The Daily Isotope dispatched its intrepid team to Alaska to get to the bottom of the story. We talked to Lucy Gibbs, head of the state government’s department of statistics. Gibbs explains, “We first did a count the usual way, but we quickly realized that the number we obtained couldn’t have been right. So we figured that we probably missed counting some folks.”

Gibbs continues, “The first thing we did was to look behind all the fridges located in Alaska. Lo and behold! Folks were either hiding behind the fridges, or they had lost their way while going somewhere else and ended up there. It is not terribly surprising that people would get lost, given the fierce snowstorms we get here. We also found a few people who lost their way only to get stranded on glaciers.”

Gibbs again, “But we did not stop there, we also looked under the beds, and we found more folks hiding there. Then we checked the brothels, the illegal booze and gambling establishments, and places of the sort, and we found even more people. Some of them claimed to have lost their way in a snowstorm, but that seems dubious. Finally, we asked the governor to open his mouth, and found one last person hiding in there.”

The final count is 697 residents, up from a 100. Unfortunately, the team sent by The Daily Isotope never made its way back. They are presumably lost in a snowstorm.

This satire was inspired by this article:

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2025/01/08/updated-estimate-shows-alaska-has-more-people-than-previously-thought