I worked in flood control pumping stations for years in a small city. I was told by fellow workers that the very nicely built and landscaped pump stations were designed to minimize the complaints from neighbors who didn’t want those stations located in their neighborhoods. So as a pump mechanic, I spent hours cutting hedges and planting flowers and weeding those flower beds, along with rebuilding massive pumps.
Here in Germany, a story is told that goes something like this: A large mobile phone provider built a radio tower in a village and as soon as it was erected, residents complained of various physical problems - such as headaches or bad sleep. The company responded: "We take your concerns very seriously, but the unit isn't even powered yet."
@@Joy-zz8wz yes, however, also people will lie to get it removed (power stations and such have a negative impact on property value), also nocebo is a thing. However to a company, it is all just noise, if all it takes a a cheap facade to shut up all the complaints (and in turn people also happen to not develop nocebic ailments) then it’s a win win
The idea of being a child in New York, living next to a house with no one in it for your entire life, until you see thousands of people pour out of it is so funny
You hear about a train accident on the news and see a hundred people pour out of a building next door you had previously thought to be uninhabited "Huge family gathering, I guess"
i dont cause those houses could be used to house people who actually need a home, this is one of the many things thats unessary but our gov does anyway
@@LyraPyxisVT The alternative to these facade houses isn't homes, its uncovered substations, ventilation shafts, oil rigs, and transformers. Removing the facades would have absolutely no impact on homelessness. Not to mention we already have more available homes in the US than we have homeless people. The issue isn't quantity of housing, its the distribution.
My grandparents said that buildings like these were designed around the time of world war 1 for national defense to help prevent attacks on our infrastructure. This had actually proven to be very effective. Paris is a prime example of this on a wider scale, where they made a clone of the city with three different zones. There were lights, buildings, and artists who would paint dirty glass on top of factories.
I grew up in a rural area where nobody cared enough to disguise substations, or sewage treatment plants. I've since lived in or visited many large cities around the world, but it never occurred to me these facilities would be hidden among the architecture. This was fascinating.
I remember throwing cans through the fence to make them spark with mates, good times. Being the kid responsible for a (albeit extremely temporary) blackout was a hell of a power trip.
Same. I remmeber constantly passing through some transformer substations which have just a conxrete wall with some paintings separating it from the public, just as phone towers. And oil rigs in the town's outskirts just fenced off
I had similar experiences in more rural areas where substations weren't disguised at all. Just some really tall fences and trees on the east and south sides neatly trimmed to obscure the view to suburbanites in certain areas given prevailing winds.
Hi! This is a fun topic. My Dad worked for the city utilities company, and we could easily recognize all of their " little houses", around town. Not only did they keep their equipment dry and protected, but it was a nice dry place for any worker who had to make any adjustments or repairs on the gages or dials.
I first learned about this 7 years ago. After I learned about fake houses (and fake trees that are electrical poles) I could no longer unsee them. This was especially when I was in North Carolina on vacation and I had seen homes that were really pump stations (as you mentioned in this video.)
The original question was sound... Delving I to the family tree of a social media post was definitely weird. I wonder if that person will ever find this video.
Speaking as someone who helped design a city substation and pump station enclosures, I think she could’ve found the answer in a more succinct way if she had just reached out to the department of water and power, planning commission, or city architect. We city designers love talking about our work! It’s not a secret. There are plenty of community meetings where we invite the public to give their input. 😅
Most modern city dwellers lack the capacity for abstract thinking that’s needed to see these buildings. Wells. Telephone switches. Substations. It’s all magic to the incurious.
These fake buildings was basically the final resolution of the plot of a later season episode of King of the Hill. A McMansion was built in the neighborhood, but it was shoddily constructed and caused a bunch of problems, and in the climax the neighbors got together during a storm and dismantled the house. The city ended up putting an electrical grid on the emptied lot, and Hank and the guys again came together to build a suburban house façade over it.
I know exactly what episode you're referring to, as a person who has seen all of KOTH like a dozen times over. Super cool what ideas the creative team came up with for some episodes.
In Hong Kong , we dont hide them unless its in a expensive district, we have brick buildings that match the color of the surrounding but it says like ‘ xx electrical substation ‘ in big bold letters and usually it has a public bathroom free to use .
I definitely vibe with the aesthetic justice concept. Living in a poorly maintained and/or poorly designed neighborhood can have a negative effect on your mood and affects how you interact with it. If your surroundings are nice, you're less likely to treat them poorly, but if they aren't, you don't care if you screw it up, accidentally or on purpose.
Idk, if I lived next to a seemingly peopleless house after a while I would be creeped out by it… Guess it depends on the person too because I don’t see substations as a negative modifier on my mood, they’re just substations lol.
She proved 2 things: 1. The commenter is probably who they said they were. 2. That you can figure out a random person's genealogy in about 2 days based on 1 comment on the internet. (Which is honestly kinda terrifying)
@@kmk900___ I mean it's not really supposed to be deep.. like I've always lived in pretty populated areas near very large cities, and I just feel claustrophobic and anxious jn the city, I would much prefer going off to live in a rural area or a forest because that is where I feel more at home. Some people get freaked out in rural areas because they feel so isolated. It's cool that you like to live in the city though, nothing against cities at all. There's a place for everyone.
@@samanthamartin1407 Yeah I'm one of those people who hate feeling isolated in a small rural town and it's also a bit scary if your house is truly isolated by itself like you can't run to a neighbors house if your in danger you are basically disconnected from society in a way.
Hidden In Plain Sight sounds like an interesting series to pursue. Were I live, is still rural enough that most unsightly utilities are built out of the way and far from housing, but those that are close to subdivisions are typically hidden using landscaping and tall hedges. We do have many “frankentrees” or cellular towers designed to look like tall evergreen trees.
Something you didn't bring up is kids. I grew up next to an uncovered substation and my cousins and I would throw empty soda cans and crumpled up tin foil balls at it to make it spark. Kids are too stupid to understand signs, but add the shell of a normal house and there's no temptation. We absolutely caused at least one local black out throwing things over the fence. Plus, putting up a stick frame house is just as much work as putting in the massive fence.
My Father worked for Bell Canada in Toronto. He used to point out fake houses to us as we'd drive around the city. He said that they were built mainly during the post-war period of paranoia and the purpose was to disguise critical infrastructure so that it wouldn't be easily recognized and targeted by enemy air craft (Yeah, In Toronto) - They stopped this practice sometime after the cold-war since the air-raids were pretty much obsolete. That's why newer subdivisions don't tend to have these fake buildings. At least not for this purpose.
Yeah, in the modern world its hard to imagine a carpet bombing run being attempted on an inland North American city. They just are too hard to invade by conventional warfare. One of 3 things would happen: 1. A comado team would just do sabotage missions because all of the relevant information is readily available online. (Between utilities publishing system info and google earth/maps) 2. Nukes would be used since ICBMs have a far better chance of reaching the intended target than a bomber group, and they won't waste one of those on anything less than a nuke. (Nukes deal wide spread damage so almost no point in targeting something small enough to pretend to be a house) 3. If it was somehow a conventional war all the way to the end, by the time bombing if Toronto or Chicago is a viable option the USA and Canada would have effectively lost the war. Our Navy's are our primary defense, and to reach Toronto you would have to get past them, and neutralize multiple military bases, and likely capture all the cities between Toronto and the Atlantic. (Which is most of Canada's core cities plus the capital, and likely America's coastal cities as well, including our capital.) I know this is a bit dark for a video on fake buildings hiding infrastructure, but its just doubling down on how unlikely it is that we bother hiding infrastructure from potential invaders. We are much more likely to hide it as a regular house to avoid having to deal with NIMBYs. (Especially considering how much of our infrastructure is protected by the mutual desire to have nice things, and the hope people head warning signs saying something will kill you painfully.)
There is some degree of truth in this. I work in infrastructure security and we are having serious talks in the U.S. about bringing back this practice because of the fear of kinetic attacks (polite speak for terrorists shooting or bombing targets).
There was also the threat of sabotage by enemy infiltrators or local people who sympathize with the enemy. A lot of infrastructure is disguised even in smaller towns.
Sometimes, the YT recommendations come up with something completely outside my usual, often resulting in a very enjoyable video. This is one of those. Great job, and thanx!
Your energy giving a speech in front of an *actual* projector slideshow for an internet video is something all UA-camrs and professors of history should learn to emulate.
We had a fake tree in a nearby city. It was really a cell tower. There were trees on one side of the tower, so the tower needed to be taller than the trees, but it needed to blend in, too. So they attached a few fake branches to it, above the tops of the trees on the one side of the tower. The branches stuck out at perfectly even lengths, at perfect 90 degree angles from the "trunk", like a cheap fake Christmas tree. We used to always comment on how it was such a pretty, pretty tree.
We're starting to get some of the fake tree towers in Colorado too, mostly noticeable near highways passing through the mountains. Some of them are really obvious and terrible looking, but some of them blend in pretty nicely. You can spot them if you know to look, but they're easy to miss if you're not actively looking for them.
This was one of the topics on urban design and architecture uni first year I attended - the answer is pretty much the latter. It is important for the neighborhood to seem cohesive and undisruptive because rhytmically designed cities improve the quality of life of people living in it.
And maybe its also good to have these thing hidden. She said they were built around the WW2 era? So it would also be less likely they would get bombarded. Was this also one of the reasons or just another plus to have fake buildings?
@@gueswho8815 The US and Canada weren't really at much of a threat from Nazi or Japanese air raids, and while small substations etc are essential on a local level, attacking a power plant would have a much larger impact
Yes. Took a course on the vernacular landscape in developed areas during my Geography degree, and we learned about NIMBY houses. Near my parents cottage the cell towers have been designed to look like trees. We all know what they are but, even though we all want better service, people get all put out by seeing them. Now, instead of them being an annoyance, they are a curiosity that people try to find.
