KAYLIE SIROVY: Welcome to ImPulse, where we’ll uncover the hidden stories just beneath the surface of our city. I’m Kaylie Sirovy. 

SPENCER TOLKINEN: And I’m Spencer Tolkinen. 

SIROVY: And today we’re taking you inside a secretive, high risk and highly creative world that exists in the margins of urban life, urban exploring. 

TOLKINEN: Urban explorers enter abandoned hospitals, defunct factories, shuttered schools, and crumbling infrastructure to capture moments lost in time. But their journey through these forgotten places isn’t without consequences from injuries and arrests to social media, drama and ethical dilemmas. The world of urbex is complex, controversial, and undeniably fascinating. At least to us it is. 

SIROVY: In this episode, you’ll hear from the explorers who chase the thrill, the beauty, and the danger. You’ll also hear from first responders who rescue them when things go wrong together. They paint a vivid portrait of what it really means to explore the hidden layers of a city. 

TOLKINEN: This is Armadillo Underground. 

SIROVY: Before we get into the danger, the community, and the consequences, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is urban exploring? 

TOLKINEN: Urban exploring or urban is the practice of entering and documenting abandoned off limits or rarely seen parts of the urban landscape. That might mean climbing rooftops, sneaking into decommissioned power plants or spelunking into the forgotten tunnel system of Minneapolis and St. Paul. For many, it’s a way to experience a city differently, to reclaim spaces that are lost or overlooked. 

KALLEE: If you can get in and get out without being seen, you didn’t trespass like. But it’s also like if it’s not being put to use, like nobody is using this property for anything and it’s just sitting there like rotting away, like why wouldn’t we want to like go see like what it has to offer instead of just letting it sit there and do nothing.

I think that like obviously as an urbexer, like you’re gonna see like a no trespassing sign and you’re gonna look the other way and you’re gonna keep going. I was just like a bored teenager and I was like, “what can I do for free?” And that’s what you can do for free. And it’s really fun. It can be really scary at times, but that adrenaline, you know, like kind of keeps you addicted to it almost like, “oh, I wanna go again.” 

KING EXPLORES: Like some of these explorers, they’ll go sneak into like active mills and explore active mills, active power plants and things like that. And it’s like, not that those charges are gonna be extremely high if you’re caught at those, because like if you’re caught at like an abandoned building, they’re most likely gonna tell you to leave. But like, I don’t know how you’re gonna explain yourself if you’re caught in an active power plant. 

NESTED: Coming up on two years now, and so I guess I was really interested in it before, but I was younger then and I didn’t really do it. But recently, coming up on two years and it just wanted just to explore. Try something new. That’s really what it was. That’s what got me into it. And I just was hooked right away. It was all, it was the history, the thrill. The photography behind it. I just, I loved it all, 

SIROVY: Despite being illegal, urban exploring has an internal code. It’s not written down, but ask any urbexer and they’ll tell you there are rules. Rules about how to find spots, how to protect them and how to behave once you’re inside.

KING EXPLORES: Like it kind of like, not really rules, but kind of like more like norms I’d say. But like a lot of times if you see like explorers taking photos, I mean it’s like this for everyone, you obviously don’t get in their shot, don’t get in way. It’s kind of a thing that you don’t really associate with certain people. Like if there’s like the explorers, like I wouldn’t like to call ’em explorers, but sometimes it is unfortunate. 

There are very few people in this crowd who go to these buildings and they’ll just destroy like everything in their path and it’s like a norm to just not like associate yourself around those people. I’d say you leave it how you found it. That’s like the biggest golden rule. I have a YouTube channel, King Explorers. I mean, if you want, you can go check it out if you like. I try my best to not, whenever I explore these places I never ever give the name unless the place is actively being demolished or is going to be demolished, like it’s confirmed they’re gonna demolish it ’cause at that point it’s like I don’t really care what happens with it ’cause it’s gonna face the wrecking ball. 

A lot of times I try my, I don’t say names. I try my best not to show entrances, or sometimes the spots are way too good. A lot of times I just keep ’em offline until like the time is right to post ’em.

But no matter what you do, people are gonna kind of find it like regardless.

KALLEE: It’s like an art form. I don’t see a problem with like leaving your mark in that way as long as you’re not being like excessive and like you know, doing the utmost. But like, I also like stand by that. Like you go because you wanna explore it. You want something to do. 

You wanna admire it, and then you take your little flicks and you get out and like, because like why would, like. Maybe you wanna post the photos, but like, I guarantee you don’t really wanna like leave your mark that much to the point where like it’s gonna help you get caught. 

NESTED: Graffiti’s a different situation if it’s a more popular spot and there’s already a bunch of graffiti going, doing graffiti there, no one in the community has a problem with that. It’s the, you know, vandalizing new spots, breaking windows and, you know, purposely hurting the building itself. That’s where it’s. We’re not a big fan of that. 

