Truth About Living in Alaska No One Talks About

Though often called the Bermuda Triangle’s  little cousin, the Alaska Triangle is probably better considered the big cousin.  Covering a vast region that links Anchorage, Juneau, and Utqiagvik, this eerie expanse has  witnessed over 20,000 disappearances since the 1970s- averaging a staggering 2,250 vanishings  each year. That’s more than six per day and far exceeds the Bermuda Triangle’s infamous track  record.

So, what’s going on here? Could it be the pull of unexplained magnetic forces? The work  of extraterrestrial beings?

A shroud of political intrigue? Or is it just the harsh wilderness,  unpredictable weather conditions, and rugged terrain, combined with the unholy vastness and  remoteness that famously characterize Alaska? Today, we’ll be looking at why so many  people steer clear of Alaska, and how, though such an empty and inhospitable  place, it came to be known at all.

Alaska’s is derived from the Aleut  word “Alyeska,” meaning ‘The Great Land,’ and the name is fitting. Covering  an area of around 665,000 square miles, Alaska is the largest state in the USA- it’s  so massive, it’s equal in size to one-fifth of the rest of the USA. To put that into  perspective, if you placed Alaska over a map of the lower 48 states, all the way from  Georgia to California.

And of the almost 12,300 miles of coastline in the entire U. S. , around  6,600 of them, over 50%, belong to Alaska.

Alaska is about as unknown to humans as the  world’s oceans. Despite having over 365 million acres, human civilization has only settled  160,000 acres of it. That’s less than 1/20th of 1 percent of the state, making it almost  completely undiscovered.

Alaska is truly the last great wilderness in the United States.  The state is so big that even if you could see one million acres of it every day, it would  still take you a year to see the whole thing. So what’s actually in Alaska, if there’s so little  human settlement?

First of all, mountains. Alaska is an extremely rugged and mountainous territory.  It boasts 17 of the 20 highest mountains in the US, including North America’s tallest peak, Mount  McKinley, which stands at over 20,200 feet high.

Alaska’s mountains compose three main  ranges: the Brooks Range, the Alaska Range, and the Aleutian Range, which stretches out  far into the Pacific Ocean. Below and between these mountain ranges lie dense forests,  glaciers, and tundra- a kind of biome where tree growth is hindered by freezing  temperatures and short growing seasons. Alaska is also a land of many lakes and  rivers.

The state has 40% of the United States’ water resources within its bounds.  The 86,000 square-mile area of Alaska that is covered by water could fit the  City of Los Angeles 183 times, or, Minnesota once. Of the 3,000,000 natural lakes to  be found in Alaska, around 3,200 are officially named.

Its 12,000 rivers taken altogether, run  a total of 365,000 miles through the landscapes, and less than 1%, or around 3,100 miles of these,  are officially designated as wild and scenic. And that’s just the liquid water. As for  the frozen kind, well, it just so happens that 5% of Alaska, or 29,000 square miles  of it, sits under glaciers.

We’re talking about around 100,000 glaciers. That’s  over half of the whole world’s glaciers. As a state that is far more wild than tame,  the Alaska State Park System is the largest in the United States by far, with 3.

2  million acres to its name. And the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve  in Alaska, covering 13.

2 million acres, is the biggest national park in the country  and can fit Yellowstone in it 6 times over. And so, unsurprisingly, the biggest  state park in the United States- Wood-Tikchik State Park- is also in Alaska.  Comprising 1.

6 million acres of wilderness, the park is over 8 times  the size of New York City. With such quantities of frozen and flowing water, and the tundras and high mountains  making up Alaska’s geography, it is characterized by what can only be called an  extreme climate and environment. In North America, Alaska ranks easily among the highest on the list  of places prone to extreme weather.

Temperatures in the winter can go as low as - 60 degrees below  Fahrenheit (-26 below Celsius). It’s one of the many barriers Alaska poses to permanent,  and even temporary, human settlement. You’d be forgiven for thinking, “well,  that’s just the winter, half the year, doesn’t it warm up later.

