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Assume you hit the power ball and over night you are set to receive several million dollars. While many people think winning the lottery is a dream come true, it’s also a curse with enormous responsibility that will require a great deal of courage and great professional advice to allow you to enjoy the winnings.The first place to go is a local bank, open a safety deposit box, if you don’t already have one, and store your winning ticket until it’s time to collect the winnings. There is no hurry. I probably can’t stress this point enough. Taking the time to formulate a plan for the money before a penny is collected is critical. The money you pay towards the professionals on the front end will be the best money you ever spent.In no certain order I’d contact an attorney, accountant, a good financial planner and a bank with a trust department. If you can withhold your excitement, have all of them in the same room at the same time and have a lengthy discussion of the winnings, your personal goals and immediate plans and discuss a long term strategy for handling the money. Without doing a deep dive you want to know one thing immediately. Will you accept the money as a lump sum or will you accept the payment as an annuity? There are pros and cons to both and you want to make an informed decision.Next you and your attorney and accountant are going to want to talk to the lottery commission to set up the mechanism for collecting the winnings. Only a fool would accept a check and drive home. The money needs to be direct deposited into a bank.With your attorney you will want to discuss whether its advisable to set up a corporation or business entity to hold the money, and whether you want to set up trusts for you and your family members and any number of other legal ways to divide the money and keep it safe and preserved. If you look at your attorney and ask him of his opinions on Alaskan Self Settled Trusts, and he doesn’t know what you are talking about, you might need another lawyer. You will also need to draft a Will the sooner the better.With your accountant, you want to know the tax ramifications of the winnings and the various tax strategies to limit or lower the taxes now and in the future because in the end, the vast majority of your winnings are going to paid to the government in the form of taxes.With your financial planner, you are going to want to know how to best invest the vast majority of your money, and assess both the risks and benefits of certain investments. The watch word here is diversification, you probably will end up with dozens of individual investments spread across a variety of areas, from rank and file bonds, to more sophisticated mutual funds, real estate and business investments.Statistically we know that the majority of lottery winners end up going bankrupt. The same is true of the majority of professional athletes who come into substantial wealth at a young age without sufficient training. The average person doesn’t know how to handle vast wealth because the average person doesn’t have and doesn’t know to have the necessary skills to transition from a person who spends nearly everything they make from pay check to pay check to a person who invests nearly everything and learns to live within an arbitrary budget.Living within an arbitrary budget is much more difficult than it sounds. Having a budget of 500 thousand to 1 million dollars a year sounds like a ton of money — and it is a ton of money — but your life style will evolve as you discover ways to spend 10 to 20 times your current income. A trip to Paris to go shoe shopping is within your grasp, buying a condo in the Greek Islands is something you can do. Hiring a staff of people to manage your new properties means you never have to cook or clean again. You can buy a private jet and hire a pilot. These life style choices are within your reach, and your life style starts to resemble what you do as a regular person. You spend what you make each year without paying attention to the consequences. Maybe you always wanted to go to Las Vegas — stay in the emperors suit at Caesar's Palace — and blow a million dollars playing in the high stakes room. That might be okay, if it was a one off — but next month you do the same thing. Maybe you want to help the underprivileged and decide to build wing to the hospital. It’s a 30 Million dollar project to start but with cost over runs and unforeseen delays, you’re up over 100 million and no way to back out. Point is this, there are a lot of temptations that come with having vast wealth, and you don’t know how these temptations will come at you — but rest assured — they will come — and all of those temptations have one goal — separating you from your money.Critical in the decision making process are a team of professionals who know advanced wealth planning strategies, advanced tax strategies and advanced wealth investment strategies.Since there seems to be some interest in this answer maybe a little more discussion is in order.Let’s assume I win 500 million in the next power ball. First I’d secure the ticket to make sure it isn’t lost, stolen, otherwise destroyed or defaced in a way that renders the ticket useless. Immediately open a safety deposit box. I believe the