Visiting the coldest town in the world - Chilling Out | 60 Minutes Australia

I've just returned from a place so piercingly cold it gives me the shivers just thinking about it it's not Antarctica or even the top of Mount Everest no it's actually a tiny village in Central Siberia in I'm Yukon it's so cold your eyelashes freeze together and you're constantly on guard against frostbite if it's warmer than minus 55 degrees Celsius and it's a good day so rug up as we venture to the coldest town in the world the icy journey to Aamir Khan is a long treacherous drive across Siberia with the temperature plummeting by the hour [Music] [Applause] [Music] it takes two days and nights on roads as slippery as glass inevitably one of our backup vehicles came to grief along the way there's something terribly haunting about this road to anicon it was built in the times of that dreadful tyrant Joseph Stalin to link a series of gulags or prison camps the political prisoners were used as unpaid labor indeed they were used to death collapsing from exposure at the horrific rate of one every meter now think about that that's one dead two dead three dead and so the death and misery continued for 1,200 kilometers more than a million people died constructing this little wonder they call it the road of bones each time a person died they just left them on the road and incorporated their bones into the aggregate what does bulldoze them into the surface stay quite literally the road of bones I'm with a man highly qualified in extreme environments Nick Middleton a travel writer and geographer from Oxford University most of the the slave labour wouldn't have been kitted out like we are and they must literally work them to death so in reality the last two days we've been driving across a million people it's a thought isn't it and it's true [Music] to get to the coldest town on earth we cross two frozen rivers climb a mountain range and traverse endless forests to a remote speck on the map smack bang in the middle of Siberia [Music] finally our destination om UConn population 547 we are last prepare yourself with a deep freeze first stop is the town square a small monument to honor the man who recorded the record load this is the temperature - 71 point - that's the coldest ever recorded in an inhabited town I take it this is the fellow who this is the guy who took the readings his name's Albert F he was a geographer explorer writer and he recorded the temperature in the 1920s and he was freezing yeah he was it's hard to describe the intensity of the cold except to say that your freezer at home runs at minus 18 degrees and when we drove into town it was minus 45 although the town's mayor thought today's weather was quite mild you sure you don't put the vanilla it's more now this is warm [Music] the locals say it's truly cold when it dips below minus 50 when blood stops flowing to exposed skin and frostbite sets in the worst thing here is that you can underestimate the cold and you're not realizing when your parts of your body are frozen and you know what you're at the end of your name is going does it yeah okay the waxy color okay that's not good no just get back in the car [Applause] we hurried to our accommodation there are no hotels and a local family agreed to put us up the night of your coots have distinctive Asiatic features and live much as they've done for centuries next to the woodpile is an I spire Feist blocks are melted inside for fresh water tomorrow you've lived here all your life it must be very hard existence no yesterday yeah but you don't need to run mystic I just no no yes there are difficulties in anyone's life but it's good here if I had a choice to live anywhere in the world it would be here tomorrow in your lifetime what's the coldest day you've experienced she searched dee dee when I was a little girl it was a minus 68 one day it's never been as cold since then one of the many day-to-day hardships of living in a place like this aside from the temperature and this morning it's minus 50 for beauty is the complete lack of running water these places have no pipes I mean apart from the money it'd be no good putting them in anyway because the water would freeze instantly that means there's no showers and no bars which is not so bad in these conditions but that means there's also no flushing toilet which leads me to this now the old-fashioned Thunder box is fine if you're in outback Australia but let me tell you when you're in the coldest part of the world and nature calls in the middle of the night you have to come and get your kid off well that's something else waimea gone is only 700 meters above sea level and is well below the Arctic Circle but the reason it's so cold is a unique function of geography there's no ocean nearby to moderate the extreme conditions and it's deep in a frigid valley and sitting in the bottom of this valley all the colder tends to accumulate and that combination of factors adds up to the coldest inhabited town on earth but people who live here I think there are certain common factors I haven't seen any tall people here and that makes physiological sense because it minimizes the amount of surface area they have to lose heat from it's the same as the acrid horses their short squat creatures yaqoob horses have adapted so well they stay outdoors 24/7 they're one weak spot is that the ice accumulates on their backs not surprised so they have to di see us the ice cohorts every month or so in winter farmers round them up for a procedure you'd see nowhere but here so they've got these really thick combs to scrape the ice off so go what do they use these horses for mainly for meat for meat horse meat morning noon and night will get pretty bored of it by the end [Music] Liam ogle a -50 this trick effect is supposed to work another day in a deep freeze and it was cold enough for Nick to try some experiments he'd read about studying geography this is boiling water after taking it just off the stove you can see the steam yeah right you watch I'm gonna throw the yet that water up into the air right ready yep it just immediately freezes in the outer and turns the snow plus put a residual steam it's extraordinary isn't it amazing [Music] washing presents some interesting effects in this part of the world live and now stand up swing it around your head swing it around my swing it around your head please bit longer this is how you drive here it all we're effectively doing is speeding up the process of hanging it on the line okay stop now see look you're doing that for about 10 seconds another that is amazing look I know tried this but you're supposed to be able to split it down the middle quite easily your favorite t-shirt but nothing Illustrated the deep freeze better the Knicks final party trick I left a couple of bananas at last night have you ever seen a nail hammered in with a banana turn honestly say no possibly not okay totally ridiculous and yet we're at totally effective you often Nick the thing that struck me most about this place was that no matter how frigid the weather the town spoke just grin and bear it on the coldest day of our journey the local reindeer herder offered to take us to see his best mate a fisherman named Igor hey listen without any reindeer that we know or meuk on because the whole town grew up on a place where reindeer here this used to spend the night next to the river it's highly unusual way to go fishing boat the reindeer dropped us at the local river where Igor was already making holes in the ice at minus 50 for the frostbite hazard on exposed skin is serious and the fishermen noticed my nose had turned white again the method is ingenious where does the net run to goes to that pole over there yeah two holes about five metres apart with a net slung under the ice between them Igor really goes home without a bucket full of fish nature provides in abundance here oh and another one Dutch gettin lost the local legend has it that when God was creating the earth he got so cold that his hands went numb and he dropped a lot in or nakhon frozen solid already not this today being 54 below school kids missed out on a day off by just one degree if it's minus 55 the school says it's too dangerous to leave home the children fear welders from Anya Conn with a dance and warned us not to come back when the weather warms up it gets 2 + 35 in the summer months and apparently it's unbearable in summer it gets very hot he gets very swampy when everything melts the air is full of mosquitoes and black fly and it's an extremely unpleasant place I wouldn't like to live here I don't think I could live here actually both for those climatic conditions and also the remoteness and that combination that package then they I could do it it's hard yards isn't it very hard very hard life hello i'm tara brown thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 6,968,234

