Mad Men Tales (Antarctica - Part 6)

On this episode of how the other half lives, two of the landing sites were on abandoned research bases.

One of them was a small museum named Damoy Hut, and though it was half buried in snow, it was open.

Humble living at its finest. There is no fresh water in Antarctica, so the water supply involves shoveling and boiling snow. Cell signal is nonexistent, so books are the only entertainment. Vegetables don’t survive here, so food is all canned. Don’t even ask about indoor plumbing, they didn’t even have mattresses on the bunks. Best method of transportation is skiing, actually.

The only positive is that you don’t need to carry around a shotgun to protect again polar bears, like you do in Svalbard.

In the summer it’s not so bad, at least it’s about freezing and there’s daylight. But typically researchers stay for 6-9 months, including in the 24/7 darkness of winter.

The crew had quite a few tales of lore about researchers who lost their marbles on those work assignments.

Here’s two of my favorites.

There were two guys living on a Russian base who hated each other (why is it always the Russians?). One of the men liked to read books. The other took it upon himself to read the ending of every novel at the base. Whenever the first one started reading a novel, the second would tell him how the novel ended.

Eventually the bookworm got so angry he stabbed the plot spoiler.

Can’t say I completely blame him…

In another instance, this small Argentine base named Base Brown (pictures below) had a handful of researchers and a doctor on assignment. The doctor was there in case of emergencies - so in actuality he didn’t have much to do. He was bored out of his mind and hated being there, counting down the days when the next ship would come and the next doctor would relieve him of his position.

One day the ship came, but the new doctor was not on the ship. There was a personal emergency and he was unable to make it, so our dear doctor was going to be extended on his assignment for another few months.

The doctor got so angry he burned down one of the buildings.

That got him kicked off the base and sent home. He got what he wanted, but did the ends justify the means?