What are the coordinates? Been looking for it around 100km west of jiayuguan but I can't seem to get it right
Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
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Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#102More info about similar places:
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#103> Our license plates started with “Gan-A,” the same as the provincial capital. We laughed at people from other cities like Jiayuguan (“Gan-B”) or Jiuquan (“Gan-F”). Even as kids, we joked, “We’re still number one.” Because our grandparents were the country’s elite and we lived in the “Nuclear City,” I always felt like I was living at the center of the world. Am I reading too much into this or does China have a cultur…
In my school in Europe we had 4 classes for each grade. A, B, C and D. Guess who felt they were better than everybody else?
mine too, but none was such a dick. also, anything related to school (particularly at a young age), is not viewed as something to boast of (at least in my experience in italy, serbia and portugal).
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#104What's the deal with AI here in the comments?
You caught me! Yes, I am using AI to assist with the translation. My IELTS score is 7.5, but my writing band is 6.0. I write my thoughts and comments in Chinese first and then use AI to translate them. The entire article was also translated from my original Chinese manuscript.
你可以把中文版发到网上吧
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#105[flagged]
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#106Amazing, related story. I had a friend that always talked about growning up in 418 Pennsylvania. It began as a company town for a ceramics manufacturer in the 1920s. The factory specialized in heat resistant vessels. You know like kettles, pitchers, industrial teapots. Each stamped each with a model number tied to production lines. Line 418 was the most profitable. When the post office opened, the clerk assumed “418”…
Atlanta is frequently referred to as "the 404" due to it being one of our area codes for calling. April 4th is an informal city holiday, "404 day". Lots of artists and companies make "404" branded stuff, and you generally see the number all over the city: https://mondaynightbrewing.com/beer/404-atlanta-lager/ https://sneakernews.com/2025/03/21/adidas-superstar-404-day-... https://x.com/kodakk6000/status/1775929898390…
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Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#107Amazing, related story. I had a friend that always talked about growning up in 418 Pennsylvania. It began as a company town for a ceramics manufacturer in the 1920s. The factory specialized in heat resistant vessels. You know like kettles, pitchers, industrial teapots. Each stamped each with a model number tied to production lines. Line 418 was the most profitable. When the post office opened, the clerk assumed “418”…
Atlanta is frequently referred to as "the 404" due to it being one of our area codes for calling. April 4th is an informal city holiday, "404 day". Lots of artists and companies make "404" branded stuff, and you generally see the number all over the city: https://mondaynightbrewing.com/beer/404-atlanta-lager/ https://sneakernews.com/2025/03/21/adidas-superstar-404-day-... https://x.com/kodakk6000/status/1775929898390…
Doesn't this happen for lots of area codes? 305 for Miami in particular as Mr. Pitbull likes to remind us.
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#108Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#109Hi HN, OP here. I grew up in "Factory 404," a secret nuclear industrial city in the Gobi Desert that officially didn't exist on public maps. This is a memoir about my childhood there. It was a surreal place: we had elite scientists living next to laborers, a zoo in the middle of the desert, and distinct "communist" welfare, all hidden behind a classified code. This is Part 1 of the story. I'm happy to answer any ques…
> 404 is a classified code for a nuclear industrial base.
Can you expand? A code under what system? What were some other code numbers and what (unclassified) things did they refer to? Did each code refer to a specific city or specific factory? Or were all cities/factories dedicated to a certain type of industry or military objective classified under the same code? Why did they teach you this code number growing up?
I'm really fascinated by this. Fantastic story overall, can't wait for part 2!
Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I absolutely agree that in the current state of things most western people are so well off they can't even imagine what it means to actually be oppressed and suffer, I can't help but notice that the current state of things can quickly change and that we're in a constant yet barely visible struggle with forces that want to bring about just that kind of oppression here and that we're slowly losing it. You might t…
> I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence Rather from numbers in my opinion. "Divide and conquer", or its modern equivalent "confuse and manipulate", is what makes violence effective. It is always striking to compare how much people are similar, even in our divided society, versus how much dissimilar they think they are. I'm used to help organize long boat trips with all kind of people from various…
> Rather from numbers in my opinion.
Because for now more people means more violence. If you control more people, you control more potential violence. So if your enemy controls more people, you need to either amass more people in your cause or divide the enemy's cause.
And there are limits to how many people you can control. Even in the past, they were surprisingly large to my liking. Helot slaves to their Spartan owners were 7:1 at some point apparently. Soldiers in WW1 had riles and bayonets, yet one guy with a revolver could send dozens of them to their deaths. But still, it was impossible to censor communication among ordinary people and prominent enemies of the regime required constant supervision by another person. Digging up dirt or evidence could take months of work. Now so much communication is online, detecting dissent can be automated to a large extent. There's a limit to how many people can be in prison without starving and without the state collapsing by how many people need to perform useful work and how many people you need to guard them.
But I bet soon we'll see a new dystopian nightmare where prisoners are watched by automated systems 24/7, increasing the prisoner to guard ratio. And finally, look at Ukraine. Artillery was the primary cause of casualties in the past century of wars and you needed people to transport heavy shells, load and fire them. Apparently 1 ton of explosives per death. Now it's drones, which can be mass produced largely automatically and controlled automatically. And they are so precise you could use them to target individuals in crowds.