One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich/Nightmare Fuel
- You'd think some of the reasons some of these guys got imprisoned are too crazy to believe, right? Well, this book was based on actual events, and yes, the real life Soviet legal system was really that fucked up!
- The hole. Basically, if you're put there as punishment, you are barely fed the bare minimum needed to keep yourself alive and forced to sit in the coldest part of the camp with nothing to warm yourself up with, and while you can survive a few days in there, over a week is an instant death sentence. The scariest part is how easy it is to piss off the warders and have them put you in there......
- Lieutenant Volkovoy is regarded as an in-universe Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant due to his extreme sadism, even by the standards of the other guards, and the thought of being on his bad side even scares Shukhov shitless.
- Sotsgorodok. Considered one of the worst places to work by everyone in the camp because it's literally a bare ice field with nowhere to warm oneself up or shelter from far below freezing temperatures all day, and while surviving there is possible, the chance of frostbite and/or death from being forced to stay there all day is so high Shukhov's foreman literally has to hand over sizable bribes to spare his work gang that fate. In fact, it's basically the second worst place Shukhov describes, with only "the hole" being even worse.