November 9, 2017 • 26 mins
Antarctica is home to one of the most brutal climates on the planet, and the few humans living on this continent face profound isolation and cramped quarters. Often, tension rises as the months between supply runs pile up -- so what happens when something goes wrong?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the show. Lads and gentlemen, thank you so
much for tuning in. I'm Ben Boland, I am Noel Brown,
and Noel I have to tell you we're exploring a
very strange, dark story about one of my favorite places,
one of my like bucket list places to travel. Somewhat uncharted, yes,
(00:46):
slightly charted. It is the continent with the smallest population
out of all of the continents and the entire area
there are a little bit over one thousand people. And
that continent would be that continent is Europe. Who bait
(01:07):
and switch? I didn't study for that one. It's uh
we we all know you can probably guess just from
hearing that population statistic. It's Antarctica. What lies hidden beneath
the Antarctic ice? I love it when you do the
vo movie voice you know what it is? What is it?
Apparently madness, chaos and murder, most foulum. I mean, Antarctica
(01:33):
is basically like a Cathulu esque love craft Ian hellscape
by many accounts, Yeah, it is not made for people,
and yet somehow people hang out there. And out of
all the continents in the world, out of all the
places on the planet where humans can exist for a
(01:54):
sustained amount of time. This is an exception. And in
many ways, the laws governing Antarctica, or we were talking
about this off air, they're like the laws governing the Moon.
It's all for the good of science, for doing science.
So no one can no one country can own a
(02:17):
piece of Antarctica, as you know, like an extension of
their own sovereign territory. This place is for research. It's
for environmental protection or conservation. It's not the place where
humanity is going to build, you know, a stadium or
a strip mall or another large city. As it turns out,
(02:40):
seven countries. We've got Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New
Zealand and Norway. They all have sort of misshapen territorial
claims on this I see hellscape. Uh, I'm probably editorializing
a little bit there. I'm sure some people think it's nice. Um,
and the US and Russia actually have sovereignty over our
(03:03):
their own research stations for doing the science. But none
of these are officially recognized in the Antarctic Treaty, which
is a thing, and some of them actually even overlap
each other. Yeah. Yeah, and this and these scientists and
these stations work together because there's literally no one else there.
(03:25):
And when when we say sovereignty, it's interesting because it's
similar to the way that a an embassy would be
sovereign soil, right, regardless of which country or which area
the world is located in. So there's severenity within these
research stations and under the constraints of the Antarctic Treaty.
(03:51):
Let's get a little bit true crime. You want to
go kind of true? Okay, alright, alright, just this is
my elevator pitch. Let me know I'm listening. If this
doesn't work, all right me two thousand. Fellow named Rodney Marks,
smart guy, astrophysicist. He is spending the winter at the
South Pole, wintering in the South pol like you do, yes,
(04:14):
as you do, very popular amongst astrophysicists. He had been
vomiting blood and hyperventilating, and he had not been feeling
well before this, But twenty four hours of vomiting, hyperventilating
and he dies from it. Are you sure you're not
describing the plot of the thing. It's very it feels
(04:35):
very close at this point. We don't believe there were extraterrestrials,
did a parasitic wolf burst forth from his remains and
devour faces? No, I know that didn't happen. I'm well,
we were we weren't there, And it's nicely to place.
It's pretty difficult, depending on the season, to know exactly
(04:58):
what's happening, right, Uh, And it can also be even
more difficult to transport people in and out of the place,
especially during winter. So when Rodney Marks unfortunately passes away,
they had to store his body for months until actually
late October. And then in New Zealand, the nearest you know,
(05:23):
quote unquote civilized neighbor of Antarctica, they conducted an autopsy
there and this single mysterious death knell it touched off
an international incident because, as it turns out, after the autopsy,
the case was ruled a homicide. And because of everything
(05:44):
we said at the top of the show, all of
these overlapping interests and territorial jurisdic jurisdictions, I guess you
could say, where would you try a case like this? Yeah,
and it gets complicated. See, this astrophysicist was working on
a US base but was an Australian national. And now
(06:05):
the autopsy is occurring in New Zealand. We're three countries deep,
not even counting Antarctica. So if this is a homicide,
where is the case tried? You know? The nineteen six
one Antarctic Treaty says, as as we have pointed out earlier,
that this continent belongs to no nation. It's not what.
(06:30):
While there might be severenity over research bases, no country
can say this whole part of this, this whole eastern coast,
or whatever is ours, or this whole shebang is ours.