@@postrachsmietnikow And as I said local substations are not a valuable target, WW2 bombers weren't even accurate enough to target them in the first place either. Targets were always towns/cities or large critical infrastructure or military targets, an air raid against a substation that powers a single suburb is pointless when the same raiding group could instead attack the nearby power plant or refinery or port or airbase or train station. Also france didn't suffer this kind of bombing campaign due to its swift defeat from invasion.
I worked in the power industry and can confirm, that yes, these fake buildings and other disguises are used to obscure things like substations in sensitive (nimby) areas. Oftentimes now, local artists are also brought in to add a cultural touch (murals, public art sculpture, etc.) on new construction or when renovations are done. Great video!
Makes sense. No one wants to live next to something that will eventually look like an abandoned industrial area or that will devalue the thing they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on and may need to sell one day if they move. Its a good solution. Same with disguising some cell towers as pine or palm trees.
Just a thought, it might have been helpful to call the owners of these buildings. They might have been able to tell you why their buildings have fake exteriors.
Many of them wouldn't have "owners" per se, and almost certainly those that do probably wouldn't bother responding to questions. Electric substations, oil rigs, ventilation systems... those would be government or corporate owned. Also, depending on country, finding the owner of a random property could be *significantly* more work than whatever she did.
@@cr1197 Most of this information tends to be public information to an extent. If it's registered to a business/large corporation, which utilities are, then you'll probably quickly run into a brick wall.
These kinds of buildings are often owned or handled by the local city governments, and/or well-known secrets from the companies that have them. For the companies, it can just be flat-out hard to get in touch with them. They may fear that the facade that is servicing them would be less effective if they talked about them, or just not feel like answering your questions are worth their time. For the city ones, let me tell you, that can be a trip trying to get good information. In my experience city, governments tend to have a public-facing group that simply has no idea how anything works and has the sole job of putting you in touch with someone that might. Often they don't, and you have to start over, and if at any point they decide you aren't worth their time search is over then and there basically.
I worked as a cell tower technician. Sometimes cell towers are disguised as pine trees (Ohio market) or palm trees (Florida market) its mainly because the residents around towers usually hate the look of towers so it’s to help with their views. Same thing with churches steeples having cell sights inside. All to bring the technology close to homes without looking too invading
Yeah we have those in Georgia also. I've seen it mostly in the nicer parts of town like Vinings, West Paces Ferry Road area, it's like right around the city of Atlanta but where a good bit of rich people or even Hollywood stars live like Usher. That's just what I can think of right off the top of my head cuz I don't go out there very much. They're shaped like very tall pine trees but it's obvious that it's not real but it does make it look a lot better. I actually wonder why they didn't do it in more areas
It's so nice to find another youtube channel with people who have basic human decency and believe in human rights. Society at large is so not reality-affirming--especially if you are disabled in any way, so online stuff is often how I find people to relate to. Thanks for being a person.
When you were discussing WW2 I was also thinking it made sense in times of war if the important infrastructure, power sub stations etc were disguised as normal houses. An undisguised power station is extremely obvious and an easy target if they want to take out the power in a local area
I live in Europe. This was my very first assumption. Usually an airstrike of one kond or another would be used to take down these. Simply disguising them well enough from a little distance makes things alot more tricky. In my country these facilities are often buried deep in tunnels and cavities sometimes hige facilities, inside granite hills (massive city servers, military rescue stations, sewage facilities) and electric stations in urban development either installed in buildings with WW II bunkers, vast cellars, or again underground with a visible small sugarcube type building over ground no larger than a regular ground floor garage, with some green shrubbery, around clearly indicating to pedestrians what it is, but not much of an eye sore and hard to detect from above. All of these are security measures in case the Russians decide our territory is tactical for them. I have friends who've been down to work on the servers. It's second level sci-fi tech in a veritable mine system. Also underground hospital facilities for wartime. We don't have the manpower to ever be able to outman a superpower, (resistance would last days, not like the Ukraine) but military funding and taxes in general can insure these facilities are very safe in their construction and virtually invisible. Few are aware of their location. Everything here is digital ( I mean it, every aspect of life) and also the climate makes us (in the north) entirely dependent on electrical power as does a virtually cashless monetary system. It's a weakness in the face of invasion, military threats. Not alot of fake houses though. Our cities arent massive enough it wouldn't not be very well known. But under government owned historic property are gateways, tunnels with roads for massive vehicles reservoirs and back up generators, weapons depots, en masse.
@@patrickkenyon2326 that’s why you do what america would do and bomb everything around it too. that way you don’t feel bad for “accidentally” blowing the space around it up
@@agentsbigassforehead Yeah, that's why we design precision munitions that cost millions of dollars each. So we can saturation bomb a city block, like a WW2 B-17...
The end of the Allied pumping station in southern England for fuel for the D-Day invasion was disguised as an ice cream stand. Look up Operation Pluto. Bombing in WW2 was generally not precision targeted. It was indiscriminate area or carpet bombing. It wasn't easy to hit targets back then even if you knew where it was.
this video is answering so many questions that have occasionally rattled around in my head for years. the ones you forget about when it’s time to stop daydreaming.
As someone who lives rurally where these facilities are for the most part just...built right out in the open (like literally next to a cornfield sometimes), this is incredibly weird and intriguing.
Kinda the same. Except I'm not aware of these in my country, at least not on the scale of suburban houses or apartment buildings as was shown here in the UK, Paris, and a few North American cities (not a great sample size for "all over the world", I might add). And I live in a European capital that's part of a metropolis of 1 million, which you'd think would be big enough if the size of a city was the issue. I think we tend to bury a lot of infrastructure underground, transformer stations are out in the open, bomb shelters are generally more of the "steel door in bedrock" style or the entrance is incorporated into some building somewhere. I mean sure, the vents for the underground parking hall for the big shopping centre nearby are visible structures on the surface, and aesthetics was definitely a factor in their design. But they're not disguised as anything other than vent structures. And on smaller scales too, air from underground structures definitely gets vented out through aboveground buildings, but for the examples I know of I have no idea if they're venting building air or underground structure air, and honestly, it's just a huge grey area which part of the underground tunnels is part of which building and which is just its own thing. I guess my final conclusion is that this "fake buildings" category isn't really a well-defined category, it's a collection of different things, and a lot of them are not very surprising at all.
@@Snaake42 its more a suburb thing than urban areas per se. generally in urban areas the commercial arguments for developing utilities will outweigh residential concerns and zoning/environmental/etc. laws that concern development won't create a need for this kind of hidden infrastructure.
When Sabrina finished explaining the research of Harold Bodwell's genealogical tree, I clapped. It's just so cool and inspiring, but in a "you can do that if you have enough time and commitment" kind of way
I love it, I hate it, I love that it’s possible to go so unhinged and deep dive so thoroughly into something. On the other hand, if that’s what she can find, holy shit, what else are people finding? How many traces of a single person exist on the internet that can be woven together to know a COMPLETE FAMILY HISTORY of them?
I think the reason the fake buildings are created is pretty simple. They are intended to not attract attention or be noticed. When something draws attention it becomes a curiosity. If it looks like other things near it most people won't even notice it.
btw i used to work on cell sites and the fake building ones aren’t actually fully fake buildings, cell sites are nestled into whatever tiny space is useless to the primary business that owns the land and the rest of it operates as normal. for fake items you’ll mostly see them as fake trees :)
I grew up in Long Beach and the city has fake *islands* 🤣 To drill for oil they made a bunch of artificial islands right by the coast and covered them in fake building covers so they look like a hotel or resort from a distance. 😆 The covers were mandated by the city when it was first built (fun fact, the main architect was a former Disney Imagineer).
@@happysmash27 Disney uses all kinds of weird names to describe their employees and guests. I'm pretty sure imaginere is a combination of the word imagine and engineer. Their visitors are called guests because they don't want to offend anyone by calling them the wrong gender. I'm sure you can find a list online somewhere that uses all their strange lingo.
I live in South Korea and here many otherwise ugly factories, trash collection points, incinerators, and generally unpleasant industrial buildings are completely encased from outside and painted with pleasant colors, making them resemble warehouses instead. From the outside all you see is a big nondescript box building. There are also many military installations inside mountains, but good luck finding an entrance...
@@yusraazeem7754 They're bunkers. If you work there, you know how to get in. If you don't work there, you don't know how to get in, and have no reason to anyway. Don't worry about it, it's incredibly boring and even the people who work there don't want to be there. It's nothing like the movies. Movies make it all seem much more interesting than reality, so just keep watching movies if any of this fascinates you. Or join the military & get a TS clearance & get stationed at one of these places to discover that everything I said is true but now you're stuck in the military for 4-20 years.
In my architecture history classes I remember my teacher said that in Paris around the time they were doing massive restructuring to the urban planning they made a lot of fake buildings with the sole purpose of making the most important streets look better. That been said I think both your theories sound very possible, my best guess is that is a bit of both. Amazing job on the research.
Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! - Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim - Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it): The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…” In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative. Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man. You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.” Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
@@cbaylor7382 Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! - Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim - Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it): The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…” In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative. Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man. You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.” Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
@@amwhite760 Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! - Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim - Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it): The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…” In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative. Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man. You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.” Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
I used to live in a little suburb in Ottawa, and I passed one of these places on the way to the grocery store. If the house shell was supposed to make it less scary, it didn't work! It just had the vibe of "someone was definitely murdered in this darkened house" until my Mom explained these fake buildings to me.
As an engineer I have taken part in some of the design work in these “fake” buildings. Edit for context, I’m a mechanical engineer, my part in the design is calculating the heat generated from the equipment and environment and telling them what they need so the room does not get hotter than 120°F. I mostly have done work for AT&T and Verizon, they kind of just have their equipment hidden in the most random places that look like a normal building such as a church or a house looking building, or even a big clock tower.
Base on some of the comments by engineers/designers, are these buildings designed for camouflage reasons in case of war, people retaliation etc. Is this something we s/b careful about not pointing out to the public? It’s great info., however if there’s security reasons behind them as one comment stated and also stated the name of a company that have part of their operations set up in one of them I can understand. One comment even stated about back in the days of war etc.,
One of the things I love about working as a tradesman is getting a very "Behind the scenes" look into utility areas. I'll always remember my first day on the job in a giant utility area for an arena. Getting to go through all of the "Do not enter" or "Staff only" signs and seeing for the first time the heart of the massive structure that makes it all work. I love debugging the problems that come up in the moment that they absolutely need to work for people to have a smooth experience, fixing the issues and nobody present even notices that something had been going catastrophically wrong on the other side of a wall they'd been sitting near.
