Arctic explorer and adventurer Mark Wood joins WIRED to answer the internet's ice cold questions about polar expeditions. How does an average person travel to the arctic? Can they? What does it take to prepare for an arctic expedition? Where precisely is the North Pole? What kind of animals live there? What do you do if you're face to face with a polar bear? Answers to these questions and plenty more await on Polar Expedition Support. Director: Anna O'Donohue Director of Photography: Chaimuki Editor: Alex Mechanik Expert: Mark Wood Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Jasmine Breinburg; Paul Gulyas; Brandon White Production Manager: Peter Brunette Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer Camera Operator: Irys Steel Gaffer: Jake Newell Sound Mixer: Michael Panayiotis Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Additional Editor: Jason Malizia Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds

[upbeat music] So Adrianjones28 asked, "What was the most repulsive thing you had to eat on your expeditions?"

It was rancid, a whale blubber, which is absolutely repulsive and just was really tough to chew through as well.

And the people who gave it me who knew me really well were smiling 'cause they knew it tasted bad.

When you chew it, it's like chewing on a car tire, but it also stinks.

So TroyPSimpson asked, "I've no idea why I'm watching videos about what to do if I come face to face with a polar bear."

Well, I've come face to face with a polar bear, Troy, and 300 meters away, right up close to my face.

Actually followed me for about three days.

But the moment that I started to feel my heart really beat was when I actually could smell the bear.

I was stood on some ice luckily, and he jumped up and sniffed my GoPro camera.

To give it perspective, he was an arms distance away.

So he was this close away from me, which is too close in my world, and this is kind of what I was looking at.

The incredible strength within this jaw to rip an animal open was only at an arm's length away.

It's the first time that I've actually felt real danger.

And you only feel tremendously alone when you feel you need somebody's help.

And I had nobody else there.

It seemed like hours, but it was seconds of looking at this bear and eventually he dropped down and just walked away.

And at that point, I got this pen with the firework on the end and I pointed it at his feet and luckily it exploded in front of him, not harming the bear, but enough to scare him away and he ran off.

But for about two or three nights, I was still sticking my head out the tent like a mere cat and looking around and making sure that he'd gone, and he had definitely gone, which was a massive relief.

So this is the top of the world and you've got Russia and you've got Canada and all the countries around.

But the blue bit in the center is the Arctic ocean.

To show you where the five North Poles are, I'm gonna use my trusty polar bear claw.

You've got the geographic North Pole, which is the very top of the planet where all of the lines of longitude pass through.

That's a fixed pole.

Then you've got the pole of inaccessibility, which is on the Arctic Ocean itself.

Again, a fixed point, but it's equidistance from any landmass around it, from Greenland to Canada to Russia, et cetera.

Then you've got three other poles.

One of them is the Geomagnetic North Pole, which all geophysicists like, very difficult word to say.

And that's a moving pole.

And currently it's going across the Canadian Island of Ellesmere.

Then you've got the magnetic North Pole, which I'm sure you've heard of.

And that's going across the Canadian ocean side and it's crossing over to Russia.

So it's moving and moving over to Russian side.

And that's really in the news at the moment because of its shift.

And the final pole that you've got is actually in the air itself.

It's the point from Polaris to the North Pole, and it's a celestial pole.

So that's five North Poles.

So a great question or statement from Snakesl1, "The dudes that were involved in the heroic age of Arctic exploration were out of their freaking minds."

So the pioneer age of polar exploration were really from the late 1800s onwards, right up to the point we reached the geographic north and geographic south poles, which were earlier on in the last century.

At that time, it was about discovery and mapping these areas.

In the days of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men doing epic journeys across Antarctica, as some would say that they risked their lives for discovery, but really it was pure survival.

So they weren't given a choice.

They went out there to do something that no other humans had done before, which was so heroic.

Nowadays that wouldn't really happen because the communications we have, the global communications, the satellite, et cetera, would allow us to show the peril in real time so we could be rescued.

R_mccallsburg has written, "Read today that the Arctic Explorer has brought lard with them since it's so calorific dense.

Nowadays we're a little bit more advanced in understanding nutrition, and this picture shows little packets of food that I've decanted from the original packet.

There's actually about 100 packets of food and you've got main meals and also puddings, and that allows me also to put salami and butter and cheese and salt and everything else in there.

And you wrap it up into a little ball.

Instead of having a big carrier bag full of food each day, there's actually two handfuls of food that you have.

And inside there is apple and custard powder and that's what I eat as a pudding.

