I went to University in Fairbanks, AK. It's a pretty unique place, probably one of the largest population centers where it routinely goes below -50F. Practical things I've learned:
1. Running outside is pretty comfortable with the proper equipment until about -20F, but is possible down to around -40s as long as you wrap something around your face and/or have clothing to "pre-warm" your air. At around -60F breathing deeply (and not into your coat) becomes painful and dangerous.
2. Metal "burns" and blisters your hands from -20F and below. The fast transfer of heat from your hands from things like snow can make them numb and inoperable in seconds.
3. The triple combination of battery blanket/oil pan heater/block heater is usually winning, but nothing beats a garage. The worst part about living off campus was walking a half mile from class AND THEN sitting in your car for 15 minutes waiting for it to become drivable.
4. It's amazing what humans can adapt to. If it was a 5 minute walk I would usually just have a big and avoid the time-consuming, but best way to stay warm (parka + layering). Also I'd usually wear jeans. When it would bump up to 20F people would be wearing shorts outside.
(From comments) - We have never had problems (I was only there six years, anecdotal) with weather interfering with internet/cell service. Some jack-ass clipped a fiber cable once, but that's all I can remember.
(From comments) - A lot of our buildings go 2-3 floors underground. We still have tunnels linking buildings together, but they are no longer accessible by the students.
As far as work goes the pipeline runs through Fairbanks, but the main centers of employment I saw were the University and the Military Base.
Do you have engine block heaters in cars in Yukon? In Scandinavia we have electric heaters installed to engine blocks for people who keep their cars outside. The heaters are typically in the 500 W range and keeping it on for an hour before starting up the car in the morning makes the starting a lot easier.
We also have cabin heaters for cars (typically in the 1000 W range) but they are more for the convenience (but also safety, car windows are clear when you drive off, and vapor from breath doesn't condense and freeze to the insides of the windows).
Their ancestors had to live there (exiled). They spent generations adapting and really it probably isn't that bad to them. If you grow up having tigers outside your door you learn to to avoid the tigers.
The human mind is a funny thing. When you're born and grow up somewhere it feels very intuitive to live there. The same reason most people don't live BFE North Dakota for the small cost of bus ticket. It just feels like home and most people don't give it much of a thought.
Unless they eat it while it's still frozen, why is this noteworthy?
Also:
> Most people use outhouses, because indoor plumbing tends to freeze.
This is due to their poverty, not the cold. If it was just cold there, as opposed to cold and impoverished, they could either keep water constantly running through the pipes, or, if that won't work, insulate them better, possibly with heating coils.
"It's so cold, they make sure they have to go outside just to perform basic bodily functions" sounds a bit... insane? Idiotic? Poorly-written and probably badly-researched?
> Cars are kept in heated garages or, if left outside, left running all the time.
This isn't unusual. Block heaters also work, and might represent a fuel savings once the electricity infrastructure to plug in all of them is in place.
> Crops don’t grow in the frozen ground, so people have a largely carnivorous diet—reindeer meat, raw flesh shaved from frozen fish, and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni are a few local delicacies.
This isn't so much due to the cold as it is due to poverty, and possibly local culture.
> Chapple found it difficult to speak with the people he encountered, as many people were rushing as fast as possible from one oasis of warmth to another.
Was he determined to do his interviews outside? I can understand him wanting to take pictures outside as much as possible, and his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to, but interviews don't need to be done out in the cold.
Unless you're the kind of person determined to climb a radio mast to get an overview shot of a town. Maybe if you're that person, everything needs to be done in the most... dramatic way possible.
Even without "poverty" keeping plumbing from freezing in temperatures like this is still a challenge. I frequent a northern Maine camp with the amenities of a regular house, and routinely have to deal with scenarios that extreme cold brings such as freezing pipes/septic lines, ice build up etc.
Also, tools like "block heaters" don't apply to the entire vehicle and all of it's inter-dependent parts. In that kind of cold, things like transmission fluid, and even door handles stop functioning normally.
> Unless they eat it while it's still frozen, why is this noteworthy?
I'm pretty sure that's what it's saying. I also don't think keeping water constantly running through pipes is necessarily enough to keep things from freezing at 40 degrees below zero.
>> Most people use outhouses, because indoor plumbing tends to freeze.
> This is due to their poverty, not the cold. If it was just cold there, as opposed to cold and impoverished, they could either keep water constantly running through the pipes, or, if that won't work, insulate them better, possibly with heating coils.
