

The world got a rude wake-up call that day when panicked scientists at the McMurdo Research Station broadcast shots of 3 JAM aircraft shooting down a cargo plane that had just taken off.

In Sentou Yousei Yukikaze, the JAM invasion of Earth started on the Ross Ice Shelf when a hyperspace portal appeared and they came out shooting.Hinata even once describes it as a great place to get away from everyone. A Place Further than the Universe involves the protagonists going on a civilian expedition to Antarctica, the "place" described in the title, which is also the title of Shirase's mother's book with the same name.In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Antarctica was the resting place of the angel Adam disturbing him is what starts the entire series.These negotiations eventually lead to the signing of the Antarctic Treaty (sort of a futuristic Geneva Convention that, among other things, outlawed the use of nuclear and biological weapons, as well as Colony Drops). Mobile Suit Gundam: In the original, negotiations between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon took place in Antarctica, since it was the closest thing to neutral territory in the Earth Sphere.The cold-blooded "serpentines" survive because of their advanced technological level and frequent use of geothermal power. In A Centaur's Life, Antarctica is inhabited by a species of snake people.See also Monster in the Ice, Grim Up North (the polar opposite), Polar Bears and Penguins. Also see The Shangri-La for supernatural or mysterious depictions of another remote, icy region.

Planetary Romance fell away once we knew that both were uninhabitable.Ī particularly common variant is the Eerie Arctic Research Station, which despite the name applies to both the Arctic and Antarctic. A number of countries have research stations.Īs time goes on, of course, Science Marches On, and the more fantastical versions of this trope are just as Discredited, just like the way depicting civilizations on the inhospitable planets of Mars and Venus in many a 1920s and 1930s

The main inhabitants of Antarctica are scientists and the main economic activity is scientific research. In Real Life, rather than pyramids and UFOs, what's under the ice seems to pretty much be. This trend continues today - after all, who knows what may be under the ice? Incredible cold and lethal winds conspired to keep humans away, which made it a fertile area for stories about mysterious buried alien technology, ancient aliens, and monsters frozen in the ice. Even now, most of its surface has only been mapped by satellite. The last continent to be explored and mapped out was the desolate, icy expanses of Antarctica, which was long suspected to exist but ultimately dismissed as myth until 1820, when it was finally, officially, sighted by humans. Eventually explorers traveled to Africa, Asia and Australia. As Europeans explored more, they sailed to the Americas, and the mysterious unknown regions were revealed and mapped as part of colonialism. At first, people explored the land mass they lived on, voyaging up rivers, forging through dense Wild Wilderness and up into mountains. People have always wondered about what mysteries might lurk in unexplored regions.