As someone that's lived in decent suburban towns (as in: kinda yuppy, definitely have nimby populations) my entire life that have always had visible substations just like... neatly fenced off on the side of a road, the fact that some places would go so far as to put a fake building around them is so crazy.
This just landed on my home page and I HAD TO comment because this was so beautifully done. I had no idea these even existed but still love learning new info I never knew I needed haha!
I think during the height of the pandemic in 2020, there was a UA-camr who snuck into one of these buildings out of curiosity in his neighborhood in France. That was the first time I'd heard anything about fake buildings. Well done with this video!
To me, the simplest answer to why there are fake buildings like this is because these facilities don't look good and would disrupt the area visually otherwise.
They should do this more in low income areas. Seems like they not only cut down more of the trees in low income areas, but they also dump all the visually unpleasant facilities right there amongst the main living areas !
Could also be a chicken-or-egg thing? Like, the unpleasant facilities are placed away from homes, but that makes the land near the unpleasant facilities undesirable and therefore cheaper to buy. So, lower income people buy there. Then later, people point and say “See? All of this unpleasantness goes into low income areas!”
@@truthsmiles Hello ! I see where you're coming from ! That could be possible in some cases, it seems plausible to me too. Believe it, people can be so unreasonable and low down. When looking into gerrymandering etc. It is definitely purposeful in places. Things like this dont persist when you actually care for people.... However! There are great souls out here who care and i believe for a better future with everyone ✨
@@truthsmiles the only reason low income housing can be bad is because of bad money hungry land lords if more houses were built or if landlord gave more of a shit about their tenants then everyone would be happy it’s more than a chicken and an egg thheory
It serves a purpose of keeping people miserable. From the unhealthy food to even your environment. People with money and power will go to lengths you would think absurd in order to hold onto that money and power.
I'm in Chicago. Sabrina would have a field day here. We have dozens of these fake utility buildings that house bunkers entrances. It's as if they assumed nobody would remember the original construction of these faux buildings. But some of us DO remember.
@@BabyWavv If you're older (60) , you would remember where the deep tunnel project entrance holes were. Those have a maintainence or park building look about them. They are real good decoys
I love the stages you go through. Normal curiosity > mildly obsessive > full on red yarn covered conspiracy theorist > normal and kinda underwhelmed person just being like.... So yeah 😂
There’s a cell phone tower disguised as a palm tree in my neighborhood. I drove past it a million times before a geocache clue showed me what was really there. Great video!
Given the amount of drama that went on in local council meetings in my suburb around the installation of mmWave 5G towers, I can now appreciate why one would disguise things like this
Thank you for finally explaining a weird building that I found in my town. No entrances or exits, and there seemed to be a rave going on but I couldn't see any people. At last I can be at peace...
I just wanted to recognise how well put together this video is. I don't think I've ever watched one of your videos before but I really enjoyed it. It's informative and engaging but I also enjoy the little moments like the powerpoint presentation followed by you sliding down the wall to tell us your thoughts. Great transition to a more intimate insight into your inner workings. Keep it up! Great video!
This video was just so chill to watch, it was like i was watching those teenage movies where they do some random non-important stuff, the amount of effort you put into it is beautiful to see
Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! - Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim - Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it): The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…” In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative. Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man. You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.” Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
@@kagitsune Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! - Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim - Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it): The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…” In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative. Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man. You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.” Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
I work for one of the largest electric companies distributing companies. As an environmental advisor. All the cities listed are pretty well known for their heavy handed regulation. They will have a bunch of requirements for storage, housekeeping, and landscaping for out door structures. But anything with 4 walls will have a lower amount of regulation and a higher barrier of entry to do inspections. Additionally you have spill control, a controlled point of entry, and you're shielded from liability if kids can't just jump a fence to get electrified. Cities prefer this as well because they think a substation is an eye sore. If you go to Dallas, or most texas cities, subs are usually in plain view. That's because they have alot of autonomy in that state. Cities are less able to regulate so there is no justification for the cost.
Huh, in my country there aren't any fake buildings that I know of... mainly because people would get inside to live in them. We do have electric stations, of course, but they're well defined, not camouflaged
@@TurkiyeGeography we have loads in the UK, usually to hide ventilation shafts and emergency exits for underground infrastructures like railways and telecoms facilities
Ive had to work on some of these fake building in my area, and we call them “Masque” cause we’re weird and cajun and its weird. We painted them, repaired the windows if vandals came and thought “hey, they never turn the lights on.” Sad to say, for one substation, a teen was a lil too ignorant to the hundreds of signs that said high voltage. It’s sad that this crap happens, but knowing he ignored signs, it makes it a little more towards “he should have known better”
Yup, one of my previous jobs also took me to a lot of small houses here in Belgium that were actually telephone and data relay stations. Some even contained police safe-houses. Since there's not a lot of space to build a new ugly station or datacenter in busy city or village centers, they sometimes just buy up a house and install it there.
I knew a guy in Alabama that worked for the local phone company. He told me of one that was hidden inside of what appeared to be a mobile home, inside of a mobile home park. They built it in around 2005, when DSL was just going in and the park and two more down the road were on the edge or just outside of the radius the closest wiring facility could support (I want to say it was three miles). So they bought one of the parcels, and built an incredibly lifelike cinderblock building, and on the outside made it look like it was another trailer in the park. He took me to it, and it did look like just another trailer, except the windows all appeared to have one-way film on them. And by doing that they were able to support several hundred more residences.
There's literally a King Of the Hill episode that shows the neighborhood build a fake house on a substation cause it was dangerous and ugly (it was at the end of the episode after the house of Ted Wasanasan's house had to be destroyed cause it was putting the neighboring houses in danger by falling apart during a storm).
I really never knew about fake houses and now I almost don't care any more than I did before. But I can not argue the amazing way you put the information together and presented it in away I will never forget. Great work!
I drive by that pump station in Raleigh, NC on a daily basis. You'd be surprised how little it's noticed and/or known by the locals. So, it appears that the covert operation remains a success for now. However, that area is rapidly gentrifying on a grand scale and soon that modest house looking thing will stick out like a sore thumb.
I think camouflage is a better word then hiding which people now think has some evil connotation, & yup property value. I'd way rather have a great looking fake building in my neighbourhood then the ugly transformer etc it hides. Great video!
This is my first time seeing a video of yours, but I really love the effort you put into it. The filming, the research, the energy and clear crisp audio. I learned something new while I was waiting for my food. Thank you and be well!
+1 on the crisp audio. I heard this woman say one sentence and tapped on the Subscribe button because gosh good enunciation and high audio quality is surprisingly so rare on YT 😂
Yeah this is a clever thing for urban and suburban towns, I bet lots of people would think the sub stations are ugly. Disney does similar things, but for immersion in their parks. If you go some place more rural, though, these don't exist. They're not hidden here, maybe tucked away in the trees a bit, but there's usually just a regular type of utility building and you can see the sub station right behind or next to it.
I've always wondered about stuff like this ever since I've seen stuff like radio towers that look like trees?? Awesome video topic, can't wait to watch!
Oh my goodness, so many communication towers that try to look like trees. If you ever visit Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, the main highway there has them throughout the park!
@@curiousfirely Yeah I know! It's weird! If you see a communication tower, you don't give it a second thought, but when they try to blend in, and you DO spot them, it becomes distracting haha.
Why do you think they would go to all the trouble to disguise these towers as trees? Is it because they are so concerned about aesthetics? Or do they want most to be numbed down so much not to realize the deception in the details..money is only spent when it’s meant to profit
I wonder if fake buildings might also reduce the risk of people exploring the property and getting themselves hurt (ignoring the signs obviously, lol). Like people might be willing to hop the fence, but you're much less likely to try to break into a building, especially one that looks like someone could live there
LOL! My husband is a career (35+ years) U.S. Army Engineer. There is even more than you think. In the beginning I asked about them. Now, I only want to know if it can go boom. Saves time.
Nice work on how you cut this video together. I especially liked how dynamic and friendly you made it feel with you playing with the sunlight and the projector light. This was fun to watch and I know it would've taken many hours to make.
This is such a cool peep into urban design that I never knew existed, but it also could explain so many weird buildings I remember seeing in places I've lived
Why have I not found this channel until just today? This video is incredible, exceptionally well put together, and entertaining. I hope you get the recognition you deserve.
Sabrina, I love your mind. You’ve got curiosity, deep thought, research, excitement, organization, the ability to communicate, and the ability to build, pace, edit, and tell a story all tied up with a lovely bow. Add to that that I’m enamored with your voice, the cadence of your speech, your physical and vocal expressiveness, and I could look at your gorgeous face for hours at a time! Thank you for doing what you do with such excellence, and making such a pleasant, curious, interesting place on UA-cam.
as someone who lives almost nextdoor to an undisguised transformer I really don't understand why it's such a big worry to cover them up, they bother nobody. making it look like a house isn't gonna make it any less likely they'll short, and all that extra construction around it makes it a bigger risk of fire spreading, they way they're hidden just feels creepy
Well it's so when people get sick by cancer or something, they don't blame it on them. Out of sight, out of mind. And people have been known to blame cell phone towers or electricity transformers for things like that. But then they say not enough studies to prove because people are exposed to many factors not just this. And so they hide it too.
@kogepanm people shouldn't be so snobbish then, it's such a waste to pretty up something that doesn't need to be pretty, if we stopped adhering to the demands of stuck up weirdos then they'd stop complaining, what are they gonna do? Move somewhere else where that place also has undisguised transformers? They can learn to deal with the reality that not everything in life is aesthetic
@Chaosstripe the kind of people that care about property value are usually the kind that want to basically live in a pseudo theme park environment and can get anal retentive when it comes to these kind of details.
lol in my post soviet country transformers are this big brutalist box with big numbers written on them (some serial number or idk) its litteraly the most obvious thing ever.
