Longyearbyen is a tiny coal-mining town of 2,000 residents in the remote Svalbard archipelago of Norway
A FREEZING and remote town on a Norwegian island has banned dying over Spanish flu fears - because bodies never rot.
Longyearbyen is a tiny coal-mining town of 2,000 residents in the remote Svalbard archipelago of Norway.
It is the world’s most northern city and the ground is permanently frozen - the average temperature in February is -17C.
The authorities "banned dying" in 1950 when they discovered bodies buried in the permafrost beneath the local graveyard simply were not decomposing because of the extreme cold, reports
The phenomenon is a serious health risk because 11 people died and were buried in the village during the catastrophic Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 5% of the world's population.
Today, the terminally ill in Longyearbyen are flown to the mainland for their final days and then buried there.
Samples of the Spanish Flu virus were recently extracted from some of the bodies so researchers could study the disease in a bid to prevent a similar outbreak.
There are many other unusual facts about the bizarre town.
Residents are required by law to carry a rifle if they leave the city limits because the surrounding area is home to 3,000 polar bears.
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed so many people there were more bodies than coffins.
It was one of history's most catastrophic disease outbreaks and killed an estimated 100 million people as it swept the globe.
Spanish flu - actually nothing to do with Spain - "made all the world a killing zone," wrote John M. Barry in "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History".
Historians think it started in Kansas in early 1918.
By winter 1919, the virus had infected one-third of the global population and killed at least 50 million people, including 675,000 Americans.
By comparison, the AIDS virus has claimed 35 million lives over four decades.
Three more flu pandemics have struck since, in 1957, 1968 and 2009, spreading widely but nowhere near as deadly.
Now scientists are fighting to develop a new vaccine to guard against a deadly new pandemic.
There is a limit to how much booze residents can buy, at 24 cans of beer, two bottles of whisky and half a bottle of fortified wine a month.
It has the world's northernmost university, circus, art gallery, commercial airport, bus station and kebab house.
Cats are banned to protect the Arctic bird population and visitors are expected to take their shoes off in virtually every building, not just people's homes.
The sun sets each year on October 25th and does not rise above the horizon again for four long months.
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