” But unfortunately,  in Alaska, the cold obeys other laws than what most of us come to expect as normal. The  effects of the cold temperatures influence the Alaskan environment throughout the year.  An impressive 85% of Alaska is covered by permafrost--permanently frozen ground. 

Some of the top-surface of the permafrost thaws and freezes periodically with  the seasonal variation in sunlight, and that, as we’ll see later, is for  us another place where problems start. It will make some sense then, that Alaska  has an extremely small human population, given such climatic conditions. But the same  doesn’t go for wildlife.

Most of America’s salmon, crab, halibut and herring come from Alaska. And  while grizzly bears in the lower 48 states have been considered a threatened species since  1975, there is no such problem in Alaska, where there’s over 32,000 grizzlies. In the  whole of the lower 48 states, there are fewer than 2,000 bears remaining, while in Alaska,  there’s one grizzly bear for every 21 people.

Alaska isn’t just defined by its geographical  enormity or its astounding wildlife—what truly sets it apart is its emptiness. Despite its  massive size and natural wonders, Alaska feels almost untouched, with astonishingly little human  settlement dotting its vast, rugged landscapes. This state, the biggest in the US by far in  physical size, is one of the smallest when considering its human population.

There are  only around 730,000 people living in Alaska, almost half a million less than the population  of Rhode Island, the smallest US state. The population density of Alaska is one  person per square mile, making Alaska the state with easily the lowest population  density of all the others. By comparison, the average for the rest of the nation is 98  people per square mile.

The density of Wyoming, a notoriously empty state, is still 6 times higher  than that of Alaska. Statistically speaking, this makes Alaska one of the loneliest and  emptiest places for a human to live in. While the population density gives us an average  of how few humans there are in the whole state, the reality is even more extreme.

Over 80% of  people living in Alaska live in urban areas, and of these, most live in just a few  cities- Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau, the capital of Alaska. And though these are  technically cities, their populations pale in comparison to the great American cities, like  New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In California, there are 258 cities larger than Juneau, and for  Californians, most of these cities are towns, neighborhoods even.

In fact, only 3 settlements  in Alaska are home to more than 10,000 people. Just under 40% of Alaskans live in Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, and a little  under 9% of Alaskans live in Juneau and Fairbanks, meaning that around half of  Alaskans live in these three cities. If it’s starting to seem like a lonely place,  this is just the tip of the iceberg.

What makes Alaska even more remote and isolated  is just how inaccessible it is. A great number of its cities and towns can only  be reached by boat or plane. This is the case for Juneau, the only capital in  the US that isn’t accessible by car.

And the roads themselves in Alaska are remarkably  few and far between. In fact, there are only 17,000 miles of roads in Alaska. Ranked among  other US states, only New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and the District  of Columbia have fewer road miles than Alaska.

By comparison, Texas, the second largest state in  the US, has the most road miles of any state, clocking in at over 650,000 miles. California,  the third biggest state, comes in second place, with just under 400,000 road miles. The United  States has a total of 8,400,000 road miles, of which only 0.

4% are on Alaskan  territory. This means that Alaska, despite the enormous area it covers, is one  of the most inaccessible places on the planet. And this isn’t exactly done by  choice.

In fact, the climate, remote location and low population  of Alaska pose road construction and maintenance problems that simply don’t exist  at lower latitudes. As an Alaskan saying goes, in Alaska there are only three seasons:  winter, breakup, and road construction. Stay tuned, you’ll find out why in just a moment.

Alaskans are forced to use airplanes,  seaplanes and boats for transportation and shipping, even though the weather often makes  this a laborious task. It means that a lot of the Alaskan summer is spent importing produce to  sustain the population during the winter months, where shipping and transport are reduced  once more by the forces of nature. In fact, the world’s largest and busiest seaplane  base is Anchorage’s Lake Hood, where more than 600 takeoffs and landings occur daily on  peak summer days.

This due include tourists, happy to enjoy life in Alaska for a  short and comfortable summer window. Beyond the meager network of roads in Alaska,  another facet of its inaccessibility is just how far away it is from the majority of  humans on the American continent. While Alaska borders on Canada, those parts of  Canada aren’t exactly the most populous Canadian provinces either.