TOLKINEN: That tension between secrecy and visibility plays out across social media. As urbex content gains popularity, more newcomers flood into the scene, and the old guard isn’t always thrilled. 

KING EXPLORES: As much as I hate to say this, it is becoming more mainstream. It is becoming really popular, which I do not like. So it’s not really much of an underground kind of like secret nightclub type of thing or whatever you wanna call it anymore. But I don’t think the mainstream’s gonna last forever. I think it’s gonna be like a whole thing or it’s gonna be like a trend and then it’s gonna die out.

I feel like TikTok’s kind of the reason why the hobby got so big and kind of like blew up a little, a little bit, but I don’t know. How that’s, but like I said, it’s kind of becoming a trend. I mean, I know like even like in the past few months alone, there’s been a bunch of like new people joining the hobby. They’ll join the hobby, they’ll like get really sendy and they’ll do a bunch of stupid stuff and then they’ll catch felonies and then they’d immediately stop. 

KALLEE: I remember I went to this one spot and somebody had carried up all the parts to a trampoline and then assembled it in the building. That was probably one of the coolest things, one of the coolest urbexing experience. So then everybody was just jumping on this trampoline. 

Yeah, but then the reason that got shut down because people started sharing it with each other ’cause everybody’s like, “where’s this abandoned trampoline thing?” And then it got posted on TikTok and it got like 3 million views. And then everybody in the comments was like, “it’s in Minnesota. It’s in Minnesota.” And then now she’s gone. 

SIROVY: But urban exploring isn’t just an ethical minefield. It’s physically dangerous. These buildings aren’t maintained. Floors collapse, stairs break, mold and asbestos linger in the air, 

TOLKINEN: And when accidents happen, explorers often rely on the people they’ve spent their whole time trying to avoid: emergency responders and police.

TYLER LUPKES: My name is Tyler Lupkes. Pronouns he/him. I am a battalion chief in the Special Operations division at Hennepin EMS. I’ve been a paramedic since 2006, working here in Minneapolis since 2012 and part of my responsibilities in our office is I oversee a group of paramedics that are trained in rescues. So technical rescues using ropes entering confined spaces and things like that. 

So we see a lot of, you know, leg injuries, hip injuries, things like that from those falls. But surprisingly enough there’s also, I think, an increase in respiratory injury and illness that can come from it just because you know, poor air quality, a lot of dust, debris, you know, burden and rodent feces and things like that that exist in those areas that if appropriate respiratory protection measures aren’t taken we have seen people that have gotten pneumonias and things like that after the fact. 

MELANIE RUCKER: I am Melanie Rucker, and I am the Assistant Chief of Minneapolis Fire Department. What usually happens is they go with a partner. And usually, you know, one of ’em will like fall or get hurt and it’s traumatic. It’s traumatic for that partner that has to call 911. It’s traumatic for their family. 

So we’ve had like feedback where, you know, parents or, you know, people have like contacted us to thank us for saving, you know, their loved one, you know. It is very traumatic. So they have to understand too that doing this exploration, if they do get hurt, get injured, or even die, that this traumatic effect it has on their loved ones, their family, or even someone that has went with you. 

So it’s not just them getting injured, them going through the trauma of a possible injury. It is the extended family as well, family and friends and loved ones. 

KING EXPLORES: One guy, he slipped and fell well into grate and he put his hands out to stop himself because you naturally just try to catch things so you don’t completely like fall and face plant. But when he put his hands out to catch himself, he put his hands on glass, unshattered glass. 

So he cut both his hands up extremely bad and he was unable to and the only way out was to go out that grate and he was unable to climb up outta the grate ’cause he cut his hands up really bad. The guy with him had a first aid kit and we patched him up, but it was bleeding so badly we couldn’t do anything.

So we were like, “oh, shit.” So we had to call the, we had to call the fire department. They had to come, they actually had to go up to the door and like weld, take one of the welds off the door. Then they had to go in for the inside, go down in the basement and get ’em, and then bring ’em out. 

SIROVY: King Explorers also talked about a time he got hurt while exploring. It wasn’t serious enough to need an ambulance, but it was still pretty intense. He once hit his head hard on a steel beam and cut it open. He ended up tearing off his sock, wrapping it around his head to stop the bleeding and just drove himself to the hospital. 

TOLKINEN: And sometimes it’s not just the explorer who’s at risk.

LUPKES: I think a lot of the initial calls for help can even just be difficult to locate, right? A lot of these buildings don’t necessarily have well-known addresses or, you know, names of buildings on the exterior of them anymore. So even sometimes finding the right location can be difficult. You know, thinking of tunnel systems and, and culverts and things. 

It’s hard to pinpoint where people are, first of all. So that’s obviously a challenge that we face. And then, you know, it’s accessing people. If it’s a scenario where they may have fallen through an old wooden floor in a building, you know, those same hazards exist for the people that are then trying to rescue the explorers from the situation that they’re in. 

