World’s 7 most dangerous and remote islands
Snorkels and beach towels stay at home. Death and dismemberment await (seriously) on this collection of forbidding islands
Idiotic TV shows and "latest apps" bumming you out on the 21st century?
Ready for some "me time" on the world’s remotest islands?
Golden sands and swaying palms are for pretenders -- the reality of solitude is different, as these terrifyingly distant landfalls demonstrate.
1. Tristan Da Cunha
1,750 miles from South Africa
Long way back if you forget your camera.
The British island group of Tristan da Cunha stands profoundly alone in the South Atlantic.
The nearest landfall is South Africa, 1,750 miles east, and to the west, South America is more than 2,000 miles distant.
It’s the world’s most remote inhabited island chain -- so precariously occupied that when a volcanic vent erupted in 1961, the whole population was evacuated to England.
2. Bear Island
400 miles off Europe's north coast
Somewhat like an oceanic Chernobyl.
Bjørnøya, better known as Bear Island, is the southernmost island in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, 400 miles north of mainland Europe -- but only on paper, given that it’s almost 150 miles south of the island chain it’s lumped in with.
It’s been a nature reserve since 2002 and has a lively history of failed occupation -- hard to believe for a place comprised of barren cliffs, near-zero precipitation and risk of leaks of radioactive material from the nearby wreck of a nuclear submarine.
3. Bouvet
1,000 miles from Antarctica
Everyone welcome -- as long as you have a very good reason.
Tristan da Cunha is the remotest inhabited island in the world -- now, welcome to its uninhabited, far bleaker counterpart.
Its cliffs are sheer. It’s almost entirely covered by a glacier. In winter, its seas are pack-ice.
And its nearest neighbour is Antarctica, a thousand miles to the south. In short, idyllic.
4. Bishop Rock
30 miles from England
Nice lighthouse, but not much room for anything else.
Regarded by Guinness as the world’s smallest island with a building on it, Bishop Rock stands at the end of Britain’s Isles of Scilly, where coastal waters give way to the fury of the Atlantic.
In 1847, engineers started building an iron lighthouse there -- and it washed away in a storm. Its extraordinary successor, first lit in 1858, stands to this day.
5. Boreray
60 miles off mainland Scotland
Everest is more conquerable than this little rock.
Love the Scottish islands, but want something with a little more bite? Head west of the Outer Hebrides and you’ll find the archipelago of St. Kilda, 40 miles into the Atlantic.
It’s one of Scotland’s five World Heritage sites, with a main island that was abandoned in the 1930s when crops failed. Imagine the surprise of archaeologists when they found that one of its least hospitable islands, Boreray, was occupied in prehistoric times.
6. North Sentinel Island
400 miles from Myanmar
About as close as you want to get to North Sentinel Island.
North Sentinel is one of the 572 islands making up the Andaman chain in the Indian Ocean’s Bay of Bengal.
It’s surrounded by dangerous reefs, but North Sentinel is intimidating because of its inhabitants. The Sentinelese want nothing to do with the modern world and have repeatedly rebuffed attempts to make peaceful contact, sometimes with deadly violence.
7. Rockall
270 miles from Ireland
What's the minimum size for an "island"?
If you think Boreray sounds forbidding, try sailing 187 miles west of it. Rockall is the tip of an extinct volcano reaching 20 meters above sea level, in seas with waves recorded as high as 29 meters.
In 1955, it became the final territorial acquisition of the British Empire -- allegedly due to fears the Russians would build a missile battery on it.
CNN
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