Most of the jobs available aren't glamorous science positions or helicopter piloting. This brings us to the crux of the issue with working in Antarctica. Sure, that's not a problem if your job description is 'super genius scientist working on a very important project that will change the world.' But, if it's 'dude who takes out the super genius scientist's trash' then it's probably not quite so great. Many contracts specify ten-hour days with unpaid overtime, six days a week, and some are even heavier schedules than that. Mostly that's to head off everyone going loco from boredom, but it still means that your time on base won't really be 'your' time at all. Working hours in Antarctica can be long and tough. As few as 11 people might be living with you, which could either mean nine months of blossoming friendship and/or hanky panky, or nine months of weeping with boredom and all getting the flu at the same time. While some bases at least have gyms and saunas, others - such as France and Italy's Concordia Station - are so tiny there's nothing there. Once winter sets in, things get even worse. Once you've gotten bored of thinking 'dude, I'm in Antarctica!' your most realistic avenues for entertainment are watching DVDs, playing video games, and getting drunk. The area immediately around McMurdo Station looks like a Soviet mining town, while the Amundsen-Scott station is in the middle of an endless sea of white. The outsides, too, are equally featureless. That means all parts of them pretty much look the same. The trouble is that research stations are designed for efficiency and science, not frat parties and jumping club nights. We're just saying be prepared for some seriously messed up stuff.Ĭanadian Geographic has the story. No, the real dark part of life on the southern continent involves stuff that's never even crossed your mind.

If you're going to Antarctica, you probably expect all that. We don't just mean where the extreme cold or relentless high altitude is concerned. Yet life in Antarctica, even in the plush research stations owned by the U.S., is about as far from penguin-pampered comfort as you're likely to get. They choose to do this for their own unique, complex reasons, nearly all of which probably start and end with delirious fantasies of training a penguin to be their own private butler. According to the CIA's World Factbook, some 4,400 people work on Antarctica's 40 scientific bases in the summer, with a hardy 1,100 hanging on for the winter season. Nothing makes New Jersey look livable.) Yet, despite this unremitting harshness, people still manage to make temporary homes there. It's the coldest, driest, windiest continent, a place so inhospitable to life it makes even New Jersey look livable. At the very bottom of our planet lies the last true wilderness on Earth.

The long dark emergency stim