This means that, uh, there's not a clear case of
who would be the law around those parts. Yeah, let
(06:55):
me read you a little exerpt from the I guess
abstract from the text of the treaty itself. The Antarctic Treaty,
the earliest of the post World War two arms limitation agreements,
has significance both in itself and as a precedent. It
demilitarized the Antarctic continent and provided for its cooperative exploration
and future use. It has been cited as an example
(07:17):
of nations exercising foresight and working in concert to prevent
conflict before it develops, based on the premise that to
exclude armaments is easier than to eliminate or control them
once they have been introduced. The treaty served as a
model in its approach and even its specific provisions for
later non armament treaties, the treaties that excluded nuclear weapons
(07:39):
from outer space, from Latin America, and from the sea bed.
So this is obviously like a very specific case, and
there are certain things that are not allowed, like nuclear weapons,
any kind of detonation or testing of nuclear materials, or
to use it as a dumping ground for any kind
of nuclear waste or anything like that. But there are
(07:59):
exception ends. Military personnel are allowed to be employed in
these research facilities, of which there are numerous ones. Yeah,
it's surprising. So when we think of Antarctica, most of
us will think of this vast, frozen, love crafty and
waste land with non Euclidean geometry in these hidden cities,
minus the ancient aliens stuff. It really, I mean, it's
(08:23):
a desert. And we can only really rank civilization by
the amount of research stations. There's seventy five, and of those,
seventy forty operate around the year, around the clindrical clock. However,
(08:43):
there is a three month window when people can fly
in and out for most of these places. And let's
talk about crime. Speaking in fantastic segues, right, Uh. Can
I give you some great hits of some of these
research stations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, h Just one that I
(09:03):
just have to mention. So we have a one that's
run by France and Italy called Concordia. Um, there's one
by Italy alone called Mario's. A Kelly, New Zealand's is
called the Scott Base, and my personal favorite is Norway's,
which is simply called troll troll Station. Troll station. I'm
in maybe they maybe there are trolls in Antarctica, and
(09:24):
the idea is if we name it this, it'll be
right under their noses. No one will know, no question.
Troll stations research, which would of course be polar trolls clearly, clearly.
But the crime the crime. So in the US, where
we're recording this show, and where Noel and I have
lived for quite some time, if you commit a crime,
(09:45):
a lot of the later investigation and prosecution of that
crime hinges upon your location when you commit the crime.
So you're either tried by state or a federal court,
and that also depends on the type of crime, right,
so like a parking ticket for instance, or a let's say,
(10:07):
let's say something a little more serious, um a theft
for instance, versus a planned homicide. American courts have jurisdiction
for some crimes that happened outside of the United States,
like on a ship or something like that that the
flying on American flag, a military vessel, or in this case,
(10:30):
a American operated research facility. And as we as we
have sort of painted here just just in the very
beginning of this investigation, Antarctica is the opposite of straightforward
and cut and dry. This is very complicated. There are
experts on the governance of Antarctica, one of them being
(10:52):
Dr Alan Hemmings. He spent two winters at the South
Pole with the British Antarctic Survey and wordins Dr Hemmings.
There are no clear legal jurisdictions in Antarctica because there
are as we said earlier, there are no recognized territories.
They're just all these research stations. And of the seven
(11:12):
countries that we named that make these territorial claims, none
of them are recognized by the treaty from nine and
Asnell said, some of them overlap. The general rule for
people in the US is that a crime committed by
U S national US citizen at a US owned research
(11:35):
facility would be prosecuted in the U. S. Court. That
makes sense, right, our citizens, our area, right, our facilities,
therefore our rules, our legal system, and the same goes
for the other countries that are operating this. That that
checks out right so far, that seems on the up
and up totally. But then Hemmings goes on to say,
(11:58):
I'll just read this quote. Um, if the dead person
and the alleged murderer are from different states or countries
and don't recognize each other's claims, which most do not,
particularly if the critical events occur away from anybody's station. Uh,
like you know, wandering snow blind in the frozen tundra
of Antarctica. Uh, and you know, maybe murdering somebody with
(12:21):
a claw hammer and the snow or something in that effect.
I'm not saying, I just you know, you can have um,
you know, in a camp site, is what he says.
