100 Places You Will Never Visit

by Daniel Smith

Ever wondered what it takes to get into Fort Knox? Fancied a peek inside the Coca-Cola Safety Deposit Box? Would you dare to visit Three Mile Island?

The world is full of secret places that we either don't know about, or couldn't visit even if we wanted to. Now you can glimpse the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan, visit the Tuscon Titan Missile Site, tour the Vatican Archives, or see the Chapel of the Ark. This fascinating guide book takes a look at 100 places around the world that are either so hard to reach, so closely guarded, or so secret that they are virtually impossible to visit any other way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, History, Geography, Reference, Adult

255 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Sherrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Companion book to "100 Things You Will Never Find", just as good. Probably wouldn't want to visit many of these, to be honest!

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some interesting places in here. I could have done without the incredibly well known military installations. Of course you're not going to get into the Pentagon. It's so obvious that it's a waste of space to include it, unless there's some interesting hook. Like the fact that, at least as of the time the book was published, Mossad's headquarters were so secret that the exact location was unknown. That's interesting.

[Jennie Machines · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty cool book that I am now going to use as a checklist for places to go. Or try to go. Except for Snake Island. Screw that place.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I didn't buy this book. Not to say the book was bad, but not what I had expected. Many of the places mentioned are more military in nature or restricted places; not exactly where you plan to travel. I was hoping and thinking there would be more lesser known places that you could visit. Nevertheless, the book was a good read and the attractions were concise with a story behind each of them, although not all attractions had a detail description.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many people have books on their shelves - either physical or digital - that describe and detail places to visit before you die? Then there are the bucket lists that include riding the top ten roller coasters. Diving the world's glorious coral reefs. Visiting all fifty states. Climbing ten tallest mountains. Pick your goal and destination.

Well, this book collects 100 places the public will never get access - hence the title.

There are security military bases - Area 51, Cheyenne Mountain, Menwith Hill, Hainan Submarine Base, Diego Garcia.
Nuclear plants and enrichment facilities - Chernobyl, Fukishima, Al Kibar and Yongbyon Research Center.
Research facilities - CERN, HAARP, CDC Headquarters.
Prisons or detention areas - Guantanamo Bay, ADX Florence.
Tense areas between countries - Pakistan-India Line of Control; Korean DMZ.
Intelligence organization headquarters like the CIA, Mossad, MI5, FSB (former KGB)
Financial institutions - Fort Knox, the Swiss Fort Knox, Bank of England Vaults, the Temple Vaults of Sree Padmanabhaswamy, Royal Mint.
Storage facilities and museums and private art collections.
Private company headquarters like Google Data Center; AT&T Long Lines Building; Skywalker Ranch
Some are rather amusing like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, HRM Elizabeth's bedroom (??), Coca Cola recipe vault.
Then there is Rosslyn Chapel, Oak Island, Surtsey island, North Sentinel Island, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Tower of London Jewel House (the actual storage area not the display area), Snake Island (home of the most venomous snake).
And then there are the 'want to visit' but the location has been lost like the Amber Room, the Fuhrerbunker, Genghis Khan's tomb.

It's a fun read and Smith did provide quite a variety from across the world. But I'm sure that anyone could think of a number of several other locations/places that are restricted to specific employees or researchers. For example, the Giant Crystal Cave of Mexico for one. The underground tunnels under Disneyland for another.

2019-091

[Krasytod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Супер интересна книжка. Който дойде у нас първо към нея се насочва. Обещал съм я и на куп народ да я прочетат :)






п.с. Света е пълен с ненормални военни на които им трябват хилади кватрадтни километри полигони, лаборатории и инсталации за да им стават спермоливниците. Как не сме се затрили до този момент, това си е направо чудо.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Granted, I'll probably never get over to see the Tora Bora cave complex or man up enough to visit the very literal Snake Island off the coast of Brazil, but I don't appreciate author Daniel Smith being so presumptuous in limiting my aspirations. I'll never step foot in the Oval Office? Or the Queen's bedroom in Buckingham Palace? Maybe not this Queen, but who knows how things play out.

