There are many harsh places in the world to find yourself. The desert can kill you just as surely as being in Hurricane Alley. There are parts of the world where it rains almost constantly, while others are prone to earthquakes and landslides. But few places are as inhospitable as the Arctic. Just a vast frozen expanse of snow and ice at the top of the world where only the bravest of men can overcome the odds and survive.
10. Poop Knife
No proper account of Arctic survival stories can exist without reference to the most infamous Arctic survival story ever told. We are, of course, referring to the story of the poop knife.
According to a widely accepted story, sometime in the 1950s, there was an isolated Inuit man who lived alone and whose family wanted him to join them in town. To escape the fate they had in store for him, he made his escape into the frozen tundra using the most astonishing improvisation imaginable. Under cover of darkness and without tools, as they had been confiscated by his family, the man is said to have released feces into the icy world and then set about shaping it into a blade. Using nothing but his own saliva to sharpen the icy edge, he sacrificed a sled dog and then fashioned a sled from its ribcage before attaching it to a second dog and escaping into the night.
The story was allegedly told by the missing man's grandson, and it captivated people so much that several researchers and morbidly curious readers attempted to recreate the feet. So yes, scientists have tried to make knives out of frozen poop.
Their conclusion was that the knives were ineffective and melted again when used. However, at the same time, there is a report from another Arctic explorer who said that he made his own chisel to dig his way out of a snowy prison.
No poop knife has ever been successful in the lab, but they have yet to test it in freezing conditions to get an accurate replica. The ones they've made have been able to cut through the subcutaneous fat of a pig before they melt, so there's always a chance.
9. Douglas Mawson's Deadly Journey
Douglas Mawson didn't survive the Arctic. He chose the opposite side of the world and conquered Antarctica. The problem was that he decided to do so in 1912, without knowing where he was going, without any real technology or equipment to navigate the continent, and with only two companions. Only Mawson survived.
It's hard to describe how cold it is in Antarctica. For some perspective, in May 1912, where Mawson was, the winds averaged over 60 miles per hour every day, 24 hours a day, for the entire month. Sometimes they've been over 200 miles per hour. Temperatures have dropped to -77 degrees Fahrenheit. The year before Mawson went there, in 1911, another explorer's teeth froze so hard they shattered. So that's as cold as it gets.
Mawson's companions were a dog handler and a lawyer who was a champion skier. They covered 300 miles in just over a month, and things seemed to be going well. It wasn't long before the first of his companions fell into a secret crack in the ice, taking the dogsled with him. The hole was so deep that the other men couldn't see the bottom.
With most of their food on the lost sledge, the two survivors were left in a precarious position. On the return journey, they were forced to eat the weakest of their sled dogs. At some point, Mawson went blind, and by January, he wrote in his diary that his partner's skin had peeled off his legs. The next day, the man became delirious and developed a fever, and died that night. Mawson was alone.
He had 100 miles to go. His face was frostbitten and in agony, as were his feet. At one point he took off his boots and the soles of his feet had come off. He bandaged the loose skin again and kept going.
A few days later, in such pain that he could barely walk five miles a day, Mawson himself fell into a crevasse. He managed to hang on to the edge of a sledge hanging over a bottomless pit. But there was a rope attached to the sledge, and it held up long enough for him to climb up. The same thing happened again the next day, but he had fashioned himself a rope ladder the night before as a safety measure, and it paid off.
By the end of January, he was making only four miles a day. He was in great agony and had suffered numerous cold sores. His hair had even started to fall out. Amazingly, he then found a cave near his base camp where other members of the original landing party had left food, including oranges and a pineapple.
On February 8 he found a shore party waiting for him, and although their ship had already left, he remained with his party and supplies and survived another winter before returning home.
8. Gudlaugur Fridorsson
There's an Icelandic fisherman named Gudlaugur Fridthorsson who proves that Viking roots are stronger than you think. Back in 1984, Fridthorsson and four other men were fishing near the Westman Islands when their boat crashed and capsized one evening. It was -2 degrees Celsius outside, and the ocean water was a deadly five to six degrees Celsius. The average person can only survive 10 to 20 minutes in water at 5 degrees before their muscles begin to weaken and they lose coordination.
Two of the men drowned immediately, but Fridorsson and two others climbed onto the keel of the boat. Their respite was short-lived: the boat sank completely, and all three were lost in the stormy, dark sea. The other two men were never seen alive again, but Fridorsson swam alone in those waters for five hours. Apparently, he was accompanied on the journey by an arctic fulmar, a kind of bird.
