Most people choose where to live based on job opportunities, family, or climate preferences. But scattered across the planet are communities that have chosen, or been forced, to make their homes in places so extreme that basic survival requires a daily battle against nature. These are real towns with real residents who consider the extraordinary their version of ordinary.
Whittier, Alaska: An Entire Town in One Building
Nearly every resident of Whittier, Alaska, population 272, lives in a single building. Begich Towers is a 14-story former Army barracks built in 1957 that now contains apartments, a post office, a small store, a laundromat, a church, and a medical clinic. The building is connected to the town’s school by an underground tunnel so children do not have to walk outside in winter.
Whittier is accessible only through a single one-lane tunnel, the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, which is 2.5 miles long and shared between cars and trains. During winter, which lasts roughly eight months, the town experiences winds exceeding 60 miles per hour and snowfall measured in dozens of feet. Residents describe a close-knit community where privacy is a luxury and everyone genuinely knows everyone.
Why Do 1,700 People Live Underground in Coober Pedy?
Coober Pedy, in the South Australian outback, is the opal mining capital of the world. Roughly 60 percent of the town’s 1,700 residents live in underground homes called dugouts, carved directly into the sandstone hillsides. The reason is practical: surface temperatures regularly exceed 104 degrees Fahrenheit, while underground homes maintain a constant, comfortable 73 to 75 degrees year-round.
The underground dwellings are not primitive caves. They include fully equipped kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms, and even swimming pools. Coober Pedy also has underground churches, an underground bookshop, and an underground bar. The town’s name comes from the Aboriginal term kupa-piti, which translates roughly to white man in a hole. Residents have embraced the description wholeheartedly.
Tristan da Cunha: The Most Remote Community on Earth
Tristan da Cunha is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, located 1,750 miles from the nearest land, the coast of South Africa. The island’s settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, is home to approximately 250 permanent residents. There is no airport. The only way to reach the island is by boat, a journey that takes six to seven days from Cape Town.
The island has a school, a pub called The Albatross, a small hospital, and a post office that does brisk business with stamp collectors worldwide. Everyone on the island shares one of just seven surnames, reflecting the community’s founding by a handful of families in the 19th century. The islanders fish for lobster, farm potatoes, and live a lifestyle that has changed remarkably little in over a century.
La Rinconada: The Highest City Where Humans Permanently Live
Perched at 16,700 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, La Rinconada is the highest permanent human settlement on Earth. Over 50,000 people live here, drawn by the promise of gold mining. The air contains roughly 40 percent less oxygen than at sea level, and altitude sickness is a constant companion for newcomers.
Living conditions in La Rinconada are harsh by any standard. There is no running water, no sewage system, and no garbage collection. Mercury contamination from gold processing is widespread. Many miners work under a system called cachorreo, where they work for 30 days without pay and then are allowed to keep whatever ore they can carry out on the 31st day. Despite these conditions, the population has grown steadily as gold prices have risen.
Svalbard: Where Polar Bears Outnumber People
The Svalbard archipelago, located roughly halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is home to about 2,900 people in its largest settlement, Longyearbyen. It is also home to approximately 3,000 polar bears. Residents are legally required to carry a rifle when traveling outside settlements, and polar bear encounter training is a standard part of life.
Svalbard is so cold that bodies buried there do not decompose, which is why the cemetery has not accepted new burials since 1950. The archipelago also houses the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a doomsday backup of the world’s agricultural seeds stored deep inside a mountain. Despite its extreme latitude, Svalbard has a surprisingly diverse international community, with residents from over 50 countries attracted by research opportunities, mining, and tourism.
Floating Lives on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap
Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, supports an estimated 1.2 million people who live permanently on its waters. Entire villages float on the lake, including houses, schools, markets, basketball courts, and even gas stations, all built on bamboo platforms or anchored boats.
The lake’s water level fluctuates dramatically with the seasons, swelling from 1,000 square miles in the dry season to over 6,000 square miles during monsoon floods. The floating communities simply rise and fall with the water, relocating entire villages as the shoreline shifts. Children learn to swim before they walk, and daily life, from cooking to commerce, happens entirely on water.
These communities remind us that human adaptability knows almost no limits. Whether underground, at extreme altitude, on water, or in frozen isolation, people find ways to build homes, raise families, and create societies in places the rest of the world would consider uninhabitable.
Could you live in any of these extreme places? Tell us which one and why in the comments.