Funky Pickens » Home Page

25 Places Nobody Is Allowed To Visit

  By funkypickens | July 8, 2018 - 2:20 pm | , , ,
Leave a comment

You’d be surprised with some of these places and the reasons why you can’t visit any of them. Here’s a list of 25 places and the reasons why nobody can go there.

Google Data Centers


Google Data Centers are situated in different corners of the world, and the company works from 15 different sites. The only way we can see this secret high-security place is through the pictures that the company has shared. Google stores our personal information and the company’s proprietary information locked behind doors that no one can reach. They have high security that we are assuming cannot be broken, as no one did till date.

Niihau, The rent-free Island


The island of Niihau is situated in Hawaii and is a famous place because it is said that the residents live here rent-free. Don’t get excited as no one is allowed to move to Niihau. In 1864, the island was purchased by the Robinson family from the Kingdom of Hawaii. No outsiders are allowed on the island since then, the native Hawaiians live there without any cars, roads, running water, stores or telephones, they receive deliveries by boat from the neighboring islands.

Ashgabat, The Capital City


Ashgabat is the capital of Turkmenistan and not even the native people are allowed in the capital. As the city is said to be a showcase for the entire world. The place is open to tourist but one has to be very clear about the obligations. You aren’t even allowed to sleep on the bus.

Coca-Cola Vault


Regardless of the fact, whether Coca-Cola is liked by the majority of consumers or not, the secrecy maintained about the drink’s ingredients since the late 1800s is quite impressive. The written copy is safe in a Vault in Atlanta U.S. While anyone can see the first vault, there’s a second vault too that stores the original papers. So far, the tradition is maintained that only two employees have the access to those papers. In case, one dies, the second employee selects another successor from the company employees.

Snake Island


Snake Island, near the Brazilian coast, Atlantic Ocean. For obvious reason, the island got its name, with 430,000 snakes, on the 430,000 square meters of land, the place holds an average of 1 snake per square meter. Many of them are endangered species of snakes. Unless you are in the Brazilian Navy, you’ll never get a chance to visit Snake Island, although, we are quite sure that you wouldn’t wish to go their either.

Area 51


Area 51, U.S., became popular among Americans and later the whole world became curious about what goes on within these premises is a secret. If we tell you about the conspiracy theories that connects Area 51 with UFOs and Aliens. As per the CIA, the official name of Area 51 is Homey Airport and Groom Lake. The intelligence was bound to admit the existence of Area 51 in 2005 under a Freedom of Information Act request.

KFC Recipe Vault


Kentucky Fried Chicken secures its secret recipe as 50% of the spice mix is produced in the Griffith laboratories. Then the mixture is delivered to the McCormick company, where the recipe is completed and sent to KFC. The vault contains the secret recipe, signed by Harlan Sanders himself with the sample of herbs and spices, which are mixed.

Surtsey Iceland


Surtsey, Iceland is a volcanic island. In the 1960s, there was an eruption for 4 years, which decreased the size of the island from 2.7km square to less than half of that area. Scientists, who are the only people allowed on the island said that according to its current state of erosion, the remaining land will fall below the sea level by 2100.

Poveglia, The Haunted Island


Poveglia Island is situated between Venice and Lido is a place you would never like to explore. During the 18th century, the place was sealed with buried victims of the Black Death. More 100,000 people have died on the island over the last decades and hence for the reason, it is said to be a striking location for paranormal activities. The island once had a hospital and asylum as per the rumors, a doctor used to perform lobotomy experiments here.

Diavik Diamond Mine


This Canadian diamond mine plays an important role as an industrial complex, as more than 1000 people work here. The mine produces 7 million carats of diamond each year which means 1400 kg of diamond!

Cinderella’s Castle Suite


Cinderella’s apartment is located in the Cinderella’s Castle in Disneyworld, one of the exclusive places in the Disney universe. The suite which was built for the Disney Family is now renovated and used as hotel rooms. Sadly, the suite will never be available to be booked as it is offered by invite-only, which is only for super rich and famous personalities. The suite gives a fairytale experience, with its castle-gray stone walls, hardwood paneling, and a marble inlaid floor that has an elaborate design of the pumpkin coach Cinderella took to the ball.

Chernobyl


Chernobyl is a city in Ukraine, that was evacuated in 1986 because of the most impactful nuclear power plant accident ever. The area, known as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation, which covers about 30 kilometers stays closed till date. After 30 years of the devastating incident, the city has a population of a few 100 people with two shops and 1 hotel for tourists. It is only when the Ukrainian government’s organized tour takes place, that anyone can visit this place. It is a huge risk in itself as the surroundings are considered to be the most polluted around the globe.