When he finally reached the shore after swimming almost 4 miles, he realized that he had come ashore in an impossible place. The waves were crashing against the rocky, inaccessible shore, so he had to go back into the water and swim further around the island in search of a better place.
Once he found a suitable spot, he had to walk in wet jeans, a sweater, and barefoot for another 2 miles in sub-zero temperatures until he found a town. Despite the ordeal and a body temperature of 93 F, he survived without any signs of hypothermia, which doctors attributed to the fact that he weighed just under 300 pounds and was well insulated.
7. Pauloosie Keyotak
Paulusi Keyotuck is a politician from Nunavut, one of Canada’s least populated and coldest regions. A man who grew up on the land and an avid hunter and fisherman, he was well aware of the environment he was entering when he set out on a snowmobile journey in 2016. But even then, he knew his journey would not end. That was easy, considering the plan was to travel about 500 kilometers, or about 310 miles.
The journey should have been easier than it looked, as it was a well-established route that Keyotuck planned to take with his son and nephew. There were cabins along the way to shelter in, and the trio had supplies to survive the 15-hour journey. It probably would have gone smoothly if not for a brutal snowstorm that disoriented them and caused them to lose the trail.
The three went missing on March 22. By the time they realized they were far off the trail, they didn’t have enough fuel to get back or reach their destination, so they did what any sensible person would do when stranded on the snowy plains of Nunavut. Keiotak used his pocket knife to carve out a snow shelter while the other two tracked caribou. And then they waited.
Canadian military personnel joined the rescue efforts, and despite having only a sleeping bag, some water, sugar and tea, the men survived quite comfortably until they were rescued on March 31.
6. Pitovirus
Not everything that survives in the frigid north is necessarily human. Or even intelligent. Perhaps the greatest Arctic survival story comes from the frozen wastes of Siberia, where scientists have brought a 30,000-year-old pituitary virus back from the cold. Because, frankly, doesn’t the world need more giant prehistoric viruses?
To be honest, the pithovirus is not dangerous to humans or animals, although it is still somehow infectious after so many thousands of years on ice. It is also a giant, at least as viruses go. You can use a regular microscope to see it. It is 1.5 micrometers in size. The average viral cell is between 20 and 400 nanometers in size. The pithovirus is 1,500 nanometers in size. It is a big guy.
The virus attacks amoebas, so we multicellular life forms are mostly safe for now. But that doesn't mean there aren't other, more dangerous viruses out there that won't emerge when the Arctic starts to melt.
5. Bob Goshi
Pilot Bob Gochey was making an unremarkable flight across Canada's Northwest Territories in 1967. The Northwest Territories are sparsely populated, and you can drive for hundreds of miles without seeing anything but forest and moose.
It was early February, a harsh time of year this far north, and Goshi was caught in a violent storm. He was disorientated and nearly out of fuel when he decided to save his life by making an emergency landing. He had taken no survival equipment with him – the plane had emergency flares and a box of frozen fish. The temperature had dropped to -60 C, which is about -76 F.
The search began shortly after Bob went missing, but the problem is that the Northwest Territories are about 442,000 square miles. In all that space, there are only about 45,000 people, and nearly half of them live in Yellowknife, where Bob was headed. The rest is forest. Goshi landed so far from civilization that he even lost radio contact.
Rescuers searched for three weeks without success. The bitter cold and strong winds made people think there was no way the man could have survived after so long. The search was called off. Friends even raised money to continue a private search, but it might not last long. The big problem? Bob had landed on a frozen lake in a white plane. He was invisible to search parties.
Wolves often circled his plane and he talked to them to avoid being alone, but after 58 days, a plane on a routine flight noticed something unusual on the ice and landed to check it out. Bob surprised the pilot and passenger by showing they were both alive and approached them with his suitcase, asking if they had room for another passenger. He holds the record for the longest solo survival in the Arctic by a downed pilot.
4. Bob Bartlett
Bob Bartlett was arguably the greatest Arctic explorer of all time. He led more than 40 missions to map and explore the region, more than anyone else ever has. And this despite being shipwrecked 12 times and nearly dying several more.
