I think that's hardly the problem. First, the highway of bones I think refers to the Stalin-era political prisoners that died building the road. Second, Kalym

I think that's hardly the problem. First, the highway of bones I think refers to the Stalin-era political prisoners that died building the road. Second, Kalyma colloquially refers to an incredibly far away place. Like in English you may say "it's on the moon" to mean that something is ridiculously far, in Russian you say "to Kalyma" Fundamentally, you don't end up anywhere near that region randomly. It's not like they were going for milk and died on the way to the store. It's hard to really understand what they were thinking - but there's no way they didn't understand that the whole area was ... challenging.