Bank Of England Vaults


Established in 1694, the Bank of England is the central bank of the UK. Its safes are located underneath London. The security is 1000s time more than any other regular bank as the Bank of England holds gold reserves of 30 other countries and of the UK itself. It stores 3% of the complete gold that is ever mined so far and the worth is more than £156,000,000,000.

Zone Rouge. The Dead War Zone

Zone Rouge or ‘Red Zone’ as it means in English, is 1200 square km French area. The place is restricted as it was destroyed completely during the World War I around 100 years ago. The number of bodies and explosives still contaminate the nearby environment and hence the French government took steps to forbid human activity in this place. Over the period of years, the prohibited area is now less than compared to before.

RAF Menwith Hill


This Royal Air Force station is located in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England, UK. Though the place is under the control of Her Majesty’s government, the U.S. authorities are responsible for its administration. The place consists of the housing, community facilities, and high-technology installations. Only employees are given an entry, no one else. The place is rumored to be part of the ECHELON system which is capable of intercepting both private and commercial communications.

Queens Bedroom: 1 Trespasser


Buckingham Palace is known as the residence of the royal family. The place is open for tourists as well but so far there’s only one person who managed to get through the security and entered the queen’s bedroom. In 1982, Michael Fagan made his second attempt to see the queen and this time he got through the royal bedchamber and woke up the queen who immediately called the security.

Ise Grand Shrine


This Shinto shrine complex is situated in Japan and there are two main shrines in Ise Grand Shrine. The annual fests are conducted here and the public can visit some parts of the place. However, there are many portions of this area where no one is allowed to enter, one can explore the forest areas here. It is assumed that the site is home to the Sacred Mirror, which is said to have been forged by a Shinto deity but mostly it is said that the mirror was lost in a fire in the 9th century.

Disney Club 33


Another famous yet mysterious place in the Disneyworld is the Disney club 33. Nowadays, everyone who visits Disneyworld is aware of it but again it’s membership is either on the invite basis only or it is very expensive to afford on such membership. The membership fee is $10,000 per year with a $25,000 initiation fee. The original club is located in Disneyland, California, U.S. Other than this, there are two more clubs across the world.

Mezhgorye


Mezhgorye, a town in Russia is buried deep in the southern Ural Mountains. This place was founded in 1979 and is a nuclear missile base. Mezhgorye is one of the secret facilities in Russia. Apparently, the place has sensors that detect a nuclear attack and attacks right back.

Air Force One: One Year Waiting List For Journalists


No one is allowed in the president’s plane. AF1 includes a small gym, a presidential suite, an electronic defense system, and a situation room. The windows are armored and the plane can withstand a nuclear blast! It even takes over a year for the journalists to be entrusted to the Secret Service who gives them clearance to board.

Chapel of the Ark of the Covenant


The Ark of the Covenant is a biblical artifact, a golden chest with two stone tablets consisting of the Ten Commandments. So far, its location is a secret. Most probably it kept in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, in Ethiopia, unfortunately, the entry to the church is forbidden.

North Sentinel Island: Do Not Disturb!


North Sentinel Island, is situated in the Bay of Bengal, is one of the countable places which are far from the modern era. The natives of this island have never shown interest in the outside world. They maintain distance from the helicopters, once they’ve thrown arrows and rocks on the aircraft and have killed the two fishermen who mistakenly reached the shore. The government of India has forbidden this island.

Vatican Secret Archives


In the 17th century, Pope Paul V chose to split the Vatican documents, forming the Vatican Secret Archives. These documents can only be accessed by qualified researchers. Vatican Archives holds approx 85 kilometers of shelving. The oldest document in those shelves is from the 8th century.

Lascaux Caves


In 1940, it was discovered by a group of teenagers. The Grotte de Lascaux caves are situated in Southern France and are more than 17,500 years old. The caves are a UNESCO World Heritage Site with more than 600 paintings on the walls and ceilings. The caves were visited by people even after World War II, however, with the increase of tourists, the place was soon closed from the fear of contamination by more than 1200 visitors per day. Scientists are trying to determine the number of visitors that can be allowed in the future to visit the caves.

source

 

An island in Brazil has so many snakes that humans aren’t allowed on it.

  By funkypickens | June 28, 2018 - 10:49 am | , , ,
Leave a comment

About 25 miles off the coast of Brazil, there is an island where no local would ever dare tread. Legend has it that the last fisherman who strayed too close to its shores was found days later adrift in his own boat, lifeless in a pool of blood.

The mysterious island is known as Ilha da Queimada Grande, and it is in fact so dangerous to set foot there that Brazil has made it illegal for anyone to visit. The danger on the island comes in the form of the golden lancehead snakes – a species of pit viper and one of the deadliest serpents in the world.

