The Earth is teeming with life on all levels and all climates, even in the most hostile and extreme environments, some sort of life springs up.
That says something about life: that it springs eternal no matter the environment.
Take the case of the pupfish colonies eking out an existence in Death Valley’s aquifers and springs, or the Desulforudis audaxviator bacteria that lives in complete biological isolation at the bottom of a gold mine in South Africa.
Life adapts to its environment and pushes forward.
Here are some examples of the most hostile environments on the planet.
Antarctica
“Antarctica has this mythic weight. It resides in the collective unconscious of so many people, and it makes this huge impact, just like outer space. It’s like going to the moon.”
Jon Krakauer
The white, snowy landscape of Antarctica is deceiving; it looks inviting, beautiful and unreal, but it’s one of the most hostile environments on the planet.
The Antarctic winter wonderland registers an average temperature in winter of minus 34.4 Celsius (minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit).
The coldest temperature ever registered on the planet was recorded in Antarctica in 1983 at minus 89.2 degrees Celsius (minus 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
This absolutely freezing, spine-chilling temperature was registered at Vostok Research Station, which sits at the center of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, about 800 miles (1,300 km) from the Geographic South Pole.
Antarctica challenges our understanding of habitability, pushing us to question how life endures in the most hostile terrains.
It is the coldest, driest and windiest continent on Earth.
Although Antarctica is 98% ice and the rest merely rocks, the area is teeming with life, or at least the sea is.
The waters surrounding the ice are chock full of krill, squid, fish, seals and other creatures.
The land, however, has no native mammals or amphibians.
The only life to be seen are the 4,000 researchers that flock to the area every year to carry out their studies.
Sistan Basin, Afghanistan
Once the home of the Hamoun wetlands, an 800-square-mile (2,000-square-km) oasis fed by the Helmand River, has now become on one of the driest in the world.
But until the ‘90s, the area was booming in agriculture and full of flora fauna. Located in southern Afghanistan, the Sistan Basin has been consistently dammed and used for irrigation for decades.
It beckons a dire question: If war and drought persist, can any environmental initiative succeed in restoring it?
That, coupled with one of the most severe droughts registered in the area ever has turned the once thriving wetlands into a dustbowl.
Precipitation has dropped 78%, and efforts by the United Nations to remedy the situation have been hampered by the war.
Changtang, Tibet
The Changtang is the highest point in the Tibetan Plateau stretching upwards at 16,400 feet (5,000 meters).
The weather in the region tends to be short, hot and dry summers, glacial winters and precipitation that falls mostly as hail.
Despite all of this, the area abounds with birds, Tibetan gazelle and wild sheep.
It serves as a grim warning: even places once seemingly untouched by human impact are not immune to the ravages of climate change.
The Changtang is inhabited by the Changpa nomads who herd goats and other livestock.
The irony is that the grasslands in Changtang are disappearing due to overgrazing and climate change.
The result, according to an April 2010 National Geographic article, is that nomads are forced to move to government resettlement camps, where they face unemployment and water shortages.
Siberia
“Siberia is a vast and mysterious land, full of contrasts and contradictions.”
Valentin Rasputin
For those of you who have read accounts and stories of prisons in Siberia, its inclusion in the list will come as no surprise.
Synonymous, for exile, prisons and a brutal climate, Siberia comprises most of northern Asia, covering 13.1 million square kilometers, or 77% of Russia.
This immense region stretches west to east beginning in the Ural Mountains all the way to the Arctic Ocean in the north and to the Pacific Ocean.
Siberia's reputation for brutal cold and harsh conditions has cemented its place in cultural narratives as a land of exile and hardship.
Although Siberia’s southern end can accommodate agriculture, until relatively recently, its economy was rudimentary.
Today, Siberia’s economy is based on mining and oil and gas.
Temperatures can soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in the summer and plummet into double-digit negatives in the winter.
The town of Oymyakon in Siberia is the coldest permanently inhabited village in the world, with a record low temperature of minus 96.16 F (minus 71.2 C) in 1924.
The Australian Outback
The outback is the hot, arid region that covers most of Australia.
The term Outback itself is tricky, giving the impression that it has an exact location, but the truth is that it doesn’t have an exact location or a specific size.
Most of Australia’s population, more than 90%, lives in urban areas on the coast; only 690,000 people live in the Outback.
