The coronavirus pandemic taught a lot of people what true loneliness was like
sitting alone at home with nothing to do but watch videos from some of youtube's top creators
like mr beast half as interesting and everything science actually that doesn't sound too bad well
regardless of how lonely you might have felt eating popcorn on your couch that still was a
far cry from the loneliest a person has ever been so who was the loneliest person napoleon when he
was marooned to saint helena melania stuck at home with trump me when no one watches my videos
well we don't actually know for sure but we have some good guesses
the most likely answers are astronauts well i hope you like this video of everything science
what's that i'm being told by my producers we can't just stop there i guess i need to
give some more detail astronauts in space the loneliest people ever were likely these six apollo
astronauts you see when the apollo missions were sending americans to the moon kennedy probably
would have liked to send his political rivals mistresses and loads of drugs to the moon and
just forget about them but unfortunately the apollo command modules could only fit
three this meant that two lucky astronauts would get to travel down to the surface of the moon
but the other would have to stay behind in the command module as it orbited the moon
at the highest point in their orbit they were about 3 500 kilometers from their fellow
astronauts that's about the distance from la to washington dc there's some pretty cool places on
the planet you could go to to get away from people but it's hard to beat those 3 500 kilometers
point nemo is probably the furthest you could get from anyone on earth the nearest inhabited island
would be easter island 2 700 kilometers away but even this is about 30 percent closer than those
astronauts on the moon and with no shipping routes that pass anywhere near the island the
closest people would actually be the astronauts on the international space station who would
occasionally get within a few hundred kilometers of the island so there's your answer right well
i wouldn't be youtube's greatest up and coming creator if i ended a video so soon so what about
the other possibilities you'd think the astronauts would have a lock on this category but it's not
so cut and dry there are few other candidates who come pretty close today it can be hard to get away
from humans because well there are just so many of them almost 8 billion people call this planet home
if you were to space everyone equally far apart each person would only get about 5 acres of land
for you non-americans out there who don't know what 5 acres is that's about 0.02 square
kilometers and for you americans who don't know what 0.02 square kilometers is that's
about 5 acres that's only three soccer fields of space per person but life wasn't always this way
in 300 bc when the first polynesians started spreading across the pacific there were only
around 200 million people and obviously no one in the pacific there's more than 8 000 kilometers
between the philippines and hawaii so this would have required a lone sailor to travel awfully far
ahead of everyone else it could have happened maybe even by accident when someone was carried
far from their group by a storm once the pacific was colonized it got a lot harder to find anywhere
on earth's surface where someone could achieve 3 500 kilometers of isolation and today now that the
antarctic continent has a permanent population of researchers it's practically impossible the
final possible winner is a bit more depressing and involves a stranded explorer outlasting all his
friends during the age of antarctic exploration a few people came close to beating the astronauts
and it's possible one of them actually holds the record the last surviving member of a
fateful expedition robert scott scott chartered an expedition to the south pole in 1911 hoping
to be the first person to ever reach the planet's most southern point unfortunately for scott and
his men when they arrived at the pole a place that was supposed to be untouched by man they found a
norwegian flag planted firmly in the ground by a team of explorers who had beaten them there
even more unfortunately for scott and his men none of them would ever make it back to civilization
due to their use of dogs which were much faster than the ponies scott and his men
were traveling with the norwegians under raul amundsen landed in antarctica after the brits
but still managed to beat them to the pole by weeks the defeated scott and his companions
began the trek back to the coast but it would take them too long with an unusually cold winter
and an 800 mile trek off the continent they would eventually die one by one while crossing the ross
ice shelf from the diaries they left behind we know robert scott edward wilson and henry bower
were the last three survivors of the original five members that made it to the poll whoever was the
last survivor of the three would have been one of the most isolated people on earth unfortunately
they were still within 3 500 kilometers of a number of humans including some other antarctic
outposts and the maori people on stuart island some 3 400 kilometers away there are a few other
notable candidates for the king of loneliest person ever pierre francois prone a french
sailor says he was mooned on the ilda amsterdam in the southern indian ocean from 1792 to 1795. if so
he came close to beating the astronauts but he wasn't quite far enough from either southwestern
australia or at the edge of madagascar both 3 200 kilometers away we'll probably never know for sure
it's possible that some shipwrecked 18th century sailor drifting in a lifeboat in the southern
ocean holds the title of the loneliest human but until some undisputable piece of evidence pops up
the six apollo astronauts have a pretty good claim if you liked the video be sure to leave a comment
down below it really does help us smaller channels and remember there is always more to learn