Challenge: Antarctic country?

Here's the problem: until the 1960's/'70s Antarctica's going to be dangerously far from the nearest shipping lanes, so that any industry is going to largely be local. Mining is hard because resource extraction blows nuts in permafrost, but it's only made worse in a place like Antarctica if you can't build a town around the region you want to extract in (I imagine towns would need to be near the coast but the mines are going to be a bit more in the interior). No one's also going to want to pay a premium for Antarctic mining when they could establish arctic mining in Svalbard for free (only Norway and Russia have done this fyi) or to simply import from a country that does it much cheaper.

Fishing is.. possible, but again it's going to be domestic. If you can somehow get a colony up before whaling becomes obsolete (for blubber and the like) there could be a small industry for that, but after that you essentially have the usual food-staples that stay in the Arctic zones because they're cheaper.

Industry, Mining, Fishing, and Hunting are the resources for a base.
 
And Siberia isn't a frozen desert anyways. :p The worst parts are taiga, which have trees. And animals. And parts of Siberia seem to be actually be pretty nice, like Primorsky Krai. Anyway, yeah, there isn't really any expanses of frozen desert in Russia. And again, Antarctica is the most hostile, barren, and remote environment on earth. Enough human settlement to make a country is rather ASB.

EDIT: Haiti has a lot of natural disasters, yes, but again, it's habitable. It's nothing compared to Antarctica. You run the risk of losing stuff from hurricanes, but you still usually don't have to worry about freezing to death every day or getting lost and dying because you were outside at the wrong time. I don't know how to make this any clearer. And I don't know what you are planning on mining, or hunting. What are you going to hunt? Penguins? This ain't the North Pole, there aren't bears and caribou and musk oxen. There is nothing. Any minerals there are are under a mile of ice. And you can easily fish the Antarctic waters from Argentina, where you won't freeze to death.

My arguement of worthless dominion peacefully seceding still stands.

First, a desert is a desert whether ridiculously hot or cold. The Sahara is inhabited. It was worthless as all get out, but it was still colonized.

Second, there are people who live in cold areas in the world. Some even live in houses made of ice for warmth.

You're acting as if all colonies were set up to be like the U.S. Sure, we're not going to see the development of a major country here, or one shooting toward ANYTHING economically, but this isn't that out there. Australia was set up to be a colony for dumping criminals. It's a nation now. Ridiculous things happen IOTL. Some colonies were retarded. This would be the mother of all retarded colonies. We're not going to see a traditional colonial model, but it could be claimed, and it could gain its independence.

If you're setting this up as a British colony in 1760 to grow tobacco, yeah, that won't happen. A British dominion claimed late in the colonial run that becomes independent in 1975 to protect the continent from exploitation could easily occur, however.
 
there is a very simple way to establish an independent nation on the Southern Continent: Turn water into the primary industry.

Have a company travel to the continent for the sole purpose of delivering water to placed of the world which have little/no water (Sahara, Gobi, Arabian, Austrailian, Sonoran, Patagonian deserts?). The water would be shaved and shipped during the summer, and settlements would travel under the ice during the winter (with surplus food being sent to the settlements as the ice/water is shipped away).

The Next summer, when the sun returns, their residency during the winter would provide stable base operations for more mining. Eventually, they would be able to live sustained under the ice until it was all gone. they could then utilize the soil for planting (as life used to be everywhere on the continent during the dinosaurs).

It is feasible, you just need to think outside the box
 
The 1933 court decision that kept Greenland a Danish posession goes the other way, and cedes Greenland to Norway.

Norway, at the time very nationalistic, turns its eyes to its Antarctic claims next. Some international trouble makes South Georgia useless as a base TTL. Norway establishes a whaling presence on the Antarctic continent instead.

It includes large incentives to get Inuit from Greenland to participate. The hunting is easier among creatures that never learned to fear man, the whaling based economy is expanding, and the climatic hit isn't so bad when you're coming from Greenland.

