Becoming a Self Sufficient Pioneer in Antarctica

Becoming a Self Sufficient Pioneer in Antarctica Yes You Actually Can Become a Pioneer and Live a Self Sufficient Life on the Frozen Continent of Antarctica Without Having to Live on a Government Science or Military Base Lex Loeb Contributor Network . Hardly anyone will notice you when you go down to Antarctica as a pioneer and not just as an explorer or adventurer but as someone wanting to create a permanent self sufficient settlement there. You don't just pack and go. It takes a lot of advance research, funding, pre-exploration trips and then a working plan. The easiest place to start a settlement is actually not on the antarctic continent proper necessarily. Instead you look for a nearby volcanic sea mount island in the proximity of the antarctic continent that happens to have active hot springs. Hot springs can help you make agriculture possible an coastal exposure might give you access to tidal forces an constant wind can help you generate electricity on site. The geothermal energy from the hot spring can help you to build actual heated insulated greenhouses on site but that would not be your main source of agricultural output. At the coastal regions you will need to have a diet of sea food supplemented possibly by adding some sea mammals and sea birds maybe even penguin delight. Seafood will do with he added befit of being a possible product for export but not necessarily your main product for export. In order to really survive and thrive as an arctic pioneer even on a comparatively lush volcanic near by island is to go underground at a sufficient depth below the permafrost line such that you have the constant regular approximately 60 degree temperature of the earth to keep your settlement living areas warm supplemented with the geothermal water run though radiators the temperature is very livable underground. This kind of living area is not naturally available on volcanic islands unless you locate lava caves far enough down below the permafrost. This is what pre-exploration is all about--finding the right spot where settlement is possible or knowing what kind of drilling and tunneling equipment you will need to create your underground settlement . The settlement area is then separated from your underground agricultural area which is your major means of self support. You use the geothermal energy to grow a variety of mushrooms and other edible fungi. Mushroom growing is the secret to self sufficiency. You might then only need to grow grass in the above ground greenhouses to harvest cellulose rich hay for your underground growing areas. It might even be cheap enough to import hay and wood chips as ballast for ships that come to export your mushroom crops. Once you have a source of mushrooms they can be come feed stock for raising domestic animals possibly they are nutritious enough to feed egg laying chickens? maybe even pigs can subsist on these? Mushroom growers can tell you if mice and rats survive in their mushroom growing caves without other sources of food. There maybe other feed stocks. Mushroom growing with the geothermal hot springs sustaining the operation is the best hope of agricultural self sufficiency. To see how you can convert wood chips and hay to mushrooms and fungus with minimal effort you can buy a mush room growing kit online and try it out yourself in a closet. You need biomass, water and a controlled temperature to get the best results. To get to self sufficiency you need a very large growing area. Mushrooms can be be grown on all surfaces of your underground tunnels including walls ceilings and floors plus they can be stacked on shelves with in the space. What about milk? Mushroom milk? Goats might be easier to keep because they can consume the mushroom growing waste and spare mushrooms. If you can make mushrooms a profitable growing operation you can do more than just subsist. Before setting up in antarctica you need to test it with a closer to home mushroom growing operation. You can find geothermal heated mushroom growing operations already. It would also pay to do research in Japan and China where mushroom growing operations have a lot more varieties in cultivation . American Mushroom growing has a more limited number of species cultivated. you can possibly learn to use dry cold weather to dehydrate mushrooms or to keep them flash fresh frozen for export. Mushroom growing will be the main way to support larger inland continental antarctic settlements. Before making plans to go to the interior of the continent it takes some advance scouting and exploration . On the continent you also can find natural hot springs and some that are really hot. You can find lava caves and even large limestone cave formations dating back to days when the continent had flowing water. These caves may require excavation of ice today to occupy them or they could be open and nicely hidden underground. To find the caves you want to look at a geology map to see where the limestone is on the continent . You might also want to find underground coal deposits. As part of the plan you can look for valuable minerals for underground excavation as reason to make the underground tunnel before shifting the use to mushroom culture. Inland settlements will not be as efficient as coastal ones for Mushroom export business. Gold mining , oil and natural gas extraction, coal will provide exports at the interior. Surface greenhouses might not work very well at all even growing tundra plants. It might be