Did you know there’s an island off the coast of Brazil that’s overrun by snakes? Hi,
I’m Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com. Welcome to the List Show, from my living room.
Ilha da Queimada Grande, or “Snake Island,”
is home to a rare and incredibly deadly species of snake called the golden lancehead. According
to some estimates, there are one to five snakes for every square meter of land on the 43-hectare
island. That said, a population survey of the area indicated that those numbers are
probably an exaggeration, but even so, there are definitely a lot of snakes on the island.
The vipers mainly eat the migratory birds that visit the island, and they’ve evolved
a venomous bite strong enough to take down their prey before they can fly away. The snakes
are so dangerous that the Brazilian government has forbidden people from visiting the area.
Rare exceptions are made, mostly for scientists studying the species, but they have to be
accompanied by a doctor—just in case.
And that’s just one of the many dangerous, mysterious, or otherwise forbidden places
that I’ll be sharing with you today.
Though not many people are eager to go to Snake Island, you may be sad to hear that
you can’t visit Lascaux Cave in France. Discovered in 1940, the cavern contains some
of the most iconic cave paintings ever studied. The sketches of horses, deer, and other animals
date back to the Upper Paleolithic period, 15,000 to 17,000 years ago. The cave opened
to the public in 1948 and closed permanently after just 15 years. The artificial lights
installed there had been promoting algae growth on the cave walls and causing the painting’s
colors to fade. The microbes humans brought in with them apparently weren’t helping,
either. Lascaux Cave is now off-limits to visitors, but archaeology fans can check out
a perfect replica of the site located right next door.
Another spot that makes the list of coolest places you can’t visit is the Ise Grand
Shrine in Japan. The first iteration of the Shinto shrine was constructed around 2000
years ago, and since the late 7th century, it’s been torn down and rebuilt every two
decades. This tradition symbolizes the Shinto concepts of death and rebirth, but it has
practical purposes as well. Reconstructing the shrine about once a generation helps keep
the traditional shinmei-zukuri architectural style alive. Wood also has a shorter lifespan
than most building materials, so demolishing the shrine before it can rot is a way to beat
nature at its own game. When Ise Grand is rebuilt, every detail of the ornate design
has to be replicated, making it one of the most expensive structures in the country.
Reconstructing Ise Grand and its hundreds of secondary shrines costs the Japanese government
$500 million each time. Most of that cost and effort ends up going unseen. While tourists
can view it from the outside, the inside of the shrine is only accessible to the highest
priestesses or priests.
Even if you were allowed inside, this next forbidden place would be hard to get to. The
Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen in Norway.
The 11,000-square-foot space houses more than 1 million seed samples native to places around
the world. The vault acts as a sort of back-up drive of the world’s crops, preserving specimens
in a safe place in case a disaster ever wipes them out in their natural environment. The
facility is built to protect its contents from unwanted visitors along with everything
else. It’s deep enough underground and high enough above sea level to withstand earthquakes,
ocean rise, and nuclear attacks.
In Atlanta, Georgia, there’s a high-security vault that would be much less useful in a
doomsday scenario. The World of Coca-Cola museum is the site of a multi-million dollar
vault that’s said to safe-guard Coke’s secret formula. Tourists can see it from the
outside, but the interior is strictly limited to top executives. Though the vault itself
is likely a publicity stunt, the formula is apparently a real, handwritten recipe that’s
been in the company’s possession since at least the 1920s. It sat in a safety deposit
box at an Atlanta bank for decades before moving to its current home at the World of
Coca-Cola in 2011. Despite all that trouble, Coke’s secret formula may not be much of
a secret at all. That same year, This American Life shared a recipe for Coke that had allegedly
been passed down from a mysterious pharmacist. Coca-Cola, of course, denies that this formula
is the same one they have locked away.