Outhouses are common in Alaska (outside of cities) as well, and it isn't exactly "poverty", but it is a significant cost to keep pipes from freezing.
Block heaters in cars are not effective in extremely cold temperatures. They keep the oil warm, but the battery still gets too cold to crank. In college, I used to remove my car battery from my car and store it on my kitchen floor at night so I could start the car in the morning.
Cameras will suffer similar issues. Lithium Ion batteries are only rated down to -20degC. Below that, the internal impedance of the battery rapidly increases as temperature decreases, and you get extremely shortened battery life. I once tested a product I designed, that normally works for 24 hours, and got only 2.5 hours from it at -40degC.
>Unless they eat it while it's still frozen, why is this noteworthy?
eating frozen meat is a lifestyle detail there. Note - it is high fat meat (or fatty fish) which doesn't become firm hard brick like lean meat would. Also there is no mentioning of vodka(diluted ethanol) which goes very well (and i'd suspect - just from my gut (i mean real gut :) feeling helps to digest) with those fat meat/fish slices.
Methinks you're severely overlooking the cost of maintaining temperate-lifestyle behavior in deeply frozen environments.
Thawing meat takes time & energy. It may very well be more convenient to just eat it frozen, especially if you're working outside and your lunch is frozen by ambient temperatures as the norm.
Keep water constantly running thru the pipes
That's a LOT of water - where do you get it from? where do you put it when it's too cool to use? Remember, this is an environment where most water is frozen; liquid water is an anomaly.
More importantly: you're overlooking where the septic drainage pipe is going. You don't "constantly run water thru" that pipe. It doesn't go to a community sewage system. It goes...somewhere out in the back yard. You can't keep the full length of that pipe, and where it's going, sufficiently warm.
insulate [pipes] better
Insulation delays thermal loss, but does not halt it. Where is the heat source? heating coils? that's more costly energy being pumped into a low-value pipe to fight extreme temperature differentials compounded by the thermal mass of water.
What you're imputing should be in place will cost a lot more than you expect. We're talking an environment where dirt itself is frozen deep down, all working at sinking any heat you pump in.
block heaters work
Ok, the block isn't frozen then. But your tires are - literally, the rubber on your tires is rock solid - and the flat side of the tire contacting the ground doesn't flex when rotating so you get an extremely bumpy ride just for starters. Speaking of starters, your starter is frozen. And the door handles. The door hinge may not give. The battery may not start. Your wiper fluid ("works to 40 below!" and temps hit -50 last night) is a block of ice. You'll have to heat the entire car just to make it function in a tolerable manner ... easier just to get on a bike (which you can easily keep warm inside) or walk.
[several imputations of blame on poverty]
Consider the _relative_ poverty. Just flushing the toilet or opening the car door just went from thoughtlessly free to significant/nontrivial cost. Crops are nearly nonexistent, almost any food not local meat has to be shipped thousands of miles to a low-demand location. Suddenly EVERYTHING costs much more just because it's so blasted cold out. Your (yes, you) normal expenses just went up 10x. Want to eat? cheapest way is go hunting out your back door. Want to, er, egest? outhouse.
The people there aren't necessarily "poor", it's that the cost of living - in a manner not consistent with certain realities of the environment - is very high.
his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to
Again, you underestimate how very cold it is outside there, and how pervasive that cold is. Modern cameras, generally speaking, are not built for use at seriously sub-zero temperatures.
interviews don't need to be done out in the cold
But talking to "the man in the street" does. He wanted to interview people he'd never met, people who were just walking by. If you're talking about serious outdoor cold, as regards to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another, you're going to find yourself in the difficult position of trying to talk to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another and who are uninterested in talking to strangers about how cold it is.
>and his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to
They are. Try using your modern DSLR in even -10C for a day. You better bring some spare batteries with you.
If I were to go on a photo safari in such cold I'd bring a mechanical Leica range finder camera (possibly a model completely without any electronics) and film. At least as a backup.
> > Most people use outhouses, because indoor plumbing tends to freeze.
> This is due to their poverty, not the cold.
I'm more worried about the physiologic consequences of exposing, um, private parts to minus a bajillion degrees. I'm pretty sure you have to finish in a couple minutes, max, or else all sorts of really bad things will happen.
Visit us in summer in Australia, when in some of the cities the temperature during the day often exceeds human body temperature. There's only so many clothes you can remove :)
I find it fascinating how people adapt to extreme climates. Learning how to cope with such inhospitable areas may be useful when it comes to going to places outside of our cosy blue planet.
