Think of the craziest reality show you've ever watched in your life. Now imagine this: 40 kids left completely alone to run an abandoned town in the New Mexico desert. That was the premise of a real show back in the 2000s called Kid Nation.

Actor Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Movie Crew Member With Prop Firearm
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If you've never heard of Kid Nation, here's the premise:

Back in 2007, CBS aired a television show starring 40 kids (between the ages of 8 to 15) in an abandoned ghost mining town located in Bonzana City, New Mexico. The show was actually filmed at the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch that was built ON the ruins of the old city.

Actor Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Movie Crew Member With Prop Firearm
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The kicker? No grown ups, no adults helping... it was all up to the children to run the town better than how the settlers in the 1800s did. It was essentially a kids version of Survivor. You can see everything be explained in the TV trailer, down below.

What did people think of the show?

At the time people liked it; however, looking back on the show a decade later, there's definitely a fascination with how the show even became a reality. Buzzfeed called it "absolutely wild", the channel Funny or Die did a video on Kid Nation calling it "one of the most insane reality TV shows ever made"

YouTuber JonTron also did a video in 2020 talking about Kid Nation, gaining over 15 million views.

He even did a follow up by having one of the former contestants, Jimmy, talk about his personal experiences on the show.

Jimmy wasn't the only one who shared experiences on the show: a couple of other kids actually shared theirs online for the website The AV Club.

A little bonus fact about the Bonanza City Creek Ranch: it was also the sight of the Alec Baldwin Rust shooting incident in 2021...

If you want to try the watch the show, the episodes are hard to find but someone uploaded the entire show on YouTube in an hour & a half long video. It's very hard to tell if the show would ever come back; so until then we'll just remember the craziness that was Kid Nation.

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