[J. Muro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wish I had an invisible cloak to go to alllllll these places.

[Claire Fun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yep, does what it says on the cover - it is indeed a book about 100 places I will never visit. (although I have been thinking about a visit to Chernobyl, as tourists are allowed to visit now and have been for a while). Okay! So 99 Places I will never visit and one I'm considering. And I've been inside Buckingham Palace at one of the Queen's garden parties, although admittedly not in the queen's bedroom... I digress.
This was somehow both a really interesting little coffee table style book, and also really dull and a bit repetitive and dragging. The ones in the UK were probably of most interest to me (the US and it's long, long list of assorted secret military bases were probably the least interesting to read about), though I found some of the more unusual things kept my attention. The majority of entries are of the sort the world knows about and are just not permitted in - The Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Area 51! and a few more where the location is unknown to everyone. There were a few I've heard about and been interested in before - obviously Chernobyl was one, and Centralia, the US ghost-town (now) whose coal mines are still burning underground decades after they began. I didn't learn anything about these from this book, because I previously read about everything that was mentioned here, but many of the entries were ones I knew nothing about, and a few of them I then went off to research further off my own back. Those were obviously the ones I enjoyed the most!
It didn't go into great depth on any one item, but that is probably for the best as it dragged a bit when reading the entries I didn't enjoy, and I imagine that favourites would vary from person to person. I could really imagine my son would enjoy this as he's 15 and so won't have heard of or know about many of these yet, but I'm sure he'd be fascinated to find out, and learn a little history of the world in the process. Without it appearing to be an 'educational book'!

Overall I'd say it would be a great book for some but your mileage may vary. I quite enjoyed it, and don't regret the few hours it took me to read. Pretty good stuff! 3.5 stars as I'm wavering between 3 or 4...

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

100 Places You Will Never Visit only gets a "meh" from me. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't really thrill me either. The description on the book jacket promises that I will "glimpse the Tora Bora cave in Afghanistan, visit the Tuscon Titan Missile Site, tour the Vatican archives, or the see the Chapel of the Ark." It says that this is the only way I'll get to see these sites, is through this book.

Then I didn't get to see much. I'd estimate only about half the 100 places has a picture of the actual location itself. The rest are either vague photos or artistic maps or diagrams. Ya'll know I'm big into photos in nonfiction. I love them! Who wouldn't? So I was majorly disappointed in the lack of photos. The Tora Bora caves? No photo. The Vatican archives? No photo.

On top of the lack of photos, then there were the plethora of places that were mythical. Like "Noah's ark" on Mount Ararat. On that page, there was a really grainy photo from a satellite of some weird rock outcropping on top of Mount Ararat, but if you read Daniel Smith's description, he clearly states that no one really believes that's the ark. Area 51 in Nevada is also in here.

Now, I do understand why there would be few photos, and why some places are steeped in mystery, and that's because the author chooses to disclose so many military installations. I understand it's in everyone's best interest to keep those a bit protected. So why not focus more on places like Snake Island off the coast of South America? I'm sure more than one person has taken more than one photo in the dark there... why weren't there better pictures? Why weren't more places like that covered? I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I trust my government just enough that I don't really have a desire to muck about visiting military test zones. But I'd love to have seen a photo of the Queen's bedroom!

There were enough good "places" covered that it was worth my while to read the whole book. But there were plenty that I just skim-read. There are better travel-interest books out there.

[Marathon County Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

This utterly fascinating travel guide describes and illustrates sites us normal people will NEVER be allowed to visit. If you do try and visit them, you will end up being warned off by gun-toting guards, carted off to jail or killed! The sites include super-secret military and intelligence bases/sites around the world such as Area 51 and Diego Garcia, financial sites like Fort Knox, disaster sites like Chernobyl and Fukushima, religious sites like the Chapel of the Ark of the Covenant and a smorgasbord of 'don't-go-there' locales like Snake Island which has one deadly Lancehead Viper every 10 square feet! It's one fantastic, wonderfully entertaining read.