That's his example. It's way better than mine. Uh. Then
it won't necessarily be clear who has jurisdiction, right, and
this becomes the crux of the complication. As far as
(12:44):
dr hemming snows, there's never been a criminal prosecution for
murder committed in Antarctica. And I'm gonna go on record
here on our show and say that I think there
were probably murders that occurred in Antarctica over the span
of human history. We know that there is violence and
(13:05):
vice in this continent, and we just brought up a
real life example that claw hammer thing happened. Yeah, no,
the claw hammer thing actually happened, not not in the
way that I uh speculated earlier, but um in n
six there was an incident at an Australian facility where
a cook in the galley attacked one of his fellow
(13:29):
workers with the back end of a claw hammer and uh,
you know, no one was killed, and ultimately resulted in
both both guys getting stitches and they actually ended up
having to call in the FBI, which set kind of
an unusual precedent here, because, like we were saying earlier,
typically they can deal with this stuff in house. Yeah,
(13:50):
routine offenses, right are usually usually what happens is the
person gets fired the contract, their their contract is not renewed,
or their grand and if there are a scientists, you know,
and without that contract or without that grant, you can't
go to Antarctica. You know that that would be that
(14:12):
would be a bummer if that was like your thing,
you know, that's how you define yourself. Was I am?
I am an Antarctic galley cook? And this visitors can
also be banned. Yeah, in this ap article there's this
fantastic line. It is just tossed off very casually, and
I adore it. Uh. It says visitors who taught the
penguins and seals, remove rock samples or break other strict
(14:34):
environmental laws are normally handled by the station's chief scientist,
who is a deputized US marshal a k A. The
most interesting person to talk to. Write their chief scientists
n Antarctica, they're also US marshal. They're like, they're like
the law, you know what I mean, They're the law
(14:56):
around these parts. To me, that's that's fascinating because we
usually think of those two roles as being separate. They're
very much separate in our country. I just picture them
all as being like Kurt Russell or Tommy Lee Jones
esque figures. And that's not the only Antarctic horror story
or crime story. They're they're actually they're numerous ones. There's
(15:19):
the Russian chess game where in someone I guess the
chess game went south no pun intended, and someone attacked
someone else with an X yeah, apparently killed them in fact,
but that happened on a Soviet facility, so it stands
the reason that it was dealt with, you know, internally
and through the Soviet government. And then there's another story
(15:43):
of a scientist who, driven mad by isolation, burned down
their own station. I can't help but think all of
this stuff is just wonderful fodder for um stories like
John Carpenter's film The Thing, where a team of Antarctic
researchers are essentially driven mad with paranoia and you know,
(16:05):
with the help of an invasive alien body snatcher chest
Burster kind of situation. And there's even episode of The
X Files that follows a similar path with an outbreak
of a plague like disease on a research facility and
the accompanying paranoia that that follows. So you know, it's
all pretty rife with potential for great storytelling, for sure,
(16:30):
and it's something that I think can be universally recognized
on some level by any human being. The psychological claustrophobia involved.
Right you're in a you're in a confined space with
interaction with the same people, whether or not you want it,
(16:54):
and that leads to problems. Right now when we're when
we're describing this, you know, we're just we're just barely
scratching the surface of the history of Antarctica. But the
reason we are describing this is not just because it's
a oh, gali g that's interesting legal problem. It's because
(17:17):
it will become increasingly important as time goes on. For
you see, friends and neighbors, Antarctica has a secret there's
oil beneath the ice. And I did that like we're
gonna introduce something like there's gonna be a bum bum
kind of signal. We can we've already used that sound
(17:39):
effect that we can just we can just reuse that. Well,
we'll lean on our superproducer, give us a cool sound
queue here, perfect, Okay. So it turns out that Antarctica
has rich oil reserves and they are a rife for
future exploration, which means that it is it is pretty
(18:01):
much certain that in the near to mid future, more
and more organizations, whether they are countries or whether they
are private companies working with the country, are going to
attempt to tap those oil reserves, which means that more
and more people are going to be living on this continent,
(18:21):
and they're going to be people from all around the world. Australians,
people from the United States, people from China, people from
like name a country, yeah, sure, yes, community filled some
time by naming more countries. Sure I can. I can
(18:42):
name some countries with you. Let's see. There's also wait,
we're not really We're not really, OK. That would be
very cheap. So right now we are as a species
that's sort of a wild West stage in the legal
story of Antarctica. In two thousand and three, professor named W.
