I got paid to live in Antarctica | Hacker News Reader

I got paid to live in Antarctica

wandereatwrite.com

165 points_xivi122 comments

I had a colleague once who worked in antarctica for a while. She told me that according to a long standing tradition, every year after the last supply plane left for the winter and the base was buttoned up for a long dark wait until spring, the whole crew would gather in the lounge together to watch The Thing.

That's all I got, I just love this story and mention it every chance I get.

As a huge fan of that movie: this story brings me joy.

They had a betamax version of the original movie when I was there. Didn't get a chance to make use of the lounge to watch it, though.

and then the vampires arrived, that's all you ever heard again :( didn't they make a movie about this?

“7 days of night” is about Alaska from the North Pole mate.

30 Days of Night.

Yeah this is a thing at the South Pole Station however it's normally in the gym. They drag all the recliners, couches, and mattresses they can into the gym and settle in to watch all three versions of The Thing on the projector back to back.

https://icecube.wisc.edu/news/life-at-the-pole/2016/03/2016-...

I also liked hearing about the "Skua" barrels, which are local recycling (I can't/won't take this back with me to the mainland) named after the voracious local avians, a sort of Ur-seagull with their worst traits magnified.

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.

Agree, this really shouldn't be on the front page, the SEO'ed writing is more likely to repulse curious readers about the topic.

And the need to discuss everyone's race, wtf.

Definitely. This is one of my favorite books due to both the writing style and the "behind the scenes" aspect of living and working in Antarctica.

This was an interesting post, but it’s very transparently written for search engine optimization rather than readability. There are some great stories in there but the formatting was really hard to read as a human all broken into obviously search-friendly questions rather than an an actual flow—just makes it come across as robotic. It’s a bummer that blogging is in this state.

There's a lot of good info in the article, but it's kind of disappointing she didn't cover how she actually got the job. It's mentioned that the jobs are quite competitive and that people are wait-listed for years sometimes.

While it would have been nice, as she was an American working in the cafeteria, it was probably simply by applying at GSC.

Presumably those positions are competitive also, given the unique experience. So, knowing if she was wait-listed, for how long, or if she found some way around that, etc...would have been interesting.

They definitely are competitive. Basically every resource gives the same advice which is:

- Apply to every position you can apply to and are willing to work if you get selected (which if you really want to get down there should be essentially all of them).

- Apply as early as you can (jobs get posted in the fall to early spring).

- Keep applying year after year because most of the time it'll take you several years before you even get a slot.

There's a nice bit on brr just about that: https://brr.fyi/about

> How did you get this job?

> I’ve been applying since 2017! It took 1,792 days since my first application until I heard back.

(Not sure if them applying for an IT job and not cafeteria made things better or worse.)

Oh wut? I got an interview from the first application, back in (checks bookmarks) 2012 (edit: It looks like they applied for McMurdo, not the South Pole). It was an odd one - the first question was what to do first when entering the server room. I'd actually read up on a few things, and the correct answer was to ground yourself to get rid of the ridiculous amounts of static electricity which builds up in a super-dry environment. Static discharge has killed a whole bunch of their equipment.

Another question was what I'd do if one of my family members had a medical emergency and could only be saved by an organ donation by me. In case of bad timing there next flight out would be in almost a year, so there would be nothing I could do. That one … was a bit harder to answer.

She got the job by applying, being qualified, and interviewing well. The only real life hack for most things is a combination of luck, work, and having a safety net if you fail. Come on, she listed job postings at specific companies categorized by function and international research organizations; were you expecting a secret handshake?

I'm interested in, for example, how long she had to wait, if she "applied cold", or knew someone that helped with a referral, etc. Why the snark?

Considering it took 4.9 years from her first application to even hearing back, I'd wager that blindly guessing at it having been a straightforward process probably isn't as effective as it seems

A friend of mine just did two stints down there -- first at a coastal base, and then again at the actual pole station. She's a nurse practitioner and decided a couple years ago to make hay while the sun was shining so to speak, since she was single and had no kids, so she started doing travel gigs.

One of them was waaay down at the tip of South America, doing health checks and COVID screening for folks headed to Antarctica. She got along well with everyone, and someone had to bow out of a posting at the coastal station, so she got asked. She did well there, and got the offer for the post at the south pole.

The pictures she sent back were AMAZING.

Oh, that's an interesting way in...working almost in Antarctica (Tierra del Fuego?) and being an obvious person to fill in for someone that had to cancel.

