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Another day ended-if you could call it day! Three hours of twilight, followed by twenty-one hours of darkness. The sun had long since slipped over the southern horizon, there to stay until springtime. Three men were huddled in the gloomy little hut, trying to keep warm. The temperature inside hovered just above freezing. Fuel must be conserved as much as possible, and a diet of cold porridge and rice did little to bring warmth to their shivering bodies.
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Three men, a Japanese, a Russian and a New Zealander, had come to desolate Wrangel Island in the fall to observe and film polar wildlife. When it was time to leave, a blizzard roared in and made it impossible to travel. They had to wait-and
wait and wait. Six weeks later they were still waiting for a helicopter to reach them. Continuing blizzards and whiteout conditions had made it impossible to fly. Now the polar bears they had come to view and film were showing a very real interest in viewing them! Nightly the men listened to the bears clawing at the door of the hut.
Strange to say, the three men were never out of touch with the rest of the world. Using e-mail and a battery-powered satellite telephone, they were "wired" into the global Internet. But, as someone said, "While they could have ordered a thousand pizzas with a click of their mouse, the Internet could not bring them the food they needed to survive!"
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