The Abandoned Sports & JDM Cars of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone

To stop and truly wrap our minds around the trauma inflicted by a nuclear disaster is nearly impossible unless you’re someone who has been in such an unfortunate situation. In the case of the city of Fukushima, people were simply living their lives when all of a sudden an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011 provoked what has been called the most severe nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster back in 1986.

Of course, at the time, residents were evacuated with many not realizing that they were walking out of their homes for the final time. Fast forward 12 years and most of the area sits as it had on that day when the terrifying disaster struck. The scene is rather eerie as it presents a time capsule of sorts with the potential for radiation lurking around every corner.

When someone is in such a hurry to get out of an area, they don’t necessarily get to pick and choose the belongings that they want to bring along. Therefore, everything that one could imagine, including transportation, some of which was high-end, had to be left behind.

To this day, many cars sit where they were in 2011 with a variety of them being pretty desirable JDM rides. However, our host at the Exploring the Unbeaten Path YouTube channel points out that most of them are pretty much worthless because of the radiation and how it impacted them. Essentially, he says that radiation can penetrate metal and plastic which cannot only cause corrosion but also weaken the metal which means that these cars can’t even be parted out but instead need to be scrapped. Our host also points out that the machines could emit radiation themselves.

Below, we check in with the video that takes the liberty of exploring some of the abandoned rides left behind in the Fukushima exclusion zone. Essentially, an exclusion zone is an area that the government deems unsafe in a situation like this and its use is to be left at the discretion of the government.