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Comment by dpflan | Hacker News Reader

If you're interested in the people and personalities and activities at the South Pole, the Werner Herzog film Encounters at the End of the World is a revealing and interesting documentary. It includes a fascinating part about a deluded penguin choosing to leave its flock and begin a fatal journey towards the center of the island...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_W...

- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1093824/

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FYI, many people who spent time at McMurdo around the filming of Encounters are not big fans. The interviews were intentionally set up to make people look weird. The narration implies there's something wrong with "polar people." You might find us dissapointingly normal.

A Year On Ice is a more accurate representation.

I'm in Frozen Planet, but you can't believe all the narration in that either.

I can see that, with only a few hours of footage to portray the situation they want. Is there not something interesting or an underlying personality trait that makes the voluntary inhabitants of the frozen world different from the average person? How much time have you spent there?

7 summer seasons, about 2 months each. Most of that was in a tent up on Erebus, but about a week transitioning through McMurdo at the beginning and end of each season.

Interesting, doing field research?

Yeah, here's a taste: https://aaroncurt.is/frozenplanet.html

(Heh, a taste of fooBBQ.) Thank you for sharing. While we're here and discussing the documentaries: care to share a highlight anecdote of your time there?

Oh man, so many stories. Well, here's a fun one. There's unfortunately a big divide between the contractor-employed support staff and the "beakers" (scientists like me) and I would try and break through the barrier sometimes. Had a brief romance with someone working in waste management (a "wastie"), so maybe that's how it started. But anyway, one day I was sitting in the McMurdo cafeteria at a table with people from Fuels ("fuelies") and people from Communications ("commies" ... yeah) someone asked me what I do and I said "I work up on Erebus." A fuelie looks daggers at me and goes "Oh yeah!? Well I work on the FUCKING MOON!" and storms off.

There were a lot of people at McMurdo for whom Antarctica wasn't quite the adventure they'd hoped it would be.

Oh ok one more story. There is a road connecting McMurdo (US) and Scott Base (New Zealand). I think it's only a few miles.

So I'm sitting in the McMurdo driving training you have to take before you're allowed to take a truck out. Get to the end of the lecture. Instructor: "Any questions?" I ask, "yeah... so, New Zealanders drive on the left, and we drive on the right, right? Which side do we drive on if we go to Scott Base?"

Instructor, looking totally bored and serious: "Drive in the middle."

To this day I don't know if he was kidding.

So where did you drive? I suppose encountering another vehicle was extremely unlikely.

I'm surprised they had a training for this. Is it more of a legal thing?

Ps thanks for the insightful stories!

Some of it was legal ass-covering but also rules about vehicle heaters, wheel chocks, radios, fueling, checking out and in etc. I only walked to Scott, never ended up driving. Drove to building 71 a lot to install and service radios taking to my equipment on Erebus, and to and from the helipad.

Oh yeah and some of the trucks have treads instead of wheels (matttracks) so those take some learning.

That short clip is absolutely breathtaking. Thank you for sharing.

I remember watching this. Turns out BBC Natural History documentaries are more theater than just documentaries. If you watch the "making of" clips at the end of some of the series, you do get the sense that they may not be just captured natural footage as much as highly-scripted activities with the actions of the cameramen, crew, etc. edited out. Still fun to watch, but isn't being manipulated as a viewer disingenuous for a studio that calls itself "Natural" History? Maybe a better name would be BBC Studios Artificial History Unit.

At this point I can't really enjoy documentaries like that anymore. I keep thinking "they brought a steadicam down there?" or "where is all that light coming from?" The fourth wall is thoroughly broken.

Thanks, I'd rather watch a poorly lit Youtube video with a guy talking to his Gopro. I wonder what the equivalent of that would be for animal documentaries.

I like the old Jacques Cousteau films where there’s no fourth wall to break, the people making it are also a subject.

I don’t like the nature documentary that tries really hard to pretend the makers don’t exist. I especially don’t like how almost all of the sound is faked.

Go ahead, bring a steadycam and a key light, just don’t stage shit like a fake reality show. Id like to see what’s actually out there. Also maybe don’t take every opportunity to say how everything you’re filming is doomed.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6J1OzLHamQ8TdX5j2w3L253m...

The sentiment resonates, but on the other hand I took a lot of video in those caves and it's all unwatchable, so I have enormous appreciation for what the BBC did. It's an incredibly hard environment to film in and I was absolutely amazed by the final product. Gavin Thurston rigged up cables from ice screws in the cave walls and set up a travelling robot camera thing he designed on it. There was a huge amount of equipment and hard work; for example for the crater shots I helped them carry up an enormous crane system to the crater rim which didn't even produce any useful footage. Also, the BBC guys were so charismatic that they could talk their way around rules and into places. For example, the helicopter pilots flying in the crater did things that aren't normally allowed. So in a way it's fake, but actually when it comes to the cave visuals, their work captures the feeling of being there, which otherwise I would never really be able to share with anyone. It really is an unbelivably spectacular place and almost impossible to film.

I suppose we're a little more adventurous on average than a random sample of Americans? Big spread there, though. Everyone's different.

Just curious, what’s the male:female ratio of the typical winter crew?

