It's Illegal to Die in Certain Towns

In the remote Arctic town of Longyearbyen, the ground itself creates a unique public health challenge. The settlement is built on a thick layer of permafrost, soil that remains frozen (Review) solid throughout the year. Because the temperature is consistently below freezing, bodies buried in the local cemetery simply do not decompose. This unusual situation came to a head when researchers realized that the perfectly preserved bodies of miners who perished in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic could still harbor the live virus. The potential for a dormant, deadly pathogen to re-emerge from the thawing permafrost was a risk the community could not ignore.

Faced with this chilling prospect, the town took decisive action. The local cemetery officially stopped accepting new burials in 1950. While not a law in the sense that one could be prosecuted, the policy effectively means that dying is not permitted in Longyearbyen. As a practical measure, individuals who are terminally ill or of very advanced age are flown to the Norwegian mainland to live out their final days. This ensures they can be buried or cremated in a place where the natural cycle of decomposition can safely run its course, protecting the living from the well-preserved ghosts (Review) of pandemics past.