(19:07):
Michael said, we've got to figure something out. We need
to have the countries, the nations that are active in
Antarctica establish a unified criminal code. Let's all get on
the same page. Right. Currently, according to signs, one cannot
easily determine whether an action is a criminal act because
(19:29):
of the various countries involved and multiple basis for jurisdiction.
This is an intolerable situation for criminal defendant and violates
any reasonable concept of due process, which is an interesting
way to look at it because not all crimes are
prosecuted the same way or carry the same consequences from
(19:50):
one country to the next. That story we did on
our other podcast Stuff they don't want you to know
about the zone of death in Yellowstone Park. There's this
like small area of this uh sort of like a triangle,
I guess um where there's no legal jurisdiction or it's
(20:11):
like difficult to determine where to pull jurors from for
a case a crime that was committed there. And a
researcher by the name of Cult kind of pointed this
out and wrote a paper about it, about how you
know how to commit the perfect crime in uh in
Yellowstone After. In his defense, he only published his paper
(20:34):
after he had contacted numerous authorities and said, hey, can
we fix this because I don't wanna you know, I
we have actually had correspondence with the good doctor Cult,
and we we assure you he's a good guy. He
doesn't want people to commit crimes. Now. It wasn't like
(20:56):
a tutorial, like a like a how to guide. It
was just literally pointing to a problem which is very
similar to what we're seeing with uh, with Antarctica, where
we need some kind of consensus, some kind of you know,
multi nation you know panel. I guess that can address
crimes committed on the continent rather than limiting them specifically
to the research bases proper. Because, like I said, what
(21:19):
happens if you just you know, go off the reservation
and wander, you know, in a fit of madness and
you know, commit some sort of horrible crime. What happens
then if you're just like out in the wild, right,
What if there are what if there's a situation where
there are multiple assailants or multiple homicides. And now we're
looking at a case where we could quite easily look
(21:40):
at a case where, god forbid, there was a series
of murders, right, and multiple murderers and multiple murder victims,
and they're all from different countries. How how do you
even begin to unpack that? How do you begin to
uh organized that that bowl of spaghetti, that bowl of
(22:03):
cold spaghetti. Because I'm doing weather references, because we're talking
about Antarctico. Well, I think we should wrap up with,
you know, the ultimate determination of what happened with our
astro physicist friend Rodney marks it was determined that he
most likely drank a bad batch of liquor, because that's
(22:26):
another thing. You know, when you're board and you're kind
of marooned, uh and like siloed up in these these
close quarters, there's there's gonna be some drinking going on,
and you know, maybe folks are brewing their own homebrew,
and I know that, you know, when you make like
white lightning or you know, any kind of you know,
home brewed liquor, there is the potential for poisoning yourself
(22:49):
if you don't do it right. And his autopsy showed
that he had lethal traces of methanol, which is you know,
points to that that very thing. Yeah, it's a tragedy
anyway you look at it. And every everything we've touched
upon in this episode is making me think of all
(23:09):
the other strange stuff we can explore about Antarctica, including
the Nazi proposal to create the territory of New Schwabia,
which is a story for another day. You know what
I want to know? No, let us know if you've
been to Antarctica. We're automatically envious. We want to hear
(23:33):
of your adventures. I don't think I want to go
you don't want to go, I don't think i'll go,
and I'll I will face time. I don't want to
get snow murder madness. I will face time me while
I am in the grips of snow murder madness. Uh,
dangerously psychotic. Right, I'll try and talk you down, dude,
but I can't. I can't guarantee I'll be successful. I
(23:55):
kind of just based on our friendship, I kind of
feel like you might end up accidentally enabling me. Well,
then just don't just you just call somebody else. What's
all right? All right? You can call me and you
can contact us directly. You might be thinking, Ben Noel,
I have been to Antarctic guy. I have a story
about the history of it that is not just fascinating,
(24:18):
it's also wait for it, ridiculous. We would love to
hear from you. You can write to us directly. We
are ridiculous at how stuff works dot com and you
know we're on all the usual social media channels, um,
you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and never Pinterest though never,
never Pinterest. I'm not I'm not anti Pinterest. I just
don't I don't understand it, right, Yeah, it's you know,
(24:40):
like a vision board. It's like a vision board, and
you and I already have one of those. It's up
on the wall here in the podcast. It's great. We
should we should send some pictures out. So we are off.