The lanceheads can grow to be over a foot-and-a-half long and it’s estimated that there are between 2,000 and 4,000 snakes on the island, which unsurprisingly is known as Snake Island. The lanceheads are so venomous that a human bitten by one could be dead within an hour.

Snake Island is uninhabited now, but people used to live there for a short period up to until the late 1920s when, according to legend, the local lighthouse keeper and his family were killed by vipers that slithered in through the windows. Today, the navy periodically visits the lighthouse for upkeep and makes sure no adventurers are wandering too close to the island.

Another local legend claims that the snakes were originally introduced by pirates seeking to protect buried treasure on the island.

In reality, the vipers’ presence is the result of rising sea levels – a less exciting origin story than paranoid pirates to be sure, but still interesting.

Snake Island used to be part of Brazil’s mainland, but when sea levels rose over 10,000 years ago, it separated the landmass and turned it into an island.

The animals that wound up isolated on Queimada Grande evolved differently from those on the mainland over the course of millennia, the golden lanceheads in particular. Since the island vipers had no prey but birds, mother nature helped them develop extra-potent venom so that they could almost immediately kill any bird. Local birds are too savvy to be caught by the many predators that inhabit the island and the snakes instead rely on birds who visit the island to rest as food.

Lancehead snakes, which are the golden lancheads’ mainland cousins, are responsible for 90 percent of all snake bites in Brazil. A bite from their golden relatives, whose venom is up to five times more potent, is less likely to actually happen due to their island isolation. However, such an encounter is far more likely to be lethal if it does happen. There are no fatality statistics of the golden lanceheads (since the only area they inhabit is cut off from the public), however, someone bitten by a regular lancehead faces a seven percent chance of death if untreated. Treatment does not even guarantee a lancehead bite victim will be saved: there is still a three percent mortality rate.

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to visit a place where a painful death lurks every few feet. However, the vipers’ deadly venom has shown potential in helping to combat heart problems. This has led to something of a black market demand for the venom. For some lawbreakers, the lure of the money is incentive enough to risk almost certain death on Queimada Grande.
source: business insider  NatGeo/Youtube

10 Of The Most Offensive Board Games Ever Published

  By funkypickens | June 18, 2018 - 11:56 am | , ,
Leave a comment

Famous board games have made family entertainment out of some dark stuff, from bankruptcy to murder to naval warfare.  But when you dig a little further, You spot games about racism, the sex trade, and even genocide—stuff so offensive you can hardly believe the games were ever published.

1. Gay Monopoly


Fire Island Games released this “Celebration of Gay Life” in 1983, right in time for the decade’s new gay rights movement. Like so many spins on the classic version of Monopoly, this game keeps the core real estate mechanics but throws in a thematic twist. In the original game, players buy houses and hotels; in Gay Monopoly, they buy bathhouses and bars. The original playing tokens have been swapped out for what were assumed to be gay-themed substitutes—a teddy bear, a jeep, a blow drier, a leather cap, handcuffs, and one stiletto heel.

On the flip side, it seems that the game does bring a few new dishes to the table. Take “Family Pride Cards” for example. Each card describes a notable gay man, and the player who can correctly identify him gets to move to any space on the board. The pile also contains a few “Camp Cards.” Draw one of these, and you have to perform a stereotypical gay camp action, such as striking a pose and yelling, “Fabulous.

”Gay Monopoly” was published by a division calling itself the “Parker Sisters.” They were unconnected to Parker Brothers, who publish the actual Monopoly game and reportedly shut the gay spinoff down with a copyright lawsuit.

2. The Sinking of the Titanic


This game from Milton Bradley sends players across around the board, rescuing passengers from the Titanic‘s staterooms. You have to escort all the passengers to lifeboats before the ship goes down, at which point the game shifts gears, and you must now hunt for food and fresh water—by drawing cards. A rescue ship eventually shows up, and players must race to it. The first one there wins the game. Everyone else dies.

“The Sinking of the Titanic” received a ton of criticism when it was released in 1975. So the company released a sister version in the UK the following year, changing the title to “Abandon Ship.” This version is set in the Pacific Ocean, and the ship collides with a coral reef instead of an iceberg. The name change cost the company the “Titanic” title’s name recognition. But since people weren’t exactly eager for a game that made light of a famous tragedy, the switch was probably for the best.

3. Life As A Blackman

This Underground Games release from 1999 offered a simple yet heavy message: Life as a black man is hard. Delivering this message pretty much involved trotting out a parade of stereotypes, blurring the lines between satire and genuine racism.

Each player starts the game as a black 18-year-old high-school graduate. Players must make moral choices throughout the game, and may find themselves in Black University, the ghetto, the military, or “Glamourwood.” The first player to reach the “freedom” space at the top of the board wins the game.

