What Is Terror Camp?
Fan convention or academic conference? Why not both?
Since 2021, Terror Camp has been an annual virtual gathering of hundreds of polar exploration enthusiasts. Open to presenters and attendees of all skill levels, Terror Camp was born out of a love for AMC's The Terror and the history of the Franklin Expedition, and has featured academics and actors, scientists and showrunners alike as speakers. The most recent conference in December 2024 featured talks on both Antarctic and Arctic history across three days, plus workshops, posters, and keynotes.
“So when it was all people in their 20s who are nonbinary, it was this incredible sense of an exploding world of options and possibilities for thinking about these topics,” [Hester Blum] says. She describes the event—a cocktail of academic history and pop-culture fandom—as “transformative.” The passion and intelligence of its largely younger attendees, she thought, “could save the humanities.”
Read about Terror Camp IN Atlas Obscura
