Big dead place
"Welcome to Big Dead Place, a grunt's eye view of America's Antarctic Program that shatters the well-worn cliches of polar literature. Here the heroic camaraderie and romantic desolation give way to sterile buildings populated by characters like a crazed manager who fills his boots with antifreeze, Boozy the Clown, ghosts that haunt the food freezer, and horny employees who grab rare private moments coupling on the altar in the Chapel of the Snows. Also included is a glossary of Antarctic slang and bureaucratese, and 16 pages of color photographs."--BOOK JACKET.
Stats for nerds
14recommend
18mentions
16people
2013–2023years
89% recommend11% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Brr.fyi is like reading Instagram. What you really want to read is Big Dead Place by Nick Johnson.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/big-dead-place-the-wi...
https://web.archive.org/web/20201116183654/http://www.bigdea...
It's a much different story. And way more depressing.
- Starlink was certainly a game changer for life around here. McMurdo is essentially a small town so many different jobs and routines to make everything go. Some stay inside all the time, some have to work outside a lot.
https://brr.fyi/ is a really good blog from a person nearing the end of a year long deployment who writes much more eloquently than I ever could if you want to read more.
Antarctica: A Year on Ice is an enjoyable film documentary from ~10 years ago.
A Big Dead Place by Nicholas Johnson is also worth a read from the early 2000s.
- A much more fun and less SEO/smarmy take on this topic is Nicholas Johnson's "Big Dead Place", originally a blog and later a book. It gives the flavor of working in the U.S. Antarctic program like nothing else does.
- There's a great book that really demonstrates the culture the NSF/Mil contractors have set up there https://www.amazon.com/Big-Dead-Place-Menacing-Antarctica/dp... by an unfortunately now dead author.
- In years past there was also ABigDeadPlace.com, which has since lapsed due to the author's unfortunate death. Thankfully it was published as a book, _Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica_ by Nicholas Johnson. If brr.fyi strikes your fancy, I bet that book would as well.
- My favorite writing about Antarctica is "Big Dead Place": https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/big-dead-place-the-wi...
You can find the blog in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20120402141259/http://www.bigdea... or grab the book.
Silver medal to Maciej for this one: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm
