
For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off from All Human Contact (2013) - oedmarap
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/
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cmpb
>Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing
prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion.

This reminds me of a show I watched on the Science channel when I was young
about how humans have evolved. They showed various African civilizations and
detailed how they hunt in parties by simply keeping pace with the animal until
the animal just collapses. It goes on to say that that is one characteristic
of human evolution that has made us drastically more successful at surviving
than other species

~~~
Macumbapotatos
Are there examples of how humans are/were able to outrun an animal until it
collapses? I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and
have enough manpower to not be run over.

~~~
dboreham
If you watch big animals hunting (wolves, bear are the ones we have here),
they also stand significant chance of being injured by prey (horns..), and as
a result tend to harry the prey until it is exhausted and basically gives up.

The other strategy is a quick surprise coup de grace, like lions. We have
lions/pumas here but they're hard to spot and I've never seen one hunting but
I assume it's like a scaled up version of a house cat, or big felines seen on
TV.

~~~
qqn
Where are you that you have all these top level predators?

Edit: Wait, nvm. This is probably the west coast of North America, and by
lions you mean mountain lions. I was thinking the ones with the manes right
away.

~~~
int_19h
Russian Far East is also similar, except with tigers.

~~~
qqn
So _that 's_ the fabled land of "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

------
kotrunga
Wow... this was an incredible read, thank you for sharing.

I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up in that environment.

Humans are amazing... one of my favorite lines from the article:

The family’s principal entertainment, the Russian journalist Vasily Peskov
noted, “was for everyone to recount their dreams.”

~~~
papeda
This is doubly strange because “recounting dreams” is, in modern society, a
pretty surefire way to _bore_ other people. But it may be that when you live
this kind of pre-modern life you don’t have all the random coins of so much
life, media, and other humans around you, so the most reliable source of
surprising material is dreams.

~~~
kick
Most people are _bad_ at recalling dreams, which doesn't help. It's not a bad
experience, if you're interacting with people who are good at it.

------
dirktheman
Surviving in the wilderness for prolonged time is really, really hard. Even
more so in a cold place like Siberia. Shows like Bear Grills are fun
entertainment, but have little to do with actual survival. The show 'Alone'
paints a more realistic picture: most contestants are airlifted because of
medical reasons, and the winners end up emanciated in less than 3 months. And
bear in mind that these are trained survivalists.

EDIT Also reminds me of the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier that hid
in the Phillipine jungle for 30 years after WWII, not knowing Japan had
surrendered.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda)

~~~
hbvvvvgff
The only way to actually survive is to hunt big game. Fish is too lean.
Vegetables have no calories. Small rodents have very few calories. Fatty meat
is a necessity.

In alone, they are forced to transport heavy camera equipment. They start out
right before winter. The local laws prevent them from actually hunting. The
show is a joke. There is no surviving actually done. Just enduring starvation.
The optimal way to win is to select fatty food as many of your 10 items as
possible, make a shelter, and expend as few calories as possible. But that
isn't entertaining to watch, so they won't select you to be on the show.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Vegetables have no calories.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food)

"Typical examples include tubers and roots, grains, legumes, and seeds."

Yeah, don't go scarfing iceberg lettuce when stuck in the woods, but we've
been finding and eating starchy root vegetables for probably millions of
years.

~~~
adrianN
We've also spend a tens of thousands of years selectively breeding plants to
produce more calories. You won't find such calorie rich wild plants. Foraging
for plants is really hard.

~~~
ceejayoz
We started breeding them presumably because they offered clear nutritional
benefits. That we made them _better_ doesn't change this.

~~~
mhotchen
Not to say there isn't nutritional benefits to wild wheat and carrots and
whatever (I've no idea to be honest), but I don't think the nutritional value
was at the front of their mind when our ancestors began understanding
agriculture. If it stopped them being hungry I think that's all that mattered,
because it was the wilderness and that's basically all wild animals think
about. I can definitely see it being a supplement to hunting initially, in
order to reduce the number of hunts required, and only afterwards as we made
improvements to our techniques and crops would the nutritional requirements
from the crops become a focus point.

I don't know shit about this topic though, I'm just trying to put myself in
their shoes (or feet as the case would be).

------
forinti
The Altai region is beautiful, I hope to visit one day.

This bloke hiked up to Agafia's and filmed it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w_NOkOLUQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w_NOkOLUQQ)

~~~
fit2rule
That was a very fascinating video to watch - thanks for that. Only thing is it
delivered a pretty gnarly case of motion sickness after a few minutes ..

What was really interesting was the observation, towards the end, that once
he'd hiked for 4 days and then arrived at Agafia's place and been there for a
day, he felt like he'd arrived in civilisation!

One wonders what the plan for the area is, once Agafia leaves this mortal
coil. She's not alone at the moment - it seems she gets regular visitors - but
would this be enough of a settlement to form the basis for a new township to
be founded? I confess, the idea of moving to that valley is _very_ attractive
these days, if but for the harsh environment I clearly know nothing about ..

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a
> single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence
> around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and
> squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from
> this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop_

Think of how long they watched this little shoot of rye grow... that must have
been a really scary period.

~~~
narrator
It's like the ancient version of those sci-fi shows where they're in deep
space and the ship breaks.

------
Loughla
I'm definitely not that person, but that level of dedication to religion is
absolutely amazing to me. Outside of my family, and maybe that was the real
motivator, I don't have a single thing in my life that I am that devoted to.

Humans are marvelous, fascinating creatures.

~~~
chasingthewind
One of my key takeaways from this story was just how "minor" the schism that
produced this appears to me. I am a Christian and take doctrine very seriously
but I find the issues that the Old Believers [0] were concerned about utterly
baffling.

