Ghost Cities

Watched a documentary called Geisterstädte on Arte about the towns around Fukushima, and walking through them in the footage is genuinely unsettling. You see these empty streets, shops still stocked, cars still parked, and it feels like everyone just stepped out thirty seconds ago. Except it’s been years. The apocalypse already happened and you missed it—that’s the feeling you get.

What gets to me is how fast it was. One day these are just regular towns with people living their lives. The next day they’re not. Families had maybe hours to pack what they could carry and had to leave the rest. The documentary shows homes still set up like someone’s coming back any minute, except they won’t, they can’t. It all just sits there, slowly falling apart.

The thing about Fukushima specifically is that it wasn’t a natural disaster that snuck up on people. It was something we built, something we made decisions about, something the authorities assured everyone was safe. And then it wasn’t. That’s a different kind of wrong. The dead cities aren’t just loss—they’re a broken promise sitting in plain sight.