Ever find an Urbex location that was just a complete waste of time and resources? Maybe it was just while scouting, or maybe during an actual exploration, doesn't matter. I haven't had too many failures yet but I'll start with the worst so far.

I was looking for a new place to explore since the previous place turned out to be way to risky and not worth it(It was a truck depot that was really open, on a busy street, with cameras, and a guard station) I was just driving around the industrial area around me looking for warehouses and such, and I came across a really cool looking warehouse and distribution center. The window was wide open and the building had no cameras, the surrounding businesses did, however. I came back the next day since it was late just to scout again, it was a bit busier since it was a workday. Anyways, my buddy and I looked around the building then I snapped a single picture of the front door. Suddenly, my buddy taps me on the back and says we have to leave and that's when I see a guy storming up to us from one of the other businesses. He had a really heavy Baltic accent, I'm guessing he immigrated from Europe and wasn't born in America. He gets really close to us and in his heavy accent yells,"Why you take picture of building?!" My bud and I are startled and I just studder out,"It looks cool..." He pauses and looks at my bud and me and says,"You wait here." Next, he storms off back into his companies building and we book it back into the neighborhood. I'm guessing he was in charge of monitoring his building cameras and thought we were suspicious, or who knows maybe they were hiding something in the abandoned building. Regardless, we decided to scratch the place for now and maybe hit it at some later point. I hope we can get a good discussion going of our biggest failures yet. I look forward to seeing some of your experiences.

Good you got out of there! My story was a failure and a bit of a miscalculation I usually scope places out on google earth before visiting usually to check the place out and to look at the surroundings for entry and exits. There was this remnant of an really old Texas town and the only remaining building was the dance hall which was about medium sized. Scoping the place out on google earth it looked clear and just open enough to park out front and check it out but once we got there they boarded up the place completely! Absolutely no way to get in this building so we walked around a few times and after getting ripped up by mosquitoes we called it quits and checked out a location that ended up being a massive success.

Nice wright up and welcome to the forum! You may want to avoid using business names and such, for your safety and the safety of the site...

The biggest failure I had with a fellow explorer was at a famous local spot... I'll spare the location details but we pretty much had to walk around said massive building to reach the back of it. There's a loooooooong stretch of about 250m we have to walk before reaching the PoE... The problem is someone drives around quite often for patrol, he didn't got us on the stretch but while we were attempting to get in... He got us has he turned around that corner... biggest fail we ever had lol

Posted by Rusty Canadian Nice wright up and welcome to the forum! You may want to avoid using business names and such, for your safety and the safety of the site... The biggest failure I had with a fellow explorer was at a famous local spot... I'll spare the location details but we pretty much had to walk around said massive building to reach the back of it. There's a loooooooong stretch of about 250m we have to walk before reaching the PoE... The problem is someone drives around quite often for patrol, he didn't got us on the stretch but while we were attempting to get in... He got us has he turned around that corner... biggest fail we ever had lol

Sorry about that, I removed it

You live and you learn, mate.

But yeah, I remember Rusty Canadian's story. That was a pretty epic fail! My personal top fail has been the times I've tried to infiltrate these two limited-use hospitals in northern Toronto. Very tight security, and I'm terrible at active infiltration. Even worse, I brought a friend into the fray one time. Absolute waste of time for both of us.

It's always frustrating when you don't have the most up to date info for the location you're planning on hitting. I've planned an entire day around hitting a certain factory, only to arrive and find it as an active fenced-in construction site, with all the windows already boarded up and half the building demolished.

Oh, I can empathize with that one! Things change so quickly here that you can never be sure even with pretty current information if that's accurate.

My worst exploration fail was recent. Me and the GF were in Ireland hunting mansions and found a place at a wall where we could move a tree trunk that had been placed to block entrance. Once we moved the tree, ahead was a muddy field with many trees in it. As we continued in, I was some hoof prints and some cows. As we neared the back of the mansion I thought "Glad there's no bull"

Right about then, as if on queue one turned towards, revealing its sharp horns and bellowed the loudest most crazy sound. It was of course an angry bull and as it cam at us we ran, as fast as we could through the deep mud and hurtled over the hole in the wall. We lifted the tree back to where it was, and we took off fast before anybody noticed and broke out laughing as it was such a silly reason to have to abort an explore.

Local place, well known and had been abandoned and wide open for years. Used to be a power generation plant.

Going out to hit it one day with a new camera as I was down in the area looking at some other stuff; hadn't been down in that area for around half a year.

Instead of walking into a thoroughly abandoned building like I expected to; I ended up walking straight into the middle of an active renovation site. Somebody finally bought the place and renovated it into a private event venue for weddings and the like.

A few years ago, I went to a nuclear plant, only wanting to take pics (obviously not gonna infiltrate). I approach the bridge across the river, off the main road. No closed gate, card readers, guards, not even a 'keep out' or 'employees only' sign. There's a sign on the front fence that only states 'no guns or explosives, video surveillance maintained'. I figure I'll go until they ask me to leave, as I just want some pics. On the island, I park very conspicuously at the empty end of the lot, snapping the cooling towers and stuff. Five minutes go by, and 2 guards get out of a truck, each in full body armor, holding full auto rifles. I turn off the car, camera on dash, and hands up. Long story short(er), they didn't detain me, but took my picture and told me to delete my pics, warning me not to return. They seemed shocked as to how I got so far, and I said, "All I did was make a right turn and cross an unguarded bridge." They were nice about my stern and rather terrifying warning, and even said I could shoot from the road on the other side of the river though. I ended up with some good pics, most as good as what I'd deleted. I can chalk some of this up to a lapse in...common sense, but it amazed me that there was no front gate access control, considering their first response was heavily armed guards...

I generally try to plan backups with my trips just in case something goes wrong and to avoid wasting a day. Well once I made a trip to a city a few hours away with three main destinations, all of which had positive information online from within the past year. The first one was now completely demolished with a new park nearly completed in its place. The next one had construction workers present, cleaning up the property. The last one (on a completely different side of town) also had a crew there doing some sort of work.

Luckily I had one lead on a smallish abandoned factory which ended up being a good backdrop for my friend and I to do some photography. So while the day was not completely wasted, we didn't get to do any notable exploration.

I once got up packed the bike and rode almost three hours to check out the Huber breaker. About to get off the highway and scan the familiar skyline for the old hulk to find.........a noticable hole in my recollection of the town. It had been demo’d a month prior! I was devastated! Thank god for plan B explores....

Posted by Rustndust I once got up packed the bike and rode almost three hours to check out the Huber breaker. About to get off the highway and scan the familiar skyline for the old hulk to find.........a noticable hole in my recollection of the town. It had been demo’d a month prior! I was devastated! Thank god for plan B explores....

I heard about the demo, just from photos I could tell it was a behemoth.

Took a four hour trip with 3 locations planned, two demoed and one had police on site.