Russian Space Junk Scavengers

From the Department of Space Exploration

There's this cluster of ten villages in remote northwest Russia where space debris falls from the sky. I just found out about this and thought it was so cool. They scavenge it for materials to either repurpose the material (like building a reindeer skin lined sled made out of titanium alloy sheets from rocket boosters) or cut it up and sell to buyers.

This is so niche post-apocalyptic-core I thought these were AI images at first. But I found several articles from 6 or 7 years ago that tell the story of these people. You can read those here: LINK and LINK​

It’s not all fun and games though. Apparently, with space debris you get fuel toxins in your soil and water and a lot of these communities suffer from strange medical conditions. The Russian gov denies it's from their spent rockets. *eye-roll*

I think this is some solid inspiration for a cool sci-fi story. It practically writes itself.

-Jake

Hashima Island

From the Exploration Unit

You've probably seen this place in different movies, or may have seen the locations it's inspired in manga and video games. The first images I saw of it where from 2012's James Bond film Skyfall.

It was a coal mine for decades, and over the years buildings were added to support the workforce there, peaking at over 5000 inhabitants in 1959. For a couple of grim decades it was a slave labor camp as Japan forced Chinese and Korean war prisoners to work the mines.

Eventually petroleum replaced coal in the 1960s in Japan and the mine shut down.

Now it's a tourist destination, and a reference for a future location in my comics.

You can read the history of it here: LINK​

-Jake