WHERE DAFUK AM I? follows one question across the sky, maps, history and politics: if Rust Island really sat in the South Atlantic on 26 April 1983, what kind of world would surround it? Not an attempt to prove Facepunch’s inspirations — just an exploration of how surprisingly well the pieces fit.
Rust’s procedural maps change with every wipe, but the sky remains fixed. By reading the Sun, solving the stars and reconstructing the sky in Stellarium, we traced the island to approximately 10°02′ S, 20°38′ W in the South Atlantic.
Rust’s skydome points toward an empty location in the South Atlantic. This time, we explore the real islands, legendary lands and strange waters surrounding it.
The Atlantic did not need fiction to become strange. Floating seas, phantom islands, unexplained photographs, satellite flashes and Antarctic expeditions supplied more than enough material on their own.
Long before Rust Island appeared, maps and stories were already crowded with Atlantis, Hy-Brasil, Saint Brendan, Tsalal, dinosaurs, cursed treasure and islands that were considerably easier to describe than to find.
From Tristan da Cunha to Saint Helena, Ascension, Brazil, Angola and Gough Island, the South Atlantic of 1983 was anything but empty. Behind every remote dot on the map were people, industries, instruments — and reasons to stay.
On 26 April 1983, the South Atlantic map looked stable. The power moving across it was not. From Ascension and Conakry to Angola, Haiti and the Falklands, sovereignty, access, force, culture and communication rarely belonged to the same actor.
We found the coordinates. Then, on 26 April 1983, a Soviet photographic reconnaissance satellite launched from Baikonur. For the final WHERE DAFUK AM I? article, we borrow its point of view and look back at the South Atlantic—and at the world that existed below us that Tuesday.