Mike O. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

[Sandra Lenahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readers of the magazine Mental Floss, Stumbled Upon users, and trivia junkies will LOVE this book. Packed with useless information, amazing history and pictures for the visually inspired, Daniel Smith's 100 Places You Will Never Visit is like auditing a World History & Geography course at your local college without all the work : )

I've put this book down time and time again so I could pick up the iPad to find more info online about the place I was reading about. Did you know that gold bars are usually only stacked 4 bars high so as not to damage the bars or that Genghis Khan's name was Temujin?!?! I love this stuff and I sincerely hope that the publishers embedded hyperlinks in the ebook version.

Great as a coffee table book, gift for weird Uncle Frank, and any high school/college history teacher to use in class -I say give this book again and again and again, you can't miss. Or if you don't want to buy it at least check it out at your local library, you won't be disappointed.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book especially the military aspect of the certain sites!
I would have liked more information on some of the places though and more about the rumours and myths but you can't have it all!
Easy to read and is 1 that can be picked up and put down whenever!
Lots of great pics and diagrams too.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Travel" book to places you will most likely never visit - this is the kind of book you read just to pass time. Or was for me, though this did cover some fairly interesting stuff! I've heard some of the places in the passing and it was fascinating to learn more about them. Similarly, it was interesting to learn about places I've never heard of. Did hit Google few times during reading this.

[Eric Montag · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book (with the catchy title!) includes such places as Area 51, Guantanamo Bay, Chernobyl, and Fort Knox, but also includes other lesser known sites like DARPA Headquarters, Skywalker Ranch, and Room 39. Each entry has 1-3 pages of information and background, and color illustrations. The book was approximately 250 pages, but it was a fun, quick read.

[Gwenette · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good -- learned LOTS of stuff I didn't know. That's what reading is all about!

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would have been way cooler if they would have included better pictures or more concrete information.

[Katharina · Rating 1 out of 5]

take away military places, this book'd be a leaflet. now it's just boring

[ADD · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moderately entertaining and I have visited some of those sites before. I was expecting something else than mainly highly classified areas found on web searches.

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.”

Challenging you with an almost taunting, ridiculing title, this is a fun and interesting list of locations, not readily accessible through your local travel agent. It has all the requisite places, from the more predictable ones, such as Area 51, Fort Knox and The White House to the more obscure locations, like Camp 1391 (a detention camp in Israel), Bavarian Erdstalle ( a series of more than 700 subterranean passages in southern Germany) and a number of unidentified structures out in the Gobi Desert in China.

At times it reads like one of those lists you will find online, although this does have more meat on its bones. There are plenty of good, quality photos and the use of satellite images seems to be much favoured. The author has a dry, arch tone which works really well as he draws some insightful conclusions, like when talking of Diego Garcia, “The island that was once a palm-fringed ocean paradise serves as a secretive military enclave, key to America’s foreign policy strategy.”

Around one third of the places listed here are based in the US of A. Let’s be honest many of these people have plenty to hide whether it’s facilities that knowingly do experiments on their own people without telling them the risks and killing them, (Porton Down). Or using facilities under the guise of “protecting” us against terrorism to spy on their own population, GCHQ and Menwith Hill, then it’s no surprise that governments wish to keep these places cordoned off. He explains that many of these compounds are part of the multi-national ECHELON (as sinister and worrying as it sounds) programme.

This is a good read that throws up some really intriguing places that pose many more intriguing questions. As Smith himself says, “There has always been a tension that exists between what we need to know, what we would like to know, and what others think it is best for us to know.”

