Going to Extremes
Going to Extremes and Surviving Extremes were television programmes made for Channel 4 by Nick Middleton. In each episode of the two series, Middleton visited an extreme area of the world to find out how people have adapted to life there.[1]
Both Going to Extremes and Surviving Extremes were accompanied by books of the same name, except in the USA where the latter was titled Extremes: Surviving the World's Harshest Environments.
There was also a third series, titled Going to Extremes: The Silk Routes.
Going to Extremes[]
In this series, Middleton visited the coldest, hottest, driest and wettest permanent settlements in the world.
- Coldest
Oymyakon in Siberia, where the average winter temperature is −47 °F (− 44 °C).
- Driest
Arica in Chile, where there had been fourteen consecutive years without rain. Fog is the only local source of water.
- Wettest
Mawsynram in India, where average annual rainfall is 14 meters, falling within a four-month period in the monsoon season. The rainfall is approximately equal to that of its neighbor Cherrapunji.
- Hottest
Dallol in Ethiopia, known as the 'Hell-hole of creation'[2] where the temperature averages 94 °F (34 °C) over the year.
Surviving Extremes[]
In his second series, Middleton visited places without permanent towns, locations where "survival requires a lifestyle completely in tune with Nature's rhythms."
- Sand - Niger
- Middleton travelled with a group of women across the Sahara in extreme heat to trade date palms.
- Ice - Greenland
- Middleton travelled with the indigenous people of northern Greenland, where four fifths of the land is permanently ice-covered.
- Jungle - Democratic Republic of Congo
- Middleton visited the dangerous jungle in Congo.
- Swamp - Papua
- Middleton examined how people live with very little solid land.
- Toxic - Kazakhstan
- Middleton visited an abandoned Soviet biological weapons testing site with a toxic environment.
References[]
- ^ "Dr Nick Middleton". School of Geography and the Environment. University of Oxford.
- ^ Nesbitt, Ludovico Mariano (1 January 1934). "Hell-hole of creation; the exploration of Abyssinian Danakil". A.A. Knopf.
Further reading[]
- Middleton, Nick Going to Extremes: Mud, Sweat and Frozen Tears.
- Channel 4 books, 2001, hardcover, ISBN 0-7522-2016-0
- Pan Books - Macmillan UK, 2003, paperback, ISBN 0-330-49384-1.
- Middleton, Nick Extremes : Surviving the World's Harshest Environments .
- Thomas Dunne Books, 2005, hardcover, ISBN 0-312-34266-7.
- Middleton, Nick Surviving Extremes.
- Macmillan, paperback, 2004, ISBN 0-330-43182-X.
- Channel 4 original programming