Quote from: Horkabork on October 01, 2011, 08:52:26 AM

Any minute now, I expect to hear a large cracking noise from when her cranial pressure, which has been increasing this past month, finally breaks through her skull and Raytheon realizes that maybe this is a life-threatening medical emergency. Hell, they have the ability, the rescue plan, the weather is fine, and the cost of a rescue is expensive, but is built into the cost of doing business at the south pole and getting paid shittons of federal grant money to run the place.

That's where the story ends, poorly. The last part is real. There really is a woman who had a stroke and is stuck at the South Pole because of bureaucracy and greed, waiting patiently either for her brain to swell up and kill her or for this to actually be classified as a medical emergency.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/09/stroke_victim_not_evacuated_fr.php
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/kw9uc/a_friend_of_a_friend_who_is_a_scientist_in/

Oh well. It's not like a massive military contractor ever gave a flying fuck about people's lives when money is to be had.

Read the comments on those links you posted. Getting in and out of Antarctica in the winter (roughly March through October) isn't trivial, and the evacuate/wait decision isn't taken lightly. Raytheon isn't run by a an emotionless computer program somewhere, there are real people making the decisions, and they weighed the risk to her against the risk to the dozen or so people that would have to fly in to the harshest environment on the planet in conditions well outside the operational envelope of even the toughest aircraft in the world.