Posted by RebelDead Honestly I look at it as preservation. Take it. It's a piece of history that is going to be destroyed. No one will ever know it existed. I don't see anything wrong ethics'wise. That line is pretty fine anyway. If you think about it... we take photos, leave foot prints yeah yeah, well those foot prints aren't supposed to be there right? Just saying.

This is my thoughts.

A building I knew was coming down had an upstairs office full of goodies... old blueprints, photos, history on tenants (most were LONG out of business), etc. Before the building came down, I managed to snag a file folder of info on the place. A week after it came down, I was over near the place and decided to walk around the lot. I found in a puddle 3 soggy black-and-white photos of the place in its prime. They had torn the place down with everything inside. I managed to salvage the photos and donated them to the local historical society for them to keep for posterity. They were quite happy with what I had....and extremely sad the rest just got mowed over.

If I'm pretty-buzzed (i.e. not so wasted I can't carry shit), I might grab a souvenir or two before I go. Nothing bigger than a softball mostly, but one time I was so hammered on Klonopins and a forty of Mickey's Malt Liquor, I took out a stack of boxes full of shit. Thank fucking whoever I didn't get arrested, lol! The stack must've weighed fifty pounds!

I've seen too many priceless historical objects get destroyed by idiots who couldn't care less. Blueprints, historical log books, historical lab manuals, a countless number of pre-1920 lab glass and apparatus smashed on the ground.

I almost think it's irresponsible and an insult to the people and history of the buildings to NOT preserve delicate historical items. Anything that will be destroyed by vandals, taken by looters/scrappers, or weather should be taken and saved.

Despite Solvay Coke being a trashed wasteland, I have a friend who has a whole collection of stuff... Lab glass, blueprints, records, lab notes, just TONS of stuff. And he scans the documents and shows anyone and everyone who asks him to see it. I know for a fact that much of the history and all of what I know wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. All of the former workers and their families that he's talked to have thanked him for saving such a vital piece of Milwaukee's history.

Say what you will, but as long as you're trying to preserve history and NOT making a personal profit, I think you're justified.

I mean, personally I have taken only one Water Usage log from the 1940s, I felt a bit of distaste in my mouth as I did, but the room contained thousands upon thousands of these logs, and water damage was also a factor. I guess my mindset would be if it were to be considered garbage if the place were still active then I don't see (much) of a problem with it.

I guess I'll extend another question to this conversation, in a case like I stated above, does the sheer quantity of the "stuff" in question affect wether or not you take it?

I have a very long list of personal rules on taking stuff, and I do consider there to be ethical circumstances to remove things from abandoned sites. One of them is that there's no exception for sites facing imminent demolition.

Personnally my answer would be, USE YOUR JUDGEMENT.

If you think the piece you find cool is in danger of not surviving the rest of it's life, take it.

- If it not disfigure the location for the other explorers
- If it's under water damage and water can ruin it
- If the place is heavily trashed and will be stolen anyway
- If it's in demolition and will be demolish with the rest
- If it's not to resell
- If you live in a city where once a place is known, it's over.


Over the years and multiple locations, i seen place get trashed and looted to death in the matters of weeks/month.

With time you understand how it work, and you can tell wich place will be stolen based on their location and neighbourhood.

I have kept numerous little souvenirs with me, mostly documents and thing you can fit in your pocket.

I can say proudly that i have save numerous things like photographs and document from being destroyed.

I have almost 100 old picture of the oldest villegiature resort in the laurentians in Québec, i plan to one day give them back to the family (i was a family based "company")
The year after i took the picture, that where laying on the ground, the roof leaked so bad that all the rest of the picture got destroyed.


Each year, i organise a big UE meet in montreal in an big malting plant wich is abandonned for 30 years.
It's trashed to death, everything you can imagine have been stole or destroyed.
But in 6 years i have accumulate a good amount or documents and littles things that represent the place well.
There is nothing left, what i took would have been gone today.

I will expose those artefacts at the meet and hundreds of people will see them

Succintly, go for it. I'd rather someone have it than it get destroyed. I have my eyes on a wall size USSR map from a site looking at demolition soon.

You can't really talk about what situation is more ethical than another if you're stealing in both situations. If you don't own it, it's not yours to take. Period.

I can tolerate taking small, worthless knick knacks. However, I fucking detest the people that say they're "rescuing vintage pieces" and then reselling them on Instagram/eBay/etc. If you're truly interested in rescuing a piece history, donate it to a museum.

One particular situation sticks out in my mind: an explorer found a stash of about 50 vintage skeleton keys in a state hospital that was rumored to be demolished soon. He could've taken one key as a cool memento. No, he fucking took every key there and started selling them online. Not only did he deprive other explorers from seeing such cool artifacts, he's continuing to tarnish the reputation of everyone in this community who doesn't loot every place they explore.