There's a site run by some well-travelled Russian photo-blogger that I once ended up on thanks to a link someone posted on HN. Good stuff. Takes a while to get used to the author's obsession with traffic signs and trash cans, but it's good.
The site's hard to navigate. You may have to hit "english" at the top right (assuming you don't want the Russian version) since it may not retain language state through links. The "veni, vidi" link on the top left will take you back to the master list, so you can find the other parts of the trip if you're interested. Photos with little squares on the top right are actually little galleries. Click the other squares to change the image.
Unrelated insights gained from the site:
* The smaller touristy Pacific islands are typically covered in garbage.
* Former British colonies are usually OK, former French colonies are usually awful.
* Ethiopia looks like a pretty cool place to visit.
I was in Regina SK, Canada this time last year, and for a South African who'd only ever experienced ~-10 degrees C, it was a humbling experience. The coldest day when I was there was below -50C, and on one day I missed my bus and walked to work on -42C. I did adapt after a while, but I don't think I'd be able to live in Oymyakon.
About 15 years ago I remember reading an article on a magazine about the coldest town on Earth, I was most fascinated by people having to walk backwards, and boiling water freezing mid-air, something I forgot to try while in Canada.
I live in Saskatoon, a few hours north of Regina. We've had it pretty bad the last two winters. It's a pretty nice day today, only -16C (3F), but there's been a lot of days recently where we've been pretty high up on this list: http://www.wx-now.com/Weather/WxExtremes
I'm not sure if we're just unlucky, but there's usually a lot of places much further north than us that are warmer.
>ymyakon earned its title as the coldest place on Earth when the mercury plunged to -90.
Mercury doesn't plunge to -90 (C or F) because mercury has a melting point at -37.9 °F or -38.8 °C.
This is a fairly common fallacy from people who aren't thinking through. Thermometers used in cold places usually have coloured alcohol as liquid, not mercury.
I think most Western countries have actually got rid of mercury thermometers altogether, because it's poisonous and also because it's a too nice material to make bomb detonators.
While the factoid is appreciated, I don't think it's fair to call it a fallacy: 'the mercury' is a common metaphor for temperature these days, whether the element mercury is involved in the process or not.
Sounds just like the 10.000 other cities near/over the polar circle. And seriously, you don't keep your cars running 24/7 there are block heaters although this sounds like a very undeveloped place. Are you sure they're not Eskimos and ride around with their sleds? Eat what they hunt(there for frozen)? I've lived in areas where there was -30-45c for months straight and sure plumbing froze unless u let the water drip. Cars hard to start unless you use the block heater. But the rest just sounds like plain bullshit.
Also as someone who's grown up in winters that regularily hit -40 and -50, it can't have been that cold otherwise you wouldn't have pictures of people without a toque on, or a scarf/neckwarmer.
[+] [-] cmillard|11 years ago|reply
1. Running outside is pretty comfortable with the proper equipment until about -20F, but is possible down to around -40s as long as you wrap something around your face and/or have clothing to "pre-warm" your air. At around -60F breathing deeply (and not into your coat) becomes painful and dangerous.
2. Metal "burns" and blisters your hands from -20F and below. The fast transfer of heat from your hands from things like snow can make them numb and inoperable in seconds.
3. The triple combination of battery blanket/oil pan heater/block heater is usually winning, but nothing beats a garage. The worst part about living off campus was walking a half mile from class AND THEN sitting in your car for 15 minutes waiting for it to become drivable.
4. It's amazing what humans can adapt to. If it was a 5 minute walk I would usually just have a big and avoid the time-consuming, but best way to stay warm (parka + layering). Also I'd usually wear jeans. When it would bump up to 20F people would be wearing shorts outside.
(From comments) - We have never had problems (I was only there six years, anecdotal) with weather interfering with internet/cell service. Some jack-ass clipped a fiber cable once, but that's all I can remember. (From comments) - A lot of our buildings go 2-3 floors underground. We still have tunnels linking buildings together, but they are no longer accessible by the students.
As far as work goes the pipeline runs through Fairbanks, but the main centers of employment I saw were the University and the Military Base.
[+] [-] grecy|11 years ago|reply
I've been out Caribou hunting in -48C snowshoeing around right near the Arctic Circle.
Snag is just down the road, where it was once -63.9C (-83F) - the coldest temp ever recorded in North America.[1]
I'm originally from Australia, so this kind of thing is Alien to me, and I think I do a decent job of explaining what it's like.
