
What it’s like living in the coldest town on Earth - yla92
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/amos-chapple-the-coldest-place-on-earth/
======
cmillard
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.

------
grecy
I live in Whitehorse, Yukon. Last week it was -37C for a few days, I rode my
bike/walked to work every day.

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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snag,_Yukon)

~~~
ptaipale
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).

~~~
gambiting
Interesting. My dad has a "Webasto" system, which is essentially a tiny,
diesel(or petrol,if your car uses petrol) powered heater, which heats up the
coolant - when you turn it on(it has a remote) it also turns the fans on,
warming up the engine and the interior. And it uses the fuel from your tank(it
has its own fuel pump), so it doesn't deplete your battery to heat up the
interior.

~~~
ptaipale
Yes we have many of those here as well. But they actually do deplete the
battery somewhat, because the heater needs to run the fuel and water pumps and
interior fans on battery.

~~~
gambiting
Absolutely, but I imagine you can run a pump and a fan much longer off battery
than you could a 1500W heating system. Or do they require plugging into mains?

~~~
ptaipale
Block heaters are always in the mains of course, a battery wouldn't do any
good there.

------
ilija139
Where is the original story? Is it this [http://www.boredpanda.com/coldest-
village-oymyakon-amos-chap...](http://www.boredpanda.com/coldest-village-
oymyakon-amos-chapple/) or [http://www.weather.com/travel/news/breathtaking-
photos-colde...](http://www.weather.com/travel/news/breathtaking-photos-
coldest-city-world-20140128)

Why there are two different authors on boredpanda and wired.com.

Did wired.com steal this article?

I'm confused..

~~~
ars
The photographer sold his photos to multiple outlets.

I guess when you spend that much time and effort for pictures you want to
recoup that as best as possible.

------
sixQuarks
The author failed to answer the most important question: Why do those people
live there?

~~~
JeremyMorgan
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.

------
cbd1984
> people here regularly consume frozen meat

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.

~~~
ctdonath
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.

~~~
shkkmo
I'm curious, do you know what you're talking about? It doesn't really sound
like it.

Septic tanks do have to be built differently, but they do work at extreme
temperatures.

Yes, you do insulate pipes better, yes you do also use heat tape to prevent
pipes from freezing. This is pretty standard practice. In general, if you're
heating something in the ground, you're going to have it well insulated, and
heat it to barely above freezing. The ground, though frozen does provide a
great deal of insulation as well. When the air is really cold, the ground is
going to be significantly warmer The big issue here is melting that permafrost
and causing the ground to sink. This wrecks foundations and cracks pipes.

Yes, we do use block heaters, but you also have to start your car and let it
warm up for quite a while before driving. Cars do behave differently at -40,
but they are still usable. Once you start dropping below -50F, cars do start
behaving really poorly. I wouldn't recommend biking in those temperatures
unless you know what you're doing. My dad usually stops riding his bike to
work at around -30F.

Yes, the cost of living (for many, but not all things) is higher in remote
areas. No, the cost does not rise 10x.

Heating is a big expense, but can be mitigated by building well insulated
homes. There is a high prevalance of dry cabins for lower incomes, since the
lack of plumbing means you can afford to let a building freeze if you don't
have tenants to pay for heat. That said, you can also heat or supplement the
heat for your house the old fashioned way, with a wood burning stove.

Yes, many of the issues (and choice) above have a lot of do with poverty. Most
of the ways you can reduce the costs of living in an extreme environment (high
quality windows, good insulation, a heated garage for your car) require
initial outlays of capital. Solutions like wood burning stoves and outhouses
mitigate that to some extent.

The article seemed poorly written and researched to me. It's amusing to watch
people speculate about things they don't understand.

------
_nickwhite
A year ago, The Weather Channel published some photos:
[http://www.weather.com/travel/news/breathtaking-photos-
colde...](http://www.weather.com/travel/news/breathtaking-photos-coldest-city-
world-20140128)

~~~
emodendroket
Those are the same photos, down to the captions being out of sync by one.

------
mhomde
We have a saying in Scandinavia: "There's no bad weather, only bad kleather
(clothes)" :)

~~~
vacri
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 :)

~~~
mhomde
In Australia they have another saying. "It's never too hot, you're just too
far away from the ocean" ;)

I've actually been in Sydney when it was like 46 degrees (record year or
something). People just started walking into the Ocean

------
athenot
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.

------
api
This place is actually colder than Mars.

~~~
ceejayoz
Virtually everywhere on Earth gets colder than Mars at times. Parts of Mars
reach 70 degrees F in summer at noon.