Then there’s Alaska’s  distance from the American mainland. The state is only 240 miles closer to New York than it  is to Tokyo, which is around 3,50 miles away, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a 2  hour and 20 minute flight from Juneau to Seattle, and over 6 hours of flying to get  to San Francisco.

By comparison, it’s a 3 hour 50 minute flight from London  to Istanbul, crossing all of Europe. The scarcity of human life in Alaska today  is especially remarkable when you consider its deep roots in human history. Archaeologists  believe that Alaska was among the first lands in the Americas to be settled, with human presence  dating back tens of thousands of years.

Early migrants are thought to have crossed into Alaska  from Eurasia, either via an ancient ice bridge or by primitive boats It’s also believed that humans  made themselves a permanent home in Alaska back in those times, with new evidence regularly surfacing  to reinforce this theory. The ancient fish traps, called “weirs,” that were found in recent  years on the Alaskan coast, suggest that humans did indeed establish permanent societies  there as far back as 10,000 years ago. So why do so few people live in Alaska  today?

And also, why have some people, for tens of thousands of years now,  chosen it for a home in the first place? As you’ll soon find out, it may not be  such a bad thing that Alaska is so remote, since the discipline, will, and  survival skills required to get there are the surest test of who can survive  in the state long enough to call it home. Let’s start with how the first Alaskans got to  what is now, a long time later, the 49th state.

For a long time archeologists assumed that humans  first crossed into North America 13,000 years ago, over what they call the Bering Land Bridge,  a sheet of ice that extended from modern-day eastern Russia to Alaska during the last  glacial period, which lasted from around 35,000 to 70,000 years ago, when the Holocene,  our current interglacial period, began. archaeological evidence suggests that early  Eurasian migrants didn’t just stop in Alaska- they embarked on an extraordinary journey,  crossing ice bridges and rugged mountains to settle the inland wilderness of North  America. From there, they ventured further, pushing southward toward the equator. 

The remains of ancient settlements and artifacts discovered along the American  coasts offer compelling clues, painting a picture of determination and adaptability  in the face of a harsh, untamed landscape. If the first Alaskans lived on the coasts, the  traces they might have left went underwater long ago. Since at the end of the last glacial  period, the earth warmed significantly, a lot of ice melted, and sea levels  rose by about 200 feet (60 meters), leaving any possible evidence of human  coastal settlements completely submerged.

Today, the classic story of a land migration  across ice and mountains is evolving. New evidence and innovative theories suggest that  the earliest Eurasian migrants may have taken a different route entirely. Instead  of crossing vast inland wilderness, these pioneers may have hugged the Pacific  coastline, island-hopping along the biodiverse kelp forests that thrive in the cool, rocky  waters.

Stretching from Japan to Baja California, this underwater highway of life could have  provided food, shelter, and resources, offering an easier and more sustainable  path into the Americas. In this way, our earliest American ancestors dispersed  and settled along the American coast, going all the way down to the south coast of  Chile. The earliest evidence we have of a crossing is around 13,000 years ago, with successive  migrations occurring over the next 7,000 years.

To understand this sudden movement  of humans, it’s important to keep in mind that the warming globe combined with  the retreat of glaciers made for a huge explosion of life. Flora and fauna spread  rapidly over newly uncovered coastlines, offering an unimaginable amount of resources to  our hunter-gatherer ancestors. When considering how many of these early migrants chose  to stay in Alaska, it’s worth keeping your mind open to just how flourishing and  plentiful Alaska might have been back then.

Insect evidence from the start of  our current epoch, the Holocene, indicates that Alaska was still a hell of  a cold place back then- at least for us. We have no way of knowing how well humans,  coming out of the interglacial period, dealt with the cold; but it’s safe to assume  they did so a little bit better than we do now. So, Alaska was and remains a much colder place  relative to the lower latitudes most of us live in.

