Inside 'most depressing city' with low life expectancy, permafrost and blood red river

dailystar.co.uk:

Russian city built on a former Soviet prison camp, with a life expectancy 10 years below the national average, has been dubbed "the most depressing on Earth".Located in the Arctic permafrost, the city has 45 days of continuous darkness per year, average January temperatures of -30C, a river that runs blood red, and pollution levels so high it reduces the life expectancy of its residents to 59-years-old.As well known for its mining as it is for its pollutants, Norilsk is the most northerly city in the world, located in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region of Siberia, eastern Russia.Home to over 170,000 people the city, which only got a proper internet connection in 2017, has no roads leading to it, and one freight railway running in and out of it.Its nearest port city of Dudinka, located 40 miles away, provides access by sea but is frozen over in winter.The only year-round access route is to fly in with a five-hour flight from Moscow, which is 1,800 miles away.For about two-thirds of the year, the city and its surroundings are covered in snow with temperatures reaching record lows of -53.1C before.In contrast, in the summer the sun doesn't set for 65 days.Norilsk's story began in the early 20th century when a geologist discovered rich deposits of nickel, copper, and cobalt at the foot of the Putorana Mountains.The city sits on the biggest nickel-copper-palladium deposits on the planet, and from 1936 the USSR spent 20 years building a huge extraction complex in the mountains using around 500,000 forced labourers from a nearby Gulag.Working in horrific conditions in the Arctic permafrost saw 18,000 of the prisoners dying.Today, almost everyone in the city has a connection to the plant that produces a fifth of the world's nickel,.