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A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)
- aresant 10y agoVice did a fun piece on this family a few years back that - on location - captures the environment they survived in -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68
- rdtsc 10y agoThanks for sharing. Just watched it very interesting. It was nostalgic seeing the old prayer book in Slavonic, with pages almost brown from being leafed through and used daily. I remembered by grandfather's books, they used to be like that. He tried to teach me some Slavonic, remember at least knowing the alphabet enough to read the words. Then I like how Agafia explains what it is like to listen to the news about the outside world. The man who came to live next "door" (their relationship seems ...complicated) has a radio, and they listen to it sometimes. She mentions the impression she gets about the outside world from it, just terrible things: people killing each other, mining accidents, terrorist acts. It is as if aliens captured some of our broadcasts and tried to infer what we are like. Not that we are doing stellar job, but the news would make it seem like we are failing even more. The other interesting comment was from the park ranger how wilderness cleanses people. Nobody is out that far stealing or committing crimes. That far out people are happy to see each other, help each other, hunters in their cabins leave food, matches and firewood. Had to laugh of course, at her using the mangled test missile crashed nearby to scare the bears away, by hitting it with a stick. It is hard to fathom a more complete mix of Russian stereotypes in one single image: feisty old woman with a stick, wearing a head scarf, bears, soviet military artifact, and Siberia.
- rdtsc 10y ago(can't edit post so I'll reply to it instead) It looks like Yerofei the man next door has died last year and so Agafia is all alone again. http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-to-reclusive-hermit-dies-leaving-old-believer-all-alone-again-in-taiga/ http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-to-r...
- effie 10y agoThe article claims "Over the years Yerofey Sedov looked out for 71-year-old Agafya", but it fails to mention that Agafia did not find him helpful and that he did a 'sinful act' and blackmailed her. https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68?t=1141 https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68?t=1141
- danielmorozoff 10y agoIf anyone is interested, the Lykovs were part of a group of 'Old Believers' (староверы) a sect of the Russian orthodox church. The primary reason many people who shared their faith fled major cities was because of Communist religious purges (an attempt to solve the problem of 'Religion is the opium of the people') https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoYep and in an irony of history, they, not the Metropolitan of Moscow, were actually being better at adhering to tradition.
- shmerl 10y agoThey have a lot of interesting traditions, including meditation techniques not known to "Metropolitan of Moscow".
- Mikeb85 10y agoWhat tradition do they hold to that has any relevance to Orthodox Christianity? It's not as if the MP (Moscow Patriarchate) is particularly modern - apart from not forcing their lay adherents to abandon modern technology. There are still hermits and monks in the canonical Orthodox Churches - on Mt. Athos, at Valaam, Mt. Sinai, etc... Canonical Orthodox churches still reject most of the shit that the Anglicans and Catholics have accepted. But they cross themselves with 3 fingers instead of 2...
- Mikeb85 10y ago> The primary reason many people who shared their faith fled major cities was because of Communist religious purges No, it's because all the Orthodox that existed in cities realised the schism was stupid. Most of the 'Old Believers' moved to whatever remote part of Siberia or Alaska long before the communists existed. And those that do still exist, live in a timewarp, and are more akin to a cult than an Orthodox community. Keep in mind the schism happened in 1666 - nearly 3 centuries before the communist revolution.
- narrator 10y agoPrimitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA He's trying to get iron smelted right now, but that's really hard. It seems the problem the Lykovs ran into was that their metal items rusted after a while and they couldn't repair them. It's really hard to live without pots, and knives.
- betolink 10y agoI'm a fan of these videos! if I get stranded on an Island my only hope is to have enough battery and this guy's videos on a usb drive =)
- StavrosK 10y ago"I'm gonna starve to death, but at least I won't get bored!"
- jshmrsn 10y agoI think the point is that if you have this guy's videos, you would be able to teach yourself how to survive and not starve to death.
- betolink 10y agoyou got it.
- kornish 10y agoI think the joke was that you'd probably starve to death before learning enough to survive from this guy's videos.
- zdkl 10y agoI couldn't begin to identify half the deposits he needs, let alone operate a DIY ore furnace. Stone age tools for me! And assuming you assimilate the tips about procuring food you still require some measure of cooperation from the environment in any case!
- paulvs 10y agoI remember reading this a while back on HN, for those interested in the discussion, here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523
- known 10y agoYour Beliefs Doesn't Make You A Better Person; Your Behavior Does;
- jedmeyers 10y agoI remember my uncle telling me about them when I was growing up in the 90s. He was an officer responsible for the environmental impact assessment of the Baikonur rocket launches and visited Lykovs a couple of times. They lived really close to the area where Proton rocket boosters are supposed to fall down. Couple of years ago I found out that V. Peskov even mentioned my uncle in his 'Lost in the Taiga' book about the Lykov family.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoA fascinating story from 2013. There was an interesting short follow up from the Siberian Times a year after the Smithsonian piece - the last surviving member was seeking help, or maybe just tiring of isolation, in her 70s. http://www.businessinsider.com/agafya-lykova-asks-for-help-2014-1?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/agafya-lykova-asks-for-help-2...
