I enjoy searching Google Maps (though any satellite mapping service will work) for interesting/out of place/wtf items.

First I bring you this:


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VOA: Voice of America

The U.S.'s foreign "propaganda" media service. Broadcasting station near Greenville, NC.

5/9/2013 8:33:43 PM

used to drive by there all the time going fishing

5/9/2013 8:37:43 PM

Cool; I'd never heard of it until today. I was just browsing maps and saw that huge bare area, and obviously went, WTF?

5/9/2013 8:38:54 PM

i saw that not too long ago, in one of my many Google Earth adventures.

i too, wtf'ed all over myself


I enjoy panning all over in GE. especially in other countries/exotic locales. kinda like a mini-vacation

[Edited on May 9, 2013 at 8:47 PM. Reason : and what's cool about GE is the historical views, they usually go back to 1993/1994ish ]

5/9/2013 8:47:06 PM

it's just rows and rows of planted pines out there. i think the bare area is where the govt sold off some of the timber.

5/9/2013 8:49:01 PM

Next I bring you...


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Piney Island Bombing Range. Now this I've known about most of my life, but it's still cool and a WTF to the unfamiliar. The marines bomb the shit out of this area. The potholes and scorch marks are just awesome.

5/9/2013 8:54:07 PM

yeah, they've used island in Bogue Sound as bombing run targets as well. you can see the pock marks from bombs there too.

hadn't seen ^that one yet. cool canals they've put in... what's the purpose of the circle areas

5/9/2013 9:01:35 PM

^helicopter pads to practice hitting them. the runway has some target fighters as well. I thought there used to be cargo/bombers on that runway as well...

well, the upper circle is a helicopter pad; the one in the center may just be the central target

5/9/2013 9:02:55 PM

there are some ships used as targets anchored in shallow water in pamlico sound as well. they have warning signs in a 5 mile radius around them.

5/9/2013 9:08:05 PM

^yeh, I was gonna show a map of those, but the resolution is shit, so it's worthless. Accidentally wen through there years ago (young and dumb). Got pretty close to the ships

well if you know what you're looking for, they aren't too hard to recognize:


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5/9/2013 9:08:57 PM

gimme a lat/long and I can try it in GE (at work), maybe tomorrow

5/9/2013 9:09:59 PM

35.206347,-76.442614

A few years ago, I'm pretty sure I found some type of government bunker (missile silo most likely) out west in the middle of a huge field. Nothing but fields, but then a road going through the middle of them, to what appeared to be about a 100'x100' fenced off, cleared area and a concrete pad in the center. wish I could find it again.

need in haystack shit.

[Edited on May 9, 2013 at 9:16 PM. Reason : .;]

5/9/2013 9:12:26 PM

I used to live a couple miles away from the VOA in Chocowinity. Was pretty cool to see at night.

5/9/2013 9:20:35 PM

Eastern NC has got some cool places to explorer, the bombing ranges, Harvey Point, etc.

5/9/2013 9:21:03 PM

^dang, I had forgotten about Harvey Point.

In case someone hasn't seen this; this is the suspected location of the training mock compound for the Bin Laden mission:


[link]http://maps.google.com/maps?q=36.099785,-76.349171&num=1&t=h&ie=UTF8&z=14&ll=36.09965,-76.348221&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215429/Osama-Bin-Laden-raid-CIA-training-facility-shown-satellite-maps-layout-Pakistan-compound.html

5/9/2013 9:26:36 PM

Big Hole in Chatham County too

5/9/2013 9:44:12 PM

This is a pretty cool thread.

5/9/2013 10:40:35 PM

some interesting stuff at the Kirtland AFB:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqoADjWnyFc

5/10/2013 8:08:50 AM

^awesome. it's scary to know that the government/contractors are up to some high tech shit all over the place and nothing is known about it.

Continuing on our coast...


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I haven't quite figured out what all of this is. If you pan northward, there's a lot of area like this (dark color, canals, linear tree lines, manmade waterbodies, etc. Maybe NRR has some information. Some of it certainly looks like it's part of the bomb ranges down there (potholes and scorching), though I don't recall any active bombing in these areas in my lifetime.

And I guess part of it could be old farming fields; the canals were for drainage. Then the fields were abandoned (turned over to DOD as part of the bombing range?).

[Edited on May 10, 2013 at 9:16 AM. Reason : .]

5/10/2013 9:14:42 AM

Check out Alamogordo, NM and the white sands missile range

5/10/2013 9:17:19 AM

Quote :

"some interesting stuff at the Kirtland AFB:"

my dad's cousin just retired from the DOD stationed at Kirtland this past summer. Can't remember the name of her actual department, but she was a member of warfighter support or some shit like that. basically a handler/travel agent for some of our secret stuff over seas.

5/10/2013 9:28:11 AM

that first one....is that the.....Raleigh Beach???

