Longyearbyen: In the town of Longyearbyen, Norway, people living here are not allowed to die. If anybody falls sick or dying, they send him/her to the mainland, and, if you die in the town then no one will bury you.
The town has had this policy in place for nearly 80 years, and the cemetery has been closed since 1918.
Temperatures in Longyearbyen drop below -500 Fahrenheit, and the permafrost is thick. After burying bodies at the turn of the century, townspeople soon realized that the bodies simply weren’t decomposing. Bodies in the cemetery were so well preserved, that scientists found living traces of the Spanish flu pandemic still alive in Longyearbyen’s cemetery.
The Spanish flu was thought to have been eradicated shortly after World War I and is thought to be.
The samples recovered from Longyearbyen graves have actually given scientists a new opportunity to find ways to fight the disease.
The Arctic town was completely unaware of the disease still sitting in their cemetery for close to 100 years. This led them to double-down on their no-death policy.