I'm going to plan my descent into antarctic madness and Noel,
thank you in advance for say in my life. But
(25:01):
we will be back very soon with more ridiculous sister,
thanks for listening to everybody. Goodbye bye m
Welcome to the show. Lads and gentlemen, thank you so
much for tuning in. I'm Ben Boland, I am Noel Brown,
and Noel I have to tell you we're exploring a
very strange, dark story about one of my favorite places,
one of my like bucket list places to travel. Somewhat uncharted, yes,
(00:46):
slightly charted. It is the continent with the smallest population
out of all of the continents and the entire area
there are a little bit over one thousand people. And
that continent would be that continent is Europe. Who bait
(01:07):
and switch? I didn't study for that one. It's uh
we we all know you can probably guess just from
hearing that population statistic. It's Antarctica. What lies hidden beneath
the Antarctic ice? I love it when you do the
vo movie voice you know what it is? What is it?
Apparently madness, chaos and murder, most foulum. I mean, Antarctica
(01:33):
is basically like a Cathulu esque love craft Ian hellscape
by many accounts, Yeah, it is not made for people,
and yet somehow people hang out there. And out of
all the continents in the world, out of all the
places on the planet where humans can exist for a
(01:54):
sustained amount of time. This is an exception. And in
many ways, the laws governing Antarctica, or we were talking
about this off air, they're like the laws governing the Moon.
It's all for the good of science, for doing science.
So no one can no one country can own a
(02:17):
piece of Antarctica, as you know, like an extension of
their own sovereign territory. This place is for research. It's
for environmental protection or conservation. It's not the place where
humanity is going to build, you know, a stadium or
a strip mall or another large city. As it turns out,
(02:40):
seven countries. We've got Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New
Zealand and Norway. They all have sort of misshapen territorial
claims on this I see hellscape. Uh, I'm probably editorializing
a little bit there. I'm sure some people think it's nice. Um,
and the US and Russia actually have sovereignty over our
(03:03):
their own research stations for doing the science. But none
of these are officially recognized in the Antarctic Treaty, which
is a thing, and some of them actually even overlap
each other. Yeah. Yeah, and this and these scientists and
these stations work together because there's literally no one else there.
(03:25):
And when when we say sovereignty, it's interesting because it's
similar to the way that a an embassy would be
sovereign soil, right, regardless of which country or which area
the world is located in. So there's severenity within these
research stations and under the constraints of the Antarctic Treaty.
(03:51):
Let's get a little bit true crime. You want to
go kind of true? Okay, alright, alright, just this is
my elevator pitch. Let me know I'm listening. If this
doesn't work, all right me two thousand. Fellow named Rodney Marks,
smart guy, astrophysicist. He is spending the winter at the
South Pole, wintering in the South pol like you do, yes,
(04:14):
as you do, very popular amongst astrophysicists. He had been
vomiting blood and hyperventilating, and he had not been feeling
well before this, But twenty four hours of vomiting, hyperventilating
and he dies from it. Are you sure you're not
describing the plot of the thing. It's very it feels
(04:35):
very close at this point. We don't believe there were extraterrestrials,
did a parasitic wolf burst forth from his remains and
devour faces? No, I know that didn't happen. I'm well,
we were we weren't there, And it's nicely to place.
It's pretty difficult, depending on the season, to know exactly
(04:58):
what's happening, right, Uh, And it can also be even
more difficult to transport people in and out of the place,
especially during winter. So when Rodney Marks unfortunately passes away,
they had to store his body for months until actually
late October. And then in New Zealand, the nearest you know,
(05:23):
quote unquote civilized neighbor of Antarctica, they conducted an autopsy
there and this single mysterious death knell it touched off
an international incident because, as it turns out, after the autopsy,
the case was ruled a homicide. And because of everything
(05:44):
we said at the top of the show, all of
these overlapping interests and territorial jurisdic jurisdictions, I guess you
could say, where would you try a case like this? Yeah,
and it gets complicated. See, this astrophysicist was working on
a US base but was an Australian national. And now
(06:05):
the autopsy is occurring in New Zealand. We're three countries deep,
not even counting Antarctica. So if this is a homicide,
where is the case tried? You know? The nineteen six
one Antarctic Treaty says, as as we have pointed out earlier,
that this continent belongs to no nation. It's not what.
(06:30):
While there might be severenity over research bases, no country
can say this whole part of this, this whole eastern coast,
or whatever is ours, or this whole shebang is ours.