The Outback challenges the illusion that all of Australia is habitable, revealing the stark differences between its urbanized coast and the unforgiving interior.
And it’s not surprising. The high temperatures, infertile soil and potentially dangerous wildlife keep settlers away from the Outback.
The real danger in this desert is the heat. Travellers are advised to carry spare parts, an emergency radio beacon and lots and lots of water.
The Sahara Desert
“In the empire of desert, water is the king and shadow is the queen.”
Mehmet Murat Ildan
The third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic (yes, they too are deserts) measures 9,400,000 square kilometers (3,600,000 sq. mi), making it almost as large as China or the United States.
It stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic coast, covering most of North Africa and holding little life within.
The Sahara receives less than 3 inches (7.6 cm) of precipitation each year, making it one of the driest places on earth.
The Sahara stands as a testament to the resiliency of life, where even in one of the most inhospitable landscapes, human and animal life find ways to adapt and survive.
It’s also one of the hottest with average temperatures at 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in summer.
The hottest temperature on record, 136 F (58 C), was recorded in the desert town of El Azizia, Libya.
Almost nothing lives in the Sahara.
Some Nomadic tribes live on the desert’s margins, etching out an existence from trading, hunting and livestock.
Greenland
Lying just 460 miles (740 km) from the North Pole, Greenland is anything but green.
The world’s largest non-continental island is almost entirely covered in a 1.8-mile-thick ice sheet, while the coast, the only inhabitable area, is home to the island’s 56,653 people.
Greenland offers a stark contrast to the expectations set by its name, serving as a lesson in the deceiving nature of labels.
If that weren’t enough, Greenlanders have to deal with the arctic sunrises and sunsets, or lack thereof, with near constant sunlight during the 3 summer months and near-darkness from mid-November to mid-January.
Part of the island, known as the National Park, is inhabited only by polar bears, walruses and other Arctic wildlife.
Rarely do humans venture into this white, wild area.
The Atacama Desert
The driest place on the planet is composed of stony terrain, salt lakes, sand, with felsic lava flowing towards the Andes.
It occupies 105,000 square kilometers (41,000 sq. mi) on a 600 mile strip of land (1,000 km) in Chile.
Though the average rainfall is about 15 millimeters (0.59 in) per year, locations receive 1 millimeter (0.04 in) to 3 millimeters (0.12 in) in a year, while others have never received any rain.
And researchers say that the Atacama may not have had any significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971.
That’s enough to dry any man or beast’s throat!
While the Atacama may seem inhospitable, it provides valuable resources through its copper mines, which sustain the human population in this arid environment.
Even so, while there are no animals in the Atacama desert, a million people make it heir home.
Most live near and work at the copper mines, while others live near the coast in research stations.
Strangely enough, this extreme area, unlike other deserts where the temperatures are absolutely sweltering.
Atacama registers an average temperature between 32 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit, and can fall to as low as 10 to 15 degrees below zero at night.
Death Valley
The name itself is daunting, but the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, have inhabited the valley for at least 1,000 years.
The natives called it tümpisa, meaning “rock paint,” thus called because of the red ochre paint made from a type of clay found in the valley.
It received its English name during the California Gold Rush in 1849 when prospectors crossing the valley were astounded by the extreme conditions of the desert, but only one death was registered in that era.
The enduring presence of the Timbisha tribe and a few families in Death Valley underlines human adaptability in even the most unforgiving climates.
However, Death Valley is the lowest, driest, and hottest area in North America, which is enough to warrant inclusion in the list.
The highest recorded temperature ever registered in Death Valley was 134 °F (57 °C) on July 10, 1913, at Furnace Creek, but the minimum annual temperature is around 77.2 °F (25.1 °C) with considerable increases during the summer months.
Some families still live in Death Valley, mostly in Furnace Creek.
Inhospitable lands, yet life finds a way
In the grand scheme of things, Mother Nature seems to have a wicked sense of humor, daring us to set up shop in the most inhospitable corners of the Earth.
From the freezer aisle of Antarctica to the oven-like Sahara, life not only survives but sometimes thrives, as if playing a cosmic game of “Survivor” with the universe.
The next time you grumble about your air conditioning failing, consider this: a pupfish in Death Valley is probably scoffing, “And you thought you had issues?”
Indeed, Earth’s most brutal habitats serve up life lessons with a dash of cosmic satire.
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