Islands of Abandonment

What happens when the humans leave and nature takes over?

Cal Flyn’s latest book (as titled above) is an award-winning writer who lives in the Orkney Islands. Discovering these ‘islands’ required extensive travel as she explored 12 abandoned sites around the world answering the question, what happens after the humans leave?

My favourite stories were the ones which didn’t involve America, they were too depressing. Are we better shielded in Europe from the lies and deceit that seems to accompany bare-faced capitalism, where the only concern is making money at any cost and damn the environment and the people washed up there after the tide has finally disappeared for good?

The collapse of the US car industry in Detroit, Michigan and subsequent demise of that society has been well documented but I’d never heard of Paterson, New Jersey. This is another forgotten industrial centre. It used to be nicknamed ’Silk City’, before all the mills closed, never fully recovering after a strike in 1913.

Little did I know when I started running toward the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge at the beginning of the New York marathon, that on the other side of Staten Island is a tidal strait called Arthur Kill. It’s so toxic from dioxin and other nasty chemical abuses, that there are frequent signs along the shore…