Hidden Histories & Complex Crimes

episode artwork

Jessa Briggs

10 December 2023

30m 46s

8. Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon ( the coldest permantly inhabited places on Earth)

00:00

30:46

Though no one really knows what goes on in Russia’s Siberia, everyone knows it’s one of the most extreme landscapes in the world. Covering most of Northern Asia, the millions-of-square-kilometers Russian providence is sparsely populated, even to this day, with all sorts of technology that could potentially help humans thrive in extreme climates. But even in Siberia, there are towns and settlements that seems impossibly habitable. Yet, people survive. What if told you that there were 2 towns in Siberia, thousands of miles apart, that both claim to hold the record for the coldest natural temperature ever recorded on earth? Would you believe me if I told you near one was a highway known as the Road of Bones, and that the other can’t even be accessed by land? What if, even in temperatures as low as negative 90 degrees fahrenheit, the people in these two towns have found a way to survive?

Please enjoy the moments where I struggle more with English than I do with Russian :).

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SOURCES

2020 Deaths on the Road of Bones: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/r eal-life/news-life/man-frozen-to-death-after-google-maps-wrong-turn/news-story/13e10cbbc96494ee26e6dea29f4fb469

Follow the Road of Bones from Yakutsk to Magadan https://www.google.com/maps/place/P-504,+Russia/@61.7037656,128.583995,8.21z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x5bf7b58f347f1d17:0xb86876cc7bcdfe3b!8m2!3d63.2255969!4d139.5916149!16zL20vMDdwcms5?entry=ttu

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

https://web.archive.org/web/20090106205056/http://askyakutia.com/tag/pole-of-cold/

https://web.archive.org/web/20120420233601/http://wmo.asu.edu/northern-hemisphere-lowest-temperature

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

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

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/the-pole-of-cold

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/photo/pole-cold-life-inside-coldest-known-region-northern-hemisphere-flna1c8417978

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway

https://www.britannica.com/place/Sakha-republic-Russia

https://www.rbth.com/history/333033-road-bones-kolyma-gulag

https://www.dangerousroads.org/eastern-europe/russia/48-federal-highway-russia.html#google_vignette

https://www.britannica.com/place/Verkhoyansk

https://www.businessinsider.com/verkhoyansk-russia-most-miserable-place-2014-2

https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/vying-for-extreme-tourists-in-siberia-the-cold-war-at-the-arctic-circle-a-402570.html

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

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/defaultinterstitial.cms

https://wmo.asu.edu/content/asia-lowest-temperature

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