- pmoriarty 10y ago"I am all alone, my years are big, my health is bad, I keep getting ill," Agafia said in the letter cited by the newspaper. "There is a lump on my right breast, and my strength is going. There is a need for a person, a helper, assuming there are kind people in the world, as the world has always had kind people." The thought of the elderly Agafia facing such a harsh winter is tough. But not all locals are sympathetic -- she has been offered a winter home in a local village before, the Siberian Times reports, but has refused it. "She is being a little cunning," Vladimir Pavlovsky, editor of the local paper Krasnoyarskiy Rabochiy, told the Siberian Times. "She has no hunger. She wants to attract more attention. She has enough cereals, bags of them lie on her porch, and everywhere. And she has enough potatoes." That editor sounds a bit heartless. She's clearly gone about as far as anyone can be expected to go, living virtually her whole life in isolation, and now she's 70 years old and is having a hard time taking surviving in one of the harshest environments on earth. After a while, your body starts to break down, and some cereal and potatoes aren't going to cut it. She needs things like firewood and water. Even simply cooking will eventually be impossible to do when one gets old enough, especially under those primitive conditions. Besides, she's probably lonely. Many elderly people suffer from depression and take their own lives because of their isolation. How hard can it be to have some sympathy for that?
- icebraining 10y agoHe probably has less sympathy since "she has been offered a winter home in a local village before (...) but has refused it." I can understand how much it pains her to leave her home, but seems a bit much to ask some unrelated person to leave theirs to live with her.
- andrewvijay 10y agoFound them gave them pneumonia and killed them.
- quakeguy 10y agoIs your comment necessary?
- wyager 10y agoOnly one died of pneumonia. Not clear if it was caused by contact with modern people.
- fennecfoxen 10y agoIt doesn't even need to be contact with "modern" people, just with people.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zhemao 10y agoOnly of them died of pneumonia. The scientists tried to save him by taking him to a hospital for modern medical treatment, but he refused.
- 10y ago
- harryjo 10y agoPrevious discussion, almost exactly 1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523#10126308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523#10126308
- voidz 10y ago> almost exactly Approximately
- aws_ls 10y agoEarlier discussion on the same article on HN, few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023 Edit: On HN, you occasionally see can't forget articles, every once in a while. This is one of those..
- unixhero 10y agoOn "Can't forget articles" I really wish there was a curated Hacker News archive. I encounter so many new things which are exciting, thought provoking and amazing stuff on HN. Or if they would extend HN with a Categories section.
- 205guy 10y agoAnother article about this family said they died of kidney failure not because of their harsh diet, but because of the reintroduction of salt [citation needed]. Similar but not as unavoidable. Then again they craved salt but it's plausible their body couldn't handle it.
- jjallen 10y agoAnother interesting place, though not nearly as isolated, is Lukomir, Bosnia. It was remote enough during the Yugoslavian war that the war never really made it up there (though there was little reason to probably). You have to drive an hour and a half from Sarajevo to a small village. From there, Lukomir is another six miles up into the hills at ~2,500 meters elevation. You can now drive up there, but I strongly recommend hiking: you will feel like the IceMan walking around Europe 5,000 years ago, at least I did. The people there live very simple lives, as you can imagine: shepherding livestock during the day in the surrounding hills, mostly sheep, for instance. On top of this is the fact that the village is on the edge of a canyon, so has spectacular views from a cliff next to it. If you're ever in Sarajevo you should check Lukomir out!
- unixhero 10y agoCool! Thanks for the tip!
- oblio 10y agoIf you want remote experiences in Europe, check out Apuseni or Maramures in Romania. Entire remote regions with people mostly living like hundreds of years ago. Apuseni: http://szelmob.com/viatori/images/Blog/transylvania/Apuseni-Mountains/green-everywhere---apuseni-mountains.jpg http://szelmob.com/viatori/images/Blog/transylvania/Apuseni-... Maramures: http://romaniatourism.com/images/maramures/maramures-barsana-romania.jpg http://romaniatourism.com/images/maramures/maramures-barsana...
- crocal 10y agoGreat story. It somehow makes me think of the honored forest people from "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind".
- aries1980 10y agoThis reminds me to the Hun village in the Swiss Alps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniviers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniviers or http://archive.worldhistoria.com/the-hunnic-swiss-valley-val-d%E2%80%99anniviers-origin-hun-or-hungarian_topic7796.html http://archive.worldhistoria.com/the-hunnic-swiss-valley-val... Because the difficult landscape, these villages were isolated and kept the culture and some of the language. Funny to see the motifs on my mom's table cloths or the ornaments on my far relatives' main gatein Transylvania are exactly the same.
- hownottowrite 10y agoHighly recommend Happy People: A Year in the Taiga http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/
- dikeert 10y agoWell, they teach us in schools about that family, so this is kinda common knowledge in russia
- kharms 10y agoThe three siblings are believed to have died from pneumonia. Yerafei expresses doubt, saying "how could they get infected from us if they never took anything? For a long time, they didn't take our water, our food. If anything, Agafia should have gotten sick. Why? Well, I once grabbed her and kissed her." Kissing facilitates the exchange of microbiota[0] and that exchange can strengthen the immune system. Might be that kiss saved her life. [0 - Shaping the oral microbiota through intimate kissing](https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2049-2618-2-4 https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...)
- zizzles 10y agoIsolated, but not as isolated as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island Forget being unaware of WWII. Try being unaware of what a car or phone or airplane or office building is, let alone the idea of a "world war". Look how primitive they behave. https://imgur.com/gallery/tWY1o https://imgur.com/gallery/tWY1o Imagine taking one of these tribesman on a tour through Times Square NYC.
- stormbrew 10y agoThey do not seem unaware of modern technology, from the info on these links. They seem like they reject it.
- rizumu 10y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523
- samirillian 10y agoKarp seems chill af
- ivan78 10y agoSome photos from 2013: http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/193005.html http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/193005.html