5/10/2013 9:38:56 AM

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=19.570668,-99.002695&ll=19.570708,-98.994541&spn=0.023736,0.027595&num=1&t=h&z=15

5/10/2013 9:40:58 AM

^good one


[link]https://maps.google.com/maps?q=19.570668,-99.002695&num=1&t=h&ie=UTF8&ll=19.570708,-98.994541&spn=0.069953,0.111494&z=14&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map

El Caracol in Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Caracol,_Ecatepec

\/\/,\/\/\/ah, glanced over that one.


[Edited on May 10, 2013 at 10:16 AM. Reason : /]

5/10/2013 10:06:44 AM

looks like a landfill

5/10/2013 10:09:12 AM

It's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Caracol,_Ecatepec

5/10/2013 10:12:13 AM

actually, it looks like this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Caracol,_Ecatepec

the other caracols arent in the middle of mexico city

5/10/2013 10:12:26 AM

ha drove past VOA every day going to greenville from home back in the day.

5/10/2013 10:19:00 AM

my wife just showed me this giant rabbit in italy on google maps. apparently some art project.

http://goo.gl/maps/d5LMc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colletto_Fava

5/10/2013 10:35:23 AM

https://maps.google.com/?ll=37.653383,-115.706635&spn=0.31911,0.441513&t=h&z=11

I know what this is of course (farms in the middle of the desert) but it looks like a pacman factory or something.

5/10/2013 10:58:50 AM

^pacman is about to be attacked by a ghost

5/10/2013 11:00:55 AM

https://maps.google.com/?ll=37.244132,-115.801907&spn=0.080215,0.110378&t=h&z=13

5/10/2013 11:05:46 AM

^area 51?

5/10/2013 1:49:10 PM

^
yes

5/10/2013 1:53:41 PM

[Edited on May 10, 2013 at 2:02 PM. Reason : apparently i'm not good at this]

5/10/2013 1:59:12 PM

^pwnt by government overlords

5/10/2013 2:00:51 PM

5/10/2013 2:11:41 PM

Quote :

"And I guess part of it could be old farming fields; the canals were for drainage."

A lot of the coast has canals that were cut in the marsh in order to drain it some and have less area for mosquitos to breed. It made it worse because the water in the canals doesn't move either. They basically just made more area for stagnant water.

^^^ Farms. They have those irrigation systems that spin out from the central point and rotate slowly.

[Edited on May 10, 2013 at 2:49 PM. Reason : *]

5/10/2013 2:47:53 PM

Quote :

"I know what this is of course (farms in the middle of the desert) but it looks like a pacman factory or something."

5/10/2013 3:06:10 PM

Ah I didn't see that you'd posted that... only the pic with no info.

5/10/2013 3:10:01 PM

no biggie.

This is my favorite thread of the day.

5/10/2013 3:12:31 PM

that area 51 map... holy... THAT is a BIG FUCKING RUNWAY

5/17/2013 12:41:21 AM

32.627248, 129.738130

Hashima island near Nagasaki, an abandoned former mining colony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island

featured in Skyfall as Bardem's base, it's a neat little place. (cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-99HFqGmn7E)

but what i find most interesting is that when I drug the Street View man onto the island, just to see if they had mapped the streets, i found that they hadn't, but they apparently commissioned a boat with a camera to go around the island and map a Street View route from the sea. has anyone else seen other water-Street Views?

[Edited on May 23, 2013 at 9:02 AM. Reason : ]

5/23/2013 8:47:53 AM

The don't use live ordinance at BT-11 (Piney Island) anymore. The big circles are laser targets used for weapons training.

5/23/2013 9:18:07 AM

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.782841,-79.073839&num=1&t=h&vpsrc=0&gl=us&ie=UTF8&ll=35.782488,-79.07304&spn=0.003825,0.008256&z=18

Big Hole, Chatham County
Secret underground communications facility
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/big-hole-deep-secret/Content?oid=1182760

5/23/2013 9:43:16 AM

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=52.376552+,+5.198303&hl=en&ll=52.376554,5.198321&spn=0.00012,0.000216&sll=35.782031,-79.086456&sspn=0.081745,0.110378&t=h&gl=us&z=22

[Edited on May 23, 2013 at 9:48 AM. Reason : http://www.snopes.com/photos/crime/parkbody.asp]

5/23/2013 9:48:11 AM

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=51.383835,30.115414&spn=0.031444,0.055189&sll=52.376554,5.198321&sspn=0.00012,0.000216&t=h&gl=us&z=14

not really "wtf" but fun to explore none the less.

5/23/2013 10:01:04 AM

i always liked this one

40.440938,90.803032

5/23/2013 10:08:33 AM

saw this in triangle business journal:
united therapeutics in RTP is a train locomotive and the new parking deck is a coal car. zoom in to see the parking deck under construction (its finished now).
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.914514,-78.87657&num=1&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A

5/23/2013 10:32:42 AM

^took me a second, gotta cock the head to the right

pretty neat, i'd love to see more designs like that


^^ WTF INDEED

[Edited on May 23, 2013 at 11:14 AM. Reason : ]

5/23/2013 11:12:50 AM