Average temperatures in the interior range  from 45 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (7-23 degrees Celsius) in summer, and about 20 to -10 degrees  (-6 to -23 Celsius) in winter. That being said, in the summer, it isn’t rare that temperatures  reach into the 90s (32 degrees+ Celsius), or that in the winter they drop all the way down to  the -60s (-51 Celsius). Besides the extraordinary temperature range this is, to most of us these  numbers, quite literally unimaginable.

But if you can prepare yourself adequately for the Alaskan  cold, it can offer you a few unique advantages. First off is food-storage. Alaska, for  any resourceful individual or tribe, is as plentiful as any other place.

Today,  Alaska produces 60% of the United States’ commercial fisheries, including salmon, crab, cod,  groundfish, shrimp, herring, sablefish, pollock, and halibut. It was no less bountiful long ago,  with natives getting much of their sustenance from these same fish, while also hunting and  feasting on seals, moose, elk, and other game, and using their remarkable knowledge of plants  to gather up the huge variety of nutritious flora in their surroundings. Now, with temperatures  regularly dropping below freezing, food can be stored for almost indefinite periods of time in  Alaska.

Alaskans have long leveraged their unique environmental advantage to sustain their way of  life. In a land where cold temperatures dominate, preserving foodstock is far less labor-intensive  than in the warmer climates of lower latitudes, where heat spoils food quickly, and refrigeration  costs soar. For generations, the natural refrigeration provided by Alaska’s frigid  environment has made the process of sustenance and food preservation not just more efficient, but  a key part of thriving in such a rugged landscape Impossible to ignore, though, is the severe  cold that sets in on Alaska each winter, when sunlight ranges from scarce  to nonexistent.

The town of Barrow, at the northern tip of Alaska, has a  prolonged polar night that starts in November- which means entire months without  a single ray of sunlight- the most important source of heat there is. The average year in  Barrow has temperatures varying from -19 (-28 degrees Celsius) to 47 degrees fahrenheit (8  degrees Celsius), with the coldest temperature on record clocked at -56 degrees Fahrenheit  (-48 degrees Celsius) on 3rd February, 1924. While this sounds terrifying, native Alaskan  tribes as well as people currently living there have grown used to having a sufficient  stock of dry wood, ready to burn all winter.

And besides the simple fact that food  can be stored for so long in Alaska, there’s the effect of seasonal daylight on the  yield of crops and other vegetation. Because of where Alaska sits on the earth’s axis of  rotation, summer days there generally peak with around 20 hours of daylight; and some  northern towns, like Barrow, have a long, luminous summer that follows the endless  night of winter. On May 10th the sun rises, and then hangs in the sky for three months.

The  effect of this on vegetation is remarkable. Common vegetables can grow to enormous proportions,  and often end up with a much sweeter taste than crops from lower latitudes. In recent  years, a 138-pound (62 kilogram) cabbage, a 65-pound (29 kilogram) cantaloupe, and a  35-pound (15 kilogram) broccoli have ranked among some of the finest prizes.

So for those  that can prepare adequately for Alaskan winters, the benefit isn’t merely that agricultural produce  and gathered foods can be stored longer. It’s also the foods themselves, which grow to fantastical  volumes and possess high nutritional values. While Alaska’s extreme swings in temperature  and daylight might seem daunting, the real danger lies elsewhere.

Here, it’s  not the predictable extremes that pose the greatest threat- it’s the unpredictable that  truly makes Alaska a land of risk and wonder. And what that means primarily in Alaska is  the day to day weather. More like minute by minute.

The variation in weather patterns  in Alaska is common, severe and sudden. Now, let’s talk about Alaska’s road  networks—or the lack of them. Even if Alaska had millions of residents demanding  highways, travel by boat or plane would still reign supreme.

Why? Because permafrost,  which blankets a staggering 80% of Alaska, makes building infrastructure a herculean task.  Roads and buildings here don’t just sit still; they shift, sink, and crack as the ground  below freezes and thaws with the seasons.

It’s a constant battle against nature,  where the land itself refuses to stay put. Add onto this the cost of shipping building  materials that far north, and paying the laborers a living-wage, and you have the reason why there  are so few roads in Alaska. Keep in mind, Alaska’s small population comes with unique challenges. 