You managed to take a mildly interesting subject and make it very interesting and entertaining. I'm new to this channel and look forward to seeing more of your content!
I hope they let people know before buying a house next to / near one of these. I'm super sensitive to the sounds emitted from substations, and anyone with anxiety surrounding one of those things catching fire would probably not be very happy to know they're unknowingly about to buy a house next to one.
I know a person who bought a house right next to a train track because the realtor always brought her from the other direction. The trains are *right there* but the track itself was not obvious. The break in the trees made the grassy area across the way seem really appealing. These were Midwest freight (mostly coal) trains. We’re talking trains that take several minutes to pass with the big loud bells on the arms that drop, like in the movies except most movies really don’t do it justice. A few times a day, conversation came to a complete standstill, all of the furniture rattled, and we stared into space for several minutes. All to say: no, people probably rarely get warned. _My_ realtors actually suggested driving past my house, maybe walking the neighborhood at different times of the day, just to be sure it was as good as we thought. They’re good folk. 👍
Thats a fair concern but you're missing the point. These facilities often do not make loud noises, produce bad fumes or present a significant fire safety hazard as they are significantly more protected against fires than any regular neighbour with a gas leak explosion. If A fire were to break out because of the high voltage transformers as an example, the power would be immediately cut and planned fire safety action would be taken ASAP. This is not the case with your neighbour's house full of cookware and gas stoves and whatnot. My point is that these facilities are disguised because they can be, People will look at these industrial environments and associate it with danger and pollution. This only means a perceived fear or discomfort. In reality industry that causes issues that cant be hidden with a simple house themed shell are built far from homes and dont bother with this kind of decoration. If they tell you that there is a big high voltage power system next to you, you'll worry about a problem you dont really need to worry about which would defeat the purpose.
There’s a visible substation in my neighborhood, and I can definitely say that blending it into architecture would be a wonderful update. Super cool video! Also, I think that anyone interested in topics like this would love to read “The 99% Invisible City.” It details every hidden and visible thing you could ever find in the urban world. It’s strictly informational, but I still couldn’t put it down.
The town I grew up on had a substation just like this. I was always afraid to go near the fence for fear it would shock me - and I wondered if anyone dared anyone else to try to pee on it.
@@justinwhite2725 peeing on it won't actually result in a fried dick at least. Unless you're literally sticking your fleshy bits onto the metal then that's just Darwin's Award seeker.
Thank you for helping me create a new obsession. I drive around all day for work which means I see a lot of buildings and houses. You did a great job making this so interesting that now I'm going to be scrutinizing every single building I see in a 50 mile radius.
I do the same. One of things I enjoy looking for are buildings with those half doors at ground level that look to once be full doors with the ground built up over the bottom half; also many windows look that way too.
Growing up in Toronto, these buildings always stood out to me, but that's also because I was told what they were for from when I was a young kid. Also one of them caught fire once, a kilometer from my apartment, and I've never heard a more terrifying electrical noise in my life.
I worked in flood control pumping stations for years in a small city. I was told by fellow workers that the very nicely built and landscaped pump stations were designed to minimize the complaints from neighbors who didn’t want those stations located in their neighborhoods. So as a pump mechanic, I spent hours cutting hedges and planting flowers and weeding those flower beds, along with rebuilding massive pumps.
Why not hire a landscaper?
@@tann_man probs not worth the specific cost.
That’s actually a nice way to incorporate needed utilities in a visually appealing way. :) I like it!
the suburb mentality and its consequences have been a disaster for north america
@@suzuplaza Absolutely. NIMBYs are the bane of everyone.
Here in Germany, a story is told that goes something like this: A large mobile phone provider built a radio tower in a village and as soon as it was erected, residents complained of various physical problems - such as headaches or bad sleep. The company responded: "We take your concerns very seriously, but the unit isn't even powered yet."
Stress will do that to you and anticipation can cause stress. :0
"This damn 5g !"
lol, can confirm, ich habe diese Geschichte tatsächlich auch schonmal gehört :D
@@Joy-zz8wz yes, however, also people will lie to get it removed (power stations and such have a negative impact on property value), also nocebo is a thing. However to a company, it is all just noise, if all it takes a a cheap facade to shut up all the complaints (and in turn people also happen to not develop nocebic ailments) then it’s a win win
😂😂😂Oh mann' I think this proves that fear of the unknown causes dumb thoughts and conclusions ' think religion and death
The idea of being a child in New York, living next to a house with no one in it for your entire life, until you see thousands of people pour out of it is so funny
Ducks need HUGS
You hear about a train accident on the news and see a hundred people pour out of a building next door you had previously thought to be uninhabited
"Huge family gathering, I guess"
@@Margen67 Garfunkel and Oates has a song about that
"Mom, why do we live next to a clown car?"
Human spawn
I actually like this a lot, allowing ugly but necessary structures to exist without disrupting the aesthetic of the city.
i dont cause those houses could be used to house people who actually need a home, this is one of the many things thats unessary but our gov does anyway
@@LyraPyxisVTYeah, but without pumps, electricity etc. everyone around would have a bad time. You can't house people in their ...
@nadiaulrich ya but these houses are no longer necessary as they were used for military that's how I see it
@@LyraPyxisVT The alternative to these facade houses isn't homes, its uncovered substations, ventilation shafts, oil rigs, and transformers. Removing the facades would have absolutely no impact on homelessness.
Not to mention we already have more available homes in the US than we have homeless people. The issue isn't quantity of housing, its the distribution.
@Will-fl3hj it kinda would, but removing said houses that are fake and no longer used could be used to put an actual house there to rent out
Sabrina going through an entire commenters genealogy in order to prove their authenticity is some next level dedication
we love to see it
I want an interview with this MS SMITH.
At the end of it I just thought "Congrats Sabrina. You just doxxed someone"
@@U.Inferno doxing is not what's happened in this video since all info was publicly accessible
More like some next-level Sabrina
So pretty much the devs were lazy and the game isn’t as immersive as they say
Fallout 4 vibes
I thought it was because of how much space the details take up💀
It’s the back rooms
Yyy....yeah? Lol.
Reason why we can’t enter ALL of the buildings.
TAHA TRAVELLING TO PARIS EVEN THOUGH WE LITERALLY HAVE FAKE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND IS SO FUNNY
I was just thinking "But London..." the whole time
I mean, a free vacation as a business expense
even funnier when you consider that London's fake buildings are arguably the most well known examples.
I do feel sorry that he was never able to go through the EU line in France for this channel as it was much quicker than the International one.
9:14 lol
My grandparents said that buildings like these were designed around the time of world war 1 for national defense to help prevent attacks on our infrastructure. This had actually proven to be very effective. Paris is a prime example of this on a wider scale, where they made a clone of the city with three different zones. There were lights, buildings, and artists who would paint dirty glass on top of factories.
Be careful, Sabrina might look through your family history to check your authenticity.
@@greatjoseph-lw8pdthat's why to not have a username that is your name
@@MichaelDarrow-tr1mnThat's great advice, Michael Darrow.
This really feels like the buildings in video games that you can't get into
Oh shoot true
now we know what they need to work on after the GTA leak lol.
Exactly! That's the exact feeling
I grew up in a rural area where nobody cared enough to disguise substations, or sewage treatment plants. I've since lived in or visited many large cities around the world, but it never occurred to me these facilities would be hidden among the architecture. This was fascinating.
I remember throwing cans through the fence to make them spark with mates, good times. Being the kid responsible for a (albeit extremely temporary) blackout was a hell of a power trip.
Same. I remmeber constantly passing through some transformer substations which have just a conxrete wall with some paintings separating it from the public, just as phone towers. And oil rigs in the town's outskirts just fenced off
I had similar experiences in more rural areas where substations weren't disguised at all. Just some really tall fences and trees on the east and south sides neatly trimmed to obscure the view to suburbanites in certain areas given prevailing winds.
Because if people knew they lived next to these things they would riot.
@@HighLieBHpower trip, haha.
Hi! This is a fun topic. My Dad worked for the city utilities company, and we could easily recognize all of their " little houses", around town. Not only did they keep their equipment dry and protected, but it was a nice dry place for any worker who had to make any adjustments or repairs on the gages or dials.
Sabrina will now proceed to dox your entire family
watch out she’s gonna check your family history too
@@-bloodstone-7038 that sounds SO ominous and threatening, it's hilarious--
*gauges
@@-bloodstone-7038 not if i check out her family history first
I first learned about this 7 years ago. After I learned about fake houses (and fake trees that are electrical poles) I could no longer unsee them. This was especially when I was in North Carolina on vacation and I had seen homes that were really pump stations (as you mentioned in this video.)
Wait until you learn how good we are at putting up cellular antennas. In an urban area, they are everywhere.
wait until you find out theres a country that uses fake grass and they no longer have grass
Exactly, I've seen a couple AT&Tree GPS towers at boyscout camps.
Sabrina's unhinged dedication to this small thing is why I watch her.
The original question was sound... Delving I to the family tree of a social media post was definitely weird. I wonder if that person will ever find this video.
@@justinwhite2725 HAHA this was awesome.
I was just watching this, not really intending to subscribe until that little rabbit hole. Now? “Coming Alice!”
I love Unhinged Conspiracy Board Sabrina.
Unhinged? It's just research. Verify your sources.
Speaking as someone who helped design a city substation and pump station enclosures, I think she could’ve found the answer in a more succinct way if she had just reached out to the department of water and power, planning commission, or city architect. We city designers love talking about our work! It’s not a secret. There are plenty of community meetings where we invite the public to give their input. 😅
Most modern city dwellers lack the capacity for abstract thinking that’s needed to see these buildings. Wells. Telephone switches. Substations. It’s all magic to the incurious.
She did all the work in a very in depth and enjoyable way. She gets the credit for the fun, informative way they gave us the info. 😍😍
Yeah, but that doesn't sell Native stationary bikes and deodorants, does it?