winner has at least 180 days to collect the winnings but the lottery rules need to be consulted. There is time to make solid plans before the winnings are collected. I’d use the time wisely.My next step if I wasn’t an attorney would be to go to a bank with a trust department who will be able to put me in touch with capable attorneys, accountants and financial planners. I know of one locally, and I’d establish an account for the lottery proceeds.There is one immediate question that needs to be addressed —whether I’d take the money in a lump sum or allow the money to be paid out over a term of years. There are pros and cons to both approaches. A little internet research will advises me to take the lump sum because the investment potential exceeds the payoff potential through the lottery annuity fund. With that said, it’s not a decision to be taken lightly and deserves several hours of research and discussion before the ultimate decision is made. I will say this, for the ordinary citizen without the skill set to manage large amounts of money, taking the annuity and allowing the payout over a term of years is a solid choice because it denies access to vast majority of the wealth over a long term of years. Over that time I’d eventually learn how to manage money wisely. However everyone is different and has different goals and objectives. While everyone dreams of the day, they can be free of the normal day to day bills, mortgages, car payments, and credit card payments, those bills are a tiny fraction of the winnings to the extent they are practically a non-factor. Self control is hard.With the plans in place, it’s time to collect the winnings.Since I know that as soon as the winnings are collected, my name and face are going to out in the public, I know that a lot of people are going to come to me asking for money. I’m going to be an instant celebrity, and people I barely know, and good friends alike are going to approach me asking for money. If I give one person money, everyone will get in line to ask for their “perceived fair share.” This is where I have to be tough and smart. Tough because I’m going to say no to a lot of people and be criticized for those decisions. But I also have to be smart. Other than paying of my bills and other expenses, I will concentrate on dividing the money into trusts for the people that you want to protect. I’d set up a spend thrift trust for each person I care about with a bank as a trustee, and provide the corpus of the trust with enough money that 3–5% per year payout would add up to a nice check every year. Refer all calls from family to their trustee whose job it is to make the decisions regarding accessing some or all of the wealth in their individual trust.For example assume I made a spend thrift trust for crazy Uncle Ivan, who then decides he wants to invest a million dollars in Bitcoins. I want the trustee to deal with this situation. And ultimately I want the Trustee to say no. Uncle Ivan keeps his income stream and I maintain peace in the family.I’d also establish a couple of charitable trusts to funnel donations to worthy causes. Wealthy people call these foundations. Essentially an attorney helps set up a mechanism or a procedure where if someone is asking for a hand out, they are directed to the foundation or the charitable trust to assess whether they receive money and ultimately how much. I can pay a nice salary to people who willingly serve on your foundation’s board who will make these decisions for me. People who might criticize such an approach don’t understand the enormous pressure that can be applied by a handful of people who will not take no for an answer.I’m going to create layers and layers of professionals whose job it is to spend my money wisely, while also compartmentalizing the assets with only a tiny fraction of the money being at “risk.”The vast majority of the money, after taxes, is going to end up being invested, the financial planner becomes a crucial component to your professional team. I’m risk adverse, so I’d invest a very large percentage of the money in low yield/low risk investments like municipal bonds. I’m doing this for a few reasons. One, it’s a lot of money and I don’t need much return on my investment. Second, these sorts of investments are practically on auto-pilot so I’m not going to be worried day in and day out about whether I making money or losing money. Third, I don’t want anyone to have the ability to write a check and access the vast majority of the money. I want there to be steps. For example if I were interested in having access to one million dollars, I’d have to contact the financial planner and decide on which investment I’m accessing, talk to the accountant about the potential tax consequences, wait a day or two for the trade to come in, and wait for the money to be deposited in a discretionary spending account. At any point I can change my mind and reinvest the money.I’d diversify the remaining money across high end stocks (Dow Jones blue chip stocks) and real estate, depending on my interest in investing or “playing” with the money more or less as a hobby. I’d stay away from risky business ventures or start ups or anyone who comes to me trying to sell me on the next great idea. On the contrary, if I saw a business that I wanted to invest in, then I’d allocate money, (money I’m willing to lose) towards that investment. My goal is to have most of the money invested within 30–60 days, leaving me to enjoy my new found wealth. Once everything is put in place and I have reasonable checks and controls over the majority of the wealth, I’d find a couple of nice places to live and retire.

[Done with this for now. Dredging the harbor dirties the water. I wrote this, edited it for two days, leaving it at this.Reading it, I know it seems unfinished, half-written. Guilty of Telling more than Showing. So be it.I am just answering, not getting paid for the autobiography. My apologies.]One of the defining days of my life, of the worst year of my 53 years, plus some backstory, for relatability.I thought hard about not telling this.I do not want to be a cranky old veteran. I try my best.But maybe, someone out there can relate, or it hints to non-military, what life is like…They will say in letters (and now, with technology) calls home: “It was hot.” “Nothing much happened.” “Do not worry.”They are lying by omission. Lots of things happen.For those who have family members deployed, they mostly will not tell you the worst of it. Suffice it to say, shit gets crazy.Guys (and now, women) come back and drink. They come back and give themselves a .357 headache. Or a drug addiction. Or become an adrenalin junkie.Sometimes the process is slow, and takes years. Sometimes, faster.And I will also say, a lot of things come down to moral choices.Overlying it all is.. survival. When it comes to surviving or doing something morally questionable, or repugnant, survival wins.There is a lot here I did not say.If your deployed loved one wants to keep it buried, let them. Do not press, I implore you. You will see them differently. Perhaps fatally flawed.If they tell you, treasure that trust. I used to trust women with the whole truth. They left. Or disengaged, slowly.I do not do it any more.30 years later, I sleep 4 hours a night. Last night, I slept 3. Thinking about this shit.Maybe I should have left it in the box.So:My first day back from deployment was a bitter day.I was a sailor. My wife had been in the Navy, also. We were both 23. She was 6 months older.As a boy, I was a nerdy geek. Wargames, scifi fan, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I loved Star Trek, and Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings.She was a Transformers superfan. She was smart, and funny.She had been my first girlfriend. We met in the Navy, stationed at North Island Naval Air station. We lived in the same Enlisted Barracks... like an apartment building.She was a Navy Journalist, I was a MK46 (Helicopter & Jet deployed) Torpedo Engine Mechanic. We dated 3 years, before we got married. We had married 10 months, before my deployment.On the day we returned, My wife did not meet me at the San Diego 32nd street pier, where the ship was home-ported.Everyone else met their wives, girlfriends, kids, parents, infants born during deployment.Some guys (of course not all) were shedding tears.It had been a very rough and difficult deployment… we made naval history for the number of missions we did.We had run aground in the gulf. We had gone dead in the water.We were in China during the Tiananmien square massacre. That was a real political nightmare, the powers at hand thought we had caused it.Our captain’s gig caught fire in the Phillipines. Guys had gone overboard, but recovered.We sailed through a Typhoon at sea, where the sea was white. Heavy seas, decks awash, nobody allowed topside.50 foot waves...We were sure the ship would capsize, or the keel would crack. The ship was 25 years old. Anyone keep a car running for 25 years?We rescued political refugees from North Vietnam. We got them to the Phillipines for asylum. That was a significant mission. These people were helpless.Near constant dust storms in the Persian gulf. We were constantly cleaning the autocannons, machine guns and small arms.The sun was a constant threat. We wore ray-bans sunglasses. I bought a pair of gargoyles, to look like Arnold Schwarzenneger. Otherwise, you’d get sun blindness.We wore flash hoods for firefighting, doused in seawater to keep cool by evaporation, and to keep the sun off.Floating sea mines were a constant threat. The USS Samuel B. Roberts had struck a mine, doing the same operations our ship was doing. They almost sank, but the crew saved it. Their ship was new, less than 5 years old… but they took a 15 foot hole, and a cracked keel.Small boats also. At night, in the dark. Probing, testing. Grateful to have night vision.Oil tankers in the Gulf and strait were getting hit by mines laid by Iran, and chinese made silkworm anti-ship missiles, to deny commercial oil shipments.We escorted Kuwaiti Tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, on 103 seperate missions. It was exhausting.Many times, our ship equipment had problems, and breakdowns. We did the best we could.Confrontations at sea. Boarding operations against small private civilian boats, looking for AK-47s, looking for RPG launchers. Looking for suicide shaped charge bombs…like what struck the USS Cole, later.Like what guys in Viet Nam did, boarding, looking for viet cong weapons, on the Mekong River, I guess.These tense operations being