The demand for essential goods is relatively low compared to other states, but the cost of  importing those goods- thanks to Alaska’s vast distances and remote location- is extraordinarily  high. Alaska’s soaring cost of living makes it one of the most expensive states to call home. While  the population has fluctuated with the discovery of oil and gas, the fishing industry boom, and  other natural resource-driven opportunities, the overall trend of migration into Alaska has  remained largely unchanged since humans first ventured there.

It’s unlikely that this will  shift dramatically anytime soon. As a result, don’t expect Alaska’s road system to ever  resemble the interconnected highways of the lower 48 states- here, the wilderness reigns,  and the infrastructure reflects that reality. To truly grasp the magnitude of building roads  in Alaska, let’s look at the Alaska Highway, a feat of engineering built in 1942 by the U.

S.  Army Corps of Engineers. This wasn’t just any road project- it required an army of 11,000 soldiers  and engineers, 16,000 civilians, and 7,000 pieces of equipment.

The final cost was a staggering $185  million in 1942 dollars- the equivalent of over $3. 5 billion today- making it the costliest  infrastructure project of the Second World War. And for all that money invested, the highway  didn’t even cut that far into Alaska.

It connected Dawson Creek, B. C. , Canada to Delta Junction,  Alaska, at the 64th Parallel- Alaska reaches all the way up to the 71st Parallel, well inside the  Arctic Circle.

And today, at only 80 years of age, the Alaska Highway is already suffering  heavily from degradation and disrepair, thanks to the harsh Alaskan climate and the  scarcity of resources and funding to maintain it. There’s more to Alaska’s population challenges  than just its harsh environment. While natural causes- like the extreme cold, isolation,  and rugged terrain- play a significant role, the relationship between culture and environment  has been equally important in shaping Alaska’s history of population and depopulation.

Over  the centuries, this dynamic has influenced how communities adapt, thrive, or move on,  revealing a complex relationship between the land’s demands and human resilience. While one  culture can deal with and incorporate a problem, another can find it a good  reason to flee and never return. Anthropologists guess that around 80,000 people  lived in Alaska by the time of contact with Europeans, which began in the mid-1700s.

From  then on, a sharp drop in population occurred, and the numbers didn’t return to their  pre-contact level until World War II, although the native populations never fully  recovered. The reason for the sharp drop was primarily the surge of epidemics and violence  which contact with Europeans brought on the native Alaskan populations. The Anthropocene-  the epoch where humans became the dominant force shaping the planet’s environment and climate- is  often traced back to the 13th and 14th centuries, with the wave of European colonizations.

This  global expansion didn’t just alter landscapes; it brought profound and often devastating changes to  local cultures, flora, and fauna across the world. While reliable census data for Alaska’s  population before its purchase by the United States in 1867 is scarce, the first  official American census in 1880 paints a stark picture- just over 33,400 people called  this vast land home. To put that in perspective, this meant a population density of 0.

005 people  per square mile- or a staggering 20 square miles per person. Compare that to today’s figure of  roughly 1 person per square mile, and you begin to grasp just how empty and untamed Alaska  was in its early days under American control. Now, as just mentioned, Alaska was  a Russian territory until 1867, when the Tzar sold the territory to the U.

S. for  $7. 2 million.

The Russians, unable or unwilling to manage such a huge swathe of remote land,  wanted to be sure Alaska wouldn’t fall under Japanese hands- they needed an ally to occupy  the territory instead. The Americans purchased Alaska for similar reasons, as a point  of strategic defense. From that point on, America has had bases and a military presence  in Alaska, and today Alaska serves as a critical point in America’s nuclear missile defense system. 

In 1935, the American Brigadier General Billy Mitchell affirmed of Alaska, under oath before  Congress that it was “the most strategic place on earth. ” Alaska is the closest U. S.

location to  the center of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is far closer to many national capitals than most  points in the lower 48 states. In that sense, it turns into a kind of advantage for Alaska to  be relatively one of the most unpopulated. It might also explain why migration there has never  been encouraged outside of economic contexts.

