
A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013) - sergeant3
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/
======
dogma1138
VICE has made a documentary about Agafia who is still alive and is still
living in the wilderness.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68)

It's quite amazing that some one at 72 who grew up malnourished and without
access to modern medicine can still be in a good enough shape to survive in
one of the harshest environments man has ever lived.

~~~
DasIch
If you die before you grow old, you're probably going to do so as a child. If
you survive birth, childhood and are otherwise healthy, you're chances of
growing old are pretty good no matter where and how you happen to live.

That's why life expectancy is so high now in the western world, it's not that
people are growing far older than they did in the past or elsewhere, children
just die very rarely and don't pull down the average.

~~~
dogma1138
It's not about life expectancy it's about your body not breaking apart. She's
freaking logging at 70+, look at how quickly she cuts the fire wood with a bow
saw try it it's not easy especially in the cold when the wood is frozen solid
and the saw gets stuck every time you lose the stroke rhythm. I've done
several "treks" under less extreme conditions with modern equipment and it's
bloody hard even basic camp management (Find dry fallen wood, cut it into fire
wood drag it to the camp site, go get water from the stream drag it to the
camp site (uphill always ;), fish/hunt, prepair your food that's easily 6-8
hours a day even with help, she's doing that and more everyday...) takes most
of your day and it's exhausting and this was as a healthy male in his mid
20's, she's full on homesteading pretty much alone in extreme conditions in
her 70's while taking care of a 1 legged man her age if that isn't impressive
please let me know what is...

~~~
DasIch
I'm definitely impressed and certainly wouldn't be able to keep up.

However I'm not sure whether this is because what she's doing is an incredible
accomplishment or I just treat my body horribly. She has probably more than 60
years of experience doing these things and kept in perfect shape her whole
life. Just imagine what we might be capable, if we kept our bodies equally
well in shape, now and in the future.

Maybe I should feel less impressed and more ashamed at myself or equal parts
of both.

~~~
p1esk
What is so impressive about the way she lives? It was considered a normal
living 100 years ago. The conditions are not that extreme (Southern Russia,
same latitude as Berlin).

She gets regular help from others, and she hasn't been shy to ask for help.
Also, she made several trips to nearby towns when she needed medical help.

~~~
zumatic
The climate varies greatly between different places on the same latitude. She
seems to live near Abakan, Russia at about 53 deg. N; according to Wikipedia,
this has average daily means ranging from -18.3 C to +20.0 C. Compare with
Manchester, UK (53 deg 28'N): about +4.5 C to +16 C.

~~~
p1esk
-18C in the winter and 20C in the summer sounds like a decent climate. Typical four seasons environment. Nothing "extreme" about it.

~~~
_delirium
A low of -18 C isn't uncommon, but a daily mean of -18 C across a whole month
(day and night) is pretty cold! It's colder than any major North American city
except Fairbanks, at least. The other cities I think of as being cold all have
significantly higher daily means in their coldest month: -11 C in Anchorage,
-10 C in Minneapolis, Montreal, and Ottawa, and -4 C in Chicago.

~~~
fsloth
-18 C night and day is not that cold. It does not stop any daily activities - like kids playing outside. Going near -30 C and below - with regular "urban" winter clothing - that starts to modify ones routines. Don't look at the statistics, observe the real effects.

~~~
hessenwolf
It depends on a few other factors, among which are wind and humidity. -18 C in
Munich is lovely for a stroll. 8 C on the west coast of Ireland is omfg.

------
dang
Many previous discussions:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=russian%20family&sort=byDate&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=russian%20family&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story).

The largest is from when the article was published:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023).

~~~
codezero
I was going to mention seeing this a few times before here, but also that it's
one that is interesting to re-read :)

------
malkia
Wow! A movie I really loved that showed similar (fictional) story is Emir
Kusturica's Underground -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114787/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114787/)

This summary written by an anonymous in the imdb site: "The story follows an
underground weapons manufacturer in Belgrade during WWII and evolves into
fairly surreal situations. A black marketeer who smuggles the weapons to
partisans doesn't mention to the workers that the war is over, and they keep
producing. Years later, they break out of their underground "shelter" \---
only to convince themselves that the war is still going on."

I was actually listening to the sound-track for the last week (Thanks to Goran
Bregovic)

------
kissickas
Agafia is the last one left alive, and she still refuses to leave.

> She claims that the air and water outside of the Taiga makes her sick. She
> also said that she finds the busy roads frightening.

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

------
vytis
VICE made a nice documentary about Agafia -
[http://www.vice.com/video/agafias-taiga-life-full-
length](http://www.vice.com/video/agafias-taiga-life-full-length)

~~~
duaneb
I believe there is also one on netflix entitled "Happy People" that explores
the taiga lifestyle.

~~~
proactivesvcs
I no longer have to look for the obscure Herzog stuff. He finds me, which is
just how I like it.

