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Welcome to Plymouth, the capital of the island nation of Montserrat—a British overseas
territory.
I mean wow—just look at the city teem with life—a beautiful, seaside UK city.
Wait a minute…
Tesco, Wetherspoons, Adidas tracksuits… this is the wrong Plymouth, UK.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Here’s Plymouth, the capital of the island nation of Montserrat—a British overseas
territory.
I mean wow—just look at it teem with li..ooh.
Um…where is everybody?
What happened to the buildings?
Why does the city look like the location of a Scooby Doo mystery?
Alright, well, it’s rewind time.
So, the island of Montserrat—a tropical Caribbean paradise with beautiful beaches,
majestic vistas, a gigantic active volcano, and a capital city that has absolutely zero
people living in it.
And if you’re wondering if those last two are related—congratulations.
You’ve won the, “Best Noticer Of Obvious Foreshadowing,” award.
You can redeem your award at the end.
Montserrat is located here, in the Leeward Island chain of the Lesser Antilles, West
Indies.
Once again, it’s an overseas territory of the UK—one of the fourteen remaining territories
left over from what was once the British Empire.
Now, the British Empire was a bit like sand—course and rough and irritating and it got everywhere.
The British have, of course, taken a 180 now as they’re trying, instead of being on every
continent, to be on none.
But back on track, Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat, is located here, and at its peak
it was home to the island’s only port of entry and was the nation’s largest city
which, to be fair, meant only 4,000 people, which is fewer than the number of people that
follow me on Instagram—not to brag or anything.
Now, remember the giant, looming volcano?
Like I said before, Plymouth is here, and the Soufriere Hills Volcano is here.
Now, volcanoes and cities go together like ice cream and tuna—incredibly poorly.
The volcano had been dormant for over one hundred years, until 1995, when it underwent
what’s known as a phreatic explosion.
Basically, magma underneath the volcano heated up ground water, but because the magma is
so hot, it turns the water into steam instantly.
That instant transition from water to steam created an explosion, and in the case of the
Soufriere Hills Volcano, it caused tons of ash and rock to be shot out of the volcano.
In simpler terms, the volcano started spitting ash all over the town of Plymouth and that
meant that everybody living there left—because if there’s one thing that’ll dampen a
town’s nightlife more than old people armed with the non-emergency number, it’s being
blanketed in a thick sheet of volcanic ash.
But after the evacuation, Plymouth bounced back!
A few months later, residents returned to the city, they started to rebuild, Plymouth
would rise aga…aaaaaaaand it’s gone.
See when the volcano stopped the phreatic explosions, it was actually in the process
of forming what’s called a lava dome which is like the thunder dome except for in every
imaginable way.
A lava dome is exactly what it sounds like—a giant dome of lava that’s made by the lava
slowly coming out and then cooling into a dome, but then in 1997, the lava dome collapsed,
causing more eruptions and what’s known as a pyroclastic flow which is when hot gas
and volcanic matter starts rushing down the volcano at about 100 kilometers or 60 muricameters
per hour… so like…very fast.
Sonic level fa…ahhh!
Terrifying.
There, that’s better.
Now, if you were wondering what’s even worse for a city’s nightlife than being covered
in ash, it’s that town being destroyed by a flood of gas and volcanic ash.
About 80% of Plymouth was destroyed and at that point, the people of Plymouth decided
they had had enough and left for good, along with most of the island, causing Montserrat’s
population to drop from 12,000 to only about 1,200, with most going to the United Kingdom.
The entire southern half of the island has now been sectioned off as an “exclusion
zone,” that people are not allowed to go into and in that exclusion zone is the nation’s
capital, Plymouth, which is why nobody lives in the nation’s capital.
But the island of Montserrat would not be kept down.
They have slowly rebuilt, and now boast a population of about 5,200 people.
The de facto capital is now the city of Brades, a town of about 1,000 people, located here,
outside the exclusion zone.
Brades was originally just an interim spot for the government in 1998 after the volcano,
but because nobody’s ever moved back to Plymouth, all government business has happened
in Brades for the last 20 years.
They’ve even rebuilt all the government buildings there but Plymouth remains the legal
capital of Montserrat, mostly because nobody’s ever really gotten around to changing it—making
the only ghost town anywhere in the world to be a nation’s capital.
Now, of course you’re probably waiting for your prize for winning the, “Best Noticer
of Obvious Foreshadowing,” award!
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