I magine living in a place so cold that spending just ten minutes outdoors could freeze your eyelashes. A place so cold that even running isn’t possible due to the sheer fatigue you’d feel. How would you cope? Could you live in an environment where stepping out could mean certain death? Well, for 280,000 people, their daily life revolves around exactly that.

Deep in the heart of Siberia and shrouded in a blanket of fog lies Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world.

Although summers can be quite warm, reaching highs of 77°F (25°C) in July, the season is very short, and it's the brutal winters that people are accustomed to in this unforgiving city.

The lowest recorded temperature in Yakutsk is -83.9° F (-64.4°C), and for anyone looking to venture outside, not wearing adequate clothing can mean certain death. Locals wear a minimum of three layers before they even consider going out.

But it’s not just the cold that people need to be wary of. It’s also the fatigue.

When making a journey, many Yakutians stop at their neighbour’s house, where they take off a layer of clothing, sip on a hot drink for a few minutes and continue onwards. The reason?

The frigid temperatures make walking so unbearable that they’re forced to make pit stops just to recover. This wouldn’t be an issue when getting in taxis but for those who commute on foot, being unprepared is no joke. It’s a matter of life and death.

Then there’s the eerie mist. Amos Chapple, a photographer from New Zealand who once visited the city, summed it up well:

‘The mist from people’s breath, from car exhaust and from factory emissions, it never goes away, it never dissipates,’ he says. ‘It just hangs there. So very, very misty, all through the day and night’

But for a place so gloomy, dark and cold, why bother living there at all?

The only reason people live in Yakutsk is for its hidden wealth buried deep underground. Although the region of Yakutia is famous for its minerals, within the city, local mines account for 20% of the world’s diamond production, with other mines holding large quantities of oil, gold and silver.

Would anyone want to live here if it weren’t for the stilted houses glowing warmly from the blazing fires?

In the surrounding towns and villages, it gets far worse. Woden houses must be layered with oak or snow to keep the cold out. And each household has to burn more than 60 cubic metres of firewood every winter to stay warm.

Firewood is so essential that even children are taught to chop logs as they need to throughout their lives.

Plants are scarce, so fatty foods like pancakes are eaten daily. As well as keeping people warm, they also provide a lot of calories. Strangely, the local cows do well in frigid conditions, so dairy products are another important food source.

Many of the indigenous men still hunt and make handicrafts, particularly in the villages further out. They live a natural life hunting and fishing, with the latter only possible in the summer months using rods and nets in holes made in the ice.

Due to pipes freezing over, most toilets are outdoors, which helps keep pooping efficient as no one wants to die in an outdoor toilet.

Life in the coldest city is tough, but life in the coldest villages? That takes extreme effort.

It may seem like a winter wonderland, but Yatukia and its capital Yakutsk are far from the typically picturesque Siberia we see online. They are terrifyingly wild places that even modern technology cannot help tame.

And yet, people still live here.

We might complain about the weather, about our internet connection or how bland the food at last week’s restaurant was, but for the people of Yakutsk, they can’t afford to even think about those trivial matters. For them, they live each day as if it were their last.

Because, unlike us, they can’t afford to slack. They can’t afford a slipup and forget a layer of clothing. They can’t choose to skip chopping firewood one day because they’re not feeling like it. Because if they do, they die.

It’s that will to live, that desire to wake up to another day, that keeps the people of Yakutsk going. Their discipline and motivation are innate because of their environment.

What would you do if you were in their place? Would you forgo your chores, or would you get up and do something?

Because if you can do it over there, why can’t you do it here?

From the times that the pyramids were raised to the end of the cold war in this publication you will find it all. This is a publication that has been created to tell the stories of forgotten battles and fortunes that have crafted the world that we live in today.

Product Operations Manager @ Onfido | Writer on History, Personal Development and Tech | Find and connect with me here https://linktr.ee/saj_chy

Laura / L.E. van Altfeldt