Pyramiden was a Russian settlement and coal mining community on the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. Founded in 1910, and abandoned in the late-1990s by its owner, it is now a ghost town. Tourists are allowed to visit Pyramiden. But visitors may not enter any buildings without permission, even if the doors are open. The settlement is accessible by boat or snowmobile. There are guided tours available (in Russian, Norwegian, and English).

Prypiat and dozens of smaller villages and towns in northern Ukraine and southern Belarus were abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and turned into a closed alienation zone.

The majority of abadoned towns and settlements in Russia are located in the Far North (Komi, Taymyr, Chukotka). Those towns became deserted due to deindustrialisation and the economic crisis of the early 1990s.

In Namibia there are two ghost towns, Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop. They were diamond mining towns and have been partly covered by the shifting sands of the Namib Desert.

A former mining town is Dallol in Ethiopia, located in the Dallol crater, were the temperatures can rise as high as 104° Fahrenheit (40 °C). It was the hottest inhabited place on Earth when people lived there.