Antarctic Extremes

(playful oboe music) - I'm sorry, is this real?

- Yeah, that's real.

It's a desiccated penguin.

That's a hundred year old penguin, yeah, dead penguin.

- That's disgusting.

And you guys left this in your museum?

(chuckles) - [Michael] We don't judge.

- [Caitlin] Some of the earliest Antarctic explorers lived here between 1911 and 1917.

- [Michael] Things are pretty much as intact as when they left.

It's kind of hallowed ground for explorers to see how fast they departed and how they left everything behind.

- This was the true age of exploration.

- [Arlo] Robert Falcon Scott aimed to be the first to reach the South Pole and his team made this hut their home base.

- He was very much interested in science, as well as exploration.

They had all kinds of experiments here, meteorological, biological, and geological observations.

- [Caitlin] Scott actually made it but a Norwegian beat him there and then he froze to death on the way back.

- [Arlo] Living here was pretty rough.

- [Caitlin] Seal blubber.

Gross!

- [Arlo] And in some ways, it still is.

- [Caitlin] But despite its hostility, people are still drawn to this desolate continent today.

What is living here like now?

Who comes here and why?

(dramatic orchestral music) - All right, fresh bagels, guys.

- While living in Antarctica for a month, we experienced basically two very different lifestyles.

I set this up all by myself!

One in the remote field camps.

I'm pretty proud.

The other in what residents affectionately call the Town, McMurdo Station.

- [Caitlin] This 105-building station was established in the 50s and today houses around 900 people in summer.

- [Arlo] And it's got just about everything, dorms, offices, a hospital, fire station, waste treatment plant, weather office, vehicle maintenance shop, and 24/7 pizza.

- If you're gonna get a slice of pizza 20 minutes before dinner time, I'm at least gonna shame you about it.

And it's all here to support science, (penguins chirp and gak) stuff like research on penguins, seals, volcanoes, climate science, weird-looking glaciers, even fish.

McMurdo provides logistical support for science across western Antarctica and the South Pole.

- [Arlo] But most people in this town aren't scientists.

- Oh man, this is the best place in the world to be a trash man.

No flies, no rats, nothing rots.

It's frozen, doesn't even really stink.

- [Arlo] They are the people who handle the trash, they are the cooks, the mechanics.

- Without us, without support people, there would be no science.

You need this big population of 700 to 1,000 people to support maybe 300 scientists because you've gotta get them to where they need to go, you've gotta get their equipment, their food, their water, and so forth.

- [Caitlin] They're essential for the science to happen but a lot of them never even get to leave the station, which looks and feels sort of like an aging mining town.

So it's hard to see on the surface what's so appealing about this place.

(dramatic orchestral music) - People either come down their first season and say that's it, it's a bucket list thing, and then they never come back and there's others that just come back year after year after year.

It's either just out of curiosity or adventure or they just get into the community and stay with the community.

I never thought I'd be doing this.

I left a pretty good job to come down here and I stayed and I keep coming back.

- What was your previous job?

- I worked on the Space Shuttle, Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

- [Caitlin] No kidding!

- Yeah.

- [Caitlin] Space Shuttle to snowmobiles?

- Yeah, I know, it's kinda-- - [Caitlin] You must really like (laughs) it down here.

- [Arlo] In a way, McMurdo kind of operates like a college campus.

All of your basic needs, like meals and housing, are taken care of.

(truck beeps) - You can do more with your social time here than anywhere else in the world 'cause you're not buying groceries, you're not buying gas, you're not paying bills.

I see more live music here than I do almost anywhere else and then I get to eat three meals a day with eight of my close friends.

(whimsical oboe music) - [Arlo] In the few weeks we spent here, we found that the bottom of the world is actually a pretty social place.

- Yeah, there's a lot of people who come here to escape people.

It's not that great of a place to escape people, honestly.

- [Caitlin] And it turns out on a continent where there's no cell phone service, you get to know people on a whole different level.

Arlo, who was your teenage crush?

- Hilary Duff.

(Caitlin laughs) - [Caitlin] A Baby!

- [Man] It's okay.

- [Caitlin] While McMurdo Station can be the social and logistical hub of Antarctica, the science it supports can happen in much more remote and isolated environments.

(helicopter blades flutter distantly) - [Krista] Probably the first thing you'll notice once the helicopter goes away is how quiet it is.

It's absolutely just super quiet out there.

You really are out there with just your team.

- [Caitlin] This is where we encountered the second Antarctican lifestyle.

- [Arlo] Out in the remote field camps, you often live in a tent, cook your own food, even poop in a bucket and bring it back to town.

- [Krista] You will be pretty amazed at how gusty it can get out there.

Yeah, you gotta keep your wits about you.

You can't put anything down on the ground without expecting it to blow away at any moment.

- [Arlo] On the ice, you have to watch out for deadly hidden cracks and, of course, it's freezing cold and windy.

- It's a strange environment to want to go and spend months away from everyone you know and everything you know in the pursuit of something.

- [Caitlin] In addition to completing their work, whether that be scientific research or logistical support for that research, the teams have to, well, survive and the environment makes everything exponentially harder.

- [Britney] Nothing ever works exactly how you want it to and so there's all these different challenges.

The technology frost is always a challenge.

We had a software glitch.

We actually really don't know what happened.

But things like that.

(pensive music) - Working here is like going up the down escalator.

You have to push a little bit harder or else it's just gonna push you back down again.

And so things are breaking all the time.

It's cold, so things snap, things freeze up.

You have to make that extra push in order to make things work.

Time to get serious.

(chuckles) There we go.

- But why do science unless you absolutely love what you're studying?

I mean, it's so consuming sometimes.

I think you have to be really passionate and really enjoy, 'cause this is grueling sometimes.

(laughing) This is really grueling!

So I think you have to have the love.

- [Caitlin] But despite the challenges, or perhaps because of them, comes an addictive sense of satisfaction.

- I always tell people it becomes more and more like work all the time and that's just a joke, it's not true.

(group laughs) - I don't get it.

- It's not more and more like work all the time.

I still enjoy it.

I actually enjoy bringing new people down.

You know, and then you see how they react, right?

- [Caitlin] We came to Antarctica to report on the research being conducted down here but the people we met were just as fascinating.

(quiet laughter) - There's something about remote research that really appeals to me and I don't know what it is.

- It was the hardest thing I'd ever done in the most beautiful place I could imagine.

- [Caitlin] It's a bit less dangerous than it was for the first explorers and there's a lot more support, but this place still has a powerful allure.

- They say that when you shake the planet, all the weird stuff falls to the bottom.

(chuckles) I guess I'm one of the weird ones.

(playful music) (strums ukulele) (quiet chattering) A la la la la long A la la la la long long li long long long - [Man] Oh, somebody showed me this when I was a kid.

I forgot all about this one.

- Pick two cards.

Pick one card.

- [Woman] Oh my god!

- Oh!

- You picked it.

It's magic!

Til you can't sweat no more And if you cry out I'm gonna push it Push it, push it some more (group cheers and applauds) (synth music) (calm music)