[madaxe_again]

I’ve been to a few of said towns - Aralsk is the most notable.

It’s a forsaken place. Never mind the port machinery swinging idly in the hot, dusty breeze, suspended over toxic sludge where a sea once lapped its shores - the human disaster there is palpable. There’s no industry, no work, no future. People sit, and wait. The North Korean friendship centre hands out packages of household supplies on a dusty square full of dead trees. The place is half abandoned, and the people who remain - well, they’re abandoned too.

It’s hard to describe the heaviness that sat over the place - it’s oppressive, a feeling of inexorable doom.

It’s unlikely these places will exist in the not too distant future. They existed on the brink, and the brink is long gone, and they are in freefall.