There’s actually a great resource on Reddit about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/antarctica/wiki/index/employment#wi...

Isn't almost everyone on Antarctica payed to be there?

From the article:

> While there are a select handful of tourist expeditions that offer overnight experiences in Antarctica, the only people who actually live on the ice are those working at research facilities.

Kind of. Many are military. When my coworker (in Iowa) was there in the 80s, he was the only non-military over-winter person there. He worked for the weather service.

The military get paid too.

Sure, but the same whatever they do. Do they get lured into a post at the earth's armpit by better pay? I don't imagine they do.

So they aren't strictly 'paid to live in Antarctica'. They are 'paid to be a soldier and do whatever shit work is their lot'.

I assume it's the Navy doing the work, maybe the Army. If either branch is like the Air Force then they'd get some nice additional money for working there. You get a nice pay bump for working in Alaska and the North Pole. I assume it's the same, plus this would be out of country, so tax break.

But yes I get your meaning. Military is assigned work, they go where they are told.

Military personnel get paid to be where they are, they don't do it for free... and they get some of the best social benefits of any citizens in the US.

It's the US' proof that socialism works!

Have you ever met an enlisted person? They usually have nothing good to say about the government.

Sure, but I've definitely never met one who was angry about their government pay, paid college, or allmost fully government sponosered healthcare, they're angry about HOW these things are enacted more than anything else for the most part not that they're being offered to them in general like the majority of the public would benefit from as well.

The point is that it's never executed well. Socialism sounds great on paper when people are perfect. But they are not. They never will be. It will therefore never be "done the right way this time" and we will keep using it as an excuse to worsen peoples' livelihoods equally, decrease peoples' income with which they decide what they want to use to pay for, and to put down dissidents. As it always has.

Capitalism is the worst type of economic strategy, except for all the others.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

To someone poor who is dying of a curable illness, healthcare that isn't executed well is infinitely better than care they can't afford.

It's great to make decisions about how to spend your income, unless... you have no income.

Here's an explainer about what socialism actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiC8YfytDw

well, not the tourists. They pay handsomely.

there's a tourist camp just next to South Pole Station. When I was at Pole in summer '19-20 the tourist camp staff invited us over for Christmas (when I guess they had no tourists). The awkward thing is that the research station is supported out of McMurdo which is supported out of Christchurch, so follows NZ time, but the tourist camp is supported out of Punta Arenas, so follows Chilean time...

I met some of the tourists on New Year's during the ceremony where the geographical pole marker is moved (the ice moves a bit every year, so the pole marker has to be moved relative to the station so that it remains over the real pole). One guy apparently had kept applying to be a winterover for some experiments and wasn't selected so he just paid to go visit Pole anyway.

And then there are the adventurers, who randomly show up on skis or in an Arctic Truck..

And then there are the adventurers, who randomly show up on skis or in an Arctic Truck.

Really? That's a bit of a surprise (the random part). Like, if you have the means, you can charter a ship out of Christchurch, sail to Antartica, and go skiing without permits or notifying any of the bases? Wild.

Given how remote the area is... if you end up with issues and don't have a permit, you'll most likely die.

“And then there are the adventurers, who randomly show up on skis or in an Arctic Truck..”

That’s an interesting point. A while ago I had a discussion with a flat earther who claimed that the military won’t allow anyone close to Antarctica. I told him I am pretty sure that people have crossed Antarctica by foot or even bicycle (heard this on a podcast). But I wasn’t sure how the permit process works and if there are limitations.

I know flat earth is stupid but it’s a good exercise to refute these people with knowledge you have. Turns out this is quite difficult because often you have only very vague knowledge of the details.

If you engage with a flat earther you have already lost. Anyone who genuinely believes in a flat earth has closed off their mind to information that refutes their beliefs. If their mind were open, they wouldn’t believe in a flat earth.

> even bicycle

Yep there have been a few of these [1].

The first trip to the south pole by cycling however was actually by tricycle by a researcher[2] who was riding alongside the South Pole Traverse[3] which is a tractor + sled motorcade for hauling cargo and supplies to and from the south pole station.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_cycling_expe... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Leijerstam 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Traverse

It’s a funny turn of phrase to say ‘on’ and it’s probably accurate as it conveys that it’s temporary.

I was on Europe a few times.