micromanaged by radio.Bar fights in Singapore, I started one, when a guy stole my wallet by cutting my pocket. I felt it, grabbed him, and it was on. But I had kept my ID, and money borrowed from shipmates in my sock, inside my shoe.Liberty in Thailand (I worked with the Chaplain and a few other volunteers to repair a school).I got arrested at dawn in Thailand for waking up naked on a beach. While drunk (on borrowed money) in some one's beach house shoreline back yard, I made a bad call, and was hot. I buried my cothes. Woke up being tapped with a nightstick.I found my buried clothes, and talked my way out of it with the Thai police, telling them my own family police stories.Liberty in the Phillipines… I was accosted by a gang of a half dozen guys in the dark with butterfly knives in Olongapo city, just off Magsaysay Boulevard. I bribed a police officer just walking by with shore patrol that moment to go after them. For $50, he started shooting, while I ran. A few days later, a guy in a food shop offerred to sell me his 14 year old daughter, while I was eating a cheeseburger and salad. I declined his offer.A crew member had mutilated himself with an axe to get out of going on that deployment.A large segment of the crew got food poisoning from a bad foreign meat shipment, that melted its packing ice, sitting on the dock in the sun for hours. That was really bad.A lot of the crew got pink eye Conjuctivitis in Hong Kong. I was one of them… in both eyes.And Lots of just.. other freaky shit… happened.Russian Submarines stalked us.Russian attack helicopters, “Hind”s invaded our air defense space, rattling sabers. Ignoring our warnings.The crew stressed out from all this.I have had occasion to email with Joe Galloway… Who was the guy who was in Vietnam in the first battle… portrayed by “Barry Pepper in We Were Soldiers Once, and Young.”He talks about this guy named Jimmy who was hit by Napalm.When we were there in the Persian Gulf a ship had been hit by a missile and caught fire. they Medevac’d this guy, a casualty, via helicopter… the helicopter stopped to refuel at our ship, and this guy was burned over his body about 80%.We got him off the helicopter and put him on a stretcher and were administering IV fluids and one of my corpsman friends was treating him.Now I know basic first aid, but pretty much those levels of burn injuries cannot be healed even by the miracle workers at the USNS Mercy, the hospital ship.This guy was so badly burned he didn't feel the pain. Because your nerves are fried.After all the fuel was secured, they're getting ready to load this guy back onto the Helo. This guy was craving a cigarette.We gave this guy a cigarette, and he's barely able to talk and he looks at me and he asks, “Do you smoke?” and I say, “Today I do.”Except for the guys on the helicopter I'm one of the last guys he talked to, I believe.I'm sure, though. I'm sure he died within a few days after that. Lesson: Life is short.I understand why Iran and Iraq went to war. I studied the region. I lost a relative who was killed in Iran, stabbed to death.I understand, I volunteered to go to this war. But many good sailors have been wounded or killed in the hot mess that is Southwest AsiaPeople wonder why I'm a Republican. Don’t wonder.All of this shit changed me. For the worse. At 23, I was hard. "Sleeping on a flight deck while resupply helicopters are landing" hard.Doing whatever I needed to survive every day, hard. Ready to follow any order.Friendly forces misunderstandings led to Security Forces confrontation incidents in Bahrain. Trigger happy Arab youth in uniform with MP-5s and Bravado.One of my close buddies almost got shot by them. Standing next to me… Over a miscommunication.He was saved by our missile officer who pulled rank on their ranking officer and stared him down.It sounds stupid to say this following but just to illustrate how there is no control…We did not get Christmas or New Year’s holiday leave because we left 15 December, by surprise, with orders to deploy. “Cancel Christmas.” Haha.In the military, you hardly ever know the big plans, just your job, plus a bit more… for “infosec”.Everything in the military is scheduled, but ironically, everything happens by surprise.You get a change of orders by surprise.The enemy attacks by surprise.And if you are not switched on… if you don't see that surprise coming, “Surprise, motherfucker, you're dead!”But this is about the day I came home from all that.And we, as a crew, were glad to be home!The sailors in their dress whites.. manning the rails for sea and anchor detail.Their women and daughters and sons were crying happy tears.Nobody met me. I (capital W) Waited.I shouldered my seabag, and left the ship.I walked through the dispersing crowds and then through the base.The base is large. It is, essentially, the main Naval base in San Diego.I walked to the 32nd street San Diego Trolley Station.I took the trolley home to Chula Vista. A Half hour ride.I felt that surreal sort of… I am here. I do not have to watch my back. I am not armed. Nobody here speaks Arabic, or Farsi. I do not have to worry about car bombs or snipers. But I could not.. relax.I got off the train.Everything was normal, which made it scary. Too normal, too quiet.I found myself walking, looking for cover, never standing in