People manage to live in some pretty remote places.
Take the 258 folks that live on the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic.
If you want to visit them, you’ll have to take a ship from Cape Town for a journey of
1,732 miles [2,787 km].
For some peace and quiet you might also visit Barrow, Alaska, which is only reachable by
plane.
The 4,200 inhabitants of this town spend much of their extremely cold winters in total darkness.
Even more remote is the town of Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland, whose 452 population make their
money fishing shrimp and hunting whales and polar bears.
They are also happy to put the intrepid tourist up for the night.
How would you fare in one of these far-flung destinations?
That’s what we’ll find out today, in this episode of the Infographics Show, Could you
survive in Siberia?
It really depends which part of Siberia we are talking about of course.
If, for example, you were dropped off in the city of Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia,
you’d be fine as it’s a modern city and you’d be living there with around 1.5 million
other people.
Ok, so the winter is not exactly inviting, but survival wouldn’t be an issue at all.
But the Soviets chose Siberia as the location where people deemed a threat to the regime
were sent to die for a good reason.
Parts of it are about as remote as you can get.
Siberia itself is massive, with a total land area of 5,050,000 square miles [13,100,000
km2].
That’s about 77 percent of the land area in the whole of Russia.
Despite that, only 27 percent of Russia’s population lives there.
The harsh climate doesn’t exactly make life easy for the 36 million people that inhabit
Siberia.
The more remote you get, the more space people have.
The almost-19,000 people that live in Koryak Okrug on the western tip of Siberia have 116,000
square miles [301,500 km2] to play with.
The largest ethnic group there are the Koryaks, and we bet you’ve never even heard of them.
They live alongside other indigenous people, such as the Evens, Itelmens and the Chukchi
people.
But let’s say we are sending you to the most remote part of Siberia, also sometimes
called the coldest year-round inhabited place on the planet.
This place is called Oymyakon, and the 500 folks that live here can enjoy just an average
of 3 hours of daylight per day in December.
In June the sun comes out, but it’s out for 21 hours a day.
The lowest recorded temperature there was −89.9F [−67.7C], which is a bit chilly
for most people.
If you go there next winter, you can expect the average temperature to be around -58F
[-50C].
In fact, it’s bitterly cold most of the year, with temperatures at the peak of summer
being 58.8F [14.9C] on average.
You get the picture.
But could you survive there?
Well, people do, even though pictures of them online depict them walking through a landscape
that looks like a miniature town that’s been sitting in your freezer for 10 years.
Once you are there, it’s not easy getting out.
The nearest town called Yakutsk is 576 miles [926km] away.
One journalist that visited the town said he was surprised that people living there
were not exactly hardened to the freezing temperatures.
“I'd expected that the locals would be accustomed to the winters and there would be everyday
life happening in the streets,” he told The Telegraph newspaper, adding, “But people
were very wary of the cold.”
Yep, if it gets too bad, say below -50, the kids don’t even go to school.
He said the entire town felt abandoned, as anything that happened generally happened
inside.
That meant that he didn’t get to meet many of the local folks.
“The only companions I had were the occasional street dog, or one of the drunks,” he said.
Thank God for dogs and drunks.
But he also said the locals were not exactly the warmest people in the world.
“They were a tough people,” he said.
“I expected there to be human warmth there, but I didn't experience that at all.”
He went as far as to say that during his trip he was threatened outside twice by drunks,
adding that if you end up unconscious on the floor there it means you’ll likely die.
He was only there a short while, too.
His conclusion.
“It didn't feel like a happy place.”
Living there is hard on you in many ways.
Reports suggest that just a walk down the street to the local store is exhausting, with
everyday tasks like tying a shoe lace outside are difficult.
The weather rules over every aspect of your life, and get things wrong and it could mean
frostbite or worse.
The BBC said the same thing.
Its journalist said that even though the frost melts during some parts of the year, it melts
slowly, and the ground is not much good for farming.
Even dying is hard.
“It takes two or three days to dig a grave in frozen ground,” wrote the BBC.
So, first things first, if you do get sent there to live you will have to get decked
out in the local-style clothes.
Fashion is of little importance of course, and most people there wear the best survival
gear there is – not available in your local sporting goods store.
The inhabitants just about all wear fur hats and fur coats.
A coat will set you back about $1,500.
One journalist explained what it’s like not having the right clothes.
“This was so cold that after no more than a few minutes outside, exposed skin started
to smart with pain, damp surfaces in my nostrils froze, and toes and fingers turned uncomfortably
cold very quickly, despite three layers of thick socks and two pairs of gloves.”
Yep, you really have to follow the locals here, so don’t think about getting precious
about wearing something fashioned out of a dead Arctic fox.
The BBC journalist had better luck than the Telegraph journalist who only seemed to meet
angry drunk men.
She was invited into a house to watch a mother dressing her daughter before she went to school.
Dressing was an important part of the day.
“In other parts of Russia, you can throw on a coat to go outdoors, here it takes ages
to dress.
But we are used to it.
This is our home,” the mother said.
Ok, so what do the locals do to survive.
Hardly anything grows, you can’t be out for long, and even if you are out it’s hardly
Disney Land.
Well, one western photographer wrote that a way people deal with the harsh climate is
to booze the dark days away.
“Russki chai, literally Russian tea, which is their word for vodka,” said the guy,
adding that they drink a lot of ‘tea’.
He wrote that as plumbing is virtually impossible so most people use outhouses to do their business
in.
Cars cannot even be left in a garage if it’s not heated as they won’t start again.
If for some reason your car fails to keep running outdoors, it’s likely it won’t
start again.
This is not a town where you want to break down.
Oh, and once you get dropped off there by plane at the beginning of winter, that’s
it for air travel for the rest of the winter season.
Those are private planes, too, there is no regular airline that goes there.
Most people take the long drive, but that’s also perilous.
The road in is called the “Road of Bones.”
It’s perilous, but it actually got that name because of all the people that died constructing
the road.
So, let’s say you have a house and have all your furs.
Now, you’re hungry, what are you going to eat?
Well, as hardly anything grows people hunt for their grub.
“Yakutians love the cold food, the frozen raw Arctic fish, white salmon, whitefish,
frozen raw horse liver, but they are considered to be delicacy,” one local man told weather.com.
“In daily life, we like eating the soup with meat.
The meat is a must.
It helps our health much.”
You are either going to have to learn how to hunt, or look for somewhere to buy some
food.
Another journalist said he managed to find a place that served him reindeer soup, and
that’s what he lived on for two days.
He also said that you build-up a good appetite just from getting around.
“After the first couple of days I was physically wrecked just from strolling around the streets
for a few hours,” he said.
On the menu the dishes mostly consist of stroganina, (raw frozen fish) the aforementioned reindeer
meat, frozen raw horse liver, and a specialty which is ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni.
Hmm, yum, yum.
You can see one video made there that shows a local market where you can buy this stuff,
but it’s not exactly bustling.
In the film there is one customer with her child, walking around the market in -68.8F
[-56C] cold.
“While filming the trading rows my hands froze to wild pain.
And sellers stand here all day long.
How do they warm themselves?” said the filmmaker.
The answer is good clothing, but also the fact these people are very, very tough.
So, the answer to the question this show asks is no, we don’t think you could survive
living here without a great deal of help.
But it all depends on which part of Siberia of course.
The more remote, the less chance you will have of survival.
Or, do you disagree?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video Why 2019 Will Be Horrible.
Thanks for watching, and as always, please don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time!