History YouCantGoHomeAgain / RealLife

* The town of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia Wittenoom]] in Western Australia was a case of this in the 1960s. The town was located around Australia's only asbestos mining site and when the dangers became apparent, the entire place was condemned and most of the residents relocated. By 2022, no one remains in the town, which receives no government services, has been erased from maps and signs, and has all roads leading to it permanently blocked off with demolition of remaining structures on progress in 2023.

* During the Edo period, Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate enacted its ''sakoku'' policy that largely closed the country off from foreign (especially Western) contact for over two hundred years. Among the edicts was a proclamation that common Japanese civilians were forbidden from leaving the country upon pain of death if he were to return, even those shipwrecked and rescued by foreign ships.

* Happened on a massive scale to African slaves taken to America or elsewhere, MadeASlave and in all likelihood never seeing their continent again.

* In the late 1990s, numerous US Army, Air Force, and Naval bases throughout Europe and the United Kingdom closed down, often becoming the property of the home militaries of those countries in which they were located. You want depressing? Try this: the children who grew up on some of those bases would be turned away by ''armed guards'' if they tried to visit their old home-towns.
** The children that grow up in ''most'' Army, Air Force, or Naval bases will get turned away by armed guards if they try to visit their old hometowns; you need a current military ID, or an escort with current military ID, and simply being the offspring of an Enlisted individual or Officer won't get you a current military ID past the age of 21.

* This happened on a ecosystem-wide scale with Africa. The Sahara used to be lush and green several thousands of years ago, but everything changed when Earth's Axal tilt increased temperatures and decreased precipitation five thousand years ago. As the sun got hotter in the Sahara, it caused a massive drought and famine that killed off almost all of the vegetation in northern Africa and forcing the animals that weren't pre-evolved to live in hot climates to migrate southward of the continent where it was cooler in order to escape the heat.

* This frequently happens to victims of natural disasters. These are more cases of No Home To Go Back To. Floods, fires, earthquakes, and other events can destroy whole countries. Even if you can physically return to where you house once stood, your house and neighborhood may no longer be there. This trope is especially the case when there are a lot of fatalities because not only is the physical location gone, but so are the people.

** Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of New Jersey and New York. Houses were completely washed away, or irreparably damaged. Even when people moved back in to less damaged houses, the surroundings have changed completely and is no longer truly home.

*** The book ''Literature/OneDayInTheLifeOfIvanDenisovich'' demonstrates quite well what happened to POW's who tried to return, as the main character was sentenced to ten years in TheGulag for being a suspected "spy" for the Germans.
* The foreign volunteers of Waffen-SS after World War Two. Germany had lost the war and they would have faced trial of high treason in their native countries. Many of them found their only solace in French and Spanish Foreign Legions. It is said the majority of the French forces in Vietnam consisted of former Waffen-SS soldiers.[[note]]As a rule, and in order to prevent any particular nation from making the Foreign Legion into a Praetorian Guard, any particular national component is kept at about 25 percent of the total. Even supposing (and this was the case, of course) that the French recruiters, in the eagerness for candidates would sign up Germans enlisting as Swiss, Austrian, Scandinavian and other nationalities of related ethnic background, it is unlikely that the number of Germans in the Foreign Legion ever exceeded 35 percent. Thus, without making an allowance for losses, rotation, discharges, etc., the maximum number of Germans fighting in Indochina at any one time reached perhaps 7,000 out of 278,000. As to the ex-Nazis, the early arrivals contained a number of them, none of whom were known to be war criminals. French intelligence saw to that. Since, in view of the rugged Indochinese climate, older men without previous tropical experience constituted more a liability than an asset, the average age of the Foreign Legion enlistees was about 23. At the time of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, any legionnaire of that age group was at the worst, in his "Hitler Youth" shorts when the Third Reich collapsed.[[/note]]
** This was averted with Swedish volunteers, as shown in ''Film/{{Frostbite}}''. Almost none of the surviving volunteers where jailed. The few who were punished were simply punished for avoiding drafting.
* In 1958, a Virginia interracial couple-Richard and Mildred Loving-were arrested for leaving the state to get married in Washington D.C. and then returning to Virginia to live as a married couple. The judge sentenced them to a year in prison but suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the Lovings never return to Virginia together or at the same time. Eventually, the Lovings did return home after winning a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, ''Loving v. Virginia''. The case not only overturned their convictions, but also legalized interracial marriages across the whole country.
* The village of Imber, in the middle of Salisbury Plain, was evacuated in 1943 to allow planning and training for the Normandy landings. The population were not allowed to return even after the conclusion of the war, and their families are still only allowed to return for an annual church service.
** Similarly, villages, towns and occasionally cities are wiped off the map for large structural projects or mining pits, ranging from some villages being removed in Germany to facilitate brown coal mining to moving 1.3 million people for the construction of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam Three Gorges Dam and Reservoir]] in China. It means that not only does your home no longer exist, even its location has completely vanished.
*** One of the more brutal examples of this is the flooding of the Welsh town of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capel_Celyn Capel Celyn]] by the Liverpool Corporation in 1960. The town was a center for Welsh culture, and one of the last towns where the entire population could speak welsh fluently. Capel Celyn, Wales, was flooded to provide Liverpool, England, with water. The action was brought to parliament by the Liverpool City Council. Every Welsh elected official from every party in Wales voted against the plan, as well as a good handful of Scots, but the plan was pushed through largely on the strength of English votes. It led to mass protests, the rise of the modern Welsh Nationalist movement, and a spate of bombings by a Paramilitary Organization known as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudiad_Amddiffyn_Cymru Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru]]. The issue still isn't settled, with the Liverpool City Council issuing an insulting nonapology in 2005, which mentioned all the wonderful things Liverpool has done for Wales. When it isn't, you know, destroying parts of the country.
*** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Villages The Lost Villages]] in Canada can be included on that list. Most of them were abandoned, the others relocated, to allow for the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Building foundations and sidewalks can still sometimes be seen when the water level is low. Other than those brief glimpses, and a memorial park, the villages have disappeared beneath the water.