The drama was necessary for viewers.
Where's the fun in that?
These fake buildings was basically the final resolution of the plot of a later season episode of King of the Hill. A McMansion was built in the neighborhood, but it was shoddily constructed and caused a bunch of problems, and in the climax the neighbors got together during a storm and dismantled the house. The city ended up putting an electrical grid on the emptied lot, and Hank and the guys again came together to build a suburban house façade over it.
I just watched that episode!
REAL JUDGE HEADS KNOW **scoots across my office in a rolling chair**
@@futsuu ASS TAG! YOU'RE IT!
I know exactly what episode you're referring to, as a person who has seen all of KOTH like a dozen times over. Super cool what ideas the creative team came up with for some episodes.
Found it! S13 E3 Square-Footed Monster
In Hong Kong , we dont hide them unless its in a expensive district, we have brick buildings that match the color of the surrounding but it says like ‘ xx electrical substation ‘ in big bold letters and usually it has a public bathroom free to use .
I definitely vibe with the aesthetic justice concept. Living in a poorly maintained and/or poorly designed neighborhood can have a negative effect on your mood and affects how you interact with it. If your surroundings are nice, you're less likely to treat them poorly, but if they aren't, you don't care if you screw it up, accidentally or on purpose.
If the liberal cities would stop creating poverty they wouldn't have to hide it.
Idk, if I lived next to a seemingly peopleless house after a while I would be creeped out by it… Guess it depends on the person too because I don’t see substations as a negative modifier on my mood, they’re just substations lol.
@@asmrtpop2676 Emptiness/lack of people can definitely play into that as well
"I don't know what this proves, I just spent two days putting it together" 💀💀 Never related more
She proved 2 things:
1. The commenter is probably who they said they were.
2. That you can figure out a random person's genealogy in about 2 days based on 1 comment on the internet. (Which is honestly kinda terrifying)
the lost art of fact checking
I get this eerie vibe in bigger cities all the time that most of the buildings are only for show with facades like in the Truman show
Lmao no. It's to hide vital infrastructure
This is EXACTLY how it feels.. cities freak me out
@@samanthamartin1407 it's not that deep bro in my opinion I lived in cities all my life who even cares?
@@kmk900___ I mean it's not really supposed to be deep.. like I've always lived in pretty populated areas near very large cities, and I just feel claustrophobic and anxious jn the city, I would much prefer going off to live in a rural area or a forest because that is where I feel more at home. Some people get freaked out in rural areas because they feel so isolated. It's cool that you like to live in the city though, nothing against cities at all. There's a place for everyone.
@@samanthamartin1407 Yeah I'm one of those people who hate feeling isolated in a small rural town and it's also a bit scary if your house is truly isolated by itself like you can't run to a neighbors house if your in danger you are basically disconnected from society in a way.
Hidden In Plain Sight sounds like an interesting series to pursue. Were I live, is still rural enough that most unsightly utilities are built out of the way and far from housing, but those that are close to subdivisions are typically hidden using landscaping and tall hedges. We do have many “frankentrees” or cellular towers designed to look like tall evergreen trees.
Something you didn't bring up is kids. I grew up next to an uncovered substation and my cousins and I would throw empty soda cans and crumpled up tin foil balls at it to make it spark. Kids are too stupid to understand signs, but add the shell of a normal house and there's no temptation. We absolutely caused at least one local black out throwing things over the fence. Plus, putting up a stick frame house is just as much work as putting in the massive fence.
Probably mitigates the noise too
When a kid sees a "Danger: Keep Out" sign their brain auto-translates that to "I Dare You!"...
@@noneofyourbeeswax01 Very true
@@bocanthandlethis humans are so dumb its amazing we havent nuked ourselves to death already
Putting up a house shell is absolutely not the same amount of work as putting up a chain link fence
My Father worked for Bell Canada in Toronto. He used to point out fake houses to us as we'd drive around the city. He said that they were built mainly during the post-war period of paranoia and the purpose was to disguise critical infrastructure so that it wouldn't be easily recognized and targeted by enemy air craft (Yeah, In Toronto) - They stopped this practice sometime after the cold-war since the air-raids were pretty much obsolete. That's why newer subdivisions don't tend to have these fake buildings. At least not for this purpose.
Yeah, in the modern world its hard to imagine a carpet bombing run being attempted on an inland North American city. They just are too hard to invade by conventional warfare.
One of 3 things would happen:
1. A comado team would just do sabotage missions because all of the relevant information is readily available online. (Between utilities publishing system info and google earth/maps)
2. Nukes would be used since ICBMs have a far better chance of reaching the intended target than a bomber group, and they won't waste one of those on anything less than a nuke. (Nukes deal wide spread damage so almost no point in targeting something small enough to pretend to be a house)
3. If it was somehow a conventional war all the way to the end, by the time bombing if Toronto or Chicago is a viable option the USA and Canada would have effectively lost the war. Our Navy's are our primary defense, and to reach Toronto you would have to get past them, and neutralize multiple military bases, and likely capture all the cities between Toronto and the Atlantic. (Which is most of Canada's core cities plus the capital, and likely America's coastal cities as well, including our capital.)
I know this is a bit dark for a video on fake buildings hiding infrastructure, but its just doubling down on how unlikely it is that we bother hiding infrastructure from potential invaders. We are much more likely to hide it as a regular house to avoid having to deal with NIMBYs. (Especially considering how much of our infrastructure is protected by the mutual desire to have nice things, and the hope people head warning signs saying something will kill you painfully.)
Exactly. Fake buildings exist to some point all over the world. It's a security thing to prevent bombing of critical infrastructure in case of war.
There is some degree of truth in this. I work in infrastructure security and we are having serious talks in the U.S. about bringing back this practice because of the fear of kinetic attacks (polite speak for terrorists shooting or bombing targets).
There was also the threat of sabotage by enemy infiltrators or local people who sympathize with the enemy. A lot of infrastructure is disguised even in smaller towns.
Most modern building are hideous so there’s no need to try and disguise another ugly thing
Melissa saying "well, this is underwhelming. it just exists." is a WHOLE FREAKING MOOD
Whenever people meet me
@@Crabernacker oh no. Anyway
Sometimes, the YT recommendations come up with something completely outside my usual, often resulting in a very enjoyable video. This is one of those. Great job, and thanx!
Your energy giving a speech in front of an *actual* projector slideshow for an internet video is something all UA-camrs and professors of history should learn to emulate.
I agree!
And adding animations mid-presentation? Iconic.
We had a fake tree in a nearby city. It was really a cell tower. There were trees on one side of the tower, so the tower needed to be taller than the trees, but it needed to blend in, too. So they attached a few fake branches to it, above the tops of the trees on the one side of the tower. The branches stuck out at perfectly even lengths, at perfect 90 degree angles from the "trunk", like a cheap fake Christmas tree. We used to always comment on how it was such a pretty, pretty tree.
those are all over in Cali! I live way up north so mine are "pine" but in the desert SoCal they have palm tree phone towers 🤣
@@jednrrp Yes, this one was a "pine", too! Haha!
We're starting to get some of the fake tree towers in Colorado too, mostly noticeable near highways passing through the mountains. Some of them are really obvious and terrible looking, but some of them blend in pretty nicely. You can spot them if you know to look, but they're easy to miss if you're not actively looking for them.
at&tree
I also love the cacti towers in arizona
This was one of the topics on urban design and architecture uni first year I attended - the answer is pretty much the latter. It is important for the neighborhood to seem cohesive and undisruptive because rhytmically designed cities improve the quality of life of people living in it.
And maybe its also good to have these thing hidden. She said they were built around the WW2 era? So it would also be less likely they would get bombarded. Was this also one of the reasons or just another plus to have fake buildings?
@@gueswho8815 The US and Canada weren't really at much of a threat from Nazi or Japanese air raids, and while small substations etc are essential on a local level, attacking a power plant would have a much larger impact
@@imogenclarke743 france and england definitely were thou
Yes. Took a course on the vernacular landscape in developed areas during my Geography degree, and we learned about NIMBY houses.
Near my parents cottage the cell towers have been designed to look like trees. We all know what they are but, even though we all want better service, people get all put out by seeing them. Now, instead of them being an annoyance, they are a curiosity that people try to find.
@@postrachsmietnikow And as I said local substations are not a valuable target, WW2 bombers weren't even accurate enough to target them in the first place either. Targets were always towns/cities or large critical infrastructure or military targets, an air raid against a substation that powers a single suburb is pointless when the same raiding group could instead attack the nearby power plant or refinery or port or airbase or train station. Also france didn't suffer this kind of bombing campaign due to its swift defeat from invasion.
I worked in the power industry and can confirm, that yes, these fake buildings and other disguises are used to obscure things like substations in sensitive (nimby) areas. Oftentimes now, local artists are also brought in to add a cultural touch (murals, public art sculpture, etc.) on new construction or when renovations are done. Great video!
Makes sense. No one wants to live next to something that will eventually look like an abandoned industrial area or that will devalue the thing they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on and may need to sell one day if they move. Its a good solution. Same with disguising some cell towers as pine or palm trees.
Just a thought, it might have been helpful to call the owners of these buildings. They might have been able to tell you why their buildings have fake exteriors.
Many of them wouldn't have "owners" per se, and almost certainly those that do probably wouldn't bother responding to questions. Electric substations, oil rigs, ventilation systems... those would be government or corporate owned.
Also, depending on country, finding the owner of a random property could be *significantly* more work than whatever she did.
@@cr1197 Most of this information tends to be public information to an extent. If it's registered to a business/large corporation, which utilities are, then you'll probably quickly run into a brick wall.
Give me a detailed plan
Since it's that easy
These kinds of buildings are often owned or handled by the local city governments, and/or well-known secrets from the companies that have them. For the companies, it can just be flat-out hard to get in touch with them. They may fear that the facade that is servicing them would be less effective if they talked about them, or just not feel like answering your questions are worth their time. For the city ones, let me tell you, that can be a trip trying to get good information. In my experience city, governments tend to have a public-facing group that simply has no idea how anything works and has the sole job of putting you in touch with someone that might. Often they don't, and you have to start over, and if at any point they decide you aren't worth their time search is over then and there basically.