AMA if you're curious about anything. (clothes, cars, etc.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snag,_Yukon
[+] [-] brational|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzleeper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptaipale|11 years ago|reply
We also have cabin heaters for cars (typically in the 1000 W range) but they are more for the convenience (but also safety, car windows are clear when you drive off, and vapor from breath doesn't condense and freeze to the insides of the windows).
[+] [-] proveanegative|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] innguest|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pokpokpok|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilija139|11 years ago|reply
Why there are two different authors on boredpanda and wired.com.
Did wired.com steal this article?
I'm confused..
[+] [-] ars|11 years ago|reply
I guess when you spend that much time and effort for pictures you want to recoup that as best as possible.
[+] [-] sixQuarks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeremyMorgan|11 years ago|reply
The human mind is a funny thing. When you're born and grow up somewhere it feels very intuitive to live there. The same reason most people don't live BFE North Dakota for the small cost of bus ticket. It just feels like home and most people don't give it much of a thought.
[+] [-] cbd1984|11 years ago|reply
Unless they eat it while it's still frozen, why is this noteworthy?
Also:
> Most people use outhouses, because indoor plumbing tends to freeze.
This is due to their poverty, not the cold. If it was just cold there, as opposed to cold and impoverished, they could either keep water constantly running through the pipes, or, if that won't work, insulate them better, possibly with heating coils.
"It's so cold, they make sure they have to go outside just to perform basic bodily functions" sounds a bit... insane? Idiotic? Poorly-written and probably badly-researched?
> Cars are kept in heated garages or, if left outside, left running all the time.
This isn't unusual. Block heaters also work, and might represent a fuel savings once the electricity infrastructure to plug in all of them is in place.
> Crops don’t grow in the frozen ground, so people have a largely carnivorous diet—reindeer meat, raw flesh shaved from frozen fish, and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni are a few local delicacies.
This isn't so much due to the cold as it is due to poverty, and possibly local culture.
> Chapple found it difficult to speak with the people he encountered, as many people were rushing as fast as possible from one oasis of warmth to another.
Was he determined to do his interviews outside? I can understand him wanting to take pictures outside as much as possible, and his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to, but interviews don't need to be done out in the cold.
Unless you're the kind of person determined to climb a radio mast to get an overview shot of a town. Maybe if you're that person, everything needs to be done in the most... dramatic way possible.
[+] [-] josefresco|11 years ago|reply
Also, tools like "block heaters" don't apply to the entire vehicle and all of it's inter-dependent parts. In that kind of cold, things like transmission fluid, and even door handles stop functioning normally.
[+] [-] emodendroket|11 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure that's what it's saying. I also don't think keeping water constantly running through pipes is necessarily enough to keep things from freezing at 40 degrees below zero.
[+] [-] Thrymr|11 years ago|reply
> This is due to their poverty, not the cold. If it was just cold there, as opposed to cold and impoverished, they could either keep water constantly running through the pipes, or, if that won't work, insulate them better, possibly with heating coils.
Outhouses are common in Alaska (outside of cities) as well, and it isn't exactly "poverty", but it is a significant cost to keep pipes from freezing.
[+] [-] pdx|11 years ago|reply
Cameras will suffer similar issues. Lithium Ion batteries are only rated down to -20degC. Below that, the internal impedance of the battery rapidly increases as temperature decreases, and you get extremely shortened battery life. I once tested a product I designed, that normally works for 24 hours, and got only 2.5 hours from it at -40degC.
[+] [-] trhway|11 years ago|reply
>Unless they eat it while it's still frozen, why is this noteworthy?
eating frozen meat is a lifestyle detail there. Note - it is high fat meat (or fatty fish) which doesn't become firm hard brick like lean meat would. Also there is no mentioning of vodka(diluted ethanol) which goes very well (and i'd suspect - just from my gut (i mean real gut :) feeling helps to digest) with those fat meat/fish slices.
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
Thawing meat takes time & energy. It may very well be more convenient to just eat it frozen, especially if you're working outside and your lunch is frozen by ambient temperatures as the norm.
Keep water constantly running thru the pipes
That's a LOT of water - where do you get it from? where do you put it when it's too cool to use? Remember, this is an environment where most water is frozen; liquid water is an anomaly.
More importantly: you're overlooking where the septic drainage pipe is going. You don't "constantly run water thru" that pipe. It doesn't go to a community sewage system. It goes...somewhere out in the back yard. You can't keep the full length of that pipe, and where it's going, sufficiently warm.
insulate [pipes] better
Insulation delays thermal loss, but does not halt it. Where is the heat source? heating coils? that's more costly energy being pumped into a low-value pipe to fight extreme temperature differentials compounded by the thermal mass of water.
