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  • this video was made possible by skill share.

  • Start learning for free for two months by going to the link In the description at S K l dot s h slash Real life floor 29.

  • If there's something that everybody watching this video can agree upon, it's probably that we've all felt a pretty big feeling of loneliness at some point or another, or even all the time.

  • Loneliness is a big part of 21st century society, but who, among all of the billions of humans that have ever existed, was the absolute loneliest?

  • First of all, I need to define loneliness in the context of this video.

  • I'm going to be looking at the furthest away any single human being has been from any other humans.

  • So you or I might feel lonely right now while you're watching this video.

  • But the odds are pretty good that you're within a relatively close distance to another human somewhere.

  • Loneliness in this video is going to be defined similar to isolation.

  • So in that sense, what is the most isolated a single human being has ever been from the rest of the human species?

  • There's quite a few good candidates.

  • But the ones that immediately jump to mind are the six astronauts during the Apollo program who each stayed behind aboard the command module while the two other astronauts descended to the surface of the moon.

  • At one point, after the two other astronauts landed, each of the six other astronauts traveled alone aboard the command module to the other side of the moon away from them, meaning that they were each at separate times, located approximately 3585 kilometers away from the nearest other humans, which were just two dudes on the complete other side of the moon.

  • This would be like standing in New York City without a single other human being around you, except for a couple of guys hanging out in Las Vegas.

  • And besides, those two humans on the other side of the moon, Earth itself and the rest of humanity with everyone they ever knew was well over 384,000 kilometers away.

  • That is so far that even light takes over a second to cover the distance and to further the sense of isolation.

  • Radio contact with Earth would cut off when the astronauts entered over to the far side of the moon.

  • Each of these six astronauts were literally left alone, with nothing but their own thoughts, thousands of kilometers away from the nearest other human, where it was impossible to contact anybody for any reason.

  • As far as we know, this is the most isolated that any human being has ever been in history, from the rest of humanity.

  • But there's a few candidates that likely came very close in the modern world.

  • It's probably impossible to beat the 3585 kilometer distance away from any other humans anywhere on the earth's surface.

  • Even if you sailed on a boat alone out two Point Nemo in the Pacific, the point of the ocean that's the furthest away from any land you'd still be within 2963 kilometers away from Easter Island, which is home to 8000 people.

  • And since Antarctica now has a permanent population of over 1000 scientists year round, it's impossible to be anywhere on earth That's more than 3585 kilometers away from somebody else.

  • But it hasn't always been like this Earth used to be a pretty unexplored place after all.

  • During the European age of discovery, a French captain named Pierre Francois Peron became marooned on the tiny island of Ill Amsterdam in the Indian Ocean for three years.

  • But he was still 2700 kilometers away from the island of Mauritius and 3370 kilometers away from Australia, which were both inhabited at the time.

  • And both were closer than the 3585 kilometer distance of our lonely astronauts.

  • But his isolation lasted for far longer.

  • Being stranded on one of the most remote islands in the world, thousands of kilometers away from anybody else with only a handful of other men for three years is peak isolation.

  • But other explorers hold similar stories during the age of Antarctic exploration.

  • In the early 20th century, a British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott set out with five men to become the first humans to reach the South Pole in 1911.

  • When they arrived in January 1912 however, their spirits were crushed when they discovered that the rival Norwegian team had just beaten them.

  • They're 33 days previously.

  • After settling for second place, they had to begin the long trek back across the uninhabited continent to their ship at Cape Evans.

  • But horrible weather and colder than expected temperatures caused them to become stranded around these coordinates here.

  • One of the men named Lawrence Oates, had gotten frostbite on his toes and feeling like he was becoming a burden to the rest of the group.

  • He voluntarily walked outside of his tent into the white blizzard, never to be seen again.

  • The party steadily began dying off, until only one remained likely.

  • Scott himself.

  • And so, for a brief period, Scott was probably one of the most isolated humans in history.

  • Before he died as well.

  • The Norwegian team had already left Antarctica and the only other humans remaining on the continent at the time, where the auxiliary components of his crew waiting for him at Cape Evans, approximately 540 kilometers away, and a team of stranded Germans that were located about 2000 kilometers away.

  • Besides those scattered humans, the closest actual civilization would have been in New Zealand, 3857 kilometers away from Scott's position.

  • But perhaps the people who are most likely to have beaten the Apollo astronauts record are unknown and unnamed Polynesian explorers of the Pacific.

  • Until very recently, Historically speaking, most of the islands of the Pacific were completely uninhabited and untouched by humanity.

  • Beginning from Taiwan and Southeast Asia, the Polynesians were the first humans to explore this vast and untouched region.

  • The Cook Islands were reached around 700 a.

  • D with Hawaii and Easter Island discovered around 900 a New Zealand around 1200.

  • Since the Pacific was mostly uninhabited during this time and sailor set out into the vast ocean, not knowing what they would end up discovering, it's likely that at some point some guy may have gotten lost store blown adrift by a storm and gotten badly separated by the rest of Polynesian society.

  • With most of the island's uninhabited, it's very possible that somebody got lost and got mawr than the 3585 kilometer record distance of the Apollo astronauts away from any other humans.

  • Exploring the vast, uninhabited Pacific back then was a similar struggle to exploring the vast, uninhabited depths of space today.

  • Whoever the loneliest person in history was, they probably never even realized it and will probably never know about them.

  • I spend quite a lot of time alone in my room, and when I'm not writing or animating videos, it's often pretty tempting to just spend hours browsing red.

  • It's endlessly for memes, and I know that a lot of you watching this probably struggle with the same thing whenever you're alone.

  • So if you'd rather spend your alone time productively, you should go check out skill share.

  • It's an online learning community for creators, with thousands of classes and business design, photography, music, production and so much more.

  • For example, if you want to learn about how to make animations like the ones that you just watched in this video, you should check out Jake Bartlett's class on animating with ease and after effects.

  • It's got 18 lessons that will walk you through step by step from no experience to making your animations look smooth and professional.

  • It's still early on into the new year, so now is the time to make 2020.

  • The year when you finally learn that new skill that you've been pushing back or deepen an already existing passion.

  • Skill share makes this so easy and fun.

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  • Best of all, though, is that the 1st 500 people who follow the link in the description at S K l dot s h slash real life floor 29 can try out all of skill shares classes completely for free for two entire months.

  • And as always, thank you so much for watching.

this video was made possible by skill share.

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