I worked as a cell tower technician. Sometimes cell towers are disguised as pine trees (Ohio market) or palm trees (Florida market) its mainly because the residents around towers usually hate the look of towers so it’s to help with their views. Same thing with churches steeples having cell sights inside. All to bring the technology close to homes without looking too invading
LOL i live in florida and theres a big ass plastic pine tree cell tower next to the highway there there are no trees, now i know what it is!!
Yeah we have those in Georgia also. I've seen it mostly in the nicer parts of town like Vinings, West Paces Ferry Road area, it's like right around the city of Atlanta but where a good bit of rich people or even Hollywood stars live like Usher. That's just what I can think of right off the top of my head cuz I don't go out there very much. They're shaped like very tall pine trees but it's obvious that it's not real but it does make it look a lot better. I actually wonder why they didn't do it in more areas
I’ve seen them in Florida! It actually looks better covered up
It's usually an ugly tree but, a good looking tower. More money for me as an installer!
It also helps birds not run straight into the towers
It's so nice to find another youtube channel with people who have basic human decency and believe in human rights. Society at large is so not reality-affirming--especially if you are disabled in any way, so online stuff is often how I find people to relate to. Thanks for being a person.
When you were discussing WW2 I was also thinking it made sense in times of war if the important infrastructure, power sub stations etc were disguised as normal houses. An undisguised power station is extremely obvious and an easy target if they want to take out the power in a local area
Absolutely.
I was going to comment the same thing.
You can't knock out a power substation if you can't find it.
I live in Europe. This was my very first assumption. Usually an airstrike of one kond or another would be used to take down these. Simply disguising them well enough from a little distance makes things alot more tricky.
In my country these facilities are often buried deep in tunnels and cavities sometimes hige facilities, inside granite hills (massive city servers, military rescue stations, sewage facilities) and electric stations in urban development either installed in buildings with WW II bunkers, vast cellars, or again underground with a visible small sugarcube type building over ground no larger than a regular ground floor garage, with some green shrubbery, around clearly indicating to pedestrians what it is, but not much of an eye sore and hard to detect from above.
All of these are security measures in case the Russians decide our territory is tactical for them.
I have friends who've been down to work on the servers. It's second level sci-fi tech in a veritable mine system.
Also underground hospital facilities for wartime.
We don't have the manpower to ever be able to outman a superpower, (resistance would last days, not like the Ukraine) but military funding and taxes in general can insure these facilities are very safe in their construction and virtually invisible. Few are aware of their location.
Everything here is digital ( I mean it, every aspect of life) and also the climate makes us (in the north) entirely dependent on electrical power as does a virtually cashless monetary system. It's a weakness in the face of invasion, military threats. Not alot of fake houses though. Our cities arent massive enough it wouldn't not be very well known. But under government owned historic property are gateways, tunnels with roads for massive vehicles reservoirs and back up generators, weapons depots, en masse.
@@patrickkenyon2326 that’s why you do what america would do and bomb everything around it too. that way you don’t feel bad for “accidentally” blowing the space around it up
@@agentsbigassforehead Yeah, that's why we design precision munitions that cost millions of dollars each.
So we can saturation bomb a city block, like a WW2 B-17...
The end of the Allied pumping station in southern England for fuel for the D-Day invasion was disguised as an ice cream stand. Look up Operation Pluto. Bombing in WW2 was generally not precision targeted. It was indiscriminate area or carpet bombing. It wasn't easy to hit targets back then even if you knew where it was.
this video is answering so many questions that have occasionally rattled around in my head for years. the ones you forget about when it’s time to stop daydreaming.
@@보예노지-r7c Or go out and find hobby
MY LAST NAME IS BODWELL. It was my cousin Buck that made the homepage. Big shock when I grew up to find out that most obscure families don't do this
As someone who lives rurally where these facilities are for the most part just...built right out in the open (like literally next to a cornfield sometimes), this is incredibly weird and intriguing.
Kinda the same. Except I'm not aware of these in my country, at least not on the scale of suburban houses or apartment buildings as was shown here in the UK, Paris, and a few North American cities (not a great sample size for "all over the world", I might add). And I live in a European capital that's part of a metropolis of 1 million, which you'd think would be big enough if the size of a city was the issue. I think we tend to bury a lot of infrastructure underground, transformer stations are out in the open, bomb shelters are generally more of the "steel door in bedrock" style or the entrance is incorporated into some building somewhere.
I mean sure, the vents for the underground parking hall for the big shopping centre nearby are visible structures on the surface, and aesthetics was definitely a factor in their design. But they're not disguised as anything other than vent structures. And on smaller scales too, air from underground structures definitely gets vented out through aboveground buildings, but for the examples I know of I have no idea if they're venting building air or underground structure air, and honestly, it's just a huge grey area which part of the underground tunnels is part of which building and which is just its own thing. I guess my final conclusion is that this "fake buildings" category isn't really a well-defined category, it's a collection of different things, and a lot of them are not very surprising at all.
It's your local government spying on everyone, so they don't get ahead of the harvest. You know black ops ,CIA kind of thing lol.
Aperture Science like-
@@Snaake42 its more a suburb thing than urban areas per se. generally in urban areas the commercial arguments for developing utilities will outweigh residential concerns and zoning/environmental/etc. laws that concern development won't create a need for this kind of hidden infrastructure.
When Sabrina finished explaining the research of Harold Bodwell's genealogical tree, I clapped. It's just so cool and inspiring, but in a "you can do that if you have enough time and commitment" kind of way
I love it, I hate it, I love that it’s possible to go so unhinged and deep dive so thoroughly into something.
On the other hand, if that’s what she can find, holy shit, what else are people finding? How many traces of a single person exist on the internet that can be woven together to know a COMPLETE FAMILY HISTORY of them?
@@Jenny77901 how far back can we go without playing with mitochondrial Eve?!
I think the reason the fake buildings are created is pretty simple.
They are intended to not attract attention or be noticed. When something draws attention it becomes a curiosity.
If it looks like other things near it most people won't even notice it.
btw i used to work on cell sites and the fake building ones aren’t actually fully fake buildings, cell sites are nestled into whatever tiny space is useless to the primary business that owns the land and the rest of it operates as normal. for fake items you’ll mostly see them as fake trees :)
I grew up in Long Beach and the city has fake *islands* 🤣
To drill for oil they made a bunch of artificial islands right by the coast and covered them in fake building covers so they look like a hotel or resort from a distance. 😆 The covers were mandated by the city when it was first built (fun fact, the main architect was a former Disney Imagineer).
Main architect was a what?
@@happysmash27 the specialist engineers that Disney uses to design a lot of the animatronics, rides, and "fake" buildings in the amusement parks.
wait really?? they always just looked like oil islands to me, no fancy resort vibes at all lmao
@@happysmash27 Disney uses all kinds of weird names to describe their employees and guests. I'm pretty sure imaginere is a combination of the word imagine and engineer. Their visitors are called guests because they don't want to offend anyone by calling them the wrong gender. I'm sure you can find a list online somewhere that uses all their strange lingo.
@@KS-zc4jn Eh that’s not completely why they call them that lol.
I live in South Korea and here many otherwise ugly factories, trash collection points, incinerators, and generally unpleasant industrial buildings are completely encased from outside and painted with pleasant colors, making them resemble warehouses instead. From the outside all you see is a big nondescript box building. There are also many military installations inside mountains, but good luck finding an entrance...
What's with the military entrances? Are they underground
I recently traveled to Tokyo for work and had a wonderful time at the park near my hotel, which was really the roof of the water treatment plant.
@@yusraazeem7754 They're bunkers. If you work there, you know how to get in. If you don't work there, you don't know how to get in, and have no reason to anyway. Don't worry about it, it's incredibly boring and even the people who work there don't want to be there. It's nothing like the movies. Movies make it all seem much more interesting than reality, so just keep watching movies if any of this fascinates you. Or join the military & get a TS clearance & get stationed at one of these places to discover that everything I said is true but now you're stuck in the military for 4-20 years.
@@akraut Was that the one in Azabujuban? I spent a lot of time in that park.
It's like making a giant, ugly creeper farm in minecraft then building a church around it.
In my architecture history classes I remember my teacher said that in Paris around the time they were doing massive restructuring to the urban planning they made a lot of fake buildings with the sole purpose of making the most important streets look better. That been said I think both your theories sound very possible, my best guess is that is a bit of both. Amazing job on the research.
theory 1: people around these facilities dont want them so you hide them. theory 2: they should be hidden. its really the same theory.
Could have started that way, and then were repurposed into these.
Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
-
Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim
-
Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it):
The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote:
“Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative.
Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man.
You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes:
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.”
Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ.
Amen!!!!!!!
@@cbaylor7382 Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
-
Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim
-
Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it):
The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote:
“Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative.
Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man.
You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes:
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.”
Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ.
Amen!!!!!!!
@@amwhite760 Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
-
Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim
-
Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it):
The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote:
“Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative.
Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man.
You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes:
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.”
Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ.
Amen!!!!!!!
I used to live in a little suburb in Ottawa, and I passed one of these places on the way to the grocery store. If the house shell was supposed to make it less scary, it didn't work! It just had the vibe of "someone was definitely murdered in this darkened house" until my Mom explained these fake buildings to me.
As an engineer I have taken part in some of the design work in these “fake” buildings.
Edit for context, I’m a mechanical engineer, my part in the design is calculating the heat generated from the equipment and environment and telling them what they need so the room does not get hotter than 120°F. I mostly have done work for AT&T and Verizon, they kind of just have their equipment hidden in the most random places that look like a normal building such as a church or a house looking building, or even a big clock tower.
Base on some of the comments by engineers/designers, are these buildings designed for camouflage reasons in case of war, people retaliation etc. Is this something we s/b careful about not pointing out to the public? It’s great info., however if there’s security reasons behind them as one comment stated and also stated the name of a company that have part of their operations set up in one of them I can understand. One comment even stated about back in the days of war etc.,
One of the things I love about working as a tradesman is getting a very "Behind the scenes" look into utility areas.
