Well I haven't been to Antarctica myself, but I hear it's quite cold there for most of the year.

>>31938744

In the north, polar bears are a big danger, esp if you have food

In my line of work (geologist) the two biggest killers in the arctic are falls/crumbling ice and helicopter accidents. Take the craziest kids you knew in public school add three decades of drinking and drugs, you have a bush chopper pilot.

Great guys, but I'd rather be drinking with them than flying with them

On that note, my buddy's exploration camp burned down, and all the stored gas cans fucking exploded one by one. One of the guys flipped out and pulled out a gun he smuggled up (he blamed the native guys working there). Thankfully the rcmp showed up via helicopter.

... The arctic's a weird place

>>31938744

There are a lot of interesting folks who work there, food for though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MImYM87jOtU

>>31938856
I'm sure you have more tales.
Don't you?

>>31938744
>I mean dangers that any human going there might reasonably expect to meet.

The deadliest part of the Arctic/Antarctic is generally the environment itself. It's incredibly cold, it's dark for half the year, the air is thin (in the Antarctic and atop the Greenland ice sheet), unless you're on solid rock, you're always on ice - ice which moves, cracks and gives way, ice which traps and crushes seagoing vessels. Compasses don't work the way you want them to. There are few, if any, landmarks.

>>31938856
OP here, that's the kind of thing I meant. Thank you really much. I you have more story I'd like to hear them.
>Captcha: iceotop inftruments

>>31938880

While I'm at home now (layoffs ;_;) I still try to keep in contact with friends in the field.

My old professor was the greatest inspiration for any travel-worker. He was an old WW2 vet who got into air-photo-analysis after flying recon planes for Canada over France and Britain.

"When you're flying recon planes, the ship has no guns at all, so you can make that height, and if you pass by a German plane, you guys wave at each other. Kinda funny, eh?"

The last time he went to the north pole, was as a tourist with a Russian travel outfit back in the 80s when eco-tours started making money.

He had to bite hold his tongue when their Russian guide claimed they had 'reached the pole', because they reached the magnetic pole, not the geographical pole, 900 clicks away.

When he asked their guide privately about that, he told him in a good Russian humour that "If you tell the other passengers here I might have to leave you"

>>31938744
It's very easy to lose a bit of sanity just being in the place. Doubly so if you aren't used to it
Everything looks the same.
You're completely isolated
You're body is working overtime just to keep you alive
Depending on the time of year Day and Night can have no meaning
It's blinding
You will likely start to disagree with your companions more, but can never split up because of safety

>>31939021
>the air is thin

This is absolutely killer for me, which is a shame since I love to skii. Nothing like having a nice hike outside, trying to blow your nose only to find that's not mucus.

>>31938856
>>31939077
awesome
and we want moar.

I love The Thing, if that's what your friend is going for.

I don't have any work experience in the arctic or Antarctic, but I would just take a look at all the supplies and stuff that you need to bring up there to work or do research, etc. and then think about all of the ways that equipment can catastrophically malfunction or fail. Helicopter crashes are a great one. Like that earlier poster, my dad and brother work in mining and oil (respectively) and have similar fears about helicopters when working in remote sites. Also you're often working on a very tight deadline with equipment that's either not up to snuff (despite what you've requested) or is completely missing. People cut corners or try to meet deadlines with substandard equipment and people get hurt. Improperly secured loads fall off of cranes. Building materials that cannot adequately cope with extreme temperatures fail. Wiring installed sloppily or hurriedly causes fires. Shoddy sanitation fails.

You may also, if it's set in the arctic rather than the antarctic, do something with angry workers. My dad had some work in south america where the site got shut down for weeks by rioting workers. They set the whole camp on fire and destroyed a lot of the heavy equipment, blocked off all the roads to the worksite, had pitched battles with police, the whole 9 yards.

>>31938744
They won't have access to a well, so put a hole in their water tanks.

Now they have to dig out ice and melt it whenever they need water, but without any storage space.

Which will be bad when the generator runs dry and it turns out there were holes in the diesel tanks too.

>>31938880

Well my cousin recently got his credentials to become a chopper-pilot (my poor, poor aunt) so he was able to take me for a ride around Vancouver in a little refurb plane (Beaver? Otter? They all have Canadian animal names) and fly around the Rockies.

He's always loved camping, hated traffic, and when I think objectively about it he was born to be a crazy bush pilot, who may die young, but certainly had a lust for life I can not even try to match.

>>31938744
Cryostasis can provide some good, freaky shit

>>31939179

The prof in question was Alan Gorman, and he really helped me out during undergrad, when I was feeling depressed and hated my field (engineering). We became friends since I also took a minor in English lit. The dude had just turned 80, sees I'm reading "The Tempest" starts perfectly reciting Prospero's big speech. He then shrugs and says "Girls used to like Shakespeare, do they still?"