Within 20 years of that first 1880 census,  the population would double in Alaska, rising to around 63,600 people by 1900  when the Gold Rush of 1896-1897 was over, and by which time Alaska had become world  famous. In 1896, a massive flood of settlers called ‘Klondikers’ poured into Alaska,  heading north for the Klondike region, looking to make their fortunes in a time of  serious economic depression. Of the 100,000 people who made the attempt simply to get to the Klondike  region, only 30,000 made it.

The rest turned back or died along the way. This was because most  Klondikers were massively unprepared for the hardship and fight against nature that awaited  them, having no idea what they were getting into. One of the Klondikers, or stampeders, as they were  called, who was drawn to Alaska in that period was 21-year-old Jack London, who would later become a  great American novelist.

He had just dropped out of college to make his living as a writer, and  arrived in Alaska with his brother-in-law and a haphazard crew on July 25, 1897. London  was threadbare, gaunt, nearly starving, and hoping, like the other Klondikers, to  fill his pockets in an Alaskan goldmine. And like the other Klondikers, what London found  instead turned out to be quite the surprise, and would furnish him with the materials to  make one of the great American literary careers.

By August 2, 1897 London arrived in Juneau. Three  days later he was in Skagway, having paddled his way up there with five tons of supplies. This  was where the reality of the frontier started to sink in, with London witnessing the horror  of what was going on in the Alaskan hinterland.

In Skagway, London was forced to come to  terms with White Pass Trail, which from Skagway wound up into the rugged interior and  the Klondike. The conditions he witnessed left him with an impression of the brutality on the  Alaskan frontier like few of us will ever know, and this would form the basis of some  of his most well-known literary works. Originally designed for lightly loaded horses  and experienced horsemen, Dead Horse Trail was torn to bits by the unmanageable traffic,  the brutal inhumanity of the stampeders, and the general inexperience and  carelessness of all involved.

At one point, while hauling over a hundred pounds  of supplies up a treacherous mountain slope, Jack London spotted a pair of shoes poking  out of the snow. Thinking little of it, he tugged at them- only to discover  they were still attached to a man, buried alive by an avalanche just minutes earlier. This was on the Chilkoot Trail, a path  notorious for its avalanche risks, which of course many stampeders  ignored completely.

On April 3, 1898, the famous Palm Sunday Avalanche occurred  on the Chilkoot Trail, killing 65 people. Native packers had warned the stampeders of the notorious  avalanche risk on the trail in the springtime, but the stampeders, with their minds set on gold,  ignored these warnings as they ignored much else. By the end of London’s ordeal, a year later, he  was almost entirely crippled from the waist down, due to scurvy.

He ate his first vegetables  in over a year in Anvik, on his way out, and by the end of June he was on the Bering  Sea, shoveling coal on a steamer to pay his way out. Jack London returned to San Francisco  with just four and a half dollars’ worth of gold to his name. Yet, what he brought back was  far more valuable: a wealth of memories, trials, and life experiences that would forge him into  one of the great American writers of his time.

Alaska asks a high price from those who wish  to make it their home, even for a little while, higher still for those who think they  can afford to be negligent of surrounding society and natural environment. The reward can be  tremendous, but the cost can easily be your life. In Alaska, survival always comes first. 

The pursuit of gold or fortune can wait- preparedness is an acquired instinct that no  Alaskan takes lightly. And for good reason. Let’s explore just a few of the challenges  that keep your average Alaskan on their toes, and why, quite simply, most people think twice  about moving to this rugged, unforgiving land.

The avalanche risks in Alaska are high, with 170  avalanche deaths there from 1951 to 2023. While Colorado has more avalanche deaths, with  323 avalanche deaths in the same period, it’s important to remember that most  avalanches are caused by humans. There are nearly 6 million people in Colorado, with  millions of tourists coming every winter for the ski season.

Compare that to Alaska, and  you’ll realize that lack of loose and melting snow is not what keeps the avalanche  count in Alaska lower than Colorado’s. Then, from avalanches in the winter you get  landslides and erosions in the summer. And with the melting ice each spring, flooding  always follows, whether on the coast or in the rivers.

