Oh Lately It's So Quiet Trivia Quiz

Answer: New South China Mall

When it was being built in 2005, the New South China Mall was expected to be not only the largest and most profitable mall in all of China, but one of the largest in the entire world, dwarfing all but a small handful of shopping centers (Dubai Mall would be larger).

Unfortunately, construction commenced at the same time as the Chinese property bubble burst and the luxurious, extravagant mall was just another product of excessive urban sprawl. Ultimately becoming a dead mall, the massive area was occupied by only a handful of stores, mainly U.S. based restaurants like KFC and McDonald's.

The mall can hold over two thousand individual stores and, in its first seven years, less than one percent of the mall was occupied. Weirdly enough, the mall wasn't the only victim of over-development in China-- whole prefecture-level cities were rendered ghost towns simply due to rampant building, Ordos and Chenggong among them.

Answer: Valdeluz

Valdeluz was proposed by the province of Guadalajara as a commuter city just close enough from Madrid to be worthwhile; while still far enough to reduce the costs, it would provide transportation via rail and homes for growing families. That is until a major economic downturn occurred in Spain in 2008, affecting the real estate market. Valdeluz was originally slated to house over thirty-thousand new residents in its first few years but ended up taking in around 4% of that total, leaving it very sparsely populated, so much so that their plans for transit never really materialized and, by that point, no one could afford one of the many new apartments constructed in the middle of nowhere.

Answer: Dubai

Built entirely by dropping desert sands into the Persian Gulf to create over two hundred individual islands, The World was a massive undertaking proposed at a time when Dubai's wealth seemed on the eternal up-and-up. With outlandish overspending on luxurious hotels and super-tall skyscrapers, the nearby Palm Jumeira built nearby, and the world's first acclaimed six-star hotel (the Burj Al Arab), Dubai seemed like the perfect place to sell individual islands to the highest bidders.

When an economic crisis brought work to a halt in 2008, only one of the islands, part of Greenland, had any construction on it (as an uninhabited model home). Slowly, The World archipelago has been sinking back into the sea.

Answer: North Brother Island

North Brother Island, home of the Riverside Hospital, was once used as a disease quarantine zone in New York City housing many tuberculosis patients and Typhoid Mary. After the hospital was closed down the island became home to war veterans and other regular residents before being declared uninhabitable in the 1960s. Since then, the island has fallen into disrepair.

It receives no visitors; no boats head towards it; it's been classified as a bird sanctuary in the East River. You can see it from the Bronx! ...And yet it's so quiet over there.

It's probably haunted, not only by the diseased patients of yesteryear, but from the deaths of the thousand plus people on the PS General Slocum, a passenger ship which sunk just offshore after catching ablaze in the mid-1900s. Yikes.

Answer: Aral Sea

Mo'ynoq was once a very profitable place to live and work in Uzbekistan, but over the course of no more than a couple of decades it went from a seaside port to a dried-out ghost town, mainly due to the drying up of the Aral Sea, a body of water once considered one of the largest lakes in the world. Mo'ynoq is particularly notable-- in what was once its waterfront, the rusted husks of former ships can be found resting in what is essentially a desert. For many years, the sea had become unusable and unsafe for humans and fish alike but constant attempts to refill the land with water are ongoing.

Answer: Maunsell Forts

Decommissioned in the 1950s after the war (at which point the UK didn't fear German forces making their way down the Thames), the Maunsell Sea Forts were created as a series of linked, concrete-fortified battlements. Shortly after their abandonment one of the forts (HM Fort Roughs) was claimed by Roy Bates, a pirate radio host who deemed it the micronation of Sealand.

The rest of the forts, however, went unclaimed and, for the most part, started deteriorating, standing as one of the few offshore forts built near Britain and never having seen a battle.

Some of them, however, have sunk-- ships collided with them well after war-time.

Answer: Craco

Craco, Italy was once a thriving commune sitting atop the Cavone River but, considering Southern Italy's penchant for seismic activity and active volcanoes (we may remember Pompeii was wiped out...) it was only inevitable that such a high village built at the peak of a hill would crumble.

Although the area had been inhabited for hundreds and hundreds of years, living conditions and earthquakes in the 20th century forced most of the inhabitants to clear out, leaving nothing more than abandoned ruins of Italian villas and only a few livable households (not towards the edges, of course).

Answer: Trains

Michigan Central Station was once the main train station in Detroit servicing routes from Canada and through the United States. For many years it was a very busy spot to be, especially since shortly after its construction, the United States and Canada became embroiled in World War I.

At this time in the continent's history, rail travel was all the more important. Unfortunately, with an increase in air travel over the course of the century and alternate options emerging, the station quieted down and trains ceased their travels to Detroit.

Although it became a Historical Site it's been empty and in a dilapidating state since 1988.

Answer: Namibia

Kolmanskop, while close to the Atlantic Ocean, is still situated in the Namib Desert and was once home to a prosperous diamond mine. For just under fifty years, the area built up with a few residences and a few not-so-essentials ranging from a casino to the first tram car station in the continent.

When the mine was essentially mined out, everyone filed out of the town and left it empty. What resulted was a slow but inevitable reclaiming of the desert. Visiting Kolmanskop today, you'd find a number of German-inspired buildings and a heck of a lot of sand, probably up to your waist, even inside the houses.

Answer: Japan

Japan, a country devoid of cactus for the most part, contained this...erm...unique amusement park in Okinawa. It opened in 1983, was apparently sold to Taiwanese investors, and then it closed down in 2005. Can't imagine why. What remains, however, is quite unique. Aside from the pavilions, villas, and fountains scattered around the area, walled in by several miles of solid limestone barriers, visitors can find fake and real cacti strewn about. Due to the typical weather of Okinawa and the obvious weathering of time, much of the place is in ruins.