the open.Walking from alcove to alcove, looking up across the street at windows.People were... walking around.. smiling.TVs in bars had commercials, all the time. Car commercials for qualified buyers. Shampoo & laundry detergent.. Wendy’s, KFC, Pizza hut.I was lean. I saw that everyone, especially in fast food restaurants, was moving into obesity. Giant big macs, and fries. Their kids were fat.I felt like I felt like an immigrant in my own country… because it had changed.Or I saw it differently… from the outside.As I arrived at the door to our apartment on H street, I still had the key… I opened it.My wife. Kicked back on the couch, wearing grey sweat pants, and a t-shirt…watching Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, eating a bag of potato chips.Other guys wives had dressed up… and put their kids in their best clothes.To welcome Daddy home.I stare at her in disbelief.Bullwinkle is saying: “Nothing up my sleeve! Presto!”I had been gone the better part of a year, to the Persian Gulf. For no pay.Because she was… as they say in the Navy… “a Cock Fiend.”She barely looked up as she said, “hey what's up?”This bitch. Did not.Come.To the pier.I advanced toward the TV, and kicked it over. It imploded onto the floor with a pop, and sounds of glass. Little bit of smoke.I did not give a damn.I did not give a fuck.After everything that had went down and she didn't even have the sense of respect to try to even welcome me…Her boyfriend for 4 years… husband for a year and a half.The guy that had been paying for her. Paying for her to bang her boyfriend in my bed… in my apartment.I smashed the TV set because... she was watching cartoons, on my dime.Smoking some other guy's dick, at night while I was going through hell. No sleep.Spending my money.FUCK THAT.She had spent $8,000, not paid the bills for about 5 months, and spent it all on that guy, her boyfriend, that she hooked up with, right after I left.He bailed a month before my return.She had completely spent all the money I had sent for direct deposit to the bank, “including” my combat-zone pay.She hadn't paid the rent for many months.A little-known law says “you can't evict a service member's family while on deployment.”She had lied to the Red Cross and told them that I wasn't sending her any money home.I almost lost a stripe from that lie, on a charge for non-support.She was not supporting herself.She was blowing it on “Jody”. He told her he would pay her back, they would run away together, right before I came back.She agreed to this. She thought, at least I would have my money back, she would be free.. and have this guy.That charge for non-support didn't happen.I had clear records from the disbursing officer AND the ship's Chaplain.I was sending every penny I earned from the US Navy, home. To her. And her Jody boyfriend.I had not taken leave for three years. 3 months of leave saved…I hadn't taken leave for 3 years!I had to sell it back at 80% to pay my bills. Credit card, phone bills, back rent, utilities.That was the worst year of my life.I had worked that whole year for no pay and no leave.Very difficult conditions. We got 4 hours of sleep every 3 days. I had slept on the helo flight deck, during helo ops, with a flak jacket for a pillow. I was that tired.I know I repeat that a lot.It became a defining image for me, of the fucking grit I had to muster. To call from within myself. The call to duty, for country.At times, the sleep deprivation was so bad, guys were hallucinating. I was one of those guys.All this went though my mind, as well as killing her, and myself, as I stood there in my living room, nose flaring.4 years gone of relationship, plus marriage, pretty much gone. Trust, destroyed. Utterly destroyed.All our money, gone. Months of rent and bills in my name, unpaid.There's this thing in the Navy if you are certified to work with nuclear weapons that you have a clearance… and if you become a person who is fiscally irresponsible… you lose your clearance… they're worried you are going to sell your secrets to the Russians……which means I would have lost my job… for her generating bills that I had to pay… that she could have paid if she'd have kept her legs closed and not been so goddamn selfish.I was up for promotion to E-5. I was a workaholic, capable of “Sustained Superior Performance.”I looked at the TV. Smashed. I thought of my future. It was a moment of destiny.I pulled it together. I could sell my leave back. Fuck it. No vacation for me. I was going to make it out.“I had just made it out of a difficult deployment… I can make it out of a bad fucking marriage.”I screamed at her, "You fucking bitch, you need to get off your ass and get a job!That was my first day back. There is my answer. I did not get drunk. I did not get laid. I smashed my TV set.CODA:Over time, we were broken, beyond repair, as a couple. We grew apart within our marriage, rapidly from that point.She continued to have sex with a bunch of other people. Promises to stop continued.I had duty every three days. Most of those days, she was up in the crib with someone.My neighbors talked behind my back.Eventually, I didn't care anymore and focused on my work, and training and assignments. I had to be 100% mission-focused.I was a top performer. I was gung-ho. I was motivated.I was sent to special