We all make a bad investment at some point in our lives: a fancy car that we can't really afford, a time share, an ill-advised zeppelin that it turns out we don't have the time or monocles to use properly. But there are bad investments, and there are these: billion-dollar projects that entire governments just got bored of and abandoned, leaving the rest of us some pretty bitchin' post-apocalyptic playsets, if we can just get past the guards.
(After this, trade in horrifying ghost towns for horrifying online dating profiles with Cracked's new series Rom.Com.)
5
Russia's Massive Abandoned Water Park
Dmitry Mordolff
In 1997, Moscow decided to build a huge indoor water park. So they set aside a large tract of land and started a construction project that went on for five years before they got distracted by a passing butterfly and skipped away, never to return.
Dmitry Mordolff
A butterfly flaps its wings in Moscow, a building collapses ... also in Moscow.
Originally built for the World Youth Games, the listing of its proposed facilities proves that they spared no expense, nor any fucks given for the finished product. The water park was supposed to house a 12-story glass roof, three underground floors, an additional nine floors above ground, five swimming pools complete with water slides, and a track and field (water ... field?).
Dmitry Mordolff
Trash aside, it still has less pee in it than your average water park.
It was also supposed to house something called the "Palace of Sports," which was a hotel for visiting athletes that itself contained offices, cafes, and a center for physical therapy and medicine. Now it's just a hell of a place to shoot zombies. Seriously, hole up on that diving board; those steep stairs are a great place to bottleneck and ... ahem, we're getting carried away here.
Dmitry Mordolff
And if you're cornered, just dive headfirst into bare concrete.
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