
A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013) - betolink
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
======
jedmeyers
I 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.

------
narrator
Primitive 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.

~~~
T0T0R0
The best part about that guy is the total absence of spoken language.

But, then, the source of the iron is also pretty incredible:

    
    
      Then I collected orange iron bacteria from 
      the creek (iron oxide), mixed it with charcoal 
      powder (carbon to reduce oxide to metal) and 
      wood ash (flux to lower the melting point) and 
      formed it into a cylindrical brick. I filled 
      the furnace with charcoal, put the ore brick in 
      and commenced firing. The ore brick melted and 
      produced slag with tiny, 1mm sized specs of iron 
      through it. My intent was not so much to make 
      iron but to show that the furnace can reach a 
      fairly high temperature using this blower.

~~~
rusanu
Bog iron [0] production was the predominant way of smelting iron before
technology advanced to the point of being able to smelt iron ores. Iron
Production in the Viking Age [1] has a really nice description and pictures of
the process. This kind of smelting can be done with a small bloomery [2] and
the resulted tiny iron specs result is called sponge iron. I wish Dwarf
Fortress would implement this chain for environs that lack proper iron ores :)

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

[1]
[http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/...](http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery)

~~~
zdkl
If you can work a forteress without both coal derivatives AND metallic ores
deposits, you're a better dorf than I am.

~~~
Brybry
There are smelting bugs in the game where melting down certain items produces
more metal than it takes to make them.

That and hatch covers (building destroyers can't destroy on different z-axis)
makes it really hard to lose in Fun ways. Most of my fortresses die from FPS
death.

------
jjallen
Another 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!

~~~
oblio
If 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-...](http://szelmob.com/viatori/images/Blog/transylvania/Apuseni-
Mountains/green-everywhere---apuseni-mountains.jpg)

Maramures: [http://romaniatourism.com/images/maramures/maramures-
barsana...](http://romaniatourism.com/images/maramures/maramures-barsana-
romania.jpg)

~~~
theklub
When I was little I remember thinking everyone in Europe lived like that for
some reason.

~~~
digi_owl
And sometimes it feels like that is exactly what the tourist office wants.

------
aresant
Vice 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
Thanks 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
(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-r...](http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-to-reclusive-
hermit-dies-leaving-old-believer-all-alone-again-in-taiga/)

~~~
effie
The 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)

------
aws_ls
Earlier 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
On "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.

~~~
harperlee
You now have the "favorites" function, with which you can publicly mark
articles.

Perhaps a rank of the most favorite articles would do that.

~~~
sn9
That's basically the "best" list with variable time scales (e.g., month, year,
all time, etc. instead of just week).

------
paulvs
I 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)

------
danielmorozoff
If 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
Yep and in an irony of history, they, not the Metropolitan of Moscow, were
actually being better at adhering to tradition.

~~~
Mikeb85
What 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...

------
anexprogrammer
A 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-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/agafya-lykova-asks-for-
help-2014-1?IR=T)

~~~
pmoriarty

      "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
He 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.

------
zizzles
Isolated, 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
They do not seem unaware of modern technology, from the info on these links.
They seem like they reject it.

------
hownottowrite
Highly recommend Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/)

------
205guy
Another 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.

------
kharms
The 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...](https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2049-2618-2-4))

------
aries1980
This 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...](http://archive.worldhistoria.com/the-hunnic-swiss-valley-
val-d%E2%80%99anniviers-origin-hun-or-hungarian_topic7796.html)

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.

------
harryjo
Previous discussion, almost exactly 1 year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523#10126308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523#10126308)

~~~
voidz
> almost exactly

 _Approximately_

------
ivan78
Some photos from 2013:
[http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/193005.html](http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/193005.html)

------
rizumu
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523)

------
crocal
Great story. It somehow makes me think of the honored forest people from
"Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind".

------
dikeert
Well, they teach us in schools about that family, so this is kinda common
knowledge in russia

------
samirillian
Karp seems chill af

------
andrewvijay
Found them gave them pneumonia and killed them.

~~~
wyager
Only one died of pneumonia. Not clear if it was caused by contact with modern
people.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It doesn't even need to be contact with "modern" people, just with people.

------
known
Your Beliefs Doesn't Make You A Better Person; Your Behavior Does;

