Posted on 01/30/2013 5:41:50 PM PST by Pan_Yan
CNN) -- Idiotic TV shows and all the latest apps bumming you out on the 21st century? Ready for some "me time" on the world's remotest islands?
Forget golden sands and swaying palms -- the reality of solitude is different as these terrifyingly distant landfalls demonstrate.
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Bear Island
400 miles off Europe's north coast
Bjornoya, better known as Bear Island, is the southernmost island in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, 400 miles north of mainland Europe -- but only on paper, given that it's almost 150 miles south of the Norwegian island chain with which it's lumped.
It's been a nature reserve since 2002 and has a lively history of failed occupation -- hard to believe for a place of barren cliffs, near-zero precipitation and risk of leaks of radioactive material from the nearby wreck of a nuclear submarine.
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Rockall
270 miles from Ireland
If you think Boreray sounds forbidding, try sailing 187 miles west of it. Rockall is the tip of an extinct volcano reaching 20 meters (about 65 feet) above sea level, in seas with waves recorded as high as 29 meters (95 feet).
In 1955, the British Empire, in its final territorial acquisition, seized Rockall -- allegedly due to fears the Soviets would build a missile battery on it.
Reaching Rockall: In the words of the recently minted Rockall Club, "visiting Rockall is difficult, completely weather dependent and not cheap."
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
St. Kilda is not that far from Scotland yet is one of the most remote places on earth. It is difficult to even land there except in the Summer.
There was an excellent movie made about the last inhabitants called “The Edge of the World”. It is now technically inhabited again as the British Army or Navy has a very small base there.
I recently read that it had been inhabited for at least 2000 years.
Found it. 1937. It's not available for streaming but I'll keep an eye out for it.
Thanks!
Ironically the few inhabitants of these islands probably moved there to get away from people exactly like that.
I bought if off ebay for a pretty cheap price. It was the wrong region code but I had read that my DVD player could be hacked to play any region and that turned out to be true.
I also noticed my computer will play it with no problem. It includes a whole lot of extra information both from Michael Powell and his widow. They also had a short movie of a return to Foula which is the island they filmed on. Nearly all the actors came back tho they were mostly in their 90s. Many of the Island’s inhabitants who were extras in the original movie were still alive too. The main actress who was a real beauty did not come but she was still alive as she lived to 93.
The actors director film crew etc. had to build their own shelter. Foula was just as remote as St. Kilda but was close to main shipping lanes so was far less isolated.
The owner of St. Kilda would not let them film there so they found what was basicall a twin to St. Kilda in the Orkneys I think. That Island such a close match it was almost weird. St. Kilda has the highest cliffs in Scotland and Foula had the exact same type of sheer cliffs which were only something like 10 feet less that Sr. Kilda.
Thanks Pan_Yan. G’night all.
Since the earliest days of the Internet, since the earliest days of "Search Engine Optimization," or "SEO," I've used this very remote American territory as a test of any given search engine's power. In recent years, finally, more and more images have surfaced, other than those of a remote ham radio DX'pedition in the early nineties and at least one persistent hand-held photograph taken from ISS, along with the Amelia lore.
< /br> Here's about all there is to see on Howland Island, aside from the Boobies who live there year round. It was inhabited as a source of phosphorus-rich bird guano for many decades, 1200 miles ssw of Hawai'i. It has a great reef for a half-mile long strip of peanut shaped desert island. No fresh water, but plenty of sun shine, right on the equator and the 180th meridian. The former might make it a great place for an eventual spaceport, with the nearly 1200 meters per second of angular momentum of Earth's rotation under foot, as an added boost to orbit. That's about three times the natural boost available at Cape Kennedy.
Along with what's left of the landing strip prepared but never used by Amelia visible in the shot above, a good picture of what remains of Earhart Light, her memorial, has finally surfaced on the Interwebs:
I often go there, in my head, when trying to get to sleep after consuming too much newsreader-news.
Take care...
 Indian Coast Guard / AP
A Sentinelese man aims his bow and arrow at an Indian Coast Guard helicopter as it flies over his island on Dec. 28, surveying for tsunami damage. Circumstantial evidence suggests the indigenous tribes of the southern archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar used ancient know-how to save themselves from the catastrophic tsunami.
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PORT BLAIR, India - Two days after a tsunami thrashed the island where his ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years, a lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter.