I'll always remember my first day on the job in a giant utility area for an arena. Getting to go through all of the "Do not enter" or "Staff only" signs and seeing for the first time the heart of the massive structure that makes it all work.
I love debugging the problems that come up in the moment that they absolutely need to work for people to have a smooth experience, fixing the issues and nobody present even notices that something had been going catastrophically wrong on the other side of a wall they'd been sitting near.
That sounds very fun and not ominous at all.
I'm so glad that there are people like you who love doing this work, it is so cool and SO not for me. YAY infrastructure!
As someone that's lived in decent suburban towns (as in: kinda yuppy, definitely have nimby populations) my entire life that have always had visible substations just like... neatly fenced off on the side of a road, the fact that some places would go so far as to put a fake building around them is so crazy.
i love how your videos go from a google slide projected on a wall to in depth animations that look higher quality than most big education channels
This just landed on my home page and I HAD TO comment because this was so beautifully done. I had no idea these even existed but still love learning new info I never knew I needed haha!
I think during the height of the pandemic in 2020, there was a UA-camr who snuck into one of these buildings out of curiosity in his neighborhood in France. That was the first time I'd heard anything about fake buildings.
Well done with this video!
Ooo who dat? I need a link to that original video now
Commenting so I can also get a link
I saw it, so it exists, but sorry no link (I'm old).
@@Cemetery._Lady I found one, Vintage Tran- Exploring Fake Buildings
@@adil0028 I love you thank you
To me, the simplest answer to why there are fake buildings like this is because these facilities don't look good and would disrupt the area visually otherwise.
Yeah exactly right, this video took 11 mins to say that. Like, I'm really confused
@@tryingmybest206 slow video week I guess
People in the neighborhood would complain
@@tryingmybest206 It's just a part of the entertainment for the video to spend so much time on it, I think.
In rural areas, they are allowed to exist despite NIMBYs being as common as they aren't numerous enough to mount a legal fight vs a corporation.
Never knew this! Now I’m going to be on the lookout for them.
They should do this more in low income areas. Seems like they not only cut down more of the trees in low income areas, but they also dump all the visually unpleasant facilities right there amongst the main living areas !
Could also be a chicken-or-egg thing? Like, the unpleasant facilities are placed away from homes, but that makes the land near the unpleasant facilities undesirable and therefore cheaper to buy. So, lower income people buy there. Then later, people point and say “See? All of this unpleasantness goes into low income areas!”
@@truthsmiles Hello ! I see where you're coming from ! That could be possible in some cases, it seems plausible to me too.
Believe it, people can be so unreasonable and low down. When looking into gerrymandering etc. It is definitely purposeful in places. Things like this dont persist when you actually care for people.... However! There are great souls out here who care and i believe for a better future with everyone ✨
@@truthsmiles the only reason low income housing can be bad is because of bad money hungry land lords if more houses were built or if landlord gave more of a shit about their tenants then everyone would be happy it’s more than a chicken and an egg thheory
It serves a purpose of keeping people miserable. From the unhealthy food to even your environment. People with money and power will go to lengths you would think absurd in order to hold onto that money and power.
@truthsmiles
i absolutely love the sound design as taha realizes which building it is.
honestly this whole channel is incredible. y’all are so talented!
exiting from a subway through to the outside of a house is some harry potter stuff
I'm in Chicago. Sabrina would have a field day here. We have dozens of these fake utility buildings that house bunkers entrances. It's as if they assumed nobody would remember the original construction of these faux buildings. But some of us DO remember.
the ones up north always trip me out I just thought they were drug houses disguised, so I just always pretended they didn't exist lol
@@BabyWavv If you're older (60) , you would remember where the deep tunnel project entrance holes were. Those have a maintainence or park building look about them. They are real good decoys
@@briankeenan4901 good for surviving a nuclear war if you dont mind 70 year old tinned peaches
I love the stages you go through. Normal curiosity > mildly obsessive > full on red yarn covered conspiracy theorist > normal and kinda underwhelmed person just being like.... So yeah
😂
Reminds me a lot of the Unraveled videos that Brian David Gilbert used to do for Polygon.
There’s a cell phone tower disguised as a palm tree in my neighborhood. I drove past it a million times before a geocache clue showed me what was really there. Great video!
I've seen one that looks like a badly-done giant fake pine tree; we're talking the cheap fake Christmas tree look here.
Given the amount of drama that went on in local council meetings in my suburb around the installation of mmWave 5G towers, I can now appreciate why one would disguise things like this
Who disguises a cell phone tower as a pine tree what the hell 💀😐💀🗿🤓🥶🥶🥶🥶💀
Oh that makes senses
@@markh.6687 The devs have gotta really lazy with our simulation lol
Imagine living next to the building that vents the dirty subway air out
Thank you for finally explaining a weird building that I found in my town. No entrances or exits, and there seemed to be a rave going on but I couldn't see any people. At last I can be at peace...
plot twist: it is in fact the rave from the movie Blade, and it never ended.
Sorry. I think you were just never invited. It's very exclusive.
I just wanted to recognise how well put together this video is. I don't think I've ever watched one of your videos before but I really enjoyed it. It's informative and engaging but I also enjoy the little moments like the powerpoint presentation followed by you sliding down the wall to tell us your thoughts. Great transition to a more intimate insight into your inner workings. Keep it up! Great video!
This video was just so chill to watch, it was like i was watching those teenage movies where they do some random non-important stuff, the amount of effort you put into it is beautiful to see
Yeah, I love this vibe. Geeking out over a small detail of urban life, with two friends.
Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
-
Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim
-
Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it):
The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote:
“Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative.
Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man.
You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes:
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.”
Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ.
Amen!!!!!!!
@@kagitsune Repent of your sins and believe on the Adon Jesus the Christ, believe in your heart that He has died for sins and rose from the tomb on the third day and you shall receive the Holy Spirit of God and He shall dwell within you. You shall be saved. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
-
Jesus the Christ loves you, praise YHWH our Elohim
-
Evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence, crucifixion, and disappearance from the tomb (He rose from it):
The Lord Jesus Christ did exist, gathered disciples, and was crucified and went missing from the tomb. To argue about wether He was taken from the grave or rose from it, is an argument a skeptic can make. Because well if you disregard the eye witness testimony of the disciples and there willingness to die for Christ, and humans won’t die for something they know is a lie, when Peter is pinned upside down to that cross, he could have said that it was a fake, but He didn’t because it wasn’t, what care would he have about death in this world if he knew for a fact he had assurance of a life in another, Jesus Christ did rise from the tomb and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now the evidence for the Lord Jesus Christ’s existence really isn’t hard to find a multitude of non-Christian scholars and historians mention Him within 150 years after the time of His life. One such is Tacitus a Roman historian who reported on emperor nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed rome in 64 AD. Tacitus wrote:
“Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
In this Tacitus makes reference to not only Christians, but Christ calling Him Christus and confirming the Gospels going on to say that He suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) under the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilate, which like I said confirms the Gospels narrative.
Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan's advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity. At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food - but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”
This passage provides a number of interesting insights into the beliefs and practices of early Christians. First, we see that Christians regularly met on a certain fixed day for worship. Second, their worship was directed to Christ, demonstrating that they firmly believed in His divinity. Furthermore, one scholar interprets Pliny's statement that hymns were sung to Christ, "as to a god", as a reference to the rather distinctive fact that, "unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth." If this interpretation is correct, Pliny understood that Christians were worshipping an actual historical person as God! Of course, this agrees perfectly with the New Testament doctrine that Jesus was both God and man.
You may have heard of the scholar Flavius Josephus who mentioned James as being the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, which matches what Paul said calling James “The Lord’s brother” and there is another document that Josephus may have written which goes:
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.”
Now it’s up to debate wether this is the entirely original document of what Josephus wrote, or if a Christian had edited it. But regardless he wrote about the Lord Jesus Christ. Wether it was negative or positive like the possible document is. Anyways there are many other statements, documents, letters, and writings of all sorts from the ancient world talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and there is not one question if He was a real person or if He was crucified and went missing from the grave. That is clear as day, He is a real person, was crucified, and went missing from the grave. And He did rise from the grave. And for more evidence of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s the Bible and you see there is no evidence the Bible is corrupted, a lie, created by the Roman government, folktale. It is the recount of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, now wether you want to believe it is up to you. And what profit was there in spreading Christianity, All the early Christian suffered persecution, beatings, and were killed. Another Scholar reported that James the Lord’s Brother was thrown off a building and then stoned to death for spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem. These people went to great lengths even giving their own lives for the Adon Jesus the Christ.
Amen!!!!!!!
I work for one of the largest electric companies distributing companies. As an environmental advisor.
All the cities listed are pretty well known for their heavy handed regulation. They will have a bunch of requirements for storage, housekeeping, and landscaping for out door structures. But anything with 4 walls will have a lower amount of regulation and a higher barrier of entry to do inspections. Additionally you have spill control, a controlled point of entry, and you're shielded from liability if kids can't just jump a fence to get electrified. Cities prefer this as well because they think a substation is an eye sore.
If you go to Dallas, or most texas cities, subs are usually in plain view. That's because they have alot of autonomy in that state. Cities are less able to regulate so there is no justification for the cost.
Huh, in my country there aren't any fake buildings that I know of... mainly because people would get inside to live in them. We do have electric stations, of course, but they're well defined, not camouflaged
Same. I live in Russia.
same in Brasil!
Is there any in the uk?
@@neko7606 seriously? That’s wild lmao
@@TurkiyeGeography we have loads in the UK, usually to hide ventilation shafts and emergency exits for underground infrastructures like railways and telecoms facilities
Ive had to work on some of these fake building in my area, and we call them “Masque” cause we’re weird and cajun and its weird. We painted them, repaired the windows if vandals came and thought “hey, they never turn the lights on.” Sad to say, for one substation, a teen was a lil too ignorant to the hundreds of signs that said high voltage. It’s sad that this crap happens, but knowing he ignored signs, it makes it a little more towards “he should have known better”
oh. did he pass away?