You've also got the main meals on this side, which can be a mixture of curries, stews, pastas as well for different packets.

So you're not eating the same food all the time.

I go and collect the snow or the ice and I melt it down, then boil it up, and then I pour this powder into a container and pour the boiling hot water into the container, mix it up, and then it expands.

And that's what I eat.

Full of protein, full of carbs, full of everything you need to perform really well.

Anderson Lemke asks a good question, "What kind of cell phones do Arctic explorers use?"

With cell phones, we can't use them in these extreme cold areas.

We use satellite phones and you can't use them as well like normal cell phones to look at the internet and to connect with friends or, say, call emergency services.

We use these to connect directly with the rescue services that we've already connected with prior to the expedition.

I can also connect with friends and family, but I don't when I'm on extreme expeditions, and the reason being is it's too emotional for me.

To bring myself back into their world will drain my sort of buildup of non-emotion that I've got for the expedition.

It loses my focus for what I'm doing each day, which is pretty tough mentally.

So I don't need somebody that I love on the other end of the phone weakening that spirit, if you like.

So this is a question from Al Lowe.

"What's the difference between a North Pole and the South Pole?

All of the difference in the world," he says.

So from an explorer's perspective, the Arctic Ocean or the North Pole is the toughest expedition that you can do hands down.

Antarctica itself being a continent, all you have to deal with is oncoming winds, tremendous cold, the loneliness of being out there, and sometimes crevasses, but you generally know where the crevasses are.

If you move to Antarctica in the center around the South Pole, there's no birds or anything like that.

It's just silence.

So Sara Bushway asks, "Watching season seven of Alone.

They have to survive 100 days in the Arctic by themselves to win a million dollars.

So I'm known for solo work, working Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, also on training expeditions as well.

So I've spent 50 days in Antarctica alone, 30 days around the North Pole, another 30 days in Norwegian High Arctic.

Generally I'm okay being alone.

And the biggest is issue there is the mental status and strength that you require to do that.

And I think experience gives you the abilities to carry that out.

And as you're going through a blank landscape, it gives you tremendous creativity in your mind to think about yourself as a human being, but what direction you want to go in, in life as well.

So Be_the_spark has asked a serious question.

"Other than reindeer and the occasional polar bear, what kind of animals would live in Santa's North Pole?"

You've got Arctic fox, Arctic hares, which are small animals.

Obviously you've also got caribou, which is a reindeer.

And you've got mascot which are quite big animals, pack animals.

And also you've got lemmings, very, very small.

And the only real bird I can think of would be the Arctic tern, which is in fact the longest migrating bird on the planet and can also be found in Antarctica as well.

So it goes all the way around the planet.

It's very rare, but sometimes you do get interaction with these animals.

So AndyC_1 asks, "Which polar explorer do you have the most admiration for and why?"

So two big explorers, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott did epic expeditions in Antarctica, but there was one person who has actually worked with them as like shadow of these two men.

And it's an Irishman called Tom Crean and he was the workforce behind them and is known as the Unsung Hero of that age.

So it was in Tom Crean's nature to survive, but also to look after the people he was with.

So he put his life in danger by actually rescuing his men, looking after Shackleton, being the forefront or the energy behind making that expedition to the South Pole a success as in all the men survived.

Rudi Schuller asks, "What do negative degree temperatures feel like?"

To stand alone in minus 40, minus 50 is a real tenseness on your body, almost claustrophobic, that you can't get out of the situation.

It's a real horrible feeling that you are engulfed in the cold.

But to survive in that moment, you need to do three things.

One is you need to make sure your body core temperature is warm.

So by eating food is a real survival technique to warm yourself up from the inside.

The second thing is to wear the correct clothing.

And that's something that will help you keep warm, but also allow your body to breathe as you're moving so you don't create sweat on your body, 'cause if you create sweat, then when you stop, that will turn to ice or clinging onto your heart and your lungs and can give you hypothermia.

And then the third thing is movement.

So as long as you can move, keep moving, keep the blood blowing around the body away from the extremities so you don't get frostbite, then your body can function and you can progress.

So inside the tent itself at night, it's the same temperature as outside the tent.

You've got a little protection from the wind, which is good, but you can be minus 35 with inside the tent, which is colder than your freezers at home.

But any explorer, any adventurer that you ever meet and you say the sound of the cooker is... As soon as you start hearing that sound, your brain starts getting happy because your body starts warming up.

And it's amazing to feel that initial heat coming off the cooker where you start stripping your clothes down and you can actually be in base layers inside your tent as a tent heats up.

