Derelict space shuttles, Cold War bunkers, and nuclear exclusion zones: A YouTube urban explorer shares his top 5 favorite abandoned places check it out

Thissen, a 37-year-old from the Netherlands, has been an urban explorer even before he knew the term existed.

His intrigue for abandoned areas was kicked off as a young child when he was drawn to a derelict monastery that his parents often drove by in his hometown of Maastricht.

"I was really curious about the place, but at that age, I couldn't go," Thissen told Insider. When he turned 16, Thissen got himself a scooter so he could get around and explore small buildings in his neighborhood.

It was only years later, in 2007, that Thissen discovered on the internet that his hobby had a name: urban exploration.

"Before that, I was just strolling around in abandoned buildings, and then I found out there was a whole underground scene of people doing this," Thissen added. "Since then, I've been hooked."

He shares videos of his adventures on his YouTube channel, Exploring the Unbeaten Path, which has garnered 454,000 subscribers.

Thissen says that he's visited abandoned places in over 75 countries so far. Below he shares with us some of his favorite adventures.

Two abandoned Soviet space shuttles sit inside an old hangar in the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Seeing them in person was an experience like no other for Thissen, and it has earned the top spot on his list of favorite places.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome is an active spaceport where Soviet and Russian space missions were launched — including Vostok 1 in 1961 which carried Yuri Gagarin, the first man to ever fly in space.

After driving through the open grasslands of the Kazakh Steppe, Thissen and his companions had to trek through 20 miles of the desert while avoiding detection by authorities to reach the spaceport.

"That was a pretty dangerous mission. I had to tell my girlfriend and family that I didn't know if I would get home because if they see you, they could shoot you since it's a live base," Thissen said. "We even heard gunshots at one point, but we didn't know if they were [at] us."

Traps were also laid in the desert to catch trespassers, including sharp pins hammered into the ground that will rip the tires of any vehicle passing through, he added.

Exploring the Fukushima exclusion zones in Japan is another highlight for Thissen. The zones intrigue him so much that he's been there four times to photograph what's left of the area after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

On March 11, 2011, tsunami waves triggered by an off-shore earthquake damaged the reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, causing them to melt and release radioactive materials into the surroundings.

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from the nearby areas, based on estimates from World Nuclear Association.

"When you go there, it's like a perfect time capsule where everything is left exactly the way it was on March 11th, 2011," Thissen said. According to him, among the most gripping sights are abandoned shopping carts filled with groceries, and school backpacks left behind in classrooms.

"You can feel the sadness of the situation because people were afraid and they left in a hurry," he added.

Since the disaster, the Japanese government has been trying to clean up the place by demolishing the damaged buildings, Thissen said.

"For me, it was important to document as much as possible before everything is gone because it's also a way to preserve a little piece of history," he added.

Despite running into serious trouble with local law enforcement because of his visit, this abandoned Cold War bunker in Liguria, Italy, is one of Thissen's favorite spots.

After learning about the existence of the underground military facility from an old newspaper article, Thissen was intrigued — but quickly realized that there was next to no information about it online.

As it turns out, the site had not been documented by any other urban explorers before, he said.

A 2020 YouTube video about the bunker that Thissen uploaded made the rounds online and was even picked up by Italian media outlets. However, it wasn't until 2021 that he received a lawyer's letter from the Italian authorities.

"I got charged for espionage and for possessing state secrets," Thissen said. "So I risked five years in prison for that adventure."

Thankfully for Thissen and the companion who was with him on the trip, the issue was resolved with the help of lawyers who made a deal with the prosecutors to let them off with a fine, he said.

A naval ship graveyard in France takes the fourth spot on Thissen's list of favorite places. It's a bay where decommissioned military cruisers are dumped before they are taken away to be scrapped, Thissen said.

"It's really adventurous. You go there [by] boat and you have to climb up the anchors. You can spend at least seven or eight hours just to see one ship," Thissen said.

Because these ships can be hard to reach, Thissen spends lots of time preparing for the trip before he sets off.

"I travel with a lot of equipment and if you forget something, you have to pedal back like a mile so it's a little bit more difficult," he added. "You also have to check the tides and the weather, because if it's rainy and there's a strong tide, you can't go there either."

Rounding out Thissen's list is the abandoned Nara Dreamland theme park in Japan.

Constructed in the Nara Prefecture in 1961, the theme park was closed in 2006 and demolished sometime in 2016, per Atlas Obscura.

Luckily for Thissen, he managed to visit the park before it was torn down.

"It was like one of the biggest abandoned theme parks in the world and it also has a really creepy atmosphere," Thissen said. "Everything is overgrown with grass and you can walk next to the roller coasters."

The place was heavily inspired by Disneyland and even had a big fairytale castle, Thissen added.