A large number of Inuit emigrates. Being only slightly more fond of Norwegians than Danes, the colony is de fact independent during and after the German occupation, and gains status as an independent dominion during the 50s. Assuming WW2 isn't butterfiled away.

There is a problematically
 
here's an idea:

a nation geographically close to antarctica, like argentina, chile, australia, or south africa, decide that their prisons are too full and they need to find another way to deal with these convicts. they decide that instead of having men sit in a prison all their life, or sit on death row for a number of years depending on the country, they just ship em off to antarctica, which becomes like the new australia.

if the prisoners are at least supplied with some kinds of tools of survival, they might eventually eke out a living. i doubt this population, if they ever organized, let alone survived, would gain national recognition as a nation, but they would be a population in antarctica
 
Antarctica is the most hostile region on Earth. You have to import absolutely everything, there is no easy access to permanent building materials like wood, the seas are the most hostile in the world and finally and perhaps most importantly it is nowhere anyone needs to go unlike... say... Greenland which is between N. America and Europe.

You would need a compelling reason to put down a lot of people anywhere in Antarctica (Unobtainium anyone ;)) you would need to support them completely for decades if not centuries both materially and financially and then those people would need a good reason to want to stay and colonize once the Unobtainium mines run out...
 
Antarctica is the most hostile region on Earth. You have to import absolutely everything, there is no easy access to permanent building materials like wood, the seas are the most hostile in the world and finally and perhaps most importantly it is nowhere anyone needs to go unlike... say... Greenland which is between N. America and Europe.

You would need a compelling reason to put down a lot of people anywhere in Antarctica (Unobtainium anyone ;)) you would need to support them completely for decades if not centuries both materially and financially and then those people would need a good reason to want to stay and colonize once the Unobtainium mines run out...

well, it's out of the way and nigh impenitrable: check for prison antarctica

they can't leave if there is no way off: check for P.A.

overcrowded prisons is compelling for a country nearby: check for P.A.

they don't need to supply prisoners, they have no rights: check for P.A.
 
Its not ASB - its very unlikely but unless you think thats what ASB means, its not ASB

The area of Antarctica closest to S America is the best choice, it even defrosts in the Summer and has lichen

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Maybe had a enviormentalist nation, of those people who want to "save the planet". Maybe Antarcitca becomes a prisoner colony (those prisoners would be screwed).

I could see some settlement on the Penninsula, like the Mc Murdo Station.
 
Antarctic Peninsula

Uh, if you alter the relative positions of the two underlying chunks of Antarctica rotating the Western portion so that the volcanic peninsula lies further North-East, linking up with S Georgia and the Falklands, then you have some land which does *not* lie beneath ice-fields...

There's gas and oil under the continental shelf and, on land, minerals brought up by thermal springs...

Be like Novaya Zemlya...
 
Make it warmer.

If the temperature was warmer we wouldn't have that ice sheet. There could be some plant life. even a winter weat crop. If the temperatures were more like Canada west then settlement could follow. If the world ecosystem was radicaly different then Antartica could be more like Florida.
 
there is a very simple way to establish an independent nation on the Southern Continent: Turn water into the primary industry.

Have a company travel to the continent for the sole purpose of delivering water to placed of the world which have little/no water (Sahara, Gobi, Arabian, Austrailian, Sonoran, Patagonian deserts?). The water would be shaved and shipped during the summer, and settlements would travel under the ice during the winter (with surplus food being sent to the settlements as the ice/water is shipped away).

The Next summer, when the sun returns, their residency during the winter would provide stable base operations for more mining. Eventually, they would be able to live sustained under the ice until it was all gone. they could then utilize the soil for planting (as life used to be everywhere on the continent during the dinosaurs).

It is feasible, you just need to think outside the box

One vote for this idea ! :cool:

I hope that someone can utilize this idea to create a proper TL :D
 
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