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book purports to take readers on guided tours of 100 of the world’s most secret places. Most entries are accompanied with photos or images with snarky titles meant to grab the attention. The British tone is evident throughout; all measurements are in hectares and kilometers, although American equivalents are given in parentheses.
More troubling, though, is the author’s habit of conveying numbers always preceded by the word “some”. This gives measurements that can be readily and easily confirmed, such as mountain elevations or distances between cities, an ambiguous element that is irritating at best and misleading at worst.
The 100 places are heavily weighted toward military sites, with close runners-up being locations of financial, technological, and political interest, with some commercial ones thrown in for good measure (such as the home of the recipe for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, GA). The few “natural” sites that are mentioned include a snake-infested island off the coast of Brazil, two nuclear disaster areas, a seed bank in Iceland, and a vast swath of ocean home to tons of degraded plastic. (Which reminds me of the author’s consistent and persistent misuse of the word “swathe” when he meant “swath.”)
Readers will undoubtedly learn plenty of interesting facts in these pages, including what percentage of the world’s gold was housed at New York City’s Federal Reserve Bank as of 2014, or the exact breakdown of the Terra Cotta Army discovered in China (it numbers over 8,000).
But with a text littered with qualifiers such as “alleged,” “purported,” “thought to be,” “believed to be,” etc., and with an overall slapdash carelessness to the writing style, readers may wish to look elsewhere.

[Timothy Grubbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tourist guide to places you’ll never get to go…

100 Places You Will Never Visit: The World's Most Secret Locations by Dan Smith is a highly informative travel guide about places you may have heard of…and others you haven’t…none of which you’ll be able to visit…

This guide is highly exhaustive. Its contents include continuity of government facilities, military bases, and important communication hubs…all over the world…

However it’s also a source for scientific stations such as seed vaults, the giant hadron collider, and hazardous places such as nuclear fallout sites and volcanos…

There are even a few forbidden supposedly religious sites from the Vatican archives to the Ark of the convent to the location of the Ark…

Basically there’s something for everyone…where you’re a horror, scifi, or adventure junkie. Lots of these places have popped up in shows, movies, and video games…and they are all over the world…

I was floored by some of the places covered in this book (including some location unknown hypothetical sites)…as well as the helpful maps and pictures that accompanied some of the off limits locations…

You should definitely check this out since it’s the closest you’ll likely ever get to the places covered in this book…

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially a gazetter of mysterious, restricted or controversial sites around the world, starting on the west coast of America and heading eastwards around the world. It doesn't have as much depth as I was hoping for, but there's a fair bit of technical detail for those who like that stuff. Some entries are very sketchy and the accompanying photographs can be disappointing, as they're entirely unrelated at times. I also found this heavily American-centric with no less than a third of the places being in the USA. Good for a quick browse but this one doesn't offer much beyond that.

[P · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book with an intriguing cover, but really disappoints. It's clearly one designed to be put up at airport bookstores and the like in hopes of satisfying people's boredom with its catchy cover. But there is little substance there. A large percentage of the 100 are just bases. Another large chunk is of famous places that are frankly rather uninteresting due to them being so well known (ex: the Pentagon). The writing is very basic and takes literally 1-3 minutes per page. There just isn't much to this book at all.

3/10

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

First the title is rubbish. The book includes the Pentagon which you can tour and the Tower of London Jewel House which was especially designed with tourists in mind. The rest of the locations are mainly a mix of military stuff and conspiracy theory stuff with a couple of wild cards thrown in - the Queen’s Bedroom Buckingham Palace. The pictures are often dull and the writing basic.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple enough book, it is quite literally 100 places you will never visit including some really obvious ones like Area 51.

I've read it over a few months on the Kindle at times like giving blood etc. You can pick it up and put it down at will and not forget anything.

[Wanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed learning about some off limits places all over the world. Some history behind each place along with a description. Some places are of military importance and other are of religious importance while others are political and some environmentally dangerous.
Very interesting.

[Hessel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wel oké. Na 6 jaar al een beetje outdated. Het concept is leuk, maar er zit te weinig variatie en interessante dingen tussen de 100 plekken. Erg veel 'militaire basis', 'kerncentrale', 'bankcomplex', 'WO2 tunnels', en weinig echt fascinerende dingen die iets van mysterie hebben.

[Kenneth Krammager · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book toke a Long time to read.
Some of The places where very interesting, like The Coca cola vault. But some of the places where a bit boring… 100 places and alot of the places I never want to visit.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

En parte muy interesante aunque por otra parte han metido mucho relleno de lugares que aunque invisitables tampoco tienen interés alguno (Muchos edificios gubernamentales)
La traducción tiene ciertos errores como confundir el hormigón con el cemento.