The Northernmost Settlement Of Mankind: No Sun Or Night

The Northernmost Settlement Of Mankind: No Sun Or Night For 8 Months, Temperature -30°, Hundreds Of People Live

The Alert Community, located at the northeast end of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, is located just over 800 kilometers from the North Pole and is the northernmost permanent settlement in the world.

The nearest more populated place is southern Greenland, but it's also more than 540 kilometers away. The nearest big city is even further away, more than two thousand kilometers away. The Alert community is so close to the North Pole that it cannot connect to communications satellites because their orbit is below the horizon.

Alert is in complete darkness for four months of the year, and for the other four months, it is dark every day and is in a state of polar daylight, but the sun does not rise more than 30 degrees above the horizon even at noon.

The land is frozen and covered with snow for nearly ten months of the year. Winters are harsh and cold, with temperatures staying below minus 30 degrees. Peak summer temperatures are just a few degrees above freezing.

In this harsh place, you'll find hundreds of people living here. Thankfully, Alert isn't their permanent home, they're just here for work, which includes members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Their mission is to maintain a signals intelligence intercept facility called CFS. Residents also include researchers working here for Environment Canada's weather stations and the Global Atmosphere Watch Observatory.

The name of the community is derived from the British ship called the Alert, which established a camp nearby during the winter of 1875-1876. The ship's captain, George Nares, and his crew were the first to reach the northern tip of Ellesmere Island.

The weather station was established here in 1950. Eight years later, the military alert station appeared. During the Cold War, the Alert was of strategic importance as it was the only point in North America closest to the Soviet Union's Northwest Territories. In fact, the alert station is closer to Moscow (4,000 kilometers away) than to the Canadian capital Ottawa (4,150 kilometers away). The alert station was close to the Soviet Union, allowing the US-Canada-UK-Australia-New Zealand intelligence-sharing alliance (also known as the Five Eyes) to eavesdrop on Russian communications networks. The site quickly became an important asset for the global network.

At its peak, there were more than 215 personnel at Alert at any one time. But after budget cuts in the 1990s, staff dwindled to about 74, but its population can grow to more than 100 in the summer.

The soldiers, many of them volunteers, work here six months a year, including three weeks of vacation. There are TVs in each room, and you can receive four TV channels and four movie channels, which contain more than 4,500 TV programs.

Another pastime is to listen to radio stations. There are also two gyms, a dark room, a bowling alley, and a theater.

Evenings are filled with activities such as multiplayer computer games or woodworking. Most of the personnel come here voluntarily, because living here is like living in a submarine, and the harsh climate brings people together.

The only way to ship anything here is by air. Every year, the Royal Air Force delivers around 2 million liters of fuel and 300 tons of cargo to the settlement. In addition to the once-weekly flight, the twice-yearly shipment of supplies required a massive operation. The problem is, the weekly flight doesn't fly most of the time. Resupply flights are often delayed by 24 hours or canceled entirely when aircraft are grounded due to mechanical problems or diverted elsewhere by military priority.

Those who come to work here are screened strictly for their physical condition, and those who cannot handle the gravel and snow are eliminated before coming here. Most people gain weight when they get here.