Millions of people visit the Vatican in Rome each year, but there's at least one area in
the tiny sovereign state that's strictly off-limits. Established in 1612, the Vatican Apostolic
Archive (formerly the Vatican’s Secret Archives, which sounds way cooler) contains the personal
documents of all the popes. The archives were completely classified until 1881, when Pope
Leo XIII gave Catholic scholars special access to the materials. Today, the collection remains
closed to everyone but certain accredited scholars. Researchers who are allowed inside
can request up to five files a day, but they have to know exactly what they want because
browsing is forbidden. Who knows what we’d find out if they let Tom Hanks run loose in
there for a few hours.
One of the world’s most famous forbidden places has only been forbidden for less than
a year. In October 2019, Uluru, or the Australian landmark formerly known as Ayer’s Rock,
closed to the public. Climbers had been trekking to the outback for decades just to scale the
iconic rock formation. But long before it was a tourist attraction, Uluru was a sacred
place to local indigenous groups. Following petitions from the Anangu people, the board
of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park finally announced plans in 2017 to ban hikers from
the site for good. To be clear, you can still visit the area, it’s just climbing the rock
that’s forbidden. In case that isn’t enough to keep people away, there are also rumors
of a curse that targets disrespectful tourists. Visitors who have collected rocks from Uluru
have reported streaks of bad luck, and enough of the cursed keepsakes have been mailed back
to park rangers to earn them the nickname “sorry rocks.”
A lot of forbidden places on this list are ancient, but this next one has only been around
for a few decades. In the 1960s, an undersea volcanic eruption created a brand-new island
off the coast of Iceland. It’s not every day that scientists get to study an island
from the moment it's born, so they decided to make the most of the opportunity. The island,
named Surstey, has become a case study for how ecosystems develop without any interference
from humans. Other than the ideally noninterventionist scientists who study the island, that is.
Some of the lifeforms that have found their way to Surstey include molds, fungi, at least
89 bird species, and, supposedly, one plucky tomato plant. In 1969 an Icelandic scientist
was asked to make a trip to Surtsey to identify a mysterious plant. He arrived and recognized
it as a tomato. The scientist, Ágúst Bjarnason, looked into the situation a bit further. As
he later recalled, quote, “Someone had done their business … and this beautiful tomato
plant … had grown out of the faeces.”
Fun fact we learned in the course of looking into this story: in Iceland, a euphemism for
going #2, which Bjarnason used in relating his tale, can be roughly translated as “playing
chess with the pope.” Do with that what you will.
Some islands are off-limits for the public’s own good. Heard Island in Antarctica is an
Australian territory, and it’s one of the more dangerous places on Earth. A 9000-foot-tall
volcano on the island named Mawson Peak has been active since at least 2000, and wind
speeds there average around 20 miles per hour. While you could apply for a permit to visit
the island, getting there wouldn’t be easy. Heard Island is at least a two-week’s journey
by boat from Australia.
Thankfully no one was around when Mawson Peak became active, but that wasn’t the case
on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in the 1990s. When the Soufrière Hills volcano awoke
from dormancy in 1995, the nearby town of Plymouth was evacuated and eventually abandoned
altogether as eruptions continued. Ash consumed the town, turning it in a modern-day Pompeii.
While the volcano is not as destructive as it was a few decades ago, there’s a chance
it could erupt again, which means more than half the island is still a designated exclusion
zone.
I can't mention exclusion zones without talking about Chernobyl. Following the meltdown at
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine in 1986, a 18-mile radius exclusion zone was
established around the site. Though it's still against the law to live there, you can take
a day trip with a licensed guide. Most of the exclusion zone is now open to tourists,
including the infamous Reactor 4 control room where the disaster took place. You'll need
a hazmat suit to enter the control room, but you can get away with long-sleeved clothing
outside the power plant.
Area 51 is famously off-limits to the public. The government refused to acknowledge its
existence until 2013, when they finally admitted there was indeed a “flight testing facility”
in the Nevada desert. Its restricted access didn’t stop people from planning a raid
on Area 51 in September 2019. Though more than 2 million people RSVP’d to the “Storm
Area 51” event on Facebook, only a few dozen showed up at the gates at the appointed time,
which is extremely relatable for anyone who created a birthday party Facebook event in
the mid-aughts. You're *maybe* attending, Donna? You live two minutes from my house
and I know you don’t have anything better to do. Anyway, the would-be stormers were
quickly forced to leave by authorities, meaning the truth is still out there.
