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A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

stories.californiasunday.com

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Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#141

Post by kbart »

saganus wrote: post #126
haroldp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I remember Ross and Irma, but I got my Roy Rogers and pool from the Anchor Inn. If I recall correctly, the Sportsman's is actually older than either the Buckner Building or Beggich Tower

Interesting how out of the total HN population there is more than one person that lived in this very small town. Not sure what to make out of it, but certainly interesting.

I guess there's not much to do besides studying and learning new stuff for a young, smart, introvert person in such small communities. The best and hardest working students I knew came from the tiny towns in the middle of nowhere.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#142

Post by haroldp »

cylinder wrote: post #129
haroldp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Why the town even exists? OK, history/geography lesson... The Kenai peninsula hangs down into the Gulf of Alaska and sort of separates those two areas. The landscape around there is very mountainous. However, Whittier has a low mountain pass to "easily" travel between Passage Canal (not an actual canal) on the east side to Turnigan Arm and Anchorage (more of a muddy tentacle) on the West side. Portage Pass was w…

Is there a doctor in the town? A hospital? What happens if someone has a medical emergency - you said the only way to Anchorage in winter was by a train that often didn't come daily. I just don't understand how these kinds of towns keep any residents. They seem downright dangerous to live in. In Russia, I can understand it, but these are US citizens who can get a flight down to a whole host of warm, easy towns and ge…

Generally speaking, there are some EMTs around. Mostly the same crowd as the volunteer fire department. They get some minor training and they do what they can. For anything big, they just transport you to Anchorage.

Back in the day, when I lived there, there was no road, just the railroad. But we had an old Army ambulance that had train wheels that it could deploy to travel to Anchorage on the train tracks. My dad actually took that trip twice IIRC for a heart attack and a stroke (I was pretty young and don't really remember it).

These days there is a road. It closes at times, but the cop has the keys, so they can open it for emergencies.

But yeah, living in the bush, emergency medical care may be a ways away.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#143

Post by Kiro »

sanoli wrote: post #5
Kiro wrote: post #2

I wouldn't mind living there. I've been dreaming about moving somewhere remote and just do freelance work. The only requirement is a good internet connection which sadly excludes a lot of cool places.

The thing is, this town is not only remote, but during the winter you have to pretty much dug in and stay inside. No going anywhere. It's not the same as just being somewhere isolated and remote, and you have to take that into consideration. Some people might enjoy it anyway.

I actually spend some time now and then in Kiruna (see other comments in this thread about the coldest cities in the world) so I have no problem with harsh winter. I think it's amazing. The rain and winds don't sound so nice though.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#144

Post by haroldp »

kbart wrote: post #141
saganus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how out of the total HN population there is more than one person that lived in this very small town. Not sure what to make out of it, but certainly interesting.

I guess there's not much to do besides studying and learning new stuff for a young, smart, introvert person in such small communities. The best and hardest working students I knew came from the tiny towns in the middle of nowhere.

I wish. Maybe that would be my story if I was a kid there now. But I left in `86. There was no Internet. There was no cable TV. Radio came in poorly. Gawddamn telephone calls were prohibitively expensive. I knew two kids that had computers at all. I played some Kings Quest on one of them, and tried to help the other with the Hitchhikers Guide game because I kind of remembered the TV movie that played out of order the year before.

I have wondered how different my life would be if I'd had wikipedia then.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#145

Post by fold »

percept wrote: post #73
kayge wrote: post #41

I live in Alaska and have visited Whittier multiple times. Every time we go, my wife and I comment about how great of a setting it would be for a zombie apocalypse movie. "Oh it's only accessible by water or the main tunnel, it's easy to secure" "oops we forgot about securing the old train tunnel" "oh no they're in the apartment building, let's go hide out in the creepy old abandoned building down the street" ... cle…

"he has recently been in talks with two reality television production companies and the producers of a Gerard Butler submarine movie." http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittie... Not quite the same, I guess.

http://www.adn.com/article/20141212/big-budget-thriller-be-f...

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#146

Post by btilly »

frik wrote: post #137
hownottowrite wrote: post #68

Whittier is also home to the Buckner Building. 250k square feet, abandoned after the 1964 earthquake and left to rot. In other words, a perfect place for indoor skiing. http://vimeo.com/50860740

Why do they build such tall buildings in an earth quake area? Why is such an destroyed inhabited building still around 50 years later? In other parts of the world there would be many smaller buildings and inhabited ugly buildings would be removed. I like the creative use of the building in the video, great work!

Why do they build such tall buildings in an earth quake area?

The basic answer is that they had no idea what kind of earthquake was possible there. That earthquake is #3 on the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes#Largest_ea... and was the second megathrust earthquake recorded since the geological knowledge existed to figure out what they were. (The first being Chile in 1960.)

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#147

Post by lmm »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #84
haroldp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to have about the same crime as anywhere. I could easily imagine a drug epidemic really getting out of hand there, though I never saw that happen. When I was there, some Alaskan religious group would rotate some "nondenominational" preacher through for a year or three and serve up basic Sunday School type Christianity out of an ugly room in the big building pictured. There seemed to be a high-ish suicide ra…

Were there people moving in to replace the deceased? Is the building shown in the article at maximum capacity? And finally, I'm extremely curious about the criminal justice system. The brief article mentions a Sheriff and I assume there may or may not be a deputy also. It also mentions a pot bust. What happens to people arrested? Are they detained until they can be transported to a nearby town with a court system, or…

For a more extreme example of crime in this kind of very isolated place, I found what happened on Pitcairn island fascinating (and tragic). The criminals had to build their own prison to serve their sentences in, because the island didn't have one. Can't find the original piece I read, but e.g. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/evil-und... .

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#148

Post by lmm »

noobermin wrote: post #14

It would be interesting if someone tried this in one of these larger cities with high rises like Singapore. You'd create a smaller groups with a sense of community while still giving members the benefits of living in a large city. The reason I thought of this is it reminded me of a strategy of using small bible study groups being employed in a large church that was part of my alma mater. The idea is that it was easie…

Sounds like Park Hill, one of the early council blocks in Britain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Hill,_Sheffield . (Mostly a failure, but that Wikipedia article is much more positive than other things I'd read about it, so shrug)

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#149

Post by lmm »

theoh wrote: post #80
mod wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I, a hacker and the target audience of Hacker News, find it very, very interesting.

It's not one of Eric S. Raymond's talking points, but the backwoodsman aspect of hacker culture seems really important, and also, probably, fatal to its long-term spread.

How do you reconcile that with so much of hackerdom being in and around San Francisco (and a lot of the remainder being MIT)?

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#150

Post by gambiting »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59
grecy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I drove 1225km from British Colombia to my home in the Yukon. I started the day at -5C, saw it hit -39C on the drive and finished at -36C. It was the most beautiful blue-sky sunny day and sunset. The full moon, Northern Lights and herd of Caribou helped too :)

Do you have a thermometer in your car? I was surprised that the buses in north east china all have this (displayed up front), as if trying to tell us how much colder it was getting :) My only experience of making that trip is in the summer. What is weird thing about china, however, is that both Changchun and Harbin are huge cities with millions of people. How could so many people live where it is so cold...the entire…

Every single new car has a thermometer built in and displays the current temperature outside on the dashboard. It's not that uncommon. I actually think it's a great safety feature for when you are driving to work in the morning and you are not sure if it's quite freezing yet or not - if your thermometer says it's less than 4C then I am more careful, but if it's above 4C then it should be fine to drive.
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