Better to live and work somewhere warm.
g-to-g.com
"Geologists were sent to Siberia in the late 1940’s in the quest of the diamond reserves that were believed to be there. In 1953, a young Soviet geologist named Larissa Popugaieva was studying mineral samples sent from Yakutia in Siberia in a lab in Leningrad. She discovered that there was a large concentration of garnet in some of the Yakutia samples. This was an exciting sign for the young geologist, as garnet was known to be a marker mineral for diamonds. In other words, if there was a large garnet deposit, there was a strong possibility that a diamond deposit would be found nearby.
Larissa Popugaieva quickly joined the geologic expedition in Yakutia, informing the diamond hunters to begin following any traces of garnets to their source. This approach eventually lead to a small diamond deposit, but after surveying the reserve, it was found to be far too small to invest in mining operations. This was not a setback to the Soviets, however, as this only proved that the garnet trail had in fact led to diamonds, even if it was a diamond reserve of an unusable size.
It was in 1955 that the Soviets finally made the type of discovery that they had been hoping for. Once again, it was a youthful Soviet geologist, Yuri Khabardin, whose exertion lead to a remarkable discovery. He, along with other geologists, had been following garnet veins through the banks of the Siberian Vilyul River. He followed a trail of garnets into a fox hole that he found dug into a ravine near the bank. Upon analyzing the soil in the hole, he discovered a high quantity of diamond mineral present. Knowing that he had finally discovered what the entire geologic expedition had been searching for he quickly and excitedly radioed back to his superiors the code for a viable diamond discovery: “I am smoking the pipe of peace.” It was from this code that the Mir or Mirny Mine (‘Mir’ being the shortened form) received its name, as Mirny is Russian for ‘peace’.
The Mir Mine officially opened in 1957. The kimberlite pipe that fed the Mir proved to be smaller than the pipe in the Premier Mine in South Africa, but this did not slow down the determined Soviets. They not only opened the mine quickly, but they also took every measure to pull out as large a quantity of diamonds from the pipe as possible. They did this despite the less-than-hospitable environment and conditions that surrounded the operations at the Mir Mine location.
The area of Siberia is one of the most inhospitable regions in the world, a fact that did not make optimum conditions for diamond mining. For example, the Siberian winter lasts for seven months out of the year. This meant that for seven months of the year, the mine operators had to deal with temperatures that were so low as to freeze the rubber tires of the vehicles, causing the tires to break. In addition to this, the oil that was needed to fuel just about everything would freeze, and even the steel being used to build the riggings would snap. The summer months would not make things much better as the land was covered in a sheet of permafrost. This permafrost would become mud as the temperature rose, turning the entire mining operation into a land of sludge."
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