So MaidenSlate asks, "Curious, how would you envision medical care in remote and rural areas?"

And I am self-sufficient, so I need to, first of all, be trained in medical care myself.

In Antarctica, as I started to move towards the South Pole over 50 days, I had a problem with my boot.

It wasn't fitting very well with my skis, so I had a little bit of movement inside with my foot.

And over a few days, it started to heat up and one day I took my foot out and I found that the base of my foot, the skin had come off, a massive amount of skin had come off and you just had the rawness of the skin underneath.

And I was in a lot of agony.

So what I did at night was I cut the skin off and because skin's got protein in it, I ate the skin.

After a few days, it actually dried off because Antarctica is a dry desert.

If you expose the foot to the dryness, it dries really, really quickly.

I think you just need to find where your passion lies and what you want to do and just take steps from there.

The word explorer is quite a contentious word in this modern era.

I've been asked whether I can actually call myself that.

Well, after 35 plus expeditions in the polar regions, I feel I have a right to say that.

And also it excites children when I come into schools to give talks that they know that have got an explorer coming in.

Really the explorers that I recognize, these guys in the past, the pioneers who discovered areas on the planet, and in space, they are the pioneer explorers of the past.

The key point is you've got to have the desire to go out there because the environment is so claustrophobic and unpredictable that you've got to have the real need to go out there and operate.

So you've got to consider that to begin with.

So my suggestion would be to go out and experience the environment to begin with and then to decide how you want to operate out there.

Limelacowboy, "I love polar exploration because where else are you going to find this many people excited to discover a guy who got cannibalized 180 years ago."

That's a good statement.

And yeah, people are excited about the mac carb, aren't they?

A 100 or so years ago in the days of Sir John Franklin and his men who perished along the Northwest Passage in High Arctic Canada weren't discovered until recent times as ships were, but all of the men died on ice.

There was talks of cannibalism as well, and this is the human nature at its rawest.

And really the only reason we know about this is because of the diaries left behind and the historic value of the whole expedition itself.

And that just shows how harsh these guys were living.

If you have to resort to something like that, it's just hell on earth.

So Orionis has asked, "How to travel to the Arctic?"

You can pull sledges like I do, carry everything with you.

You can go on snowmobiles with teams, you can also go on dog teams, which I love doing in Alaska.

I've worked with really good dog teams out there called Squid Dog Acres.

So these little blue bits of material are actually booties for dogs to put on their feet.

So these dogs have actually running these.

This was one of the main transports back in the day for dog teams to transport humans across the ice.

And it's still used today in High Arctic areas, but not in Antarctica.

They're not allowed dogs in Antarctica anymore 'cause it's unnatural for dogs to be there.

But it is a main source of transport for the polar regions.

So aside from pulling sledges, we also wear skis and we go back country skiing.

So we have the bindings which not are attached to the ski itself with the whole foot, it's just attached by the toe.

It allows us to propel ourselves a greater distance using less energy.

So I do extreme expeditions, but the polar regions are accessible to anybody to go and venture into.

You just need to travel with the right company.

Devan Flaherty has asked me about the third man factor.

Has anybody ever experienced the third man factor?

When I did the South Pole, I crossed there for 50 days without any music, anything to stimulate my brain.

But after a while, as I started to approach the South Pole itself, it's on a plateau of 3,000 meters and I started to push up this plateau and I was in quite a bit of pain.

My body was folding a little bit.

I was really pushing against the wind as I was going forward.

I felt somebody gripping onto my shoulder and somebody leaning into me whispering words of encouragement, "Keep going, keep going, keep going."

And that allowed me to almost be quite zen.

And even though I felt really relaxed as I was pushing forward, my mind was clearer, my body was still probably struggling but I didn't feel it inside and it felt great.

And that happened about six or seven times on that expedition.

And when I called for it, it never happened.

When I got back to Canada, I spoke to a great explorer up there and said this is what happened 'cause I was a little bit embarrassed as well.

And he said that it happened to him on the way back from the North Pole when they tried to find this food area which they'd laid out on ice, they'd lost it.

So they did a pattern search and something was telling him to go over towards the left.

And as he walked 100 yards, he found the food in the ice.

I'm sure scientists would say that you are a lowest ebb and your mind was thinking that you had no other choice and I needed support.

So I could easily relate it to maybe it's the spirit of my mother coming through.

And a lot of people might do that and I wouldn't smile at that or joke about it.

