East (Antarctic Station)

Climatic conditions in the station area are some of the worst on Earth.

• Severe frosts. The station area is characterized by very low temperatures throughout the year. It recorded the lowest temperature on the planet of all meteorological stations in the 20th century: −89.2 ° C (July 21, 1983) ^{[9] [10] [11]} . Remote sensing from satellites shows that places with a lower temperature are possible in Antarctica (see Poles of cold ). The warmest summer day at the station for all the time of its existence remains December 16, 1957, then the thermometer recorded −13.6 ° C ^[12] .
• Almost zero absolute air humidity in winter ^[13] , the average annual relative air humidity - 71% ^[9] .
• The average annual wind speed is 5.4 m / s, its direction is west-south-west ^[9] , the maximum wind speed is 27 m / s (almost 100 km / h).
• The height of the station is 3488 m above sea ​​level , which causes an acute shortage of oxygen . Due to the low air temperature in the station area, its pressure decreases faster with height than at mid-latitudes, and it is calculated that the oxygen content in the atmosphere in the station area is equivalent to an altitude of five thousand meters.
• Increased air ionization .
• The partial pressure of gases there differs from that in the air familiar to us.
• Lack of carbon dioxide in the air, which supposedly leads to malfunctions in the mechanism of regulation of respiration.
• The polar night lasts from April 23 to August 20, 120 days - almost a third of the year.
• Just two months a year, the average monthly air temperature exceeds −40 ° C and four months −60 ° C. From March to October, severe frosts occur, and only in November do relatively comfortable conditions come.

Acclimatization to such conditions lasts from one week to one to two months and is accompanied by dizziness and flickering in the eyes, ear pain and nosebleeds, suffocation and a sharp increase in pressure , loss of sleep and loss of appetite , nausea, vomiting , pain in joints and muscles , weight loss from three to five (known cases of up to 12) kilograms.

The average temperatures of the warmest months, December and January, are −35.1 and −35.5 ° C, respectively, which is equivalent to the cold Siberian winter. The average temperature of the coldest month, August, is −75.3 ° C, sometimes drops below −88.3 ° C. For comparison: January 1892 in Verkhoyansk (the coldest in the history of observations in Russia) had an average temperature of −57.1 ° C ^[14] . The coldest daily maximum temperature is −52 ° C; in May, the temperature during the entire measurement did not rise above −41.6 ° C.

There is practically no rainfall. The average annual rainfall is only about 18 mm.

Vostok station is located 1253 km from the South Pole , 1410 km from Mirny station and 1260 km from the nearest coast. The thickness of the ice sheet in this area is 3700 m. The glacier bed under the station is at a mark of about 200 m below sea level ^[11] .

Getting to the station in winter (from May to September) is practically impossible, which means that polar explorers cannot count on outside help. Cargo delivery to the station is carried out by air and sled-caterpillar train in the summer, relatively warm period, from Progress station ^[15] . Earlier, sled-caterpillar trains departed from Mirny station ^[16] , but due to the increase in hummockness along the route of the sled-caterpillar train, this is no longer possible . In detail, the difficulties of delivering goods in this way were described by Vladimir Sanin in his books “Beginner in Antarctica” and “72 degrees below zero”.

The station is located near the South geomagnetic pole of the Earth and is one of the most suitable places to study changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Every year, 12–13 people winter there. In the summer period (from December to March), when one shift replaces another, the number of polar explorers can reach 25 ^{[1] [17]} .

For more than 40 years, Russian specialists have been researching hydrocarbon and mineral raw materials, reserves of drinking water; carry out aero-meteorological, actinometric , geophysical and glaciological observations, as well as special medical studies ; They study climate change , the study of the " ozone hole ", the problems of increasing water levels in the oceans, etc.