This means that, uh, there's not a clear case of
who would be the law around those parts. Yeah, let
(06:55):
me read you a little exerpt from the I guess
abstract from the text of the treaty itself. The Antarctic Treaty,
the earliest of the post World War two arms limitation agreements,
has significance both in itself and as a precedent. It
demilitarized the Antarctic continent and provided for its cooperative exploration
and future use. It has been cited as an example
(07:17):
of nations exercising foresight and working in concert to prevent
conflict before it develops, based on the premise that to
exclude armaments is easier than to eliminate or control them
once they have been introduced. The treaty served as a
model in its approach and even its specific provisions for
later non armament treaties, the treaties that excluded nuclear weapons
(07:39):
from outer space, from Latin America, and from the sea bed.
So this is obviously like a very specific case, and
there are certain things that are not allowed, like nuclear weapons,
any kind of detonation or testing of nuclear materials, or
to use it as a dumping ground for any kind
of nuclear waste or anything like that. But there are
(07:59):
exception ends. Military personnel are allowed to be employed in
these research facilities, of which there are numerous ones. Yeah,
it's surprising. So when we think of Antarctica, most of
us will think of this vast, frozen, love crafty and
waste land with non Euclidean geometry in these hidden cities,
minus the ancient aliens stuff. It really, I mean, it's
(08:23):
a desert. And we can only really rank civilization by
the amount of research stations. There's seventy five, and of those,
seventy forty operate around the year, around the clindrical clock. However,
(08:43):
there is a three month window when people can fly
in and out for most of these places. And let's
talk about crime. Speaking in fantastic segues, right, Uh. Can
I give you some great hits of some of these
research stations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, h Just one that I
(09:03):
just have to mention. So we have a one that's
run by France and Italy called Concordia. Um, there's one
by Italy alone called Mario's. A Kelly, New Zealand's is
called the Scott Base, and my personal favorite is Norway's,
which is simply called troll troll Station. Troll station. I'm
in maybe they maybe there are trolls in Antarctica, and
(09:24):
the idea is if we name it this, it'll be
right under their noses. No one will know, no question.
Troll stations research, which would of course be polar trolls clearly, clearly.
But the crime the crime. So in the US, where
we're recording this show, and where Noel and I have
lived for quite some time, if you commit a crime,
(09:45):
a lot of the later investigation and prosecution of that
crime hinges upon your location when you commit the crime.
So you're either tried by state or a federal court,
and that also depends on the type of crime, right,
so like a parking ticket for instance, or a let's say,
(10:07):
let's say something a little more serious, um a theft
for instance, versus a planned homicide. American courts have jurisdiction
for some crimes that happened outside of the United States,
like on a ship or something like that that the
flying on American flag, a military vessel, or in this case,
(10:30):
a American operated research facility. And as we as we
have sort of painted here just just in the very
beginning of this investigation, Antarctica is the opposite of straightforward
and cut and dry. This is very complicated. There are
experts on the governance of Antarctica, one of them being
(10:52):
Dr Alan Hemmings. He spent two winters at the South
Pole with the British Antarctic Survey and wordins Dr Hemmings.
There are no clear legal jurisdictions in Antarctica because there
are as we said earlier, there are no recognized territories.
They're just all these research stations. And of the seven
(11:12):
countries that we named that make these territorial claims, none
of them are recognized by the treaty from nine and
Asnell said, some of them overlap. The general rule for
people in the US is that a crime committed by
U S national US citizen at a US owned research
(11:35):
facility would be prosecuted in the U. S. Court. That
makes sense, right, our citizens, our area, right, our facilities,
therefore our rules, our legal system, and the same goes
for the other countries that are operating this. That that
checks out right so far, that seems on the up
and up totally. But then Hemmings goes on to say,
(11:58):
I'll just read this quote. Um, if the dead person
and the alleged murderer are from different states or countries
and don't recognize each other's claims, which most do not,
particularly if the critical events occur away from anybody's station. Uh,
like you know, wandering snow blind in the frozen tundra
of Antarctica. Uh, and you know, maybe murdering somebody with
(12:21):
a claw hammer and the snow or something in that effect.
I'm not saying, I just you know, you can have um,
you know, in a camp site, is what he says.