Lately, I have had the pleasure of salvaging material and hardware from two 1860s-era buildings, with permission of the contractors/owners, prior to demolition. Shortly after I retrieved what I could, they were dozed over, loaded into dumpsters, and hauled away.

Obtaining permission is not always that easy, though. As a farmer and builder, I use a lot of tools and material widely regarded as junk, and I've helped myself to a great deal of items. On subsequent visits, I often find stuff destroyed and regretted not rescuing them.

On the other hand, some things are just integral to their home site and should be left for others to see and enjoy. As others have said, use respectful judgment.

This is a hopelessly circular argument.

Everybody abides by their own moral code, which differs from person to person.

In the first place, UE by its nature is (generally) illegal. Therefore I would imagine the vast majority of people doing it aren't committing B&E carrying swag bags hoping to score big.

I've read the posts from people saying they have taken items to preserve because they're going to be destroyed anyways. Is this right? Wrong? It depends on the (perceived) value of the item I would say, and also on the intentions of the (would be) thief.

The people who scrap buildings for copper are scumbags, in my opinion. They are destroying a location to line their pockets, pure and simple. They have selfish motivations and likely don't care about the UE aspect in the least bit.



If you come across something that looks nice, like say a vintage looking Coca-Cola bottle from the 1910s, and it's sitting in a house that has been abandoned since, say, 1981, there are pretty good odds that the owner of said bottle have long forgotten it (time being a factor here). I don't know that I would crucify anyone for taking that bottle with them.

Now, depending on what they did with that bottle, I might reconsider my stance after the fact. Are they an avid Coca-Cola memorabilia collector and adding it to their collection? No harm, no foul. Conversely, have they sold that bottle on eBay for $500? Hmmm. Not really impressed there; it's not that much different than scrapping a building for copper (the difference I suppose being that the vintage bottle might be discovered by accident; scrappers are deliberately stealing from the site).


A site I explored with a friend of mine once upon a time had an abandoned computer in it, and it had a hard drive. After much deliberation, we decided to remove the hard drive and take it with us. Our plan was to check the contents of the drive once we were gone from the location to see if it could provide us with a clue as to the location's history and reason(s) for being abandoned. We didn't profit from this venture; in fact, we ended up spending money on the resulting rabbit holes we found only to get minimal information in the end.

And we never did return the drive to the computer, despite having returned to the site since then.


I guess you can call me a UE "thief" then, even though I never planned to take anything for the sake of personal gain.

Posted by Darendor If you come across something that looks nice, like say a vintage looking Coca-Cola bottle from the 1910s, and it's sitting in a house that has been abandoned since, say, 1981, there are pretty good odds that the owner of said bottle have long forgotten it (time being a factor here). I don't know that I would crucify anyone for taking that bottle with them. Now, depending on what they did with that bottle, I might reconsider my stance after the fact. Are they an avid Coca-Cola memorabilia collector and adding it to their collection? No harm, no foul. Conversely, have they sold that bottle on eBay for $500? Hmmm. Not really impressed there; it's not that much different than scrapping a building for copper (the difference I suppose being that the vintage bottle might be discovered by accident; scrappers are deliberately stealing from the site).

The above scenario violates one of my rules against taking anything that's part of the experience of the house. I'd probably revise my decision of there were a crate of 40 bottles and the removal of one wouldn't diminish the experiences of future visitors. On second thought, it's a damn Coke bottle, so why would I want that?

Posted by Darendor A site I explored with a friend of mine once upon a time had an abandoned computer in it, and it had a hard drive. After much deliberation, we decided to remove the hard drive and take it with us. Our plan was to check the contents of the drive once we were gone from the location to see if it could provide us with a clue as to the location's history and reason(s) for being abandoned. We didn't profit from this venture; in fact, we ended up spending money on the resulting rabbit holes we found only to get minimal information in the end. And we never did return the drive to the computer, despite having returned to the site since then. I guess you can call me a UE "thief" then, even though I never planned to take anything for the sake of personal gain.

That's an interesting scenario. I think I'd do what you did, depending on who I was with -- if it were a trusted partner with that sort of innovative streak, I'd go for it, but if it were someone newer I was introducing the hobby to, I'd set an example by not taking it.

Definitely what's done with an object after is relevant: putting it up for sale or profiting from it in some other way (such as saving yourself a purchase) also doesn't sit right with me. I once found a theoretically working record player -- which I need -- and I didn't take it because of that. Later, the owner returned for it.

Where is the line between 'finding' and 'stealing'? Archeologist can find shitloads of things and keep them, but an explorer can't take something in a derelict building that no one cares about and where items, sometimes of great historical value, are inevitably going to rot away or be vandalised? Where are the ethics of the owners that let historically valuable items rot away?

