ARCTIC: Alaska’s Deadly Storm & more – 21st Oct 2025

Hei Hei from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 21st of October twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Disaster struck the Arctic this week. The Associated Press reported on Friday the 17th, that a devastating storm hit the Alaskan coast and its rural communities on Monday the 13th. According to the latest FEMA report from Thursday the 16th, thousands of Alaska Native people have been evacuated, with one confirmed death and two reported missing so far. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed by what state officials are calling one of the most destructive storms in Alaskan history.

Could more have been done to prepare for such a storm? Is a significant question that people have been asking the government. On Thursday the 16th, the Environmental Protection Agency defended its recent cancellation of a 20 million US dollar grant meant to create environmental protections for remote Alaska communities, saying that money is better placed in the US Treasury than being used in Alaska.

If you want to help in the recovery efforts for this storm, Alaska Public Media has compiled a useful list of ways to help. The link is in the show notes.

Where might money be better spent in Alaska then? On Friday the 17th, Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian government’s investment envoy, told journalists of his unique idea. He wants to build a rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link the US and Russia, unlocking joint exploration of natural resources and becoming a symbol of unity. The idea is estimated to cost 8 billion US dollars, and Dmitriev even spoke of contracting Elon Musk’s tunnel-building company, The Boring Company, to head construction.

Dmitriev’s working title for the project is the Putin-Trump tunnel, though when US President Donald Trump was asked about the project at a press conference on Thursday the 16th, he would only say the idea was interesting.

A tunnel to Alaska seems unrealistic, but a different Russian project could benefit the whole Arctic. As reported by The Barents Observer on Monday the 20th, the draft Russian federal budget for twenty twenty-six-twenty twenty-eight includes money to raise and scrap two cold war-era nuclear submarines, currently sitting at the bottom of north Russian waters.

Over 370 million US dollars has been proposed to rescue the K-27 and the K-159 submarines, which together contain about 800 kilograms of nuclear fuel. While the nuclear pollution has yet to leak into the environment, experts from Russia and Norway fear the two vessels are ticking time bombs with the potential to seriously harm the Arctic marine environment.

With this budget, there are hopes that the dangerous remnants of a darker Soviet past might be put to rest.

Russia is improving its relationship with the US, but other countries aren’t following the same path. In a previous episode, we covered the EU’s recent sanctions against Russia. This week, on Thursday the 16th, the UK announced a new massive sanctions package targeting Russia’s Arctic oil and gas industry.

Among the many new sanctioned entities are a Chinese ship terminal in the city of Beihai, which has been importing gas from the Russian Arctic, seven more vessels of the Russian Shadow Fleet, which operate illegally in the European Arctic, and two of the country’s largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

While a strong statement of intent by the UK, it needs to be matched by equal action by the US and EU to have any real impact against the Russian economy.

There’s a political battle taking place in Finland too, between the Finnish government and Sámi reindeer herders. According to a report by the news agency, The Arctic Today, released on Wednesday the 15th, Hogan Lovells, a global giant in the legal industry, has agreed to represent the Sami herders who are complaining to the UN that the Finnish government is stripping them of their human rights.

The complaint covers many alleged abuses, with one major aspect being the logging of a culturally and economically vital forest to Sami communities. This forest provides food for the reindeer, which support Sami livelihoods, yet the Finnish government has felled almost half of these forests.

Hogan Lovells says they hope to bring Finland to account for not protecting the rights of its Indigenous groups.

Over the border in Norway, the latest state budget has only one priority for the north: defense. As reported by the news agency, High North News, on Thursday the 16th, the government designated the whole of Northern Norway as an action zone. This means in the case of military conflict, the northern regions of Norway are expected to see direct action.

Over $11 billion US dollars will be spent on defense, about $2 billion dollars more than last year. While much of this will go to defending the north, there has been little investment in any other parts of northern society. Many sectors, such as Healthcare, culture, and housing, are left stagnating as military priorities take over all else.

The economic outlook for Canada’s north is less lucrative than that of Norway. The Finance Minister for the North West Territories spoke in the Legislative Assembly on Friday the 17th, announcing that the territory’s annual surplus has shrunk by over $100 million US dollars. The start of the fiscal year projected a healthy operating surplus of over $120 million dollars, but a year of destructive wildfires has reduced this surplus to just $11 million dollars.

Canada’s north contains huge economic potential, but if climate change and wildfires continue to increase, money will be hard to make.

Meanwhile, according to the Canadian broadcaster CBC, on Monday the 20th, researchers from the University of British Columbia and Natural Resources Canada predict that nowhere in the country will see fewer wildfires by two thousand one hundred. The Arctic territories of the Yukon and Nunavut will see more and more wildfires as time progresses, but thankfully the Northwest Territories is already at its peak wildfire rate and will remain at this level for the rest of the century.

The study based its forecast on current forest conditions across Canada. Forests need to be either maintained or improved to prevent wildfires from accelerating beyond human management.

Elsewhere in Arctic Canada, a suspected rabies outbreak is causing health concerns. In a news release from Tuesday the 14th, Nunavut’s Health department advised residents in the town of Arviat to be on the lookout for signs of rabies after an Arctic fox was found acting abnormally. The fox made contact with a number of local dogs before being euthanized, so residents have been advised to keep watch for any other foxes, or dogs, that show signs of rabies.

There’s more hopeful news on the way in Iceland. In previous shows, we reported on the town of Grindavik, which has had two years of struggle as repeated volcanic eruptions battered the area. But with no eruption since August, the Grindavík town council announced on Friday the 17th that they aim to reopen schools by next autumn.

Extensive repairs have been restoring the road system and main infrastructure in Grindavík since August, with the government implementing a three-year funding program to restore the town. Even though only about 400 people currently live in the town, down from 4,000 pre-eruption, there are hopes that normal life will be a real possibility soon in Grindavik.

In science news, mysteries surrounding how people have survived in the far north are being uncovered. In a paper published on Wednesday the 14th in the journal, Nature, scientists from the University of Quebec analyzed the diets of Inuit communities in northern Quebec.

The lack of fresh vegetables and high pollution levels in the Arctic shouldn’t be a healthy diet, but blood tests show Inuits exhibit some of the highest blood concentrations of antioxidants in the world. This study reveals that the skin and blubber of the beluga whale are a huge source of the antioxidants, selenoneine and ergothioneine. These compounds are how beluga whales survive in Arctic waters all year round, and have been protecting Inuit from the harsh northern environment too.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

This past Saturday, we held a trial of a new kind of gathering. Highly structured but radically equal, very wild. No keynote speakers, no talking heads. Those who join decide who they talk to, but without knowing the identity of who they will meet, they propose and decide what they will discuss. Like we said. Wild, interested in what it was, check the show notes and if you’re interested, we can help you hold one in Svalbard, Norway.

Moikka