What you're imputing should be in place will cost a lot more than you expect. We're talking an environment where dirt itself is frozen deep down, all working at sinking any heat you pump in.
block heaters work
Ok, the block isn't frozen then. But your tires are - literally, the rubber on your tires is rock solid - and the flat side of the tire contacting the ground doesn't flex when rotating so you get an extremely bumpy ride just for starters. Speaking of starters, your starter is frozen. And the door handles. The door hinge may not give. The battery may not start. Your wiper fluid ("works to 40 below!" and temps hit -50 last night) is a block of ice. You'll have to heat the entire car just to make it function in a tolerable manner ... easier just to get on a bike (which you can easily keep warm inside) or walk.
[several imputations of blame on poverty]
Consider the _relative_ poverty. Just flushing the toilet or opening the car door just went from thoughtlessly free to significant/nontrivial cost. Crops are nearly nonexistent, almost any food not local meat has to be shipped thousands of miles to a low-demand location. Suddenly EVERYTHING costs much more just because it's so blasted cold out. Your (yes, you) normal expenses just went up 10x. Want to eat? cheapest way is go hunting out your back door. Want to, er, egest? outhouse.
The people there aren't necessarily "poor", it's that the cost of living - in a manner not consistent with certain realities of the environment - is very high.
his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to
Again, you underestimate how very cold it is outside there, and how pervasive that cold is. Modern cameras, generally speaking, are not built for use at seriously sub-zero temperatures.
interviews don't need to be done out in the cold
But talking to "the man in the street" does. He wanted to interview people he'd never met, people who were just walking by. If you're talking about serious outdoor cold, as regards to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another, you're going to find yourself in the difficult position of trying to talk to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another and who are uninterested in talking to strangers about how cold it is.
[+] [-] kybernetyk|11 years ago|reply
They are. Try using your modern DSLR in even -10C for a day. You better bring some spare batteries with you.
If I were to go on a photo safari in such cold I'd bring a mechanical Leica range finder camera (possibly a model completely without any electronics) and film. At least as a backup.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|11 years ago|reply
> This is due to their poverty, not the cold.
I'm more worried about the physiologic consequences of exposing, um, private parts to minus a bajillion degrees. I'm pretty sure you have to finish in a couple minutes, max, or else all sorts of really bad things will happen.
[+] [-] _nickwhite|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhomde|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athenot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashark|11 years ago|reply
Here's part one of his trip to this region:
http://tema.ru/eng/travel/yakutetnoexp-1/
The site's hard to navigate. You may have to hit "english" at the top right (assuming you don't want the Russian version) since it may not retain language state through links. The "veni, vidi" link on the top left will take you back to the master list, so you can find the other parts of the trip if you're interested. Photos with little squares on the top right are actually little galleries. Click the other squares to change the image.
Unrelated insights gained from the site:
* The smaller touristy Pacific islands are typically covered in garbage.
* Former British colonies are usually OK, former French colonies are usually awful.
* Ethiopia looks like a pretty cool place to visit.
[+] [-] DanBC|11 years ago|reply
-58F is -50C
-90F is -67C
[+] [-] louthy|11 years ago|reply
28C is 82F
[+] [-] nevi-me|11 years ago|reply
About 15 years ago I remember reading an article on a magazine about the coldest town on Earth, I was most fascinated by people having to walk backwards, and boiling water freezing mid-air, something I forgot to try while in Canada.
[+] [-] bch|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMNSvpB9dY
[+] [-] tonyarkles|11 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if we're just unlucky, but there's usually a lot of places much further north than us that are warmer.
[+] [-] ptaipale|11 years ago|reply
Mercury doesn't plunge to -90 (C or F) because mercury has a melting point at -37.9 °F or -38.8 °C.
This is a fairly common fallacy from people who aren't thinking through. Thermometers used in cold places usually have coloured alcohol as liquid, not mercury.
I think most Western countries have actually got rid of mercury thermometers altogether, because it's poisonous and also because it's a too nice material to make bomb detonators.
[+] [-] skj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joevandyk|11 years ago|reply
Pass me the Kleenex?
Give the Tesla some gas, let's go man!
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kybernetyk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul9290|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyrain|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slowwriter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taybin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shalle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soperj|11 years ago|reply
Also as someone who's grown up in winters that regularily hit -40 and -50, it can't have been that cold otherwise you wouldn't have pictures of people without a toque on, or a scarf/neckwarmer.