schools, I was given all kinds of specialized training.I was recommended for instructor duty at the Orlando Naval Training Center Torpedo School.But as time went on I descended Into Darkness.I became an adrenaline junkie.Every time I drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge, I thought “all I need to do is just make extreme Lane change and that would be it.”My best friend killed himself by driving his Ninja motorcycle into a canyon wall because his wife cheated on him.He loved her to death and when love was gone, it was time for his death.My wife and I separated. She moved back to her family in Indiana.I started drinking more and more. I started dating dancers. I started speeding, at night, down I-5.I started making regular trips to Tijuana.I was a wreck. There was a point where I would just go to the beach and walk into the ocean with all of my clothes on, Daring God to exist so that he could send sharks to eat me.But I knew that there was no God.Not after the things that I had seen.This directly led to me studying Buddhism.It came to a point where this dancer that I was dating started telling me that I was scary.That was really hard. That was really hard to take.But I got insight and I talked to a co-worker who had been through this kind of experience run by Navy chaplains which was called chaplain's religious enrichment development.It was basically to give yourself a spiritual enrichment and two appreciate yourself and other people and the kind of humanity that we all share.I went to that, I went to on base counseling… even though in those days it was pretty much going to be the end of your career.My counselor was this guy named George who had been a medic in Korea… a black man, who told me about keeping Frozen bags of blood under his armpits so that he could give it to casualties…and we had some very intimate talks about death in combat zones.How easy it was to kill people, and how easy it was for that process to become the mechanical action of your training, as you divorce your Humanity from the process.I went to Navy alcohol rehab.And then after the first Gulf war was over I was on Shore Duty.At that time I had a female lieutenant and she heard about a program of the post Gulf War Force reduction and asked me if I wanted to be part of that.And I said “Yeah, let's do it. I'm tired. I know that my career isn't going to go anywhere after rehab, and I'm done.”But rehab cured part of me. Sober siince November, 1992.I started studying languages, from Books.. Thai, Chinese, Japanese…and thought about going to school, to get a degree.I was already on a path toward Buddhism. I started studying the words of Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, Thich Nhat Han, and Christian Humphreys.* * *My wife and I finally divorced, in 1994. I went to school to study Physics.She ended up getting a job in Colorado after she tried to hook up with an oil geologist she met on the Internet. He dumped her and so that left her working at a shoe store selling shoes, and then changing bedpans at the hospital.She tried to worm her way into the LDS Church by trying to hook up with missionaries… they agreed to pay her rent for a few months if she would convert and so she went through it and I went to her baptism.She was quite talented as a writer. I paid Orson Scott Card to be her writing teacher with a course by mail.And our final split as I was going to college, in the end, she threw those course books out.I retrieved them from the trash and started reading them… and began to think, “I could be a writer.”That's how I became a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer. There is more to it, but those Writer’s Digest course books started it rolling.And then I took creative writing taught by some excellent instructors at Wright State University. I took every creative writing course they had… I took poetry writing… I took a short story writing. Novel writing.I was I was encouraged by my instructors who all told me that I had a gift for … “just telling it.”This right here, this post to quora, seems like it is probably very light reading for some people… but just bringing all this back was very upsetting over the last few days.Much as hearing the sound of UH- 1H helicopters, makes my hair stand on end, 30 years later.That sound, doesn't make me sad. That sound… it doesn't make me sad… yet tears flow.I dream that sound.Much respect to my Father’s generation, who lived and died by that sound:

1. Surtsey, IcelandPhoto: Getty Images / Gerard GeryWhen people try to convince you there's nothing new under the sun, direct them to the Icelandic island of Surtsey. Before 1963, it didn't exist. Then, an underwater volcano in the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) erupted, and when the activity settled down in 1967, what remained was an island where no island had been before.2.Moeraki Boulders, New ZealandPhoto: Karsten SperlingLarge spherical boulders -- some measuring 12 feet in circumference -- are scattered on Koekohe Beach on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. They formed millions of years ago on the ancient sea floor, collecting and hardening sediment and minerals around a core such as a fossil or a shell similar to the way oysters form pearls.They're not the world's only examples