Can you survive in Antarctica?
Antarctica is the 5th biggest continent on Earth and spans an area of 13.66 million km². It is covered in nothing but ice, snow, and rocks, making it the hardest continent to survive on, which is one of the reasons that nobody bothered to try and settle there. Currently, there is no civilian population, and the only people living there are the staff of the several dozen research stations that various countries who signed the Antarctica treaty have sent there to spend terms of up to a few months.
If you were ever stranded in Antarctica in a survival situation, you would only have what you were stranded with to help you.
When it comes to surviving in any kind of wilderness, the equipment you have and your knowledge of how to use it could make the difference between life and death, but this isn’t the case in Antarctica. There is simply nothing to work with here, and nothing to keep you warm. There are only 2 flowering plants that grow on the land which are Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort, and these only appear in specific areas, mostly on the western Antarctic peninsula and south Shetland islands.
There haven’t been any coal deposits found yet and even if there were, this wouldn’t be a practical way to keep warm in such a windy and exposed place. There is nothing to build a shelter with and nothing to burn, but there is food around the coast. The center of the continent is a barren wasteland of nothing but mountain peaks and snow, with a complete lack of any kind of living creature. Even birds won’t fly near the center because of the cold and there’s nothing to eat there, so the only thing you will see is frozen water.
So what should you do if you get stranded in Antarctica?
Fortunately, this isn’t the kind of place you could accidentally get stranded. Commercial and merchant ships and planes stay well away from Antarctica, and even if you’re traveling from somewhere like Argentina to Cape Town, you will still be hundreds of miles away from the Antarctic mainland. If you ever find yourself unlucky enough to get stranded here, then you will almost certainly be on the coast. Normal planes have no reason to fly inland and wouldn’t be able to withstand the weather for long if they did, so coastal stranding is pretty much guaranteed.
(A snow cave like this would be the best shelter you could build here if you had the equipment to do so, but it still wouldn’t do you much good without a heat source)
The best chance of survival would be to try and find one of the research stations or follow any paths or tracks you can see, which would mean a station is close by. The chances of getting lucky enough to be stranded near a station that you can see are very low indeed, so if you don’t know where to find one then stay near the coast.
The classic snow cave is the best, and only type of shelter you could build, assuming whatever vehicle you crashed in wasn’t an option. There are lots of boulders in certain areas, like the dry valleys of Antarctica which hold the record for having the driest air on the planet, with any humidity instantly freezing and falling to the ground, making the air contain zero water. Even with the huge amount of rocks you could find, there isn’t much you can do with nothing more than frozen boulders and snow.
Wild food in Antarctica
Due to the lack of plant life on the continent, there is nothing to forage from the land, and so all food has to come from the sea. The Current layout of Antarctica is about 25% bigger than the amount of land it has, and all the rocks that are visible are the tops of mountain ranges. The huge ice sheets make up over 3 million km² of the current surface of the continent, which means a complete lack of any kind of shore around most of the continent. This means there won’t be any mussels or clams to gather, leaving the only options as fishing and hunting.
(The continent is too far for poachers to travel, and the Antarctica treaty has banned interactions between researchers and animals, so they see humans as simply just “there”)
When it comes to hunting this would be a pretty good place, and many of the marine mammals that live along the shore, like elephant seals and penguins, can be caught by simply running up and grabbing them. Due to the Antarctic treaty, all animals on the continent are to be left alone and no hunting or interaction with the animals is permitted. This has led many of the penguin and seal groups to see humans as non-threatening, and often walk right up to researchers out of curiosity.
From a survival perspective, this would make it very easy to catch a huge amount of meat you could easily freeze, but would have no heat source of any kind to cook it with.
Has anyone ever been stranded in Antarctica?
There have been plenty of people who have been stranded there or found themselves in a survival situation, but they have all been expeditions or parties of explorers that ran into trouble. As for civilians, there are currently no reported strandings ever occurring on the Antarctic mainland, but there have been numerous accounts of people getting stuck on some of the smaller islands that surround it that are still classed as part of the continent.
For some good examples of what it takes to survive in this frozen wasteland, here are a couple of short survival stories.
Currently recognized as one of the greatest Antarctic explorers of all time, Mawson was part of a three-man team that tried to map the coastline south of Australia. They were supposed to travel from one station to another but ran into trouble after one of the team fell through a snow bridge and disappeared into the crevasse below, taking with him the sled that had most of the food.
(Douglas Mawson – One of the most famous Antarctic explorers of all time)
Mawson and his teammate started to make the long walk back, but due to their lack of food had no choice but to kill and eat some of the huskies they had. This worked out ok for a while until the other member got sick from eating nothing but the huskies’ livers. He found the meat far too tough and opted for eating only the liver, but they didn’t know that the livers of arctic animals contain huge amounts of vitamin A, which can cause a condition called Hypervitaminosis. He eventually died from this and Mawson had to make it back to base alone.
Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance
In 1914, a man named Ernest Shackleton took a ship called the Endurance and went on an expedition to Antarctica to explore its coastline. Before he could even get close to the coast, the ship became lodged between two giant ice sheets and held in place. The ice carried the ship for months before putting enough pressure on the hull to burst it open and finally sink it. Shackleton and his men found themselves having to set up camp on a huge ice sheet, but fortunately, they were able to gather enough supplies off the ship before it sank.
(Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance trapped in between two giant ice sheets)
They had no choice but to stay in place and wait for help, or until the ice sheet broke up and they all died. After a few weeks, the ice sheet started to fall apart and the decision was made to take the rowboats and try to make it to the nearest whaling station over 200 miles away. After a small crew made a journey worthy of being turned into a feature film, they reached the whaling station and rescue was sent for the rest of the crew.
The above stories all involved experienced explorers who were well-trained and equipped, but people still died and things went wrong in a major way. If you don’t have everything you need with you, then it would be impossible to survive stranded here for even a few days.
Interesting stuff in Antarctica
The biggest research station in Antarctica is called the McMurdo station and within its territory is a little place called Scotts hut. This hut was premade in England and sent to Antarctica as part of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910 – 1913, and is still standing today with much of the original food and equipment on display.
(Scotts hut was built in 1910, there are still dozens of preserved food items, and the entire interior is original)
There is an active volcano in Antarctica called Mount Erebus which erupts gold. Every day a huge amount of gas comes out of the summit and this contains tiny fragments of gold, but each fragment is too small to see. It has been estimated that the volcano throws out around 80 grams of gold into the air each day, but it never settles in an amount that can be gathered.
(An ariel view of the Russian Vostok research station where the lowest temperature on Earth was recorded)
There are no civilian populations on the continent, and the only people there are researchers and field workers who occupy the 70 permanent research stations operated by 29 countries.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica at the Russian Vostok research facility on 21 July 1983. It gave a reading of -89.4°C, but satellite data collected between 2004 and 2016 shows an area called the Eastern Antarctic Plateau which was estimated to have a wind temperature of -94°C.