Ice-jams are also frequent. This  is where ice blocks up a river until there is a large enough mass of water to push it all  past the dam, resulting in what is, in effect, a tidal wave over the river flats. What’s  more, with Alaska’s thousands of glaciers, glacial outbursts occur frequently, where the dam  holding together a glacial lake bursts and the whole body of water suddenly pours off into the  valleys below.

This was the case on August 6th, 2024, when the Mendenhall River, near Juneau, rose  16 feet (4. 8 meters) above its normal level near Auke Bay- all because of a glacial lake outburst  flood in Suicide Basin, on the Mendenhall glacier. And with the warming climate, these problems  aren’t going away.

Glacial lake outburst floods, uncommon on Mendenhall River in the past, have  since 2011 increased dramatically in regularity, with Suicide Basin producing a glacial  lake outburst flood ever year since. Even if we ignore the sudden calamity posed by  glacial outbursts, the high groundwater imposed by glaciation and glacial melt year round in  Alaska can severely affect coastal communities, from flooding, to contamination and buildup of  pollutants, to quickened infrastructural decay. Another very important reason why Alaska  is so uncommonly chosen as a place to live, is that it sits on 3 fault systems. 

So, saying Alaska is seismically active would be putting it lightly. Between 2013 and  2018, there were around 150,000 earthquakes, 31 of which with magnitudes of 6 or higher.  Alaska is not a place you come to if you’re scared the ground beneath you might give way. 

Alaskans have to deal with fault ruptures, seismic shaking and landslides. It also has to  deal with liquefaction. This is when seismic disruptions cause water-saturated sediment to lose  its strength and act like a fluid, ruining any infrastructure that happens to stand on it, and  putting lives in great peril.

What’s especially terrifying is that landslides and earthquakes  in Alaska, when large enough, trigger tsunamis. At 5:36pm local time on March 27, 1964, an  earthquake of magnitude 9. 2 occurred in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska.

The  Pacific Plate lurched northward underneath the North American Plate, slipping in some  places as much as 60 feet (18 meters). It lasted 4. 5 minutes, and to this day is still  the second largest earthquake ever recorded.

In fact, the earthquake was so large  that the whole Earth rang like a bell, and modern instruments recorded vibrations that  had no precedents whatsoever. The earthquake spawned thousands of aftershocks, hundreds  of landslides, huge submarine landslides, and scores of other secondary-effects. The most  serious of these were the tsunamis triggered, which caused fatalities and other damages all  the way down in Oregon and California.

But this was nothing compared to what some coastal  Alaskan communities, like Whittier, Valdez, Seward, and Chenega, faced. Within minutes of  the earthquake starting, tsunamis flooded some areas as high as 170 feet (51 meters) above sea  level. Within four minutes of the earthquake, a 65-foot (20 meters) wave barrelled into Chenega,  killing a third of its population.

All in all, the earthquake resulted in 129 fatalities sustained,  and billions of dollars in property losses. Alaska’s dangers are countless: extreme  weather, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and limited search-and-rescue capabilities.  Add to that the constant threat of losing critical infrastructure- power, communication,  water systems, and clinics- or facing facility failures like collapsing bridges, washed-out  roads, and hazardous spills.

Every Alaskan knows these risks intimately. Why? Because here,  the number one rescue resource is yourself.

Unlike the lower 48, there’s no guarantee  of outside help- it’s you versus the wild. And fundamentally, this is why there  are so few people living in Alaska. As we’ve seen Alaska is a land of paradoxes, at  once one of the most inhospitable places in the world and one of the most bountiful.

It’s a  place where some find their true strength, resilience, and a self-reliant way of  life; and where others find a cold, hard end. So, though Alaska will likely never  have swarthes of humans flocking to it again, as they have repeatedly done so over the  ages, it will always hold a certain awe over us. It will continue to draw those of us  who are tempted and taunted by the wild life, out into its enormous wilderness  to see if we have what it takes.

Thanks for joining me today! I hope you  enjoyed the video, and if you want to see more videos like this, then please consider  subscribing and turn on notiffications, really does make a difference. Thanks again,  and I'll see you next time on Map Pack!