In my other hobby, finding bunkers of the Atlantikwall and digging them up, we've been taking every valuable item we'd find, ranging from small badges to large machinery. Sometimes it was already too late and the rare item would crumble into rust powder in our hands. No one thinks about preserving these things if we don't take them, like some guerilla archeologists! Technically, the bunkers and items inside them are property of the local government. A few years ago the local government has given us permission to dig out a couple of bunkers and turn them into a museum. Now all the stuff we found (in legal terms, stole from the gov't) is on display for everyone to see, and the local gov't is very supportive and gives us loads of funds to expand. The museum is very succesful and loads of people come every week to admire and study the stuff we 'stole'.

Recently I even came to a point where I even felt with copper thieves in a recent encounter with a few of them. These guys, among hundreds of other workers, were fired when a blast furnace shut down. An entire town was suddenly jobless. These guys are scraping a few bucks together from the place they worked at very hard for years for a pittance. The factory is just standing there, rotting away, with stuff of value inside. Not saying that copper thieving is ok, but I do understand their position.

I feel very uncomfortable around explorers with strict ethics, especially when they feel like everyone should act like that. It's all about common sense to me. There are so many shades of grey in this.

i was in a closed resort that was mid-demo and took this crowbar like tool used to scrape shingles off roofs to pry open a cash register, i found $60.

i've been doing this a looooong time and in the past few years my mindset has completely changed, the only rules is that there are no rules.

Posted by sirpsychosexy A few years ago the local government has given us permission to dig out a couple of bunkers and turn them into a museum. Now all the stuff we found (in legal terms, stole from the gov't) is on display for everyone to see, and the local gov't is very supportive and gives us loads of funds to expand. The museum is very succesful and loads of people come every week to admire and study the stuff we 'stole'.

This isn't stealing. You were essentially hired to salvage these items to create a museum display.

Posted by sirpsychosexy I feel very uncomfortable around explorers with strict ethics, especially when they feel like everyone should act like that. It's all about common sense to me. There are so many shades of grey in this.

Agree that there are many shades of gray, but if ethical people make you uncomfortable, you're probably on the wrong side of this argument.

Can we also discuss exceeding the speed limit on the way to/from the abandoned building?

Posted by blackhawk ...treat the site as if we're[sic] a museum.

You are not a museum. You are a human being.

Posted by A Through Z Explorations You are not a museum. You are a human being.

The site
Members are people, not curators of a museum.

The older I get the less my inclination to horde. Too much stuff is a burden.
A TB of images is bad enough to manage and cull.

Ever have locked doors and no keys because some "explorer" took -all- the keys? swell.



edit-spelling

Posted by siper One particular situation sticks out in my mind: an explorer found a stash of about 50 vintage skeleton keys in a state hospital that was rumored to be demolished soon. He could've taken one key as a cool memento. No, he fucking took every key there and started selling them online. Not only did he deprive other explorers from seeing such cool artifacts, he's continuing to tarnish the reputation of everyone in this community who doesn't loot every place they explore.

Yes, fuck that guy. I think a lot of us know exactly who you are talking about.

Posted by IndoAnomaly Yes, fuck that guy. I think a lot of us know exactly who you are talking about.

Wow, you must have ESP too...
especially super pissed

Posted by Steed The above scenario violates one of my rules against taking anything that's part of the experience of the house. I'd probably revise my decision of there were a crate of 40 bottles and the removal of one wouldn't diminish the experiences of future visitors. On second thought, it's a damn Coke bottle, so why would I want that? That's an interesting scenario. I think I'd do what you did, depending on who I was with -- if it were a trusted partner with that sort of innovative streak, I'd go for it, but if it were someone newer I was introducing the hobby to, I'd set an example by not taking it. Definitely what's done with an object after is relevant: putting it up for sale or profiting from it in some other way (such as saving yourself a purchase) also doesn't sit right with me. I once found a theoretically working record player -- which I need -- and I didn't take it because of that. Later, the owner returned for it.

It's a "damn Coke bottle" to you, but to an avid Coca-Cola memorabilia collector, it's prize gold. I actually know someone who is into collecting all things Coca-Cola, hence my example.


I think we could all - or at least mostly - agree that there is no hard and fast code of ethics here. Sure, most of us more or less claim to explore for the sake of exploring and taking pictures... no stealing, no vandalizing, etc. But each person is different, and each person assigns different personal values to different objects (and scenarios, for that matter).

The Coke bottle in the above example. Sure, lots of people might go "pfft whatever". But let's turn that on its head for a second. Suppose that Coke bottle was instead a 10 kilogram bar of solid gold. Suddenly, your values are in the spotlight. Do you take it? If you don't, someone else might. That gold bar could be worth tens of thousands of dollars after all.



It's different for each explore(r), I would say.