16,500 Condoms Delivered to Antarctica Research Base

Mon, Jun 9, 2008

antarctica

Image (c) National Science Foundation

Last month, researchers in Antarctica received about 16,500 condoms, which are being made available for free to avoid any uncomfortable situations.

The condoms were sent with the last shipment of supplies to McMurdo, a U.S. research station. The U.S. base is host to only 125 scientists over the winter, which has been the real issue here. Winter brings the region into total darkness and many of the researchers simply leave - it is a time when everybody knows everyone else and passes large amounts of time indoors. Purchasing condoms therefore, has become a somewhat uncomfortable business.

The McMurdo station manager said that people get bored especially in this period, but they know how to occupy their time.

After the winter and up until the sun rises in full on August 20^th, the base is to be repopulated and the number of researchers will grow to about 1,100.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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anatarctica, delivery, research base, snow, winter

This post was written by:

Vlad Jecan - who has written 36 posts on Environmental Graffiti.

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Maura Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Um…It’s McMurdo. Not McMundo. Time to fire your editor… ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station
Chris Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Thanks for the tip off Maura. Guess I’ll have to fire myself lol.

Chris

Um…It’s McMurdo. Not McMundo. Time to fire your editor… ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station
Michelle Waitzman Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 3:15 am
125 researchers, 16,500 condoms…

When will they find the time to do any research??? Sounds like a whole lot of “passing the time” to me. I wonder if there have ever been any babies born in Antarctica?
Paracelse Says:
June 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
We have to change the Islands name from Antarctica to Erotica…. ;)
Taylor Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Does anyone know the gender ratio at McMurdo base? I tried to find it but I couldn’t get any specific data. Anyways, I thought that would be interesting (and if the ratio is really skewed as I assume it may be it would be even more interesting).

Here’s a little math for you:
Lets assume an even distribution of “couples” and that gives us 62.5 (only one party in any pair would need a condom) and assume approximately 72 days between the time the condoms were delivered (sometime in May) and the time that the base returns to capacity on August 20th.

16,500 condoms/62.5 couples/72 days = approximately 3.67 times per day per “couple”. Impressive.

Of course this only an approximation and while not necessarily assuming heterosexual intercouse, does assume that each couple either is using or necessarily needs to use a condom each time, and negates any other usage of the condoms than for intercourse between two individuals (if they really are as bored as I assume they would be, who knows how they “entertain themselves”).

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