How people live in the coldest village on the planet—it can get to minus 71°C.
In the village of Oymyakon in Yakutia, the temperature can drop below -71°C. This is a territory where the earth is bound by permafrost hundreds of meters deep, equipment often breaks down, and even wolves that get caught in traps freeze to death.
Blogger and documentary filmmaker Ruhi Çenet, who visited Oymyakon during the coldest period of the year, talked about the peculiarities of life in this settlement. The journey to the "Pole of Cold" consists of a flight to Yakutsk and overcoming 900 kilometers by car in 18 hours.
The village, where about 800 people live in an area of one and a half square kilometers, greeted travelers with a temperature of -60.5°C. The situation is complicated by the short daylight hours: in January, it lasts about four and a half hours.
The specific climate is explained by geography: the settlement is located in a deep basin surrounded by mountains. Due to the lack of wind, cold air, which is heavier than warm air, settles at the bottom of the valley, turning the territory into a natural freezer.
To simply stay alive, when leaving a house where the temperature is around +30°C, to the street with a frost of -60°C (the difference is almost 100 degrees!), the blogger puts on more than 20 layers of clothing with a total weight of about 14 kilograms, including items made of reindeer fur. But even this does not guarantee complete safety. After a few minutes in the cold, the eyelashes become covered with ice, and the skin begins to burn.
"After spending just over 15 minutes outside, my nose turned white. Ice crystals began to form inside the cells, and the tissue began to die. If I had stayed outside for another five minutes, my nose would have suffered irreversible tissue damage," the blogger notes.
Locals teach: the face must be covered, and the nose warmed with hands, but in no case should it be rubbed, so as not to damage the capillaries.
Infrastructure on permafrost
Oymyakon stands on permafrost - land that never thaws. This makes it impossible to lay ordinary water pipes and sewers: the pipes would simply be torn apart by the ice pressure. Therefore, toilets are located outside, which in such frost becomes a separate test.
Water is extracted here in the old-fashioned way: men cut huge blocks of ice from the river, load them onto sleds and deliver them to homes. There, the ice is placed in barrels, where it melts.
The washing process requires significant effort and time, so a bathhouse is usually arranged once a week. To wash, you need to melt the ice on the stove and even heat the bottles of shampoo. The procedure ends with a sharp temperature contrast: after washing in a room heated to +60°C, people have to go out into the cold, which often exceeds -50°C.
Houses in Oymyakon are designed for maximum energy conservation. To build on frozen ground, thick wooden beams are first laid to create a flat base. Then the main logs are laid on top. A 30-centimeter thick floor is added, then insulation and, finally, the finished floor.
Each wall consists of seven layers of materials. Outside, wood, then basalt wool as the main insulation barrier, then plaster, mesh, foam, another layer of plaster and, finally, a wooden panel inside. The windows have triple glazing, forming a vital barrier against the piercing cold, and the attic is insulated with sawdust and earth. Combined with a stove or heating system, this design keeps residents warm.
The "heart" of the village is the only coal-fired boiler house. It must work continuously, day and night, because even a short-term shutdown will lead to disaster: the pipes, which run directly inside the living quarters for better heat dissipation, will burst, and people will be left defenseless against the deadly cold.
A characteristic feature of every local house is an unheated room at the entrance. It performs a dual function: it serves as a temperature buffer between the house and the street, and is also used as a giant natural freezer. Here, right on the shelves or floor, strategic reserves are stored all winter: frozen milk, fish and pieces of meat.
Animal husbandry and transport
The nature of Oymyakon is merciless not only to people. Local owners are forced to wrap the udders of cows with a special fabric to protect it from instant frostbite and keep it clean.
Due to the lack of water supply, animals have to be driven to the river for watering every morning. It seems incredible, but even at such extreme temperatures, the river does not freeze in one place. The secret is that warm underground springs beat here.
By the way, they mainly keep an aboriginal breed here - Yakut cows. Despite the harsh conditions and modest diet, they give milk with a fat content of up to 7-8%, which is a valuable source of energy for local residents.
Yakut horses are a true miracle of adaptation. These short, stocky animals have incredibly thick wool and a layer of fat. They have high hooves, which act as insulators and allow animals to stand on the icy ground for days without freezing their feet. Horses live outdoors all year round, even at temperatures down to -70°C.
They are on free range, independently extracting food, although in winter the owners additionally feed them with hay harvested from the summer. For local residents, these animals are a guarantee of life: they are both reliable transport and a source of meat rich in vitamins, which are so lacking in the polar winter.
In addition to cows and horses, reindeer play a large role. Before the advent of all-terrain vehicles, they were the main transport, but even today they remain vital: this is meat, milk and skins for tailoring the same warm clothes, without which a person will die on the street.
Everything is more complicated with technology. If you leave the car outside with the engine turned off, even for a few hours, it turns into an immobile ice statue. Literally everything freezes: metal, diesel fuel, oil, battery. Even the tires become hard as stone and flatten out because the air inside is compressed by the cold.
To bring such a car back to life, a complete defrosting process is required, which takes 3-4 hours: the car is covered with a special cover and heated with a powerful heat gun. Therefore, the only reliable solution for locals is to have an insulated garage where transport can be stored for months without risk to the engine.
Coexistence with the elements
The frozen wolf shown in the film became a symbol of the danger of the local climate. The predator got caught in a trap and died not from injuries, but from hypothermia, turning into an ice statue in a few hours. This clearly illustrates the main rule of the region: lack of movement leads to death.
Due to climatic conditions, agriculture is impossible here. The basis of the diet is meat and fish, which are often eaten raw frozen. Locals claim that this is how products retain the maximum of vitamins necessary for life.
As the blogger notes, despite the extreme conditions, people in Oymyakon do not fight with nature, but coexist with it. They adhere to ancient traditions, respect the spirits of nature and believe: if you don't move, you freeze.
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