Could we set up a colony in Antarctica that could live for hundreds or thousands of years without resupply with today’s technology?
Did you mean the colony sustains modern tech on its own, or do you mean build it with modern tech but success is simply them feeding thenselves year after year UFN while not freezing?
If the former:
No. The minimum buy-in for self sustaining modern tech living is pretty much the whole world as it is, minus the subsistence farmers. At least a hundred million people.
If the latter:
No. 16th century agriculture can’t grow anything in that ecosystem. And absent modern tech or contact w the outside world, your colony will be stuck using 1600s tech within 50 years whether they want that or not.
I meant the latter. Maybe not 1600-technology, but I realize you probably won’t have iPhones after a while.
Being Antarctica, the big limiting factor will be access to energy. There’s nothing we have that would be self-sustaining for that time scale. Solar isn’t a practical option that far south, any fossil fuel system would require replenishment quite frequently, and even nuclear would be expected to break down eventually. You could probably stockpile enough uranium or thorium to last that long, unlike coal or oil, but even the most basic nuclear plant would require a technological system to sustain it indefinitely.
Without energy, food production becomes impossible, as well as any other industries you might require.
You might could find radioactives, and maybe coal, in Antartic mountains that reach above the ice cap. Probably all of the above under the cap. Maybe a hypothetical colony could drill through the ice to reach it.
I don’t know how practical a local energy cycle depending on mining and refining fissiles would be, especially mining in distinctively challenging circumstances like under an ice shield.
Even coal would be challenging to mine, even if refinement wouldn’t be a requirement.
Drilling for geothermal would seem more practical, except I have zero idea of the geothermal potential of any part of Antarctica.
It would be a god test for planning a Moon/Mars colony. I love this idea.
That is what I wanted to say, but I know that there are active volcanoes in Antarctica, so there must be good spots for geothermy.
A good start would be looking at the significant logistics required to maintain Antarctic bases. Scaling them up to support a larger population, let alone self-supporting a larger population, would be a tremendous effort. And why bother? What’s in Antarctica that’s worth hosting a permanent, self-supporting large colony?
I dunno. The Inuit managed to live around 70°N, and the Antarctic Peninsula is mostly more north than 70°S, and they did this without modern technology.
It’s the “without resupply” part that is tricky. Any Moon or Mars colony would be able to mine resources, either using stuff on the Moon or Mars, or asteroid mining. Plus, we could still supply them with things they can’t make yet, like computer chips, even if it would cost a lot.
A better comparison would be the Generation Ship stuff we discussed a while ago. We could design something that would last a long time using stockpiled materials and replacement equipment, but the real question is “how long”?
And we can quibble about that being “self” sustaining. They survive because of a massive investment by the technological society that sent them off. When that investment runs out, they’re screwed if they haven’t built something self-sustaining at a new home.
And a Generation Ship would have a choice about where to put the new colony to maximize the chance of success. Place it near useful resources, like a forest, and the local equivalent of coal and oil deposits, and a lot of the biggest problems become much more tractable.
Antarctica is one of the most inhospitable places on our planet. Virtually no native plant life, limited wildlife, and difficult access to pretty much every other resource. That makes a self sustaining colony far harder.
As above, it’s a potential trial run at colonizing even less hospitable places. Antarctica is a paradise compared to Mars - free oxygen for the breathing, access to safe water, etc.
They managed that by seasonally hopping around and relying on large sea mammals. Both more difficult or impossible to do in Antarctica. At this point, if it could have been done, it would have. People spread to just about every part of earth that could support human life for more than the short term even before modern technology.
It would be much, much, much easier and cheaper to colonize than Mars.
Plus, Inuit relied on a relatively land-locked ocean that would freeze over in winter; they could go out on the ice and hunt, for example seals by stalking them near holes in the ice that seals use to get air. The wide open ocean was too rough and tended not to freeze as solid. Plus, where they lived tended to melt and actually grow green stuff to attract birds and sustain smaller mammals in the summer.
A lot of the Inuit lands tend to be at a lower latitude than the corresponding Antarctic land mass.
Would wind mills be an option for energy generation? (Because I was under the impression that most of Antarctica was constantly windy.)
Good luck building the industry to make these mfers in Antarctica.
I suppose, but they’d also be very labor intensive. I’d expect significant icing issues for a large part of the year, which would also likely shorten their expected service life.
They couldn’t even get biosphere to work for a year.
And none of this discussion even covers the psychological issues. How you gonna keep the colonists “down on the farm”, so to speak?
Best bet is to start with children and tell them that their world is all there is.
Moderating
I think this topic involves too much speculation and opinion for FQ. Let’s move this to IMHO.
This. The answer to the OP is no, IMHO.