Unlike many games on this list, “Life as a Blackman” isn’t forgotten. An app of the game is coming soon for your iPhone.

4. What Shall I Be: The Exciting Game of Career Girls


Published in 1966 by Selchow & Righter, this less-than-exciting game was once considered an educational game for young girls, outlining suitable career options young women may want to pursue. The game includes a detailed outline of the “proper” personality for each of the prospective careers.

It’s perhaps no surprise that the only options included in the ’60s game were a teacher, airline hostess, actress, nurse, model, or ballet dancer. The male counterpart of the game, published by the same company, had career options such as lawyers and astronauts. Fortunately, the game was updated in 1976, swapping the stereotypical women’s roles for such career paths as medical school and law school.

5. Black and Whites


Here’s another example of a game that tries to illustrate racism, with pretty shocking results.“Blacks & Whites,” according to publisher Dynamic Design Industries, depicts housing discrimination through “the absurdities of living in different worlds while playing on the same board.” At the beginning of the game, players choose to either be a “Black” or a “White,” and the choice handily determines who wins the game.

The Whites comprise the majority of players, start with $1 million, and can buy property anywhere on the board. Their black counterparts are the minority, start the game with only $10,000, and can’t buy many properties. These properties that the players fight over range from the “inner ghetto” and “outer ghetto” to “lower integrated” and “upper integrated” neighborhoods too, lastly, “newer estates” and “older estates.”

True to life in the ’70s, when the game was published, “Blacks” and “Whites” each draw from their own set of “opportunity cards.” A typical White opportunity card: “Stock dividend from a company that makes tear gas. Collect $40,000.” A typical Black one: “Government begins urban-renewal project. You lose both Harlem and Watts. Collect full price less 10% from Treasury.”

6. Busen Memo


This 2003 memory game plays practically just like any other memory game you would buy for an 8-year old. Except for one thing: Instead of matching the usual toy cars and smiling apples, players of the game match the right and left breasts of 48 women.

Each individual tile has a picture of one of a woman’s bare breasts, You place all the cards facedown at random and then flip two of them over. If you manage to uncover a matching pair, you get to go again; if not, your opponent takes a turn.

In case you couldn’t guess it by now, “Busen Memo” is German for “Bosom Memory.”

7. Darkies In The Melon Patch


Now it’s time move away from those games that merely teach about racism—“Darkies in the Melon Patch” is racism, plain and simple.

Players take up the roles of four dark-skinned gentlemen attempting to escape a patch of melons. Angry farmers and bearded grandmothers act as threats. The path also offers some tempting distractions, such as melon races and seed spitting contests.

Though the game allegedly dates back to 1910, some versions for sale are modern counterfeits. It’s possible that the game was manufactured fairly recently and was just falsely dated to a time when such racist nonsense seemed reasonable.

8. Project Pornstar


“Project P” casts players as directors of their own porn flicks. If you’ve ever played a trading card game, you have a rough idea of how this works—the various cards in the game components for your film, and the best combinations win you the most points. Since you’re making a porno, one set of cards represents your actors (men, women, amenable livestock), and another represents objects (handcuffs, for instance, or a cucumber).

Another set, the “action cards,” further change the course of your film. If a performer’s face doesn’t quite meet expectations, you can play a card to throw a paper bag over it. There’s an “AIDS” card, too, of course.

Fun for the whole family!

9. Five Little N****R Boys


I think the blatant use of one of the most offensive racial slurs smacked on the front of an actual marketed product should leave anyone speechless.

This 1950 release from Britain is a target shooting game—yes, a target shooting game. It consists of five pieces resembling African children along with a small pop-gun rifle that fires corks. And, if you couldn’t already guess it, the only goal of this game is for its participants to shoot down the four little N-word boys in cold blood.

The first player to shoot down a predetermined amount of pieces wins the game but loses a conscience.

10.  Juden Raus! (Jews Out)


Nazi Germany featured quite a few horrifically offensive anti-Semitic games, from shooting games reminiscent of the above British example to games tracking the triumphant rise of the swastika. But the most notorious of these games is probably “Juden Raus,” published in Dresden in 1938 approximately one month after “Kristallnacht”(the Night of Broken Glass).

It’s a simple game. You roll dice and move your token to Jewish homes, where you collect Jews. You must then escort your Jews to a “collection point” so they can be banished from the city. “If you are the first to expel six Jews,” reads the game’s original rules, “you are the undoubted winner.”

Still, the Nazis were the evilest people in history, so it’s unsurprising that they produced such a game, right?

Not exactly. “Juden Raus” was manufactured by some private German company, and the Nazis themselves criticized the game.

Source: listverse