The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the World


When humanity's not trying to destroy itself, its steadily redefining its boundaries. Every passing year, we create further-flung outposts in places nature never intended to us to inhabit. Here are the loneliest places mankind has made its bed in search of the unknown, the overwhelming, and the great.

The Salomon August Andrée's Station at Danskøya, Svalbard, Norway, c1900

A Buddhist shrine at the Chang La pass, with an altitude of 5360m near Leh in Ladakh, India

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

The Tektite I habitat, an underwater laboratory, located in Great Lameshur Bay, Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands in 1969

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, 1979

The Hydrolab research station of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands (1970-1985)

Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, Belgium's zero-emission polar research station anchored on the granite ridge of Utsteinen Nunatak, Dronning Maud Land, East-Antarctica

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: René Robert/International Polar Foundation

The Monte Rosa Hut, at an altitude of 2,795 metres, owned by the Swiss Alpine Club

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto:  twiga269 (Preview)

The French-Italian Concordia research station in Antarctica, built on an ice plateau 3200m high in one of the most remote places on Earth

The NASA Radome at the McMurdo Station, Antarctica

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto:  Alan Light (Preview)

India's brand new Antarctic Station called 'Bharati'

Summit Station, a small U.S. National Science Foundation research center situated 3200m above sea level, on Greenland

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: Brennan Linsley/AP

The Northeast Science Station near Chersky, Northern Siberia, Russia

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: Arthur Max/AP

The Mauna Loa Observatory sits on the north flank of Mauna Loa volcano at an elevation of 3396 meters above sea level in Hawaii

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: Chris Stewart/AP

The Schneefernerhaus, a former hotel in the Alps, now an environmental research station. It lies immediately below the summit of the Zugspitze at a height of 2650m

The NOAA Aquarius Reef Base located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, adjacent to Conch Reef

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: NASA/NEEMO

Porer is one of eleven lighthouses available for rent on the eastern Adriatic

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: Darko Bandic/AP

The IceCube laboratory at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

The late Mir Space Station (as viewed from the Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-63)

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto: NASA

The recently opened Halley VI Modular Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf, in northwest Antarctica

The International Space Station (ISS) (taken from STS-119 Space Shuttle Discovery)

The 20 Loneliest Outposts At the End of the WorldPhoto:  NASA (Preview)