That's his example. It's way better than mine. Uh. Then
it won't necessarily be clear who has jurisdiction, right, and
this becomes the crux of the complication. As far as
(12:44):
dr hemming snows, there's never been a criminal prosecution for
murder committed in Antarctica. And I'm gonna go on record
here on our show and say that I think there
were probably murders that occurred in Antarctica over the span
of human history. We know that there is violence and
(13:05):
vice in this continent, and we just brought up a
real life example that claw hammer thing happened. Yeah, no,
the claw hammer thing actually happened, not not in the
way that I uh speculated earlier, but um in n
six there was an incident at an Australian facility where
a cook in the galley attacked one of his fellow
(13:29):
workers with the back end of a claw hammer and uh,
you know, no one was killed, and ultimately resulted in
both both guys getting stitches and they actually ended up
having to call in the FBI, which set kind of
an unusual precedent here, because, like we were saying earlier,
typically they can deal with this stuff in house. Yeah,
(13:50):
routine offenses, right are usually usually what happens is the
person gets fired the contract, their their contract is not renewed,
or their grand and if there are a scientists, you know,
and without that contract or without that grant, you can't
go to Antarctica. You know that that would be that
(14:12):
would be a bummer if that was like your thing,
you know, that's how you define yourself. Was I am?
I am an Antarctic galley cook? And this visitors can
also be banned. Yeah, in this ap article there's this
fantastic line. It is just tossed off very casually, and
I adore it. Uh. It says visitors who taught the
penguins and seals, remove rock samples or break other strict
(14:34):
environmental laws are normally handled by the station's chief scientist,
who is a deputized US marshal a k A. The
most interesting person to talk to. Write their chief scientists
n Antarctica, they're also US marshal. They're like, they're like
the law, you know what I mean, They're the law
(14:56):
around these parts. To me, that's that's fascinating because we
usually think of those two roles as being separate. They're
very much separate in our country. I just picture them
all as being like Kurt Russell or Tommy Lee Jones
esque figures. And that's not the only Antarctic horror story
or crime story. They're they're actually they're numerous ones. There's
(15:19):
the Russian chess game where in someone I guess the
chess game went south no pun intended, and someone attacked
someone else with an X yeah, apparently killed them in fact,
but that happened on a Soviet facility, so it stands
the reason that it was dealt with, you know, internally
and through the Soviet government. And then there's another story
(15:43):
of a scientist who, driven mad by isolation, burned down
their own station. I can't help but think all of
this stuff is just wonderful fodder for um stories like
John Carpenter's film The Thing, where a team of Antarctic
researchers are essentially driven mad with paranoia and you know,
(16:05):
with the help of an invasive alien body snatcher chest
Burster kind of situation. And there's even episode of The
X Files that follows a similar path with an outbreak
of a plague like disease on a research facility and
the accompanying paranoia that that follows. So you know, it's
all pretty rife with potential for great storytelling, for sure,
(16:30):
and it's something that I think can be universally recognized
on some level by any human being. The psychological claustrophobia involved.
Right you're in a you're in a confined space with
interaction with the same people, whether or not you want it,
(16:54):
and that leads to problems. Right now when we're when
we're describing this, you know, we're just we're just barely
scratching the surface of the history of Antarctica. But the
reason we are describing this is not just because it's
a oh, gali g that's interesting legal problem. It's because
(17:17):
it will become increasingly important as time goes on. For
you see, friends and neighbors, Antarctica has a secret there's
oil beneath the ice. And I did that like we're
gonna introduce something like there's gonna be a bum bum
kind of signal. We can we've already used that sound
(17:39):
effect that we can just we can just reuse that. Well,
we'll lean on our superproducer, give us a cool sound
queue here, perfect, Okay. So it turns out that Antarctica
has rich oil reserves and they are a rife for
future exploration, which means that it is it is pretty
(18:01):
much certain that in the near to mid future, more
and more organizations, whether they are countries or whether they
are private companies working with the country, are going to
attempt to tap those oil reserves, which means that more
and more people are going to be living on this continent,
(18:21):
and they're going to be people from all around the world. Australians,
people from the United States, people from China, people from
like name a country, yeah, sure, yes, community filled some
time by naming more countries. Sure I can. I can
(18:42):
name some countries with you. Let's see. There's also wait,
we're not really We're not really, OK. That would be
very cheap. So right now we are as a species
that's sort of a wild West stage in the legal
story of Antarctica. In two thousand and three, professor named W.
(19:07):
Michael said, we've got to figure something out. We need
to have the countries, the nations that are active in
Antarctica establish a unified criminal code. Let's all get on
the same page. Right. Currently, according to signs, one cannot
easily determine whether an action is a criminal act because
(19:29):
of the various countries involved and multiple basis for jurisdiction.