In the linked article, the table of the "main" differences are shockingly
trivial from my perspective and include:

1) How "Jesus" is spelled 2) How to hold your fingers when making the sign of
the cross 3) Procession direction (CW vs CCW) 4) etc.

That either side was willing to kill or die over these things is something I
simply can't understand.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers)

~~~
deepsun
Well, I think those are just markers. I think the real issue began with mass
murdering of Old Believers during Nikon reforms, which were mainly about power
(to separate from Constantinople).

~~~
int_19h
By the time Nikon reforms happen, the Russian Orthodox Church already had its
own independent patriarch.

And in fact, the reforms were about making things _more_ like what the Greek
church was doing at the time. Russian traditions, meanwhile, were based on
_old_ Greek ones, and basically better conserved. It went above and beyond
matters of dogma and ritual, even down to stuff like clothing and hairstyles.

Tsar Aleksei was also a Grecophile, and to him this was less abstract than
just church issues - he was seriously eyeing Constantinople as a potential
"Orthodox Reconquista", with himself as the new Constantine - _the_ emperor of
the Orthodox faithful. Military feasibility aside, this all is a lot easier if
tsar's take on Orthodoxy itself is more consistent with what the Greeks see as
such.

------
narrator
Things started to get a lot harder when their metal items started to fall
apart. Metal smelting and forging are always the part of those primitive
technology youtube channels where things get really complicated.

------
grecy
I've always enjoyed this article - I lived in the Yukon for 4 years and we
would go on ~10 day moose hunting trips in the fall where we wouldn't see a
person, or even signs of people (roads, power lines, fire pits) the whole
time. It would be below freezing overnight, and sometimes chunks of ice would
come down the river.

We always wondered if we could survive a winter with just what we had.

Anyway, but biggest questions from this article are how did they light fire,
and how did they boil water? I assume steel pots, but what would they have
done once those were damaged?

~~~
205guy
I think the article mentioned using birch bark containers when their pots wore
through. To heat water in them, they probably heated rocks in the fire and
dropped them into the bark bowls full of water. I'm not sure how they made
fire, but it was probably tedious so maybe they kept it going constantly--no
shortage of wood.

~~~
grecy
> _I 'm not sure how they made fire, but it was probably tedious so maybe they
> kept it going constantly--no shortage of wood._

From experience, I know it's a full time job when the temperature drops to
-40. You don't want to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. One
mistake and you're in big trouble at those temperatures.

------
pulse7
Previous discussions in 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023)

~~~
diminish
and even more discussions - it's one of the beloved recurring HN topics.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20R...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20Russian%20Family%20Was%20Cut%20Off%20from%20All%20Human%20Contact&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

~~~
dang
(Quick tip: links like that can become more useful with "comments>0":)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=comments%3E0%20For%2040%20Year...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=comments%3E0%20For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20Russian%20Family%20Was%20Cut%20Off%20from%20All%20Human%20Contact&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&storyText=none)

~~~
diminish
thanks @dang would never discover it "comments > 0"

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downwithdisease
That website is pretty brutal for reading, with the ads rotating and their
different heights shifting the content up and down constantly.

~~~
AA-BA-94-2A-56
I was using ublock origin and it was fine

------
205guy
The article mentions how the children died of kidney failure. One thing I
remember reading was that their bodies had adapted to the lack of salt, so it
was the salted food they ate after contact that killed them.

~~~
doitLP
I had the same thought. Dying within days of each other post-contact from
kidney failure after a lifetime in the wilderness is a little coincidental.

------
mothsonasloth
Here's a Vice documentary from 2014 about Agafia :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68)

~~~
x3haloed
I feel a profound sadness watching this. Not because of the difficulty of her
life. She prefers it her way. But because she is good. And there is so much
bad in the world outside. She deserves all the kindness. Edit: We all do,
actually. Kindness.

~~~
fit2rule
I've followed Agafia's story for a few years, and I have a similar conclusion
to yours - she demonstrates the core value of human nature, that it really can
survive on a simplicity of needs. I was struck by the realisations of many
that visited her, that she was a civilising force in the rugged landscape in
which she lived. This seems to be an irrefutable aspect of human nature, given
the right ingredients for its exposition. Just the simple act of cutting grass
for her goats reveals human kindness at its core.

I also think its pretty neat that she encourages visitors. Altruistic, as in -
she wants to share the beauty of the world she's made for herself - or is
there some selfish desire for human interaction, unfulfilled, which motivates
this act? Either way, she's a beautiful human being.

------
raldu
> ... , and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on
> the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had
> noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly
> across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this:
> “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very
> like stars.”

------
ChrisArchitect
more previous discussion highlights:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12374973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12374973)

------
blakesterz
Really interesting story, it's from 2013, someone might want to add that to
the title here.

~~~
kyuudou
Yep, I saw the headline and thought it must be that one story I read about
back in 2013. It's still a captivating read, however.

The stories about the Japanese soldiers marooned on Pacific islands for
decades still thinking they were at war with the Allieds are right up there
with this one.

~~~
Loughla
It's the human endurance piece of these stories that is just fascinating for
me. There are times in my very cushy life that I worry about how hard I have
it, and don't believe that I can go on.

Then this comes along. Humans really, genuinely are remarkable creatures.

------
x3haloed
This is the most interesting story I have read in a long time. Thank you for
sharing.

------
nagyf
Fascinating story, it is unbelievable what humans can survive

------
megiddo
The website crashed.

Interesting!

------
seemslegit
> and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the
> moon

Prescient for somebody who doesn't even know what a soundstage is.