He passed two years ago, and unfortunately the service did not include his best war time photo - Smiling in a bathtub in a bombed out English house with a brick and his rifle.

He was bathing and the building got hit, but he was completely unscathed. He then realized he should always bathe with a brick and his rifle, rifle in case the jerries were flying high and the brick if they were flying low.

Some teachers, really stick with you, especially when they helped you find work.

http://www.queensu.ca/geol/gorman

>>31939507

I envy you. Seriously, guys like that are worth every last dime you spend for your education.

>>31939507
Wow. This guy.. I wish I had met him at least once. We talk about adventurers in fantasy lands but then we have real people like this.

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>>31938744
Did some one say anomaly.

>>31939623
Get out of here stalker.

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If it were me running the game, I would include either:

A snowy, deserted island with an eerily preserved ghost town on it, thirty to a hundred years old or so. It could have military installation or a numbers station on it. It could be a lost fishing community with meals still on the tables and bodies flash-frozen in place.

Or:

An ice-locked ship graveyard, several dozen ships from the 1800s to the present, brought together by shifting ice and constant arctic sea currents. It could all be centered around the largest ship, an old Art Deco ocean liner or a battleship, and there could be evidence of previous habitation, like graffiti and the vessels being connected with chains and ropes and gangways.

My granddad started my love for travel and the north, because he used to work for Union Gas in the 50s and the 60s when the world was becoming smaller so he was able to travel extensively. He did a lot of travel with his new wife to the arctic, since global temperatures were increasing (probably in part due to leaded gas and CFCs but also the 'little ice age' still had some lingering effect) so geology nerds smelled the oil (protip: it stinks).

Keep in mind though that back then, there were Native Inuit (who we still called Esquimaux/Eskimo) who were living a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but after distemper took out a lot of their sled dogs, the government stepped in to build temporary housing meant to last a few years, prefab buildings mostly. Unfortunately the years went on and the Inuit were forgotten in the times (Russians! Cuba!). So it was a tough time to be native, having grown up in actual igloos and surviving on seals and whales, and then move away to new homes and food sent from the south (that's not even touching the molesting priests barf).

This was a strange time in Inuit culture where they started to move from a hunter-gatherer society to a tourist-based one.

Anyway granddad visited during summer, because it was believed there was a greater chance for 'incidents' during the darker months. So he learned to praise the sun for 23 hours a day, when the sun keeps spinning around you, teasing you with sunset, taunting you with a break. Fun to visit, dreadful to stay in.

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>>31939583
>>31939554

When he was sick in the hospital, I was away in BC but sent an email to his daughter, and she told me to my surprise that he remembered me perfectly, even six years after graduating, and dying of cancer...

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>>31939918
>Visiting during summer, because it was believed there was a greater chance for 'incidents' during the darker months.

Your use of the word 'incidents' sends just the right sort of chill up my spine.

>>31939986
Jeez, dude

>>31938744

I believe everything that's writen on this thread, every word

Anyway to end it on a lighter note, let me tell you of a coworker we shall call Dipper.

Dipper was a crane guy, he sat in the crane all day, even during breaks. He sat in that metal can, for eight hours a day with his little binoculars and radio, when the temperatures were so low the schools call "snow day" anyways.

We felt bad for Dipper until he told us on slow days he would just hotbox the mother and play his DS =/

In his defence, he never caused an accident, and never toked up when there was chance he'd be operating it (i.e. the rebar ordered is going to be late, but he has to sit there in case it magically arrives during a blizzard).

First day of spring, snow is gone, and at lunch Dipper comes out of his tower prison to tell us he just saw three kids screwing in the woods.

He goes on to elaborate that he saw two guys and a girl walking through the woods, stop and share a joint. This turns into a three way until someone notices a giant crane with a bearded guy looking in binoculars at them, at which point they bug out.

We of course, call bullshit and investigate the area, about two hundred feet away from the base of his tower.

We found a used Jimmy hat, and some tracks.

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If you're in the Antarctic, you also have to worry about the giant albino penguins.

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>>31940400

QALLAPILIUT CAN'T CATCH ME

>>31940417

http://www.inuitmyths.com/story_qua.htm

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>>31940417
YOU GON' GET CATCHED

AN' YOU GON' GET ET

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSMET

>yfw earth is a giant magnet

>>31940400
Such a gorgeous mating call.

Teke li li! Teke li li!

Not the OP, but >>31939745, thinking now of running an arctic-based horror game. TO anyone reading his thread, what do you think would be the best way to approach things? Local myths, legends, and monsters? Cold War experiments? Crashed alien craft? Ghosts?

>>31941428

Slightly faded newspaper clippings for local murders or to make it extra creepy someone is mutilating pets

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The northern lights should be significant.

>>31941428
Use Ithaqua, go full Mythos with the wendigos.