Ask Lemmy

That's a good point. I know that in the US, pretty much everything costs more in Hawaii. Though...hmm. I'd bet that a big chunk of that might be the Jones Act, which requires any shipping from a US port to a US port without intermediate stops abroad to be done on a US-flagged ship with American crewmen, which is quite expensive. Net result, as I understand it, is that a lot of shipping between US destinations will do an intermediate stop at a port abroad. That works for, say, the Caribbean. But there isn't any non-US territory anywhere near Hawaii, so a shipper won't be able to readily use that approach.

googles

Yeah, it sounds like it's a factor and a bit of a touchy point for Hawaii.

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/jonesact/

The 1920 Jones Act requires that all cargo transported between U.S. ports be on ships that are U.S. flagged, built and mostly owned and crewed by Americans. It is well known that the act adds to Hawaii’s high cost of living...

So I dunno if it'd be as bad for Svalbard.

Also, Svalbard's gonna be cold -- even if it's warmer than places at a similar latitude, it's still in the Arctic -- so heating costs will be higher there than most other places that people live.

When it isn't being cut, they have submarine cables to Norway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System

The Svalbard Undersea Cable System is a twin submarine communications cable which connects Svalbard to the mainland of Norway. The two optical fiber cable consist of two segments, from Harstad to Breivika in Andøy, and from Breivika to Hotellneset near Longyearbyen in Svalbard. The segments from Harstad to Breivika are 74 and 61 kilometers (46 and 38 mi) long, respectively, and the segments from Breivika to Hotellneset 1,375 and 1,339 kilometers (854 and 832 mi). Each consists of eight fiber pairs and there are twenty optical communications repeaters on each segment. Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s. The system is now the sole telecommunications link to the archipelago.

There's apparently 5G service:

https://www.lifeinnorway.net/5g-norway/

The company began Scandinavia's first 5G pilot back in November 2018, conducted Norway's first 5G video call, and launched the world's northernmost 5G pilot in Svalbard. Telenor chose Nordic company Ericsson over Chinese firm Huawei to supply the critical infrastructure for the rollout.

I don't know whether Starlink orbital paths can cover that far north.

googles

Apparently so, and they started service about five months ago.

https://satprnews.com/2023/07/09/starlink-launches-in-svalbard-a-new-era-of-internet-connectivity-in-the-arctic/

Starlink Launches in Svalbard: A New Era of Internet Connectivity in the Arctic.

Well, everything is terrible when you subject it to the realities of our modern world. Just turn off that part of your mind for a few moments and enjoy the idea.

googles

Apparently, they don't let people be buried there anymore, because it's all permafrost, so the bodies don't decay. This says that they sometimes permit people to be cremated and have their ashes kept in the graveyard there.

https://www.iflscience.com/it-is-against-the-law-to-die-in-this-town-for-very-good-reason-46724

The notion it's illegal to die in Longyearbyen may have first started when it was discovered that in 1950 bodies within the town's cemetery were not decomposing due to the permafrost. As a result, it was believed deadly viruses within the bodies could be kept alive and possibly re-infect the living population as the permafrost thawed.

It sounds like a nightmare scenario, but it's one that has already played out elsewhere. In August 2016, there was an anthrax outbreak in northern Siberia, with one boy being killed and around 90 others hospitalized. Furthermore, 2,300 reindeer died from the disease.

The most recent outbreak prior to this took place in 1941. The 2016 outbreak occurred during a heatwave in the region, leading officials to conclude that a reindeer killed by anthrax had thawed out, causing the virus to be released into the environment.

In 1950, officials in Longyearbyen were worried that a similar thing could happen with bacteria and viruses hiding in the residents of their graveyard.

Recently, samples of the Spanish Influenza were found in the lungs of victims of the disease that had been preserved in the permafrost of Alaska, stored there since 1918. Traces were also found in Longyearbyen itself, from a person who died during the 1917 outbreak.

Though it's unlikely that bodies in Longyearbyen thawing out would cause an outbreak of Spanish Flu, a team of scientists studying the virus in 1998 took extra precautions just in case. While extracting samples from the graves, they wore modified spacesuits and ensured that the tissue did not thaw out before it reached a specialized facility in the US.

"Potential viruses from the bodies that died during the Spanish flu is not a worry in Longyearbyen," Carlsen told IFLScience. The results of those scientific studies can be read about here.

"It is not illegal to die on Svalbard, that happens from time to time, but as a main rule you cannot be buried here. However, in some special cases and for people who have a special connection or history to Longyearbyen, you can be buried in an urn at the cemetery."