His passion and obsession was Arctic exploration and the discovery of the North Pole. He was involved in many unsuccessful missions, including one in which his explorer friend Robert Peary lost eight toes to frostbite. In 1908, the Pole was spotted on his third attempt when Peary sent Bartlett home, claiming he was not as good at sledging as the other man on the expedition.
In 1913, while on a scientific expedition, Bartlett's ship became trapped in ice for a staggering five months. Anticipating the worst, he ordered his crew to build an igloo on the ice and transport supplies. When the ice finally broke through the hull and sank the ship, at least they were prepared.
The crew left camp and traveled hundreds of miles by sled. They left their crew on Wrangel Island and then traveled the last 700 miles to Alaska with one guide, reaching there by the end of May. The rescue ship reached the island crew by September, a full eight months after their own ship sank, which, you will recall, had been aground for five months before sinking.
3. Marten Hartwell
Marten Hartwell was a pilot who had set out on the same journey as Bob Goshee a few years earlier. Hartwell was flying three passengers—a pregnant Inuit woman, a nurse, and a boy named David Pisurayak Kutuk—to Yellowknife to get to a hospital. Kutuk had appendicitis and needed treatment.
A storm knocked the plane off course, it crashed into a hill and crashed near a lake. The woman and the nurse died, but Hartwell and the boy lived together for 23 days.
Kutuku, despite being only 14 years old and gravely ill, managed to build a shelter for himself and the pilot to withstand the -40C temperatures. He also made a fire and hunted for food, but it was not enough.
Hartwell was eventually forced to eat the flesh of the dead passengers. Kutuk, despite his condition and the fact that there was nothing else to eat, refused. He died of starvation after 23 days, while Marten lived for another week until rescuers arrived. Doctors later determined that Kutuk would have survived if he had not expended so much energy building a shelter and trying to keep him and Hartwell alive. He was posthumously awarded the Cross of Merit.
2. Bruce Gordon
The harsh climate is one of the scariest things about surviving in the Arctic, but that's not all you have to overcome. Polar bears call this land home, and they're not to be taken lightly. So what happens when you run into North America's largest land predator? If you're Bruce Gordon, you make friends.
Gordon was on a whaler in 1757, and it is said that the captain was too brave to set sail. The ship was between Greenland and Iceland when it was crushed by ice floes. Gordon was on a lookout high up on the mast and was thrown off the ship onto the ice as it sank.
The boat capsized and Gordon was able to get into the upturned vessel and search the dry parts for food and supplies. That's when the bears came.
According to legend, a bear got on the ship and he was able to kill it using a torch and a knife. He skinned it and collected the meat, and then some time later a cub appeared. He killed its mother.
Taking pity on her, he fed the cub, and she became his companion. She grew up and followed him like a dog, even fighting off other polar bears that came later. They lived and hunted together for a long time, until Gordon finally found a small settlement of natives.
The bear left in time and never returned, and Gordon managed to track down another ship that rescued him. On board, he learned that he had been missing for seven years.
Is this story true? Well, who can say? But that's what it was said.
1. Ada Blackjack
Wrangel Island is an Arctic island near the East Siberian Sea where Bob Bartlett left his crew. It is also the location of Ada Blackjack's amazing survival story.
Blackjack was an Inupiat, an Alaskan native, and by no means a survivalist. In September 1921, she was hired on a one-year contract for an Arctic expedition as a seamstress, since her experience was sewing fur clothing, nothing more. All food, shelter, and survival gear were guaranteed as part of her terms of employment, so she accepted.
The plan was to claim Wrangel Island for the British Empire for no apparent reason. The four men and Blackjack set out with no Arctic survival experience and six months of supplies. Remember, this was a year-long mission. The Arctic was supposed to provide them with everything they needed for the next six months.
They managed to hold out for a year, but the ship sent to retrieve them was forced to turn back after failing to break through the ice. One man fell ill with scurvy, and three others decided to go for help, leaving Blackjack to care for the sick man. These men were never seen again.
Blackjack nursed the patient for six months. She had to learn to hunt and survive, while facing constant criticism from the patient. Then he died.
Alone, Blackjack continued her efforts to survive. She learned to trap foxes and shoot birds. In August 1923, a boat finally arrived and found Blackjack as one of two survivors on the island. The expedition left with a cat named Vic, whom she also managed to keep alive.
When she returned, she had not been paid nearly what she was owed, and people criticized her for failing to save a dying man's life. Others profited from her story, and she did not, but at least her name and her remarkable tenacity can now be known more widely.
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