top | item 10125523

A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

226 points| sergeant3 | 10 years ago |smithsonianmag.com | reply

58 comments

order
[+] dogma1138|10 years ago|reply
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

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|10 years ago|reply
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.

[+] unknown|10 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] malkia|10 years ago|reply
Wow! A movie I really loved that showed similar (fictional) story is Emir Kusturica's Underground - 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)

[+] RomanPushkin|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] sakopov|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] fapjacks|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
Looks like the site got the HN hug of death. Mirror: https://archive.is/Ilo1W
[+] Carrok|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
Actually 2 died of kidney failure and 1 died of pneumonia.
[+] xacaxulu|10 years ago|reply
I'd call them lucky.
[+] Nicholas_C|10 years ago|reply
If you read more about them you'll find that they weren't very lucky.
[+] knn|10 years ago|reply
Not hacker news, but amazing story
[+] toomuchtodo|10 years ago|reply
All interesting news is "hacker news" (not to be confused with "Hacker News" the site).
[+] osipov|10 years ago|reply
The Wikipedia article about them is quite sparse -- is that because Wikipedia is blocked in Russia?

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

[+] vbezhenar|10 years ago|reply
Wikipedia is not blocked in Russia AFAIK. There was threats from Roskomnadzor to block it, but they finally gave up. And it was specifically about russian wikipedia domain: http://ru.wikipedia.org