5 Places on Earth Where No Laws Apply

5 The Nubian Desert Gold Mine

In 1899, the British created a border between Egypt and Sudan, using the classic British method of drawing a straight line on a map. A couple years later, they drew a slightly different line, paying slightly more heed this time to where people actually lived. Today, Egypt recognizes one of these lines, while Sudan recognizes the other. The weird part is, each claims a border that doesn’t give themselves control over a thousand-square-mile patch known as Bir Tawil. 

That’s because if Egypt switched to the more recent line (or Sudan switched to the older 1899 line), they’d gain Bir Tawil, but they’d lose a different, more desirable patch land. That means both countries currently want that more desirable patch (the “Halaib Triangle”), as happens with so many disputed borders worldwide, but no one wants Bir Tawil, making Bir Tawil the only habitable land in the world that no one claims. 

No one other than this guy, anyway:

That’s Virginia man Jeremiah Heaton. In 2014, he traveled to Bir Tawil and stuck a flag in the ground, saying that if no country claimed it, he was now naming his own six-year-old daughter the land’s princess. But that was just a stunt, with no consequence whatever, and Heaton didn’t follow that up by moving to this desert. 

The population there mostly now consists of prospectors, digging in the sand, convinced they’ll find gold. If they find any, they’ll run into the remaining members of the population: armed gangs, happy to relieve them of their find. 

4 Pirate Bay Island

If you’re a fan of those sort of tiny places claimed by individuals, which we call “micronations,” you might have heard of Sealand. It’s a naval platform off the coast of England, which the Royal Navy hasn’t used since the 1950s. After that, it got occupied by DJs broadcasting unauthorized radio stations (because during the dawn of rock, BBC Radio refused to play rock music), followed by a whole lot of different people with different and strange motivations. 

The place had a truly crazy few decades, and you should go read the article we did about it. But here’s one fact we didn’t get around to mentioning: In 2007, the Pirate Bay tried to buy Sealand. Sweden had briefly shut the website down, and they figured that if they had their own nation, no own could ever interfere with them again. 

That didn’t work out. They were offering £65,000,000 for Sealand, which would have been an extraordinary price for 6,000 square feet of steel, but since no nation actually recognized the existing owner’s claim on Sealand, it’s likely this sale would have bought them nothing. The Pirate Bay suffered worse legal consequences in the years that followed, then they settled on just moving to various domains based in different countries once everyone gave up on caring too hard about piracy. 

3 The Walled City

Right after World War II, Hong Kong was in the middle of its century of British rule. China now newly declared ownership of one little nook of Hong Kong: Kowloon Walled City, which had once been a military fort. The British were largely okay with this, because it was just around six acres of land, and they’d been thinking of razing the buildings there anyway. 

China got control over the walled city, but given that they didn’t have control of any of the city around it, they didn’t have any real way of administering the place. The British, meanwhile, now had no jurisdiction over it. So, the place became its own little lawless enclave. That might not seem like such a big deal, considering how small it was, but by the 1980s, those six acres became home to 35,000 people, making it the most densely populated spot in the world. 

Some people moved to this complex of 35 buildings to escape the law. More people moved there because it was so cheap — because in any other part of Hong Kong, making rooms that terrible was illegal. 

We’re talking apartments with no running water, with residents tapping into the communal supply with their own makeshift pipes. Then there were the heroin shops, the casinos and the brothels. The British had to let this go on, of course, till they got around to demolishing the whole complex in 1993. Up until then, even if a criminal from outside the walled city fled in there, police wouldn’t follow. Partly, this was because of the jurisdiction thing. Partly, it was out of fear of getting lost. 

2 Bismarck, North Dakota

Wait, Bismarck, North Dakota? That famous city, known for being the state capital, and which we might not actually know anything else about, but still, it’s the state capital? Surely Bismarck is no haven of anarchy?

Okay, it’s no haven of anarchy now. But back in the 1870s, Bismarck had a nickname: “The Wickedest Town in the West.” Its riverboat was a fine entry point for criminals, and the thousand miles of wilderness around it meant you were always close to true freedom. 

Most “Old West” towns weren’t nearly as dangerous as you’re picturing. But Bismarck? One Bismarck saloon had seven murders in two years. Often, the town didn’t bother punishing such killings either. For example, a judge opted not to hold a trial because of that street’s “terrible record of blood.” Such records are usually considered a reason for trials, not a reason to cancel trials. 

Then, in 1889, the Dakotas formally joined the United States. A little later, in 1898, all of Bismarck burned down. When they rebuilt, they now aimed for slightly less murder. 

1 The Headless Corpse Border

We’ve got one more border to discuss — the border of Belgium and the Netherlands, two countries that aren’t usually known for being too murder-y. At the edge of Belgium, there were these 35 acres of undeveloped land, a peninsula cut off from the rest of the country by the Meuse River. It used to be connected to the rest of Belgium, but then we shifted the river in 1961 and left this nook stranded. 

The place became known for drugs and weird sex stuff, because police never entered it. Dutch police wouldn’t enter it because it was Belgian territory. Belgian police wouldn’t enter it because there was no bridge over that section of the river and no easy way to dock a boat. They’d have to cross into the Netherlands to reach the peninsula, and while you can freely go from one of those Schengen countries to another most of the time, police moving internationally is a whole other can of worms that no one wants to deal with. 

Then some Dutch people who casually wandered into the peninsula (maybe for drugs and sex; we didn’t ask) stumbled upon a headless corpse. The Dutch refused to investigate, and the Belgians could only investigate with great difficulty. So, to simplify matters in the future, the Belgians agreed to just hand the land to the Netherlands in 2016, in exchange for the some other spare land those Dutch folk had lying around.

As for whose corpse that was, we still don’t know. If you have its head and are looking for reuniting it with the remainder of the body, we recommend contacting Dutch officials. Or possibly Belgian officials. We’re not totally sure.

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