Rating: 4.7965851 out of 5

Keywords: Oymiakon, Central Siberia, cold, frozen, coldest town in the world, Winter Solstice, Liam Bartlett, 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, coldest, coldest place, coldest places on earth, frozen town

Id: l1noUh2NrLI

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/grambell789]

Back in the 1970s 60minutes tv show did a visit to a siberian town in winter. They sold milk in frozen block with no container. It was a flat disc from a pan they carried around.

[u/doobtacular]

Wow, they're not kidding. Forecast on google is -30-36ish all week. I wouldn't be able to cope.

[u/sammo21]

The fact that there is actually a town there cracks me up; its literally like nature saying, "Ok, how about not live here?" "Whatever, nature, don't tell me what to do."

[u/Marconius1617]

But what’s the Pokémon Go scene like up there ?

[u/FrozenInferno]

There's a great documentary travel show in which three friends drop everything and travel the world for a year (Departures, it's on Netflix if you're in Canada). Oymyakan is one of the places they visited in Russia. One of my favorite shows ever and incredibly inspiring. Highly recommend it.

[u/nick3501s]

this town only exists because of soviet era forced labor. It costs more to heat the town than the value of the nearby coal.

[u/Lizardgic]

Could you profit from placing a crypto currency mining facility here since you wouldn't need the energy to cool down the machines?

[u/rwilkz]

Woahhh I've been to the actual North Pole (well 89 degrees latitude, never made it the final degree) and it was -38. Seems positively balmy compared to this!

[u/serial97]

I would be curious if everyone has reduced inflamation than average.. Like 24/7 cryotherapy