The latest James Bond film, Skyfall, features Javier Bardem as a classic Bond villain with an equally classic lair on an abandoned island. As I learned watching a recent episode of Top Gear about Bond cars, the crew prefers reality to effects whenever possible, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Silva’s lair is a real place — Hashima (also known as Gunkanjima), off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan.

Photo by Jordy Theiller

The island was a company town operated to mine coal starting in 1887, but abandoned in 1974. Reminiscent of Pripyat near Chernobyl, check out lots more photos on Haikyo.org and Gakuranman.

Via Boing Boing.