of what geologists call septarian concretions. You can also visit the Koutu Boulders near Hokianga Harbour on the northwestern coast of New Zealand's North Island, for example. Yet the Moeraki Boulders are some of the world's largest. The particulars of their origin and what caused the distinctive cracks inside them are still being studied.3.Longyearbyen, NorwayPhoto: Chris Jackson / Getty ImagesFrom April 20 to August 23, the sun never sets over Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that lies north of Greenland in the Arctic Sea. The phenomenon plays havoc with everyone's body clocks. Is it noon? Is it midnight? After a day or two, it's hard to tell.4.Pamukkale, TurkeyPhoto: Getty ImagesWhat appears to be a Doctor Zhivago-style snowy landscape in southwestern Turkey is actually the result of calcium carbonate deposits from 17 natural hot springs accumulating over thousands of years. Beginning in the late second century B.C., this area near present-day Denizli was a destination for those who sought the therapeutic benefits of the mineral-rich water whose temperature reaches upward of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.5. Notch Hill church in Tappen, BC, Canada.The light is from the train coming up behind it. Since this picture became popular on the internet and got a bit of press, they decided to restore the church.————————————————————————————6. San Zhi City, UFO Pods, TaiwanTaiwan’s other-worldly “ruins of the future” are a set of pod-like buildings built in 1978 as a vacation resort. However, two years later the project collapsed due to financial problems and a number of deaths during construction. Deserted for a further 28 years, demolition finally began in 2008. Despite the original structures’ futuristic design, the land remains rooted in the past with current developers hoping once again to build a seaside retreat in the area.7.Pripyat, UkrainePripyat, a city of nearly 50,000, was totally abandoned after the nearby Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Due to radiation, it has been left untouched ever since the incident and will be for many thousands of years into the future. Nature now rules the city.————————————————————————————8. Hashima Island, JapanHashima island in Japan has a wide array of nicknames, including Battelship Island (for its shape) and Ghost Island. From the late 1800s to late 1900s, the island was populated because of the access it granted to undersea coal mines. However, as Japan gradually switched from coal to petroleum, the mines (and the buildings that sprung up around them to support their workers) closed down, leaving an isolated ghost town that reminds some of a ghostly concrete battleship.————————————————————————————9. Ryugyong Hotel – Pyongyang, North KoreaUnoccupied, unopened and unfinished, the 105-story shell of the Ryugyong Hotel is a scar on Pyongyang’s skyline and North Korea’s pride. Construction began in 1987 but stopped after five years due to a lack of funds. Once proudly emblazoned across North Korean stamps, this vacant hotel soon became airbrushed out of official photos. Despite nearly two decades of abandonment, construction resumed in 2008 but whether the hotel will ever be completed is open to debate.————————————————————————————10. Abandoned Military Hospital in Beelitz, GermanyA rotting carcass of deserted corridors and empty patient wards, this military hospital once housed German and Soviet soldiers but has been largely unused since the late 1990s. Derelict it may be but it has not been entirely abandoned; empty bottles and rubbish scattered on the ground hint at the disparate groups of opportunistic looters, weekend wanderers, curious travellers and inspired photographers who are drawn to the decayed aesthetic of this moribund site.————————————————————————————11. Six Flags Jazzland – New Orleans, LouisianaSeverely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Six Flags Jazzland has been abandoned since. Several of the rides still stand, a testimony to the resilience of New Orleans. Several companies have plans to develop the park, but until then it will remain as the perfect setting for a horror movie.————————————————————————————12. Salto Hotel, ColombiaThe Hotel De Salto opened in 1928 near Tequendema Falls in Colombia to serve tourists who came to marvel at the 157 meter-tall waterfall. It closed down in the early 90s after interest in the waterfall declined. In 2012, however, the site was turned into a museum.————————————————————————————13. Gulliver’s Travels Park – Kawaguchi, JapanConstructed in the shadow of Mt Fuji, this theme park opened in 1997. Despite financial help from the Japanese government, it lasted only 10 years before being abandoned.————————————————————————————14. Underwater City in Shicheng, ChinaThis incredible underwater city, trapped in time, is 1341 years old. Shicheng, or Lion City, is located in the Zhejiang province in eastern China. It was submerged in 1959 during the construction of the Xin’an River Hydropower Station. The water protects the city from wind and rain erosion, so it has remained sealed underwater in relatively good condition.Read more at 10 Mysterious Places Around The World That Are Hard To Explain... Even For Scientists20 Mysterious Places Around The World Abandoned By Society