IBM Greenock, as it is today

[InSanCen]

Well, fairly recently that is.

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=35647

I'll be going for a look around, as apparently, some of it still stands. Will be sure to take some piccies, but, one of the Rules is to take no "Souvenirs".

[ch_123]

Webwit posted that pic a few months ago, but still pretty awesome nonetheless.

[InSanCen]

I only noticed it as it was linked from another section of the site. Am up that way in a few months, and it would be rude not to really.

[kishy]

Would be funny if that pile of CPUs was the destination of all the FDIV bug P1s...

Significant cash in the pile if so.

[aegrotatio]

I thot abandon-in-place stop happening in the US with the railroad failures of the 1970s.
This looks just like all those abandoned Soviet places at http://www.abandoned.ru and countless other urban exploration photo sites.

Some time ago I was approached to help assess some abandoned office buildings in the early 2000s.  When all those dotcom companies went bankrupt they just left entire office suites, and sometimes entire buildings, right as they were on Friday.  Think of two-year-old coffee cups sitting in front of dusty computers with sticky notes on them.  Dead desk plants.  Random personal effects.  Loading docks with who-knows-what incoming and outgoing.  Pallets full of Sun servers undelivered.  Just amazing waste.

When creditors call, you're locked out, apparently, but I don't think that happened there in Greenock.  What an odd circumstance of the offices abandoned like that.

[Rajagra]

When creditors call, you're locked out, apparently, but I don't think that happened there in Greenock.  What an odd circumstance of the offices abandoned like that.

Greenock is in Scotland. They probably just went to the pub and haven't returned yet.

[ch_123]

Greenock manufactured and provided support for things like -

PCs
Laptops
Terminals
Keyboards
Printers
Typewriters

So, basically all the stuff they don't make anymore... that's what happened there.

[aegrotatio]

Oh, Scotland.  Close enough, hehe.

[audioave10]

Very sad these places are. It reminds me of Chernobyl "without the radiation and deadly consequences". Total abandonment has a look all its own.

[spolia optima]

that was really cool; it does make me sad, though. <3 urban exploration.

[InSanCen]

The Missus lived just down the road from Greenock for years. Her family still do. Next time we are up for a visit, I'll be going for a look around.

[clickclack]

I love that forum link you provided! What a neato site and that IBM plant seemed very interesting.
I am really into spatial detritus so to speak. I do these mini treks around here all the time. One of my favorites is a local decommissioned power plant that I frequent. It's just way beyond cool!

=)

[InSanCen]

There is a good chance it's been explored by someone... The US, by virtue of being fooking massive, has some Awesome places to go see. Thankfully, in the UK, Trespass is a Civil problem, rather than a Criminal one, and unless you are wrexking stuff, the Owners won't bother to haul you into court.

[kishy]

A tour of Chernobyl would be interesting...life-altering, you might say.

[sethstorm]

Thought (by reading that site) that the factory got demolished.

[sethstorm]

A tour of Chernobyl would be interesting...life-altering, you might say.

It would be literally life-altering, courtesy of various forms of radiation.

[ch_123]

Well, depends on how fast you go through it...

[sethstorm]

Well, depends on how fast you go through it...

...and if you decide to go off-road, into the forests.

[quadibloc]

It would be literally life-altering, courtesy of various forms of radiation.

I think that's what she meant.

[kishy]

I'm male, thank you.

[ricercar]

A tour of Chernobyl would be interesting...life-altering, you might say.

Woman motorcycles through Chernobyl and posted pics. Enthralling. She writes in English well for a Russian. Better than most American blogs, at least.

Here's the first page of the original story....

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

and a few quotes:

Dad is nuclear physicist, and he has educated me about many things. He is much more worried about the speed my bike travels than about the direction I point it. My trips to Chernobyl are not like a walk in the park, but the risk can be managed. It is similar to walking on a high wire with a balancing pole. One end of the pole is the gamma ray emission intensity and the other end of the pole is the exposure time. But the wire is also covered with a slippery dust, and this is the major risk. I always go for rides alone, sometimes with pillion passenger, but never in company with any other vehicle, because I do not want anyone to raise dust in front of me.

As I pass through the check point, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell something at me....something that I strain to hear....something that attracts and repels me both at the same time. It is divinely eerie - like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks.

EDIT: Original writer's domain:
http://www.elenafilatova.com/

[aegrotatio]

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

Woman motorcycles through Chernobyl and posted pics. Enthralling.

And proven fake.
The pictures are real but none of the motorcycling pics or the "daddy works there" stories were true.  They're just regular exclusion zone visitor/tourist pictures.  The pictures with the bike are photoshopped or taken elsewhere.

[aegrotatio]

Greenock manufactured and provided support for things like -

PCs
Laptops
Terminals
Keyboards
Printers
Typewriters

So, basically all the stuff they don't make anymore... that's what happened there.

The comments on Flickr are interesting.  The Thinkpads were built in Hungary and shipped to Greenock to have their keyboards installed so they could say "Built in Scotland."

There's always something weirdly political about these huge factories built in that part of the world.  The DeLorean factory springs to mind, a total boondoggle to create jobs that didn't need to exist except for politics.  I don't know if Greenock was one of those but its closing sure looks like a familiar political tale.

[ricercar]

And proven fake.
The pictures are real but none of the motorcycling pics or the "daddy works there" stories were true.  They're just regular exclusion zone visitor/tourist pictures.  The pictures with the bike are photoshopped or taken elsewhere.

I'm so disappointed.

There are some groups and forums which think that all of what you are doing is fake. Do you know who and why is talking about you in that way? Is somebody standing behind those people?

Of course what I do is not good news for power industry, but it is not power industry alone that stand behind all those attempts to discredit my work. What really stands behind every armchair critic is their own stupidity, boredom, envy and other defects of their nature.

I am immune from their oppression, for I know that the only way I can show my intelligence in dealing with fools is by having nothing to do with them, so I don't read what they write about me on forums.

I believe that the problem of internet forums is that armchair critics and all sort of idiots are very loud and active while reasonable and decent folks are silent and passive, thus if you doing something outstanding you will expose yourself to the passive goodwill of a decent people and face active ill-will of every rascal. This easily makes impression as if you gotten in a mad house and such environment discourage people from doing good things.. This is actually problem not only of internet forums, but of a society in a whole and it is easy for people to lose orientation. Especially for young people, they can not see what is good and what is not, they can not understand why those who speak the truth are being called liers while some phoney actors being admired by millions, they don't know which dirrection to follow. For me being called a lier, fake is a highest praise, in this way I know I did something good, because they only talk scandal and with them everything goes counterwise: their NO is YES and their YES NO. Thus their NO is my guiding star, which I follow for when they speak ill of me I know I am on right path..

[ch_123]

Greenock was established in the 1950s when such a facility would have been viable. I guess the sort of thing you were describing came later on when the government would have been throwing money at IBM to keep the jobs afloat.

[aegrotatio]

On the topic of radioactive urbex, fire up your Steam client and download S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl for a really cool virtualization of most of the popular spots in the exclusion zone.  It turns up at low prices regularly on Steam.