CW: Extreme Survivalism, Death
Today we unbury what circumstances are ideal to trigger your breath freezing in the air as you expel it. Who lives in the regions that reach conditions that get that far? Why would they live out there?! And how do the stars whispering get involved with the breath freezing?
This link will take you to an article about the photographer Bryan Alexander who has spent plenty of time living in the Arctic including around the Yakut. It shows some amazing pictures and explains the “Whisper of the Stars.”
Further Reading: I’ll give you the blurb for this book! “In this photographic journal the author takes the reader across the vast land of Siberia where temperatures dip to unimaginable lows, where at -56 Celsius you hear the ‘Shhhhhhh’ sound, the “Whisper of the Stars”. The narrative and beautiful photos reveal a region of diversity, change, and great human warmth.”
Further Reading: Another story about another artist traveling to Yakutia, a city very near Oymyakon and tied for coldest city in the region. Cool story and great pictures.
27 pictures and a story about Oymyakon.
Further Reading: This is information about the Sakha people. I called them the Yakut people in this episode, but I am now correcting myself here as I learn that they prefer the name Sakha. Here is history and current issues.
This is more in-depth information about the Sakha people with pictures! And you can see their tiny horses that M called barrels with hair.
Just the Guinness World Record page for the Super Pack of wolves we talked about.
This is a personal story from a teenager living in the city of Verkhoyansk where winters get to be -60 C / -76 F
This is an article about the 5 coldest places in Canada, which includes Winnipeg. It details classifications for coldiness in different ways depending on which place they’re talking about.
Further Reading: This is a really amazing look at the Inupiat life up there in Utqiagvik, the coldest city and farthest north city in the United States. It talks a lot about their subsitance life and really answers Karen’s question of how they live up there.
Further Reading: This article was writting this month (August 2022) and talks about the culmination of 75 years of colaboration between the Inupiat community and the Naval Arctic Research Labratory.
This is just a list of 10 cool facts about Utqiagvik.
This is a view of the Vostok Station in Antarctica from Nasa’s P-3 Orion research aircraft. There re some really neat overhead shots and information about the mission of the scientists at this station.
This is information about what the research teams are doing recently at the Vostok station from the people there.
This is the archived NY Times story about the 20 Russian researchers that we stuck in the Vostok station, the one I told. It’s a great read.
Further Reading: This was an interesting thing I found. Someone named Adam Rozanski from the Monash University did a project on the Vostok Station for his Master’s Thesis. It is a really cool read. To use his words: “The project seeks to redesign and improve the living conditions at the coldest, driest and most geographically isolated place on our planet … The project focuses on ways to deal with the effects of prolonged social isolation through intelligent design and treats Vostok Station as a means to the study the ways in which future colonisation and inhabitation of Mars and other far off planets may be possible.”
Further Watching: This is a short documentary about the lake under the glacial shelf that Vostok Station is on.
Further Reading: This is just for fun. It looks at the other stations on Antarctica and what they’re doing and how they’re like little cities. It also has a cool map!
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