Here, in the mid-1990s, as a result of drilling ^[18] glacial deposits (first with thermal drill shells and then with electromechanical shells on a load-carrying cable), the relict lake Vostok (the largest sub-ice lake of Antarctica) was discovered by the joint efforts of drilling groups of the Leningrad Mining Institute and the AARI . The lake is located under an ice sheet about 4000 m thick and has dimensions of approximately 250 × 50 km. Estimated area of ​​15.5 thousand km². Depth is more than 1200 m. Projects are being developed for exploring the lake.

Antarctic station Vostok was one of the stations that took part in the federal target program “World Ocean” ^[19] .

• The station is described in many books by Vladimir Sanin : “Newcomer to Antarctica” (1973), “Seventy-two degrees below zero” (1975), “Trapped” (1976).
• The films “ Seventy-Two Degrees Below Zero ” (1976) and “The Antarctic Tale ” (1979), filmed according to the stories of Vladimir Sanin, unfold along the road to the station and at it itself.
• In the film " Whiteout " (2009), the main character in one episode ends up at Vostok station, whose storyline staff was evacuated for the winter.
• In Max Brooks' novel, World War Z , the tycoon who sold the fake vaccine takes refuge from retaliation at Vostok station, leased from the Russian government.

• Installation of a toilet at Vostok station (according to the memoirs of Yuri Senkevich ): A cylindrical recess is made in the ice with a diameter of 1 m and a depth of 5 m, a standard "house" is attached above it. A steel round frame with an axis in the middle is mounted on the recess, on which a steel disk of the corresponding diameter is turned around its axis. A toilet seat is placed above the frame with the disc. Excrement falls on this disk and freezes. The duties of the station duty officer included cleaning the toilet. It happened like this: with a crowbar frozen excrement was broken into small pieces, after which the disk turned over its axis and the broken contents fell into the ice cylinder. The disk was fixed by the former back side. After some time, the cleaning process was repeated. When the cylindrical ice pit filled, the toilet was transferred to a new place, where the same design was also pre-drilled. It is worth noting that later the toilet device became closer to the standard city. There are 3 toilets at the station (in the radio house, diesel power station and dining room)
• On the night of April 13, 1982, after a fire that arose for an unknown reason, all the main and backup diesel generators burned down, and the station remained de-energized. 20 people spent a heroic wintering for 8 months, warming themselves with homemade diesel stoves , until a sled-caterpillar train with a new diesel-electric installation came from Mirny ^[20] .
• The station is approximately the same distance from the equator as the cities of Longyearbyen and Barentsburg on Spitsbergen in the Northern Hemisphere, where the absolute minimum temperature is −46.3 ° C, the absolute maximum +17.5 ° C, and the average annual temperature −14.4 ° C.

• Vostok-1 (Antarctic station)
• East (lake)

• Savatyugin L.M., Preobrazhenskaya M.A. Pole of Cold / Ed. Dr. geogr. sciences, prof. I.E. Frolova and Cand. geo sciences V.Ya. Lipenkova. - SPb. : AANII , 2008 .-- 508 p. - (Polar Library). - 500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-98364-036-8 .
• Savatyugin L.M., Preobrazhenskaya M.A. 4.4.3 Station Vostok // Russian Studies in the Antarctic. - SPb. : Gidrometeoizdat , 1999. - T. 1: (First — Twentieth Soviet Antarctic expedition). - S. 52-56. - ISBN 5-286-01265-5 .

• Station Vostok (neopr.) . AANII . Date of treatment January 3, 2015. Archived on August 8, 2007.
• Russian stations in Antarctica (neopr.) (Inaccessible link) . AANII . Date of treatment January 3, 2015. Archived on October 25, 2012.
• Alexey Ekaykin. Half a century in the depths of Antarctica (Neopr.) . Telegraph . Around the World (December 15, 2007). Date of treatment January 3, 2015.
• Alexey Ekaykin. In the "East" seven days a week (neopr.) . Telegraph . " Around the World " (January 19, 2008). Date of treatment January 3, 2015.
• On the threshold of life. Documentary - about the life of polar explorers during wintering at stations (Russian) . Life.ru (December 4, 2016). Date of treatment December 19, 2018.