The WORST episodes of Abandoned Engineering
Every episode of Abandoned Engineering ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Abandoned Engineering!
As the saying goes – they probably seemed like good ideas at the time. The world is peppered with examples of incredible engineering projects and buildings designed to make life easier for those that used them, amaze those that came to see them, and make money for those that ordered, designed and built them. They were the stuff of dreams. Each and every one of these extraordinary places is home to a wealth of powerful and compelling stories. We’ll see and hear about some of the most spectacular examples of abandoned engineering the world has ever known. We’ll show how and why they were built, consider the financial and social costs of their failure and examine the environmental and ecological impacts.
#1 - Spike Island
Season 6 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/8/2020
An impressive compound commandeered and repurposed by a brutal regime and an eerie complex off the coast of Ireland that became the biggest of its kind.
#2 - Moonshot
Season 10 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/10/2022
An industrial ruin in the Florida Everglades that once took part in the greatest race the human race has ever seen; a community in Indonesia torn apart by a terrifying and deadly unseen force; the graffiti-covered walls of an Ibizan legend hinting at a fun-loving past; and a Bulgarian school hiding an ambitious and covert plan for retaliation.
#3 - Ruins of Empire
Season 9 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/25/2022
Exploring a British fort that became a bizzare zoo, a brutalist school for Communist top brass and a lost world hides secrets of a vanished people.
#4 - Bannack USA
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/14/2019
A sprawling Wild West ghost town sits peaceful and abandoned in Montana, USA, but is still haunted by tales of murder, corruption and buried treasure. Also, a cold, dark, underground mountain network that cost the lives of thousands... the crumbling ruins of an English industry that turned poison into profit... a peaceful village that was shattered by the terrors of war.
#5 - Niagara's Hidden Marvel
Season 9 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/6/2022
Exploring a royal retreat caught in a web of corruption, an engineering marvel hidden behind the Niagara Falls in Canada, and a subterranean treasure.
#6 - Trouble In Paradise
Season 9 - Episode 7 - Aired 5/2/2022
Exploring a luxury resort in Argentina, a Greek palace above a Mexican city and a former hotel in Hawaii.
#7 - A Royal Deception
Season 8 - Episode 3 - Aired 8/13/2021
Exploring a jungle refuge concealing a story of royal deceit, nuclear bunkers infiltrated by outsiders, and a haunted hospital marked by scandal.
#8 - Mission: Space
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/25/2017
We aim for the stars and find out why unwanted battleship guns allow the United States to gain vital information about the borders of space. We ask how the shattered remains of a secret Nazi base became the first on the path to a new world, with the development of the ground-breaking V2 rocket. We explore a forgotten structure deep in the Arizona desert to ask if it is the true home of America's space programme. And we reveal the bizarre link between a discarded oil drum and a Cold War struggle to survive in zero gravity.
#9 - Paradise Lost
Season 8 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/6/2021
Exploring a ghost town in Colorado, the remnants of an industrial enterprise in Puerto Rico, and a remote village on Cyprus.
#10 - Escobar's Ruin
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 8/1/2019
Features a ruined compound in Colombia which was once home to Pablo Escobar and alien-looking structures with no apparent purpose, isolated in an empty English marshland in Denge, near Dungeness in Kent. But how and why were they ever built at all, and why are they now left abandoned?
#11 - The Battle of San Pietro
Season 8 - Episode 8 - Aired 9/17/2021
Featuring Italian ruins immortalised by Hollywood, a crumbling Chilean city with two lives and a brutalist Scottish relic whose prayers went unanswered.
#12 - Lost Bridges
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/4/2017
Soaring across some of the widest rivers and deepest valleys on the planet, bridges have always been at the cutting edge of engineering. We travel high into the mountains of the Colorado desert to find out why a hidden engineering masterpiece could disappear at any time. We ask why a stretch of overgrown concrete in a Czech reservoir is known as 'Hitler's bridge'. We find out how the highest bridge in the world collapsed in less than one minute. Finally, we uncover the story behind Cape Town's invisible bridge, which never carried a single vehicle.
#13 - England's Abandoned Village
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/14/2019
An eerie, empty country village which hides a sad secret, a mysterious tower battered by the elements and a disused railway deep beneath the streets of a city.
#14 - Villa De Vecchi Rhodes
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 8/8/2019
A formerly luxurious and strategic mountain-top villa on the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean that's been ravaged by acts of revenge by locals since 1955.
#15 - Blast Zone
Season 6 - Episode 3 - Aired 7/23/2020
Within a dense Polish woodland sits a forgotten complex with an explosive history. Also, grand coastal defences in Ghana reveal a tortured past.
#16 - Fortress of the Sky
Season 7 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/10/2021
Eerie ruins hiding in the forested hills of Arkansas, USA, and a disintegrating gulag in Albania that housed enemies of the state.
#17 - Jungle Fantasy Land
Season 9 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/28/2022
Exploring the remains of a pioneering industry town in Ohio, a once beautiful Croatian resort bombarded by enemy fire, and an otherworldly garden of Eden in Mexico.
#18 - The Beached Leviathan
Season 9 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/4/2022
The graffitied remains of a correctional facility in Atlanta, USA with a controversial and unexpected past, forgotten remnants of fraud and fusion on the Western border of Argentina and a mysterious ancient complex built by a devoted Khmer King in the jungles of Cambodia.
#19 - The True Cross
Season 11 - Episode 5 - Aired 6/12/2023
Exploring Old Byron Hot Springs in the Californian desert - a once glittering Hollywood hotspot, converted into a top-secret interrogation centre.
#20 - Propaganda Palace
Season 12 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/13/2023
Alps Ski Resort, is a mountainside retreat in Heul-Ri, South Korea in the shadow of a frozen conflict; Pyrenees Defence Organization, a network of defences in Spain, has recently declassified; Apollo Movie Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia is an ornate shrine to Soviet propaganda; and Club Hotel De La Ventana is an Argentinian complex that became a surprising home for some unexpected guests.
#21 - Border Wars
Season 14 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/18/2025
Exploring two ornate buildings in Texas that were once at the heart of the Mexican Revolution and a top-secret facility outside Berlin, used by a ruthless dictator to escape justice.
#22 - The Lost Pirate City
Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/9/2020
What happened to an infamous pirate city in Jamaica? Also, a grim gulag in Croatia and a Louisiana plantation caught up in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
#23 - Hollywood Heroes
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/13/2021
Legendary film sets with surprising pasts and real locations that inspired Hollywood. Within these decaying structures are the echoes of history.
#24 - Top Secret Nuclear Arsenal
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/11/2020
A secretive underground base that concealed the power to destroy nations, and a sprawling industrial relic clinging to the edge of an unforgiving waterfall.
#25 - Defender of Liberty
Season 6 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/3/2020
A now silent site that played a pivotal role defending the U.S through the 20th century. Plus, a crumbling Italian fortress and a ghostly Ukrainian mansion.