Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

lbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 193 posts

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#61

Post by scotty79 »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #43
renegade-otter wrote: post #35

This is not really suspicious. I regularly went foraging for shrooms in Ukraine with my gram gram, but I was not allowed to pick anything, of course. It requires expertise. In that part of the world, this is very common, and so are the cases of people poisoning themselves because they think they are good at it. If you can't relate - think of all the "gun people" who think they are experts on gun safety and then they…

It is not common at all. You have maybe several people dying every year, which is in the "hit by lightning" territory. It's very well-publicized whenever it happens, which probably helps keep the numbers low. But this is a very unusual way to die.

It's like few cases per season per million people eating wild shrooms.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#62

Post by scotty79 »

krastanov wrote: post #24
rebolek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 77 years, he certainly knew what he's picking up, it's not that hard to learn edible mushrooms, poisonous mushrooms and ignore the rest which may be edible but also not.

This is not remotely what the "common knowledge" about mushroom foraging is in Eastern Europe. There is a "funny" story in Bulgaria how the most famous mushroom foraging expert in Bulgaria a few decades ago died because he made a mistake when foraging. Plenty of edible mushrooms are just "twins" of poisonous mushrooms, using animal's knowledge to not eat them, without expending the metabolic cost to actually produce…

To become an expert you have to be a little bit adventurous. Average forager knows and gathers maybe 10 species of mushrooms that are hardest to mistake for anything else and leaves alone anything that looks just a little bit different.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#63

Post by pavlov »

api wrote: post #44
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #36

Is Russia running out of windows or what?

Prigozhin fell from the sky in a plane so at least that one was still a fall. This isn’t even trying. I’m just blown away by the gullible fools who see this dying totalitarian dystopia with statistics around birth and family life that are way worse than anything in the West as a beacon of resistance to decadence or something. Of course I guess this isn’t new with Russia. Back in the Cold War it was naive elements of…

Or if it’s not Russia proper, then the object of right-wing idolatry is Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” in Hungary which is essentially Diet Putin.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#64

Post by mindslight »

api wrote: post #44
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #36

Is Russia running out of windows or what?

Prigozhin fell from the sky in a plane so at least that one was still a fall. This isn’t even trying. I’m just blown away by the gullible fools who see this dying totalitarian dystopia with statistics around birth and family life that are way worse than anything in the West as a beacon of resistance to decadence or something. Of course I guess this isn’t new with Russia. Back in the Cold War it was naive elements of…

The ironic thing is that even a broken clock is right twice a day. This is like scoring less than 25% on a multiple choice test.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#65

Post by dannylandau »

As an active mushroom hunter (born in Russia), can confirm that this is extremely unlikely and uncommon. People who have done this since birth know how distinguish between mushrooms, and usually stick to the variety that they love the best. In Russia, the mushroom of choice is the "White Mushroom" (or Porcini, King Bolete) or Rejik (Milky cap) and Chanterreles, and a few others, and that's it, with the top 2 being the most sought after.

I've been doing this for over 35 years, and always go after the same mushrooms, and have never been poisoned. So, very unlikely someone much older would make a mistake, sounds like foul play.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#66

Post by throw_pm23 »

krastanov wrote: post #56
oblak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your counter example is one guy dying from poisoning, in a country that does a lot of shroom foraging (берем гъби у гората). The Russia rocket expert was likely killed.

You are reading too much in what I said. Of course weird things are happening in an unstable dictatorship like Russia and this guy might have been assassinated for one reason or another. That does not mean it is not nice to give people context about the culture in that end of the world though.

I think you make it sound more exotic than it is. People pick mushrooms around the world. Slightly more common in SE-Europe, a bit less so than a few decades ago. People tend to stick to the 1-2 species they know best, poisonings are extremely rare.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#67

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

vmladenov wrote: post #59
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if I understand your point and link: this is not something that actually happened, it's just a joke, but after enough retellings for some reason people think that it is real.

> after enough retellings for some reason people think that it is real I do not think anyone thinks it's real; you might be getting caught up by the word "story", just some dark Balkan humor.

I see the original commenter I replied to said it was just a "tale", but I don't think that's how most readers would interpret that comment. Saying something "happened a few decades ago" is oddly specific if it's just a joke/tale.

Also, the whole point of their comment was to emphasize how foraging for mushrooms is dangerous - using an old wives tale