@@lulucool45 He was in the for the shock of his life/death depending on how you look at it?
I just fell in love with this channel.
Yup, one of my previous jobs also took me to a lot of small houses here in Belgium that were actually telephone and data relay stations. Some even contained police safe-houses. Since there's not a lot of space to build a new ugly station or datacenter in busy city or village centers, they sometimes just buy up a house and install it there.
I knew a guy in Alabama that worked for the local phone company. He told me of one that was hidden inside of what appeared to be a mobile home, inside of a mobile home park. They built it in around 2005, when DSL was just going in and the park and two more down the road were on the edge or just outside of the radius the closest wiring facility could support (I want to say it was three miles). So they bought one of the parcels, and built an incredibly lifelike cinderblock building, and on the outside made it look like it was another trailer in the park.
He took me to it, and it did look like just another trailer, except the windows all appeared to have one-way film on them. And by doing that they were able to support several hundred more residences.
I am glad that you mentioned the fake buildings that cover oil wells in Los Angeles. Those are the ones that I have noticed many times.
There's literally a King Of the Hill episode that shows the neighborhood build a fake house on a substation cause it was dangerous and ugly (it was at the end of the episode after the house of Ted Wasanasan's house had to be destroyed cause it was putting the neighboring houses in danger by falling apart during a storm).
I really never knew about fake houses and now I almost don't care any more than I did before. But I can not argue the amazing way you put the information together and presented it in away I will never forget. Great work!
I drive by that pump station in Raleigh, NC on a daily basis. You'd be surprised how little it's noticed and/or known by the locals. So, it appears that the covert operation remains a success for now. However, that area is rapidly gentrifying on a grand scale and soon that modest house looking thing will stick out like a sore thumb.
Just found my favorite youtuber, the side quest proving bodwell family just so relatable for me
I think camouflage is a better word then hiding which people now think has some evil connotation, & yup property value. I'd way rather have a great looking fake building in my neighbourhood then the ugly transformer etc it hides. Great video!
This is my first time seeing a video of yours, but I really love the effort you put into it. The filming, the research, the energy and clear crisp audio. I learned something new while I was waiting for my food. Thank you and be well!
+1 on the crisp audio. I heard this woman say one sentence and tapped on the Subscribe button because gosh good enunciation and high audio quality is surprisingly so rare on YT 😂
Same
This is exact example of jumping into the rabbit hole 8:20
Yeah this is a clever thing for urban and suburban towns, I bet lots of people would think the sub stations are ugly. Disney does similar things, but for immersion in their parks. If you go some place more rural, though, these don't exist. They're not hidden here, maybe tucked away in the trees a bit, but there's usually just a regular type of utility building and you can see the sub station right behind or next to it.
I've always wondered about stuff like this ever since I've seen stuff like radio towers that look like trees?? Awesome video topic, can't wait to watch!
Oh my goodness, so many communication towers that try to look like trees. If you ever visit Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, the main highway there has them throughout the park!
@@curiousfirely Yeah I know! It's weird! If you see a communication tower, you don't give it a second thought, but when they try to blend in, and you DO spot them, it becomes distracting haha.
Why do you think they would go to all the trouble to disguise these towers as trees? Is it because they are so concerned about aesthetics?
Or do they want most to be numbed down so much not to realize the deception in the details..money is only spent when it’s meant to profit
I wonder if fake buildings might also reduce the risk of people exploring the property and getting themselves hurt (ignoring the signs obviously, lol). Like people might be willing to hop the fence, but you're much less likely to try to break into a building, especially one that looks like someone could live there
LOL! My husband is a career (35+ years) U.S. Army Engineer. There is even more than you think. In the beginning I asked about them. Now, I only want to know if it can go boom. Saves time.
Nice work on how you cut this video together. I especially liked how dynamic and friendly you made it feel with you playing with the sunlight and the projector light. This was fun to watch and I know it would've taken many hours to make.
This is such a cool peep into urban design that I never knew existed, but it also could explain so many weird buildings I remember seeing in places I've lived
You know what kind of freaks me out? When they bore out and hide things in MOUNTAINS.
Idk how I have only just found this channel, the pure chaos combined with good quality editing and videography is so enjoyable to watch
Why have I not found this channel until just today? This video is incredible, exceptionally well put together, and entertaining. I hope you get the recognition you deserve.
Sabrina, I love your mind. You’ve got curiosity, deep thought, research, excitement, organization, the ability to communicate, and the ability to build, pace, edit, and tell a story all tied up with a lovely bow. Add to that that I’m enamored with your voice, the cadence of your speech, your physical and vocal expressiveness, and I could look at your gorgeous face for hours at a time! Thank you for doing what you do with such excellence, and making such a pleasant, curious, interesting place on UA-cam.
Yes, I too am in love with he, but like, in a non-creepy way. Guess you put it better.
weird
i read the title and im like "Ok lets see how she proves that we're all in a videogame"
as someone who lives almost nextdoor to an undisguised transformer I really don't understand why it's such a big worry to cover them up, they bother nobody. making it look like a house isn't gonna make it any less likely they'll short, and all that extra construction around it makes it a bigger risk of fire spreading, they way they're hidden just feels creepy
Well it's so when people get sick by cancer or something, they don't blame it on them. Out of sight, out of mind. And people have been known to blame cell phone towers or electricity transformers for things like that. But then they say not enough studies to prove because people are exposed to many factors not just this. And so they hide it too.
@kogepanm If such an insubstantial thing can affect property value, those people weren't interested in paying the full price anyways.
@kogepanm people shouldn't be so snobbish then, it's such a waste to pretty up something that doesn't need to be pretty, if we stopped adhering to the demands of stuck up weirdos then they'd stop complaining, what are they gonna do? Move somewhere else where that place also has undisguised transformers? They can learn to deal with the reality that not everything in life is aesthetic
@Chaosstripe the kind of people that care about property value are usually the kind that want to basically live in a pseudo theme park environment and can get anal retentive when it comes to these kind of details.
lol in my post soviet country transformers are this big brutalist box with big numbers written on them (some serial number or idk) its litteraly the most obvious thing ever.
You managed to take a mildly interesting subject and make it very interesting and entertaining. I'm new to this channel and look forward to seeing more of your content!
It's virtually impossible to ingest the harmful amount of aluminum through deodorant
I always love the research put into these videos... but the chapter titles are always an icing on the cake to enjoy!
thanks to this comment i actually read the chapter titles and got a laugh out of them. thanks bro ❤️
The real winner here is finding the Bodwell family tree and connecting it back to a random user on the internet.
i studied and worked in urban planning for 4 years and never heard of this. that was really interesting thank you 😊
That’s gotta be a city thing cause I live in the Midwest country, and everything is just exposed outside
I hope they let people know before buying a house next to / near one of these. I'm super sensitive to the sounds emitted from substations, and anyone with anxiety surrounding one of those things catching fire would probably not be very happy to know they're unknowingly about to buy a house next to one.
i mean, thats exactly why theyre concealing them, to be able to sell them to people with the anxiety unknowingly
I know a person who bought a house right next to a train track because the realtor always brought her from the other direction. The trains are *right there* but the track itself was not obvious. The break in the trees made the grassy area across the way seem really appealing. These were Midwest freight (mostly coal) trains. We’re talking trains that take several minutes to pass with the big loud bells on the arms that drop, like in the movies except most movies really don’t do it justice.
A few times a day, conversation came to a complete standstill, all of the furniture rattled, and we stared into space for several minutes.
All to say: no, people probably rarely get warned. _My_ realtors actually suggested driving past my house, maybe walking the neighborhood at different times of the day, just to be sure it was as good as we thought. They’re good folk. 👍
You're insufferable.
Thats a fair concern but you're missing the point. These facilities often do not make loud noises, produce bad fumes or present a significant fire safety hazard as they are significantly more protected against fires than any regular neighbour with a gas leak explosion. If A fire were to break out because of the high voltage transformers as an example, the power would be immediately cut and planned fire safety action would be taken ASAP. This is not the case with your neighbour's house full of cookware and gas stoves and whatnot.
My point is that these facilities are disguised because they can be, People will look at these industrial environments and associate it with danger and pollution. This only means a perceived fear or discomfort. In reality industry that causes issues that cant be hidden with a simple house themed shell are built far from homes and dont bother with this kind of decoration.
If they tell you that there is a big high voltage power system next to you, you'll worry about a problem you dont really need to worry about which would defeat the purpose.
why would they tell people if theyre hiding them...
fake buildings can legit become the centre of mysteries and conspiracies too
Also if this was a trend started during ww2 it could be a strategy to hide needed infrastructure from sabotage, or enemy bombing.
Not just fake buildings, but also fake trees. In Los Angeles.
There’s a visible substation in my neighborhood, and I can definitely say that blending it into architecture would be a wonderful update. Super cool video!
Also, I think that anyone interested in topics like this would love to read “The 99% Invisible City.” It details every hidden and visible thing you could ever find in the urban world. It’s strictly informational, but I still couldn’t put it down.
The town I grew up on had a substation just like this. I was always afraid to go near the fence for fear it would shock me - and I wondered if anyone dared anyone else to try to pee on it.
@@justinwhite2725 peeing on it won't actually result in a fried dick at least.
Unless you're literally sticking your fleshy bits onto the metal then that's just Darwin's Award seeker.
Thank you for helping me create a new obsession. I drive around all day for work which means I see a lot of buildings and houses. You did a great job making this so interesting that now I'm going to be scrutinizing every single building I see in a 50 mile radius.
I do the same. One of things I enjoy looking for are buildings with those half doors at ground level that look to once be full doors with the ground built up over the bottom half; also many windows look that way too.
Growing up in Toronto, these buildings always stood out to me, but that's also because I was told what they were for from when I was a young kid. Also one of them caught fire once, a kilometer from my apartment, and I've never heard a more terrifying electrical noise in my life.