So Seetheuniverse has asked, "If you could bring one animal back from the North Pole to be a pet, what would you choose and why?"

And the bad news they're giving me is penguins don't live in the North."

If you are asking me what's my favorite animal and maybe a cuddly toy version of it, then I would definitely bring back a lemming 'cause it's very small, it's very cute, and it's very easy to hide away in my house away from people who think a 58-year-old man shouldn't have a teddy bear.

So Licensedclown asks, "What if I went to work in the Arctic?

I can talk about the Canadian High Arctic, which is probably half the size of Europe with a human population of about 500 people.

There's two settlements, Greece Fjord and Resolute Bay, which have about 270 to 300 people in.

And then there's a few research centers around a vast area which makes the numbers up to between four and 500 people.

However, there's also polar bears roaming around that area.

So the polar bear population really outweighs the human population.

So Quora asks, "How does one prepare for an expiration to the Arctic?"

And I think that to answer this, it's in preparation.

There's many things you have to pack for a polar expedition.

But the top five things that I would recommend are these.

A sleeping bag is essential for a good night's sleep.

Sleep is so important to how you perform the next day.

A great tent, you need something which will withstand storms and keep you protected from the wind.

A great cooker, something which will be reliable through the 50/100 days.

And then the fourth thing is your navigation.

And the final thing is if I was gonna drop all four of those and just pick one thing, it would be a location beacon.

And if we don't take that with us, I think it's four highly.

So to take a navigational system with you to track where you are going and then to press it in your hour of need is so important because the success of an expedition is coming home safe and sound.

I don't really take books or anything like that 'cause they're too heavy.

I take a little iPod with me with music on it and some podcasts on there as well.

But also I take a Dictaphone 'cause I'm not great at writing things down as the pioneers used to do like great diaries.

So I actually sew it into my sleeping bag and at night when I've had something to eat and I'm nice and warm, tucked in my sleeping bag, and it's the winds blown outside and it's tremendously cold, I can sit in my sleeping bag and talk about the day and talk about how I feel, which I think is really important for people to listen to.

What draws humans to visit the Arctic and how can one visit the great north and leave it untouched?"

For me, the biggest fear on exploration isn't polar bears, isn't the cold, it's the fear of giving in.

It's the fear of that moment where you find a weakness within your body and your heart and you say, "I can't go on."

And the trigger that keeps you going is the fact you truly believe in what you're doing, and also you have the mental knowledge to know that it will get better.

You will progress and you will get to your destination in the end.

So when I was in Antarctica, the plane did disappear and I was left on my own and I knew I had 50 days in front of me to reach the Geographic South Pole.

I'd spent three years preparing for this and telling everybody I was gonna do it.

So I had a the weight of the world, if you like, upon my shoulders as I moved forward.

But five days into the journey, I lost a key element to my expedition, which was my music.

So I had absolutely nothing to think about, but my own thoughts and the silence and looking around 360 of nothing actually played on my mind to the point where I pitched my tent middle of the day and I sat in it and I thought, I can't do this anymore.

This was five days into the journey and I spent 36 hours in that tent just going through my mind of giving in, giving in, giving in all the time.

I know I'm an older man, but I can be honest to you and say that I cried and I judge myself and what I was doing.

And at that point, I got on my satellite phone, I phoned my friend back in the UK who knew me really well and I said, "I want to give in."

And he talked me through what was wrong, how I could process things.

He talked me back on my feet but he didn't make me move my feet.

So I packed everything away.

Then I stood looking at the path in front of me and I just put one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, kept on doing that for another 1,000 feet.

And that's how I reached the South Pole by just basically moving myself in the right direction.

Remember_Sarah asks a good question.

"How was the golden age of Arctic exploration possible before Hot Hands, which is what I want to know."

Hot Hands is like a pad that you can have in your hand, you break it and it warms up your hands.

They're great if you're go skiing or if you are doing stuff like operating cameras and things like that.

It feels great at the time, then that's taken away and I'm back to being cold again.

It helps in in sense of emergencies, but I don't generally use them just to warm myself up.

You've got to remember they didn't have these pads, but what they did bring on their ships were things like musical instruments, like pianos and guitars and they have bottles of whiskey and wine and rum and all these different foods on the ship.

And then they transported that to the ice and they took a lot of heavy equipment along with them.

So even though they didn't have the comfort of Hot Hands, they had the comfort of other things that we take for granted in normal life.

You have very, very thin layers that you wear that are breathable, that trap air.

And you can have two or three of those on depending on how cold you are.