I've never been there in the winter.

It sounds like you either are or were formerly posted in the Antarctic — any advice about how to get involved, and maybe get a shift working there, as a civilian with a technical background but without much in the way of a research background? Or is it just totally off the table?

Used to be pretty easy to sign up as a dishwasher or that kind of thing. If you are in interested in science, find a PI looking for grad students. Edit: I read more closely. There are technical grantee groups as well, like UNAVCO and IRIS PASSCAL. Not too hard to get a job with one of those.

Lots of ways in... Everybody I know who has really tried has made it down there.

Thanks for the pointers! Hope I can get a spot down there in a few years too.

any people who spent time at McMurdo around the filming of Encounters are not big fans

They didn't check out any of Werner Herzogs movies before letting him in? They would have known what they were in for.

Fair point. Actually come to think of it most of the people I talked to who were IN the documentary were ok with it (and my volcanology professor went in to make 2 more movies with Herzog after meeting him during Encounters). It was others at mcmurdo that were angry about the portrayal of the town and generalizations about polar people. Maybe people just seized on it as something to argue about when bored, I dunno.

I've seen "Into the Inferno", which I assume is one of the films your professor was in (is he Oppenheimer?). Visually spectacular, but Hertzog's commentary overlay and approach made it just...odd. He's a weird dude, but very talented.

Yep. On all counts.

The famous scene[0] from this film is a masterpiece. It never fails to sink me to my nadir, so I avoid watching it even if I love it so much.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTU_hJoByA

Understandable. It struck a deep chord with me, became a larger metaphor applicable to all life.

Amazing, thanks for sharing.

Herzog laying it on thick with the music as per usual lol but that is a beautiful, haunting sequence nonetheless. I like to rag on Herzog but he really is a unique mind and an incredible documentarian.

Beautiful, thanks for sharing.

That penguin walked to his certain death, while his mates swam and caught fish, to their certain death. Sadness for it and his supposed insanity only exists for a fleeting moment. In a long enough timespan, it lived and died like any other penguin has or ever will.

Nihilism is not necessarily pessimistic. It presents our universe, and life itself, as a glass half full, but it's up to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Thanks for this evening philosophical reflection.

I speculate, but I imagine that that type of behavior by a group of individuals on a long timescale where most but not fail is one important mechanism of how remote Polynesian islands, ice age American via Beringia, and other areas of the world get populated.

That’s what I was thinking—-the occasional outlier’s success in pioneering out into the new.

at least for most of us it is not pessimistic only as long as one can muse about it while sitting comfortably in a warm place with a full stomach.

You are mistaken. Being at peace with the universe isn't only available to wealthy people. This is a very materialistic view.

There is someone out there in abject poverty that is more content than anyone with a warm place and a full stomach. They are hungry, they are cold, yet they are at peace.

Likewise, I believe one can reach inner contentment even if fed and clothed. It is not a path accessible only to the poor.

Food and shelter isn’t materialistic. The lack of them have have severe psychological and physiological consequences.

"There is someone out there in abject poverty that is more content than anyone with a warm place and a full stomach"

This is a statement without meaning, e.g. so what?

I would wager that it's easier to "come to peace with the universe" if your basic needs are met: warmth, shelter, friends, food, etc. (it has nothing to do with materialism or wealth).

> Nihilism is not necessarily pessimistic. It presents our universe, and life itself, as a glass half full, but it's up to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

The nihil is nihilism is Latin for "nothing".

Nihilism says there is no meaning to existence: it does not matter if the glass if half-full, it does not matter if the glass is half-empty, it does not matter if the glass (or its contents) exist at all. It does not matter if you decide if life/universe/everything is good, or if you decide it is bad. It does not matter what, or even if, you decide something at all.

The nihilistic philosophy offers neither a good nor bad view of the universe, but people then assume that nihilism itself is good or bad, because of their preconceptions.

If you really want to believe that your life has meaning, you will find any philosophy saying your life has no meaning utterly abhorrent.

But if you accept that life has no meaning whatsoever, it is exhilarating and freeing.

So I'm agreeing with you, just pointing out that philosophy itself is neither good nor bad, it all depends how one approaches and judges it.

Thanks. I remember that scene well. Herzog at his finest. I had the privilege of seeing Herzog speak in person at a conference around the time when this movie was released.

The top rated comment is spot on:

> Werner Herzog tells a joke:

> "Why did the penguin cross the road?"

> "To die. Alone. Insane and unnoticed."

> It never fails to sink me to my nadir, so I avoid watching it even if I love it so much.

Of course the sound track to that scene is a Russian Orthodox religious chant:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LVHl3HTBoA

Insightful comment on that video by Chudea. Reposting here so I'll remember it:

"All death is certain. This penguin didn't go to the mountains to die. He went on the journey in order to live. Rest in peace on the top of that mountain, penguin. Your frozen grave will be your place of victory over monotony."

That has certain crossover with the mockumentary / sci-fi movie "The Wild Blue Yonder". I love that one. They use footage by one of the McMurdo station occupants of the film you mention, as if it were images from a remote planet.

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

There also is a japanese movie based on a chef in Antarctica: The Chef of South Polar (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345728/)

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