Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

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Criminals, no. But Werner Herzog's documentary on people that work at the research station (Encounters at The End of the World) paints a fascinating picture of the people that decide to basically leave modern society for months/years at a time. You definitely have to be a special type of person and even a borderline social outcast to make it a regular job.

One of the researchers he interviews about it describes how he lives life with no real home and always has a bag packed with enough essentials to go hike out into the wilderness anywhere in the world--Herzog asks to see the bag and the person happily pulls out an enormous pack and starts pulling out stuff like an inflatable pack raft, stoves, tents, etc. The big point is that you have to be a special kind of person that's not really attached to modern society to go live and work at the end of the world.

>You definitely have to be a special type of person and even a borderline social outcast to make it a regular job.

Many, many years ago I was in the Army and served with a man, Corporal White, who was the oddest person I had ever met. He was probably the best soldier I have ever seen, but refused to take anything seriously and treated the Army as a game to be played (as one should).

Anyway, he put in a DA4187 form, a personnel action request form, with roughly four words on it: "request duty in Antarctica", it worked its way up the chain of command, and after several months a telegram (the army sent telegrams called PERSGRAMS up until the late 90s!) arrived assigning him to duty in Antarctica.

He spent about six months down there, in his words "moving around barrels and crates and playing Nintendo", and came back engaged to a scientist.

Now he and his wife are itinerant adventurers and I don't think they've lived anywhere for more than six months in the last 25 years.

Yes and no. There’s 1000 people down there and plenty of them have relatively normal lives back home for ~7 months or the year. Some do travel the world and then come back to McMurdo every year.

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