This is an intolerable situation for criminal defendant and violates
any reasonable concept of due process, which is an interesting
way to look at it because not all crimes are
prosecuted the same way or carry the same consequences from
(19:50):
one country to the next. That story we did on
our other podcast Stuff they don't want you to know
about the zone of death in Yellowstone Park. There's this
like small area of this uh sort of like a triangle,
I guess um where there's no legal jurisdiction or it's
(20:11):
like difficult to determine where to pull jurors from for
a case a crime that was committed there. And a
researcher by the name of Cult kind of pointed this
out and wrote a paper about it, about how you
know how to commit the perfect crime in uh in
Yellowstone After. In his defense, he only published his paper
(20:34):
after he had contacted numerous authorities and said, hey, can
we fix this because I don't wanna you know, I
we have actually had correspondence with the good doctor Cult,
and we we assure you he's a good guy. He
doesn't want people to commit crimes. Now. It wasn't like
(20:56):
a tutorial, like a like a how to guide. It
was just literally pointing to a problem which is very
similar to what we're seeing with uh, with Antarctica, where
we need some kind of consensus, some kind of you know,
multi nation you know panel. I guess that can address
crimes committed on the continent rather than limiting them specifically
to the research bases proper. Because, like I said, what
(21:19):
happens if you just you know, go off the reservation
and wander, you know, in a fit of madness and
you know, commit some sort of horrible crime. What happens
then if you're just like out in the wild, right,
What if there are what if there's a situation where
there are multiple assailants or multiple homicides. And now we're
looking at a case where we could quite easily look
(21:40):
at a case where, god forbid, there was a series
of murders, right, and multiple murderers and multiple murder victims,
and they're all from different countries. How how do you
even begin to unpack that? How do you begin to
uh organized that that bowl of spaghetti, that bowl of
(22:03):
cold spaghetti. Because I'm doing weather references, because we're talking
about Antarctico. Well, I think we should wrap up with,
you know, the ultimate determination of what happened with our
astro physicist friend Rodney marks it was determined that he
most likely drank a bad batch of liquor, because that's
(22:26):
another thing. You know, when you're board and you're kind
of marooned, uh and like siloed up in these these
close quarters, there's there's gonna be some drinking going on,
and you know, maybe folks are brewing their own homebrew,
and I know that, you know, when you make like
white lightning or you know, any kind of you know,
home brewed liquor, there is the potential for poisoning yourself
(22:49):
if you don't do it right. And his autopsy showed
that he had lethal traces of methanol, which is you know,
points to that that very thing. Yeah, it's a tragedy
anyway you look at it. And every everything we've touched
upon in this episode is making me think of all
(23:09):
the other strange stuff we can explore about Antarctica, including
the Nazi proposal to create the territory of New Schwabia,
which is a story for another day. You know what
I want to know? No, let us know if you've
been to Antarctica. We're automatically envious. We want to hear
(23:33):
of your adventures. I don't think I want to go
you don't want to go, I don't think i'll go,
and I'll I will face time. I don't want to
get snow murder madness. I will face time me while
I am in the grips of snow murder madness. Uh,
dangerously psychotic. Right, I'll try and talk you down, dude,
but I can't. I can't guarantee I'll be successful. I
(23:55):
kind of just based on our friendship, I kind of
feel like you might end up accidentally enabling me. Well,
then just don't just you just call somebody else. What's
all right? All right? You can call me and you
can contact us directly. You might be thinking, Ben Noel,
I have been to Antarctic guy. I have a story
about the history of it that is not just fascinating,
(24:18):
it's also wait for it, ridiculous. We would love to
hear from you. You can write to us directly. We
are ridiculous at how stuff works dot com and you
know we're on all the usual social media channels, um,
you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and never Pinterest though never,
never Pinterest. I'm not I'm not anti Pinterest. I just
don't I don't understand it, right, Yeah, it's you know,
(24:40):
like a vision board. It's like a vision board, and
you and I already have one of those. It's up
on the wall here in the podcast. It's great. We
should we should send some pictures out. So we are off.
I'm going to plan my descent into antarctic madness and Noel,
thank you in advance for say in my life. But
(25:01):
we will be back very soon with more ridiculous sister,
thanks for listening to everybody. Goodbye bye m
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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