North Korea's version of Area 51 is Room 39, but instead of military secrets, it's said to
hide things like black market Viagra. The name refers to the secret department as a
whole, but it’s also believed to be the name of a real office in the Workers Party
building in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. According to some defectors, it keeps foreign
cash flowing into the pockets of elite officials. Illegal activities coming out of Room 39,
such as counterfeiting, insurance scams, and drug production, along with some legal endeavors,
are estimated to make the country between $500 million and $2 billion in U.S. dollars
a year. Of course, the country’s notorious secrecy makes all of this hard to confirm.
Poveglia in Italy is deserted today, but it’s been said that over the years, 160,000 people
have lived, and died, there. The Venetian island became a quarantine station in 1793,
and for two decades it was a place for potential victims of the bubonic plague. So many people
died there that up to 50 percent of the island’s soil is said to contain human remains. The
quarantine station closed in 1814, but Poveglia’s dark history didn’t end there. A mental
hospital opened at the site in the 1920s, and it quickly developed a reputation for
its inhumane treatment of patients. The hospital closed after a few decades, and today the
overgrown island is largely closed off to visitors—except for the occasional ghost
hunters.
New York City is also home to an abandoned quarantine island. In the late 19th century,
North Brother Island on the East River became the site of a hospital for patients with contagious
diseases. Its most famous patient was Typhoid Mary, America’s first known asymptomatic
carrier of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever. Mary Mallon unknowingly got dozens
of people sick while working as a cook in the early 1900s. She spent three years quarantined
on North Brother Island after the first outbreak she caused, and when she was eventually released,
she went back to cooking and infected even more people. Mary was sent back to the hospital
against her will in 1915 and lived there until her death in 1938. The deserted island now
serves a much happier purpose as a bird sanctuary. It’s inaccessible to the general public,
but the city does make some exceptions for visitors with “compelling academic and scientific”
reasons to visit.
Heart Reef, which is part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, is a serious candidate
for “world’s most photogenic location.” As the name suggests, the reef is shaped like
a heart, and it’s been the subject of countless Instagram posts and tourism campaigns. It
may be iconic, but you can’t actually see the landmark up close. Divers and snorkelers
have been banned from the spot to protect it from damage. So if you want to snap that
perfect vacation pic without hurting a delicate ecosystem, you’ll need to pay for a helicopter
ride.
Maya Bay in Thailand was also shut down to protect its environment from visitors, but
the closure is only temporary. Following the release of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The
Beach” in 2000, Maya Bay exploded into a massive tourist destination. The beach was
attracting millions of people a year at its peak, which wiped out a lot of the coral native
to the area. Thailand made the decision to close Maya Bay in June 2018 to give the ecosystem
a chance to recover. The plan is to reopen the beach with tighter restrictions at some
point, but as of now it remains a forbidden destination.
And finally, Ethiopia claims that it’s home to the Ark of the Covenant. It’s kept in
a church in the city of Aksum that’s so closely guarded, even Indiana Jones would
have trouble getting in. According to legend, the monks who guard the treasure have been
trained to kill with their bare hands. By some accounts, only the monk who is designated
as guardian is able to see the Ark, and after assuming his role he isn’t allowed to leave
the church grounds for the remainder of his life. The secrecy and potential myth-making
means that archaeologists haven’t been able to confirm the Ark’s legitimacy. A British
historian who claimed to have seen it during World War II said that it’s actually a medieval-era
replica.
Our next episode is all about facts related to conspiracy theories. What could go wrong,
right? In all seriousness, we want to discuss objectively-verifiable information about the
phenomenon of the conspiracy theory—how do they start, why do they spread, and which
ones have turned out to be true? If you have a rational, evidence-based fact to share (preferably
one that avoids the words “lizard people”), let us know in the comments. Remember to subscribe,
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We’ll see you then!