Wow, I never noticed that before. It is probably because to the English brain Antarctica sort of has the feel of a mile high platform of ice, but it is certainly interesting that we use "on" vs. "at"

Or "in"

It's common for islands, and Antarctica is somewhat island-ish. For Long Island (New York), you say "on" it, and anyone who says "in Long Island" gets laughed at. I think the same goes for the Hawaiian islands and places like Key West. Although, funnily, we do say "in Manhattan", not "on" for that one.

There's a limit once the island is big enough, as it's usually "in Great Britain" or "in Iceland".

Is great Britain the island, though?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain

I’ve also noticed that it happens with tiny sports cars too if they are perceived as ‘cute’.

‘I’d love a turn on it’.

There are now over 100,000 tourists visiting Antartica per year [0], while the working population maxes out at around 5,000 [1]. So, in fact, the overwhelming majority of visitors to Antartica pay for the privilege.

0: https://geographical.co.uk/science-environment/tourism-numbe...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica

This is true however very few tourists who visit Antarctica actually ever do more than step out onto the ice or the shore for a fairly short amount of time, often not even at all (just cruising along the coast). Those that actually venture inland are few and far between.

If you can get a slot with one of the contractors for the USAP, you'll almost certainly get a chance to do a lot more than the average tourist.

There is a lot of great youtube videos on both McMurdo and the station at the pole.

I know the plan to rebuild McMurdo was delayed by covid - https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/antarcticas-agi...

I'd love to hear what the plan is now. Are they moving ahead with the project?

I remember seeing a web dev (!) job for the Antarctic Survey years ago where you stay there, probably in summer.

Become an aircraft mechanic. You can support research planes or helicopters for organizations like BAS or similiar.

I thought about it at one point, but then I saw the pricing for the training you need and my jaw dropped.

Just to expand a bit since I didn’t have the time when I posted, I’m looking for a new career and aircraft mechanics are moderately in demand in my area.

There are two Part 147 AMTS schools nearby, one is a program for high schoolers exclusively and the other plainly states the program is $35000 in total. For comparison. In state tuition costs for an Aerospace engineering degree at a nearby university are around $27000 for four years. You could learn to design aircraft cheaper than to repair them. Even worse is the mechanic jobs don’t pay so great. I see a lot starting around $18/h.

Wish she went over the life there in more detail. It's a very isolated place, surely you'd go mad constantly being stuck with the same people.

Or other interactions like that. More on the uniqueness of the location, and difficulty of travel or getting stuff.

If you haven't already, check out https://brr.fyi

Outside of tourists is anyone paying to live in Antarctica? I assumed everyone was paid there

Chile and Argentina have ostensible towns on the peninsula (basically one each), in which even a few children have been born, but I'm not sure the degree to which it's possible for someone to actually get up and move down there purely on their own whim.

They do sound like they're basically just remote small towns. See for example https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/world/americas/chile-anta... which describes the Chilean one. Honestly it sounds like Chile and Argentina are both doing this to spite each other.

Thanks that was a fun read

I don’t think anyone is particularly raring to go live on a continent where the warmest month is December. With perks like “in December and January the monthly average high temperature may occasionally rise above freezing” - doesn’t that just make you instantly fall in love?

If you want to live somewhere cold alaska is probably the better choice, since you get to enjoy all the lovely things in life like Amazon delivery.

> I don’t think anyone is particularly raring to go live on a continent where the warmest month is December

Um... you know that December is summer in the entire southern hemisphere?

> If you want to live somewhere cold alaska is probably the better choice, since you get to enjoy all the lovely things in life like Amazon delivery.

The remoteness is a draw for some.

But what about Canadians? Do we not have a chance to live in the land of The Thing?

You have barren frozen wasteland at home.

best blog about working in Antarctica, with fabulous photography by Mike Krzysztofowicz: https://antarcti.co

Nice read - It never occurred to me you'd need catering staff there

And of course, the author is paid for doing a job not for (just) living there. It's like me saying "I got paid to live in Berlin".

That's almost entirely what the post is about.

I didn't want to imply that the author is lying, more that "I got paid to live in Antarctica" is clickbait.

Antarctica is what makes it interesting though. Dog bites man doesn't make headlines, but man bites dog does.

Dog bites man in Antarctica might also make headlines

Bah, I got paid once to live in Bakersfield CA for about three months... now that's a real extreme environment!!

hah, the armpit! Hows was that? :)

Stupidly I accepted a DB admin job in a cowboy real estate firm there, that mostly took care of all the abandoned strip malls and some former strip-malls-now-crack-dens. Knew I'd made a bad mistake on minute one, day one of that job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com