Man discovers thousands of abandoned vintage cars inside Fukushima’s disaster zone

A man found thousands of abandoned cars when exploring inside Fukushima's disaster zone.

Urban explorer, Bob Thissen, visited the site of one of the most well-known disasters in human history to find tons of vintage sports and Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) cars that were lost to time.

The fallout lead to 150,000 people forced to evacuate the area.

The incident irradiated large parts of the Japanese prefecture - with many areas still affected 10 years after.

The 34-year-old travelled through the exclusion zones with his team, visiting some of the old car dealerships that Bob had researched beforehand.

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And his expedition certainly didn't disappoint, as he uncovered many vintage models including a Porsche 911 Carrera (964), Nissan Skyline, Mercedes S Class, Nissan 300ZX, Nissan Silvia, Japanese hearses, Chevrolet Impala SS, Jaguar XJ, Honda S2000, Mitsubishu Lancer Evolution and Subaru STI.

But, while you might think the discovery means he's sitting on a vintage-car goldmine, the truth is that it isn't lucrative at all - in fact, he can't even sell the cars for scrap.

Despite most of the cars being in mint condition, the radiation levels within the metal frame renders them not fit for purpose and completely worthless.

Bob said: "It was a sad sight to see these collectibles in a bad shape, especially when you know every car had an owner, who couldn’t retrieve their vehicle.

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"The cars can be found in the affected villages of the the nuclear fallout. Some fields have been used to dump cars, which were collected from the streets."

He continued: "I believe most of them are irretrievable because many cars were parked outside and nuclear particles penetrated them.

"There were countless cars in the exclusion zones and former exclusion zones. Over the years some cars got town away, but there’s still a large number of them left."

The accident at Fukushima was triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which struck east of the city of Sendai on 11 March, 2011.

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It remains the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, killing an estimated 19,729 people, with a further 2,559 remaining missing and over 6,000 injured.

The over 14-meter-high wave flooded the nuclear power plant and damaged the emergency diesel generators, leading to a loss of electric power.

It was the second disaster to be classified as a level seven event since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and all six of the units in the Fukushima plant have been shut down permanently.

Another strong, 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Japan's Fukushima prefecture in March 2022, which triggered a tsunami warning and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo and the surrounding areas.

Public broadcaster, NHK, reported one death and 69 people were injured.