And then you have a mid layer on top.

And then if you are really, really cold, like if you're static and not using your body to generate heat, then you can put a big down jacket on, zip it right up with your hat and everything to keep me nice and warm.

But it all depends on what you're doing.

If you are moving, then your body will generate heat.

If you're static, then you will release heat from your body so you need to contain it.

When you're in a tent at night and you're about to get into your minus 40 sleeping bags, so really great sleeping bags you need.

The mistake a lot of people make is they think, I'm really cold, so they wear all their jackets and everything and they get into the sleeping bag and they start to freeze.

And the reason for that is because the sleeping bag is designed to contain the heat of the body.

So you heat up the bag, the bag doesn't heat up you.

So to wear less clothing in a sleeping bag is the important thing to do.

What I do is I get into my sleeping bag and when it's freezing cold, I do a little jog.

I move around quite a lot and I generate a lot of heat.

Then I put the bag up, zip it up, and all that heat is then dispersed inside the bag.

Igloos are built in igloo shape because it gives strength to the structure.

If it just had walls, then it'd be difficult to build a structured roof to it.

Also the ice that is used has got very little water content.

So if you try to get the ice and scratch it up like a snowball, then it would just flake away in your hands 'cause it hasn't got anything to bind it together.

So that's why you cut bricks to build an igloo because it's more structural, a bit like polystyrene if you like.

The igloos will keep you sheltered from the wind and you can actually light a fire inside or put your cooker on and that will then contain the heat inside.

The only technical thing you need to know about is how those fumes are released outside.

If it's sealed, you can actually succumb to the fumes.

So Romanticspiral, "Walking to work today in a stormy winter weather made me realize I have zero survival instincts.

Drop me alone in the middle of the Arctic and I will give up within a day."

If the average person was dropped into the same area that I operate in, it would be a rapid decrease in the mental and physical state.

There is a thing called Arctic shock, and that's the reality of where you are.

The coldness, that engulfed shoe, the wind that whips around you, the realization that you're not gonna be able to go into a building for the next two to three weeks can be quite intense on you.

So Arctic shock kicks in and basically that means that your body's telling you to give in at a very, very early stage.

So failure would be very, very quick for them unless you have that backing of experience.

So Simplebeauty asks, "So we're not gonna talk about Antarctica melting?"

Well, I've actually bought in some ice, which is over the course of 12 years from Antarctica and from the Arctic circle as well.

So this is ice from the Geographic North Pole, and this is ice from the Geographic South Pole.

In Antarctica, the ice is melting so fast and it's one of the most rapidly heating places on the planet.

So, so much research is being taken out there with different teams from around the world.

And when it comes round to the Arctic circle, because it's an ocean, obviously there's very, very different patterns there.

But with the Arctic, it's very, very different altogether because it's an ocean with land masses around it like Russia and Canada and places like that.

So you've got ice crossing all the way from Russia all the way to Canada, but that ice is depleting.

Because in ice cube in a glass, if the ice melts, it stays the same level, but because the ice is so vast, it's got its own gravitational pull and it draws in water from all oceans from around the planet.

And as it gets to the top of the world, it freezes and that's why you get this beautiful ice mass on top of the planet.

But because the world is heating up, this ice is melting and it's now dispersing the water back around the planet so sea levels rise, and that's an explanation of what's happening at both poles.

To the naked eye, this looks very, very clear at both poles, but in the Antarctic one, you've got ice, which is sat on top of land mass.

So it's pure ice sat on top of there in a pure area.

And on this one, you've got ice from the ocean, the Arctic ocean.

So I would imagine it's got salt content within this one though I haven't tested it, but they are very, very different in their content.

It'd be wrong of me to burn anything out there anyway environmentally.

So what I use to heat up my food is a little cooker and we use fuel and we light that and it sets off the heat for the food, but also heat for the tent as well.

So it warms me up at the same time and I go out and collect snow and ice and I melt that down, boil it up, and that's what I add to my food.

So actually the heater is a main source of survival.

Quora writes, "What was your most unexpected Arctic experience?"

One of the most memorable was you expect to see a polar bear in the Arctic, but one day a little lemming just decided to walk into the tent and it was a total shock.

A lemming is a little rodent and he just walked in like it... Well, it was his home.

I took some photographs and didn't touch him at all.

And then he walked out and as I saw him walk out, he sort of walked off into the ice and then just disappeared over a little bit of ice, and I thought, how does he survive in this wilderness?

It's made me think about who I'm as an explorer, it's put me on my back foot.