------
RomanPushkin
Old Believers are actually not the members of any sect. It's religion, and
it's just old, no any fundamentalism there. And it's called that way because
of Russian Orthodox Church splits and reforms in 17th century.

------
phantarch
Reminds me quite a bit of the last true hermit story posted here a while ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993)

------
sakopov
Peskov, the guy who found the family, used to put together expeditions once a
year during summers to visit the family with a helicopter full of food and
supplies. He'd write about it in Komsomolskaya Pravda every once in a while. I
remember reading KP when I was 10 (20 years ago) and being totally fascinated
by these stories.

------
unreal37
Some more recent updates here:
[http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-
to-r...](http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-to-reclusive-
hermit-dies-leaving-old-believer-all-alone-again-in-taiga/)

------
_0ffh
Agafia was probably the inspiration for a set of (ostensibly true) novels by a
Siberian that started a strange kind of romantic "back to nature" movement in
Russia. Her alter ego in the books is called Anastasia.

The author:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Megre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Megre)

Official PR:
[http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/Main/English/index.php](http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/Main/English/index.php)

------
fapjacks
You know, I'll never forget a quote of the father after their discovery. He
said "Living without salt was a special kind of hell" and that has affected me
pretty profoundly for such a tiny thing. I've tried to spend my days not
taking things for granted, especially here in the developed world, and this
man's experience (and subsequent comment) is something I remember every time I
see or use table salt. It's become a kind of central theme in my impossible
goal of not taking things (and people) for granted.

------
benbristow
Looks like the site got the HN hug of death. Mirror:
[https://archive.is/Ilo1W](https://archive.is/Ilo1W)

~~~
Carrok
Actually if you see ?no-ist at the end of the URL, this is their anti-adblock
measure. Short for 'no-interstitial' means they didn't get to show you an ad,
so don't show the article either. If you simply delete this part of the URL,
it will load properl.

------
grecy
After spending a few years in the Yukon, I wonder how they a) lit fires and b)
cooked on those fires.

We once forgot to bring anything steel for cooking on a fire during a week-
long sheep hunting hike. After much thought, I managed to boil water for
coffee and food :)

------
tim333
That's rough - mother staved her self to death to ensure food for her kids, 3
out of 4 of those died of pneumonia after geologists visited. Makes you
appreciate the comforts of urban life.

~~~
notfoss
Actually 2 died of kidney failure and 1 died of pneumonia.

------
xacaxulu
I'd call them lucky.

~~~
Nicholas_C
If you read more about them you'll find that they weren't very lucky.

------
knn
Not hacker news, but amazing story

~~~
toomuchtodo
All interesting news is "hacker news" (not to be confused with "Hacker News"
the site).

~~~
dang
> not to be confused with "Hacker News" the site

"Hacker News the site" is for anything and everything of intellectual
interest. We're always hoping for more diverse stories.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

~~~
davidw
You guys should really expand on what 'gratifies intellectual curiosity'
means, in the guidelines. Stuff like this article is interesting, but all too
often people claim how they are _really intellectually gratified_ by an
article calling Trump a doody-head troglodyte or some such thing.

I would suggest that one such metric is if you learned something interesting
from an article, rather than having the article simply confirm your own
beliefs.

~~~
dang
> all too often people claim how they are really intellectually gratified by
> an article calling Trump a doody-head troglodyte

I almost never see that. There's isn't much controversy around what counts as
"intellectually interesting" here. People spend more effort trying wrongly to
narrow the scope of HN, e.g. claiming that it's only about startups and tech,
flagging all non-technical posts, etc., all of which is against the spirit of
the site (and bad, in my opinion, for technical creativity too).

The standards are better established _de facto_ than _de jure_ —the last thing
we want is legalistic arguing about rules. So I think the traditional
description suffices:

 _A crap link is one that 's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN
don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in
hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting. What does "deeply
interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story
about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if
this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, perhaps it could
be._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

Edit: but if there's something we could do to get more high-quality links
posted about history, arts and letters, geography, anthropology, etc.—the
myriads of interesting stories outside HN's couple of core grooves—I would
love to hear about it. We rarely have enough of those.

~~~
Pyxl101
You take such a mature and balanced approach toward content on the site. The
content is interesting and thought provoking. It's why HN is my primary source
of daily news. Please keep it up!

I'm now watching the 35 minute documentary about Agafia and surviving in the
Siberian wilderness.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68)

A metaphor just occurred to me: Hacker News is like a better Internet version
of what the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel used to be in
their golden days (back when MTV played music videos, before reality TV). HN
is much better than that, since those were still TV, and did not cover
business and leadership, but that's the best analogy I can come up with at the
moment. I get far more out of reading HN-provided links and comments for hours
than I ever did TV.

------
osipov
The Wikipedia article about them is quite sparse -- is that because Wikipedia
is blocked in Russia?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family)

~~~
pilsetnieks
The Russian article has a little more than the English one, if that's what you
mean.

Anyway, [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-
russ...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-
family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/?no-
ist) has a lot more than either.