He then took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.
It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, the tribesmen needed to learn nature's sights, sounds and smells to survive.
Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26.
"They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don't possess," said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer who has called on the courts to protect the tribes by preventing their contact with the outside world.
Frozen in the Paleolithic past
The tribes live the most ancient, nomadic lifestyle known to man, frozen in their Paleolithic past. Many produce fire by rubbing stones, fish and hunt with bow and arrow and live in leaf and straw community huts. And they don't take kindly to intrusions.
Anil Thapliyal, a commander in the Indian coast guard, said he spotted the lone tribesman on the island of Sentinel, a 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) key, on Dec. 28.
"There was a naked Sentinelese man," Thapliyal told The Associated Press. "He came out and shot an arrow at the helicopter."
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According to varying estimates, there are only about 400 to 1,000 members alive today from the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompens. Some anthropological DNA studies indicate the generations may have spanned back 70,000 years. They originated in Africa and migrated to India through Indonesia, anthropologists say.
It appears that many tribesman fled the shores well before the waves hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of year.
After the tsunami, local officials spotted 41 Great Andamanese — out of 43 in a 2001 Indian census — who had fled the submerged portion of their Strait Island. They also reported seeing 73 Onges — out of 98 in the census — who fled to highland forests in Dugong Creek on the Little Andaman island, or Hut Bay, a government anthropologist said.
However, the fate of the three other tribes won't be known until officials complete a survey of the remote islands this week, he said. The government reconnaissance mission will also assess how the ecosystem — most crucially, the water sources — has been damaged.
'Islands of the cannibals'
Taking surveys of these areas is dangerous work.
The more than 500 islands across a 3,200-square-mile (8,288-square-kilometer) chain in the southern reaches of the Bay of Bengal appear at first glance to be a tropical paradise. But even one of the earliest visitors, Marco Polo, called the atolls "the land of the head hunters." Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus called the Andamans the "islands of the cannibals."
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Anthropological Survey of India / AP
Three boys from the Jawara tribe in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago pose in a photo released by the Anthropological Survey of India.
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The Sentinelese are fiercely protective of their coral reef-ringed terrain. They used to shoot arrows at government officials when they came ashore and offered gifts of coconuts, fruit and machetes on the beach.
The Jarawas had armed clashes with authorities until the 1990s, killing several police officers.
Samir Acharya, head of the independent Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, said the Jarawas were peaceful until the British, and later the Indians, began encroaching on their territory. Thousands of bow-wielding Jarawas were killed by British bullets in 1859.
Improving relations
Over the past few years, however, relations have improved and some friendly contacts have been made. The government has banned interaction with the tribes, and even taking their pictures is an offense. Many tribe members have visited Port Blair, capital of the Indian-administered territory, and a few Great Andamanese and Onges work in government offices.
Outsiders are forbidden from interacting with the tribesmen because such contact has led in the past to alcoholism and disease among the islanders, and sexual abuse of local women.
"They have often been sexually exploited by influential people — they give the tribal women ... sugar, a gift wrapped in a colored cloth that makes them happy, and that's it," said Roy.
One of the most celebrated stories of a tribal man straddling both worlds is that of En-Mai, a Jarawa teenager brought to Port Blair in 1996 after he broke his leg. Six months later, he looked like any urban kid, in a T-shirt, denim jeans and a reversed baseball cap. But he is back on his island now, having shunned Western ways.
"He took to the ways ... out of a certain novelty," said Acharya. "It's like eating Chinese food on a weekend."
Bear Island
Bishop Rock
Boreray
Bouvet
North Sentinel Island
Rockall
Tristan da Cunha
Note: this topic is from 1/30/2013. Thanks Pan_Yan.
Could any of these places house our incarcerated folks?
Sounds like some great places to exile certain statist leaders after we take back the nation.
Hah! What does CNN know?
Those islands are for pantywaists. The real most deadly island is off the coast of Brazil and it takes a permit to go there because of the danger of a lethal snake bite.
Ilha de Queimada Grande: World’s Deadliest Island | Science | Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/snake-infested-island-deadliest-place-brazil-180951782/?no-ist
Rikers Island
Free Streaming of The Edge of the World here:
http://free-classic-movies.com/movies-03e/03e-1938-01-10-The-Edge-of-the-World/index.php
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