~~~
ochoseis
Actually curious, would 70F on Mars with it's low air pressure feel the same
as 70F on Earth (let's assume you somehow have a space helmet but no suit)?

~~~
ars
It would feel warmer. Without [much] air there is little conduction to draw
heat from the warmer skin.

You would lose heat by radiation, but that happens on earth too.

Conversely something at 50F would warm up slower (i.e. it would "feel" colder
to it).

You could think of it as a giant vacuum thermos.

~~~
FreeFull
Evaporation would cause quite a lot of heat loss though from moist areas, such
as eyes and mouth.

------
ashark
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.

Here's part one of his trip to this region:

[http://tema.ru/eng/travel/yakutetnoexp-1/](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
-24F is -31C

-58F is -50C

-90F is -67C

~~~
louthy
My favourite one for 'getting my bearings' is:

28C is 82F

~~~
flavor8
And -40 is -40.

~~~
bsder
The most important and useful as it makes C-to-F conversions much easier.

add 40--convert (9/5 or 5/9) -- subtract 40

or, as I tend to use,

add 40--convert (2 or 1/2) -- subtract 40.

~~~
dasil003
How does that crude approximation make it any easier?

I am pretty fluent in conversion just by remembering that 10 Celsius degrees
are equivalent to 18 Fahrenheit degrees, then practicing counting by 10s:

-4°F, 14°F, 32°F, 50°F, 68°F, 86°F, 104°F

Once you have those under your belt you can figure most earthly air
temperatures pretty quickly and exactly.

------
nevi-me
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.

~~~
bch
I tried this in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory on a cold winter day -- it doesn't
freeze, it vaporizes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMNSvpB9dY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMNSvpB9dY)

------
ptaipale
>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.

~~~
joevandyk
Be right back, going to Xerox some papers.

Pass me the Kleenex?

Give the Tesla some gas, let's go man!

~~~
dalke
Someone's cell rang while I was watching the film.

~~~
aragot
Dalke, care to explain this one to us non-natives? Sounds funny, is it like
"film", "cell" and "watching" should be replaced by "movie", "mobile" and
"netflixing"?

~~~
gwern
You missed 'rang' as well - cellphones don't have bells, they have speakers or
other things which are skeuomorphs.

~~~
dalke
Yes. And to finish off for aragot, few movie theaters use actual film these
days.

------
paul9290
Interesting video about this town...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTcrIGFUq_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTcrIGFUq_c)

------
flyrain
Why they didn't build their houses underground or at least half underground?
That will be much easier to keep warm.

~~~
slowwriter
They have to keep a bonfire running for days to bury a body. What do you think
it takes to dig a hole for a house then?

~~~
Someone1234
You could build a home, live in it for a year, and eventually the heat from
that home will act like the bonfire. You then remove the top soil (until you
re-hit frozen), and then wait another year and rinse/repeat.

Year upon year you dig down, until eventually you have another floor's worth
of space, then the original house becomes the top/second floor, and the new
"basement" becomes a new area.

I would add that I wouldn't want soil to be literally the walls of the lower
level, as frozen soil conducts away heat from the air extremely effectively.
So what you'd likely want to do is set up an insulated layer between the soil
and the living space.

It is also worth noting that heat rises, so you'll still lose a lot of heat if
the new basement doesn't have a VERY well insulated roof. Then you could just
pop out the front of the old house, add doors, and now you have a garage for
the car.

It isn't that crazy of an idea. But it would take several years (minimum 3-4)
and cost you a few thousand just for insolation (both new roof and new walls),
and also for new structural supports if you want to do the house-to-garage
thing (to hold the car's weight).

~~~
dalke
It isn't so easy. Oymyakon is on permafrost. The heat from the building melts
the permafrost and destabilizes the building. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost#Construction_on_perm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost#Construction_on_permafrost)
for some pictures and info. Eg, "Modern buildings in permafrost zones may be
built on piles to avoid permafrost-thaw foundation failure from the heat of
the building." and shows the building above the ground.

That's what documents like [http://www.uaf.edu/files/ces/publications-
db/catalog/eeh/HCM...](http://www.uaf.edu/files/ces/publications-
db/catalog/eeh/HCM-00754.pdf) say:

> Make every attempt to keep the soil beneath the building frozen and the
> permafrost stable. The strategy for alleviating the engineering risks of
> building on permafrost sites is to build the structure on piles or an
> elevated foundation, taking special care to insulate the ground and prevent
> thawing.

------
Shalle
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.

~~~
soperj
Considering that they actually included pictures from yakutsk by the same
photographer ([http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2548176/Feeling-
cold...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2548176/Feeling-cold-Share-
thought-residents-coldest-city-earth-currently-MINUS-50C.html)) It seems like
they really took the time to cross all their i's and dot all their t's.

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.

