Brownstone Institute BY
In October of 2021, I deployed to McMurdo Station, Antarctica for the second time. Each austral summer, McMurdo Station becomes home to about 1,000 eclectic and wonderful people who are the workforce behind the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) United States Antarctic Program (USAP), which facilitates research with a logistical prowess on par with that of the US military.
Despite McMurdo’s remoteness and lack of the usual American amenities, there is normally a rich community life on this strange island. The community organizes yoga classes, cafes, art galleries, music festivals, craft fairs, holiday parties, and more. I was enamored by this social-scape during my first visit in 2017, but in 2021 community life at McMurdo has been unrecognizable due to the NSF’s Covid policies for the Antarctic.
While USAP research stations are some of the only populations in the world with zero Covid, residents of these stations live under stricter Covid precautions than many Western cities during peak waves of infection.