-->"Even if they were complete duds on the big trail, politicians like Rick Perry and Bill Richardson entered their presidential campaigns after decades of service and effort. And when they came back out of it, the states that had backed them for so long decided they didn't have a use for their enduring leaders anymore. By going for that juicy presidential fruit, they essentially got tossed out of the states they represented. There's no looking back once you go in the big race, unless you want to be turned into a pillar of salt."

* Iranian actress Creator/GolshiftehFarahani is banned from returning to and working in Iran since 2009, for having played in ''Film/BodyOfLies'' (seen by Iranian authorities as "collaboration with American propaganda") and for appearing nude in several films and magazines. She resides in France ever since, and has dual citizenship.
* Many UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n artists and creators have gone into exile for opposing the mass scale invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} in 2022 (it's now been declared a crime there to oppose the so-called "Special Military Operation"), such as director Creator/AndreyZvyagintsev (who now resides in France).

* Many unmanned spacecraft that are sent to explore other planets are often unable to return to Earth once their mission is finally complete.

*** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Villages The Lost Villages]] in [[CanadaEh Canada]] can be included on that list. Most of them were abandoned, the others relocated, to allow for the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Building foundations and sidewalks can still sometimes be seen when the water level is low. Other than those brief glimpses, and a memorial park, the villages have disappeared beneath the water.

* It used to be a common thing in American culture -- still is in certain parts of the country -- where parents would kick their children (especially boys) out of the house as soon as they turned 18 or graduated HighSchool depending on when in the school year their birthday fell (by law, hitting 18 legally makes you an adult). This is due to the belief that children are supposed to face the world on their own and survive on their own, or perhaps resulting from accumulated strife during the teenage years, as a response to the kid's expectations regarding so-far free laundry service and food.\\
In areas where this mindset is/was prevalent, children who lived with their parents were often branded as "lazy", "freeloaders", and/or "failures"; while parents who allowed it without preconditions (exorbitant rent, etc) were openly mocked by other parents. Media will often portray them also as sexually immature or dysfunctional.
** While this mindset is still around, especially in parts of the South, it has become increasingly rare thanks to America's post-2008 perpetually-sluggish economy and the ever-increasing cost of basic necessities (rent, utilities, food, gas/petrol) being at its highest in 40 years. This reality has forced many twenty-something Americans to either find roommates or stay home with the family.
** This is a good example of entertainment lagging behind reality, since living with your parents past high-school/college age ''does'' make you an acceptable target for comedians and the media.

* This can occur during severe infestations of pest animals (IE: Rats, cockroaches, etc.). The infestations can be so severe that the families living in said home have no choice but to pack up their things and leave. The Creator/AnimalPlanet series ''Series/{{Infested}}'' is a documentary that is basically about these situations (Though, fortunately, they are often [[SubvertedTrope subverted]], but not always).
** Some infestations can become so severe that the home is essentially uninhabitable to humans.

* Part of the reason for the SadBollywoodWedding trope is that once married, it was traditionally expected that a woman would join her husband's family and never see or contact her family of origin ever again.

* Many UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n artists and creators have gone into exile for opposing the war in UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} that started in 2022 (it's now been declared a crime there to oppose the so-called "Special Military Operation"), such as director Creator/AndreyZvyagintsev (who now resides in France).

** This might also be the case with TimeTravel-we’ve only figured out how to go to the future, not the past.

* It used to be a common thing in American culture –- still is in certain parts of the country -- where parents would kick their children (especially boys) out of the house as soon as they turned 18 or graduated HighSchool depending on when in the school year their birthday fell (by law, hitting 18 legally makes you an adult). This is due to the belief that children are supposed to face the world on their own and survive on their own, or perhaps resulting from accumulated strife during the teenage years, as a response to the kid's expectations regarding so-far free laundry service and food.\\

* It used to be a common thing in American culture – still is in certain parts of the country – where parents would kick their children (especially boys) out of the house as soon as they turned 18 or graduated HighSchool depending on when in the school year their birthday fell (by law, hitting 18 legally makes you an adult). This is due to the belief that children are supposed to face the world on their own and survive on their own, or perhaps resulting from accumulated strife during the teenage years, as a response to the kid's expectations regarding so-far free laundry service and food.

In areas where this mindset is/was prevalent, children who lived with their parents were often branded as "lazy", "freeloaders", and/or "failures"; while parents who allowed it without preconditions (exorbitant rent, etc) were openly mocked by other parents. Media will often portray them also as sexually immature or disfunctional.
** While this mindset is still around, especially in parts of the South, it has become increasingly rare thanks to America's post-2008 perpetually-sluggish economy and the ever-increasing cost of basic necessities (rent, utilities, food, gas/petrol) being at its highest in 40 years. This reality has forced many twentysomething Americans to either find roommates or stay home with the family.