Etyom - built on top of Norilsk, an arctic hell at the edge of the world.
​Norilsk is an ex-Gulag mining city situated on the Siberian western plateau at the foot of the Putorana Mountains. The average annual temperature is -10C, but reach as low as -55C in winter. It is considered one of the most miserable places to live on Earth.
The city-factory with 170,000 residents, has only one reason to exist: maintaining the biggest metallurgical and mines complex in the world - it has the largest deposits of nickel, copper and palladium on the planet. The complex brings in 2% of Russia's GDP.
The cold period extends for about 280 days per year, with more than 130 days featuring snowstorms. There are two whole months of polar night, when people endure near total darkness, and Norilsk is encased in snow for eight to nine months a year.
The Norilsk’s citizens suffer ‘the polar night syndrome’, resulting in anxiety, nervousness, drowsiness or insomnia, depending of the seasons, while the psychological discomfort and poor emotional stimuli also generate many cases of depression. It is also consistently in the top 10 post polluted cities in the world.
In ITDTRAS, Norilsk becomes the last escape from the New Black Death. The city is renamed Etyom.