Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire “Mysteries Of The Abandoned “

Discovery Channel’s show is now probably one of the best shows on TV .
With the History Channel and A&E networks dominated by obviously scripted reality shows, and with diversity and inclusiveness ruining most of the dramas and sitcoms, I watch less and less TV anyway. I turn on the news long enough to catch the weather, and that’s it.
But with the reintroduction of Mike Rowe and “Dirty Jobs”, I started watching “Mysteries” and find it both interesting and entertaining.
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Very good show. Fascinating.

What's amazing to me is the amount of effort and expense involved in some of those ruins, and what a short time some of them were in use. I had a distant cousin who moved his family from Tennessee to Anchorage Alaska in a converted city bus back in the 1950's when the Alcan highway was mostly gravel. He worked for many years as a DOD civilian electrician on the remote radar sites known as the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line. That was back when the Strategic Air Command kept nuke-loaded B-47's and B-52's airborne 24/7. All those sites are abandoned now, made obsolete by the ICBM missiles in the 1960's and 70's.

As a fellow who grew up in an auto salvage, it’s surprising to me how machines and buildings are now left abandoned and allowed to rot.
We’d part out the good stuff, and when the parts were gone, or the vehicle too far gone, we scrapped it. Nothing was wasted.
Up in Somerset there are quite a few draglines and other mining equipment just rusting away. The one that was sitting near where flight 93 went down was scrapped and the steel recycled for use in the USS Somerset.
Other than that, I guess it cost more to reclaim stuff than it’s worth.
Still, you’d think some guy with a set of tools or torches and some ingenuity could find a use. We live in a disposable world now.
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I watch that show. Pretty interesting stuff.

Lot of Cold War era stuff on there.

Years ago a buddy bought a dump trailer and would haul his torch around cutting up old metal stuff that people wanted gone. He’d talk to the owner and if they wanted it removed he’d cut it up and haul it off under the condition that he could have it to sell for scrap. Totally on the level since he’s not a meth head.

A guy gave him a big D? Caterpillar dozer that was sitting in the middle of a field. It seems it had blown it’s engine while they were doing some terrace work or something and that’s as far as it went. Wasn’t worth putting an engine in and it just sat there for a couple decades. He studied on it for a long time and finally just told the guy thanks but no thanks. He’d penciled it out and with his time and torch gas and the price of scrap at that time he didn’t think he could even break even on it.

I know where there’s several combines sitting in fields with blown motors or trans. Cost more than they’d be worth to fix and they just farm right around them now.

Great show, but I do miss mysteries at the museum.

Yeah, I worked in factories building construction equipment like scissor lifts and boom lifts. When I worked for a contractor I found that most of the bigger projects just factor in the cost of new lifts into the bid.
After a job or two it gets traded off or scrapped.
No I sure wouldn’t tackle a scrapped dozer with a torch either. That would be tough work and expensive. But there are folks who scrap ships, so you’d think somebody with the tools and equipment would be able to salvage those old draglines and such.
And you’d think that buildings, especially in a retail setting, would be cheaper to convert or repurpose. I’m surprised at the old stores left vacant, things you’d expect to be worth saving.
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Prolly a % of the older buildings get tangled up in asbestos remediation. So it sits undisturbed.

When I was a teenager my Dad’s cousins owned an excavation business.
One of his dozers blew the engine while working a pretty steep mountainside. The oil ran away from the pump pickup, and she went south.
Us boys and The Old Man pitched in on a day’s work recovering that dozer. A lot of work with winches and blocks, but we finally got it down to where it could be recovered.
I know where there’s a few old cars and trucks that maybe weren’t worth recovering but I don’t think draglines were that cheap.
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I like that show as well, some of the places are crazy

We had a gravel train derails south of town here a few years back. They sent a crew of guys with thermal lance setups and volcano suits. Them guys had that thing cleaned up in no time. Of course I think they parked a train with a boom on it to load all the pieces up as they demoed it. Someday scrap will be high enough to make it worth it for all that stuff and somebody will be willing to put in the work.

Isn't there a tranny on that show that comes on when they have something pertaining to the Nazis in WW2?

Yes. He/she/it is creepy. The show can be interesting, but about every other segment is a Nazi ruin. And they constantly ask "What could it have been?" when it's bleeding obvious it was a war ruin.

Early shows shows he/she/it before transformation to a "woman", either is creepy. Surely there exists a straight "authority" on the matter. Guess they're into "diversity" barf, barf !

NatGeoWild has interesting veterinarian shows.

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Ever see that coil down over the bank on the north side of 30, near
Harrisonville? It layed down there for years, but the last few times ive went
by, I can't see it. Maybe someone drug it out the last time scrap was high.
never messed with them much, but in guessing it was around 10k#.

Then there is the mixer that rolled down the moutain above Fairhope after
the flood in the 80s. It had cement in it. Doubt it ever comes up out of there.

Strangest Things has been an interesting watch.

There’s a one legged Asian guy—I think former military runs around Central America finding old pyramids with LiDAR equipment—pretty interesting!

He wasn't military. He lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. But that is a VERY interesting show. He has LIDAR mapped all over the world revealing civilizations never guessed at.