{"id":5052,"date":"2013-04-02T20:12:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T02:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5052"},"modified":"2013-04-02T20:12:47","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T02:12:47","slug":"northern-exposure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5052","title":{"rendered":"Northern exposure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scmp.com\/magazines\/post-magazine\/article\/1201736\/northern-exposure\">Justin Jin:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Inside the claustrophobic confines of a shipping container erected in the middle of an icy nowhere, a group of Russians wait out another Arctic storm. Anton bakes blinis. Andrei watches a horror movie for the umpteenth time. Alexei tries to craft a toothpaste holder from an empty tin can. Lisa the dog, who finds company among the 100 men in Camp No2, curls up farthest away from the drafty door.<\/p>\n<p>The engineers gathered on this desolate patch of Russian tundra have been hired by a geo-exploration company to look for oil deep below the permafrost. I am waiting out the battering winds with them, to document the international race to secure Arctic resources.<\/p>\n<p>I have made six trips over three years to the Russian Arctic, a 7,000-kilometre-long region stretching atop the planet from Finland to Alaska, upon which Moscow bureaucrats have bestowed the name &#8220;Zone of Absolute Discomfort&#8221;. The icy hinterland is wretched to live in, but just hospitable enough to allow for the extraction of billions of tonnes of resources trapped beneath the permafrost.<\/p>\n<p>Here, three contrasting ways of life, representing three centuries of Russian history, simultaneously tap the Earth&#8217;s resources amid its harshest conditions: indigenous reindeer herders known as Nenets; descendants of former Soviet prisoners; and energy-company men seeking oil and natural gas.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Jin: Inside the claustrophobic confines of a shipping container erected in the middle of an icy nowhere, a group of Russians wait out another Arctic storm. Anton bakes blinis. Andrei watches a horror movie for the umpteenth time. Alexei tries to craft a toothpaste holder from an empty tin can. Lisa the dog, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}