possible to set up a self sufficient settlement in the most inhospitable spot on earth working the same was as the coastal volcanic island with added challenges. The constant temperature of the earth below the surface is the same. The need for free flowing geothermal water is the same as before. There maybe too little light half the year for growing much of anything in the surface greenhouses . You might be better off having a hydroponic garden using some other indigenous form of energy to illuminate growing areas underground. The technology comes from marijuana grow rooms you can find equipment sellers for. This kind of growing is too expensive as a means of supporting self sufficiency it is only economically feasible for marijuana growers with the no solar light imported because of the absurd market price for marijuana. Food is worth a lot more in in Antarctica. The problem is the lights will burn out and need replacing . The equipment is expensive. It is the mushrooms you can grow in the dark that give you the best chance for development, Antarctica has other geographic secrets . Not only can you find geothermal, mineral resources and caves you an possibly find ancient preserved peat bogs and they can be quite extensive. frozen peat bogs can provide you will everything you need to grow mushrooms and maybe generate heat with the equivalent of pellet stoves Finding the right spot with the right resources is how and where you have to quietly stake your claim and start pioneering Antarctica. There could be economic advantages that justify a long term settlement there based on export value because you are always going to be dependent on imported supplies unless your settlement reaches some critical mass where it eventually builds factories and has thousands of miles of settlement tunnels and a population of 2 to 4 generations living there. Unlike government run military bases and scientific stations in Antarctica, using mushroom growing technology and smart geography your settlement can be much cheaper than theirs over the short and long term. You could really do it on the cheap. Some of those scientific stations in antarctica cost the various government more than a million dollars to host each person a year or less living there. If you can find ready made caves and geothermal resources you can set up for under one hundred thousand dollars and maybe start a sort of hotel for government researches where you can charge them $500,000 for a year including just the room which is a considerable bargain for the government's. Once you can do that you go for the tourists. $1500 a night for an antarctic hotel room including a private hot springs fed hot tub and mushroom fine dining. I already found an island frequented by tourist ships near antarctica with the running hot springs and that is my first choice because agriculture in exposed greenhouses and aqua culture are also possible there. It is sort of like starting your own moon base only lot easier. I cannot start the project until i have at least 10 years of experience in commercial mushroom growing and research or find an expert. If it is possible to grow fungus with a high sugar or carbohydrate content it is then possible to convert that to a kind of beer or even mushroom vodka. I have no idea if there are mushrooms with high sugar content. I don't see why not? If not there is genetic engineering to the rescue. I wound never attempt a moon base or a mars base without high sugar fungus to make it possible. You would not want to be stuck on the moon or mars with out something like beer to help you pass the time. I am not much of a beer drinker but i probably would want to become one stuck out in some remote settlement anywhere. I think i should become the founder of the NASA mushroom lab if they don't already have one. Mushroom cultivation is the key to long term space settlement. Mushrooms will necessarily be the main crop that sustains a moon or mars base the same way it will in Antarctica. It might be possible to rent subway tunnel drilling equipment to get started fast once the right location is found which means not having to own the expensive equipment as a long term expense to save on doing this on a shoe string. Before even starting out mushroom growing experience is required. Trying it on safe ground first will allow one to figure out if the idea is feasible. Poor mushroom growers might live healthy lives on mostly mushroom diets? Research needs to be done. There are other ways to make money there including offering cold storage facilities or hosting scientific experiments for the longer term at less cost than can be done in expensive government facilities. One might get paid for providing weather station data or hosting outdoor web cams. Setting up the first cell phone towers there might give you the ability to collect rent. The whole project could be more lucrative than ever imagined even as your competition moves in nearby....ah but not if you work to colonize all the right spots with the geothermal and the caves before they ever think of doing the same. You have to get there now and quietly before 2040 when the international mining ban ends. By then you may need to have extra rooms to rent out as military bases to get you some free protection. Antarctica could quickly become the new wild west for mushroom growing , mining and other industries possibly even nitrate farming using the ions attracted to the magnetic poles to generate fixed nitrogen on industrial towers into the sky. . Close