And obviously if those people are now injured or having other, you know, medical emergencies, we can’t necessarily, you know, just walk them out the same way that they came in. So if there’s things like splinting or immobilizing people fully, if they have, you know, back injuries, things like that, they can make it extremely challenging to ensure that we’re giving them the appropriate medical care that they need as to not worsen than any injury, and, and then find a suitable location to get them out. 

So that often involves very prolonged incidents where we may have to set up rope systems or other means to, you know, safely extricate people out of those areas while also keeping the responders safe with, you know, their own rope harnesses and things if there’s a risk of them falling through holes and, and things like that.

SIROVY: So why do it?

TOLKINEN: Why climb into asbestos, lace buildings in the dark? 

SIROVY: Why risk injury or arrest for a few photos? 

NESTED: It’s cool to, you know, photograph it and then be able to show it off and see you’ve been there. 

KING EXPLORES: I mean, it’s kind of like every community. I mean, there’s like some really cool people in this hobby, but there’s also some really bad people in hobby or not bad people, but I say like people I’m not really fans of. I mean, it’s kinda like every, everywhere you go in life, there’s gonna be, you can’t have a good without the bad because everything’s good. You can’t compare it. You can’t compare it to bad. 

SIROVY: Urban exploring walks the line between danger and beauty, creativity and illegality. For some, it’s worth the risk. For others, it’s a call to caution. 

KALLEE: Go sober. Go with a group. Like, don’t be like stupid like look where you’re walking, be like aware of your surroundings. If you are going when it’s dark, bring a flashlight, dress appropriately. Some people are just like, “yeah, let’s go.” And they’re in like, I swear, like I’ll see people and they’re in like t-shirts, jeans, nothing else. And I’m like, “yep.” 

And then some people do and they bring like their masks and like never touch like random water or like try not to touch the walls. And if what I have seen is like people will be like, “okay guys, we’re gonna go through this one area, everybody hold their breath and run through it. And then once we get to the other side, like then you can breathe.” And I’m just like, “okay. That would’ve been nice to know.” 

KING EXPLORES: Some of these explorers get extremely territorial or sometimes there’s people who will, it’s really awkward. They’ll like trash talk me on the internet or do a bunch of like really petty things, and sometimes I’ll see ’em in person as a spot and like we both don’t like each other. Then we’re just like awkwardly like we run into each other and it’s just like awkward silence. It’s just like really weird. 

Another thing I’d recommend too is carrying like a weapon. Obviously I wouldn’t bring a firearm as if you’re caught that could be a very serious charge, but I would bring like probably like a can of spray or just a knife or some, just something small. Just the case. I mean, hopefully you don’t ever have to use it. 

NESTED: So I guess with like asbestos, black mold for really decayed places though,it’s really popular. You’ll find them for sure. So I guess  you know, wearing a respirator can always be good. If you’re going into a place, you know, has chemicals, you know, has asbestos, has black mold respirators or some type of like industry standard mask, that’s what I would suggest there. 

KING EXPLORES: You kind of just kinda watch where you stop because that’s a thing. You can’t go into any abandoned building and just not expect a risk. Like a lot of times you kind of have to just accept that there is a risk and you’re gonna see a risk and you kind of just have to accept it. And like when it comes across, you gotta learn how to just like come, go around it. 

RUCKER: I say it’s just dangerous. There’s other ways to get that kind of adrenaline rush that they’re seeking or, you know, that extra challenge of doing like, you know, places where there’s rock climbing, there’s hiking, where they’re it is, that’s what it’s built for, where they’re, you know, not the places that have the unknown hazards. 

So I would say stick to the places that are built for these types of explorations that have been vetted, that have been deemed safe and don’t have these, you know, you can always get still hurt hiking, rock climbing and different things like that. But don’t venture into places that you don’t know the hazards, where there’s unknown hazards that can sneak up on you.

LUPKES: Every once in a while you know, responders can get hurt as well. We work very closely with the fire department, obviously, on these types of calls where, you know, they’re experts in the rescue world as well. You know, even things as simple as you know, rusty nails and all of that stuff is still around that, you know, they may not necessarily be, you know falling through holes in the floor because, you know, we try to prevent that through the ropes and stuff that I just talked about. 

But there are still hazards and, you know, other parts of the building may still be falling down just with the presence of extra people around now. There’s, you know, extra load on the floor and, and, you know ceiling parts and things fall that we’re not prepared for.

TOLKINEN: Urban exploring exists in the shadows. 

SIROVY: It invites curiosity and sometimes chaos. 

TOLKINEN: It’s a look at the forgotten corners of our city and ourselves. 

SIROVY: I’m Kaylie. 

TOLKINEN: And I’m Spencer. 

SIROVY: This has been Armadillo Underground. 

TOLKINEN: And remember, beauty is sometimes hidden in plain sight.