remaining Japanese soldiers who failed to evacuate the city on time were quickly slaughtered, many impaled on the tips of the Communist bayonets. But the doctors and scientists who headed the Unit 731 program fled justice, by plane only a few hours ago.

That stanza eerily resembles something from an Evanescence song. Sad, beautiful, and haunting at the same time.
I am sure most of you enjoy listening to that band.
I think this has something to do with suicide. I am not too sure, but the lyrics pretty much sounds like it.

The same hole that is allowing snow to fall in will bring in dandelion fluffs come spring. Within 5-10 years, I can expect this place to host a variety of weeds and plants.

This is just what an undergraduate student's dorm room looks like.

Look at the floor in the foreground, it seemed like a flaming piece of debris had shot in from the burning other side and landed on the floor. If you look even more closely, it looks like the floor is covered with some dry accelerant and is about to ignite rapidly

This pictures certainly looks medieval.
Does it remind anybody of knights, dragons, trolls, fairies, and elves?

It really resembles the new high speed rail system in China that connects Beijing with Shanghai and Harbin. The locomotives and cars are colored in this exact same way. Add some long windows to the pic above, you'll see what the train looks like.
DVD players in each seat, Wi-Fi Internet connection, GPS trip-tracking, just some of the things you'll find on that train!

That is just awesome man!

Purple Loosetrife growing in the foreground. Introduced by the Europeans, it now grows with terrifying speed at abandoned places and marshland.
You guys should read a book called "Gone Away Lake" by Elizabeth Enright. It might be for young adults, but that book is interesting.

Is this the neighbor's front yard? LOL

I absolutely love these places where nature is reclaiming long abandoned property. They have an almost spiritual sense to it. They have become the subject of my art in the several years.
FYI- The ferns are just introductory plants.
Every year, as the winds shift, countless airborne seeds are carried to this ceilingless room, the wooden floor, door, and walls pack abundant nutrients, and those seeds, with enough water, will grow with wild abandon, reducing the wood into an even more fertile compost mix for other plants and trees.

Hey Motts, did you use some sort of filter, or is this a natural color. It looks creepy, haunting, and beautiful at the same time. I was able to create the same effect in some of my drawings.

That is one awesome picture, being an artist myself.
I would name this photo "Radioactive"

I do see the ring of dead grass at the upper right side.
If you look at the building wing towards the left of the photo, see how the exit door is placed at the rear, and the rows of windows, it almost looks like an old bi-level railcar abandoned in a yard.
A CSX facility had ancient Chesapeake & Ohio Railway double-deck passenger coaches in one of their yards, along with locomotives stripped of their engines and transmissions

It almost looks like a war zone. Reminds me of Grozny