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St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

hakaimagazine.com

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Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#51

Post by dheera »

mxcrossb wrote: post #32
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

I also routinely wander on google maps in search of remote islands. I always wonder what it’s like to grow up in a place like that. If I wanted to live in New York City or Paris or Beijing, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. But for those remote islands, living there is only an experience for a small portion of human beings.

I do this as well. Actually what fascinates me much more than remote islands is remote islands with evidence of human settlements.

Remote uninhabited islands are easy to find. It's the ones with like a village of 20 houses and a dirt path that I find super interesting. Who lives in those houses? How do they get their groceries? What do they do on the weekends? How do they make a living? Do they have internet access? How did they get the materials there to build houses? What do the houses look like on the inside?

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#52

Post by owenversteeg »

sandworm101 wrote: post #43
owenversteeg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm, "all the money in the world" would totally get you there faster. You'd be able to fly in a helicopter with a FIPS (which allows flight in full icing conditions without limitation.) You might not want to get too close to the ground for various reasons, but then parachute put some guys with Jetskis and drop down supplies and oxygen in strategic places and you can damn well get to where you want to be - significantl…

Icing? That isn't the issue. It is wind and visibility. Helos don't fly in blizzards.

Well, I have an experienced helicopter pilot literally in front of me who said the icing is indeed the biggest issue.

Helicopters can indeed fly ILS, and larger helicopters can indeed fly into severe wind. Even HH-60s have flown into hurricanes before. While ILS flight into blizzard conditions would require a very skilled pilot and a capable helicopter, for "all the money in the world" those could easily be provided.

I like how my above comment is -3, classic HN.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#54

Post by contingencies »

sandworm101 wrote: post #18
walrus01 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neal Stephenson invented a humorous and not entirely serious comparison of difficulty of ground travel, measured in "Lewis and Clark Expedition Day" (LAC). In which the relative difficulty and trouble in covering an amount of terrain is measured in units of LACs, equivalent to the theorized amount of suffering a member of the LAC expedition experienced in one day.

The military does similar, measuring distance in days required for a footsoldier with a pack. A mountain forest in winter? Snow many meters deep with trees only a meter apart? Low visibility? Wind? Uphill? A platoon might move less than a single kilometer per day.

Since ancient history, China used the distance unit li (里). While it was theoretically moved to some sort of standard in the Qin dynasty (The Qin was the dynasty ruled by the tyrant that built the great wall and the terracotta warriors, famous for the attempted and actual standardizations of weights and measures), it has effectively also, otherwise and perhaps generally been an effort-based unit in colloquial use. As recently as early this century I encountered people who still used the li in the effort-based way in Yunnan province (highly mountainous).

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#55

Post by contingencies »

14u2c wrote: post #46
sandworm101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try flying a helicopter in the mountains during an alaskan blizzard. All the money in the world wont get you there any faster. And there are sides of cliffs where air rescue is impossible in even the best weather.

I feel like if you were to devote huge a chunk of the top engineering talent in the world for 10 years, as was done with the moon missions, then it would certainly happen.

You could use thin rigid supports: something like telescoping linear actuators generated in-situ with a coiling system from flat material. See http://mymechatronics.pbworks.com/w/page/76547795/Telescopin... for an overview of commercially available systems. The same principle sped up would likely do the trick.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#56

Post by lultimouomo »

sandworm101 wrote: post #10
rfergie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous! It would take longer to get to the moon and back if you walked there. There is no place on Earth that you couldn't get to quicker if your budget was the same

Try flying a helicopter in the mountains during an alaskan blizzard. All the money in the world wont get you there any faster. And there are sides of cliffs where air rescue is impossible in even the best weather.

Try launching a rocket during a Florida hurricane. You will not go to space today.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#57

Post by iso947 »

dheera wrote: post #50
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

Not quite so remote but another thoroughly fascinating island is Miquelon-Langlade, part of St. Pierre et Miquelon. What's thoroughly fascinating about both St. Pierre and Miquelon is that it's the last remaining French territory in North America, and located right off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It's the only place in North America where you actually spend Euros and the cars have EU license plates. The superm…

Facinating. How is it coping with covid? Is there an exception to allow people from the island to go to Canada?

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#58

Post by rabbitonrails »

dang wrote: post #5
rabbitonrails wrote: post #3

Is it possible to stuff more purple prose into a single article? For a laugh, try reading out loud in a Keira Knightley accent. Puke.

Please don't post this sort of snarky dross to HN, regardless of how bad an article is. The article may not deserve better, but this community deserves better if you're contributing to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: unfortunately, it looks like you've been doing a lot of this. Could you please not? We're trying for something else on this site.

Why is it against the community guidelines to point out bad writing?

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#59

Post by m463 »

dmckeon wrote: post #12
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Remote is more than a measure of distance on a map. Among climbers there is a logic about remote places: it took a week to get to the moon and back. There are places on rock faces and up mountians that take longer, that are more remote than the moon. In places like the alaska/canadian/russian north is very possible to be trapped by weather for days, weeks, even months. That is more remote than any island.

Here is a place (San Agustín sump) that takes 3 weeks to get to from the cave entrance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_Huautla

> In 1994, during a 135-day expedition of 44 people ...

wow

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#60

Post by dheera »

iso947 wrote: post #57
dheera wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so remote but another thoroughly fascinating island is Miquelon-Langlade, part of St. Pierre et Miquelon. What's thoroughly fascinating about both St. Pierre and Miquelon is that it's the last remaining French territory in North America, and located right off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It's the only place in North America where you actually spend Euros and the cars have EU license plates. The superm…

Facinating. How is it coping with covid? Is there an exception to allow people from the island to go to Canada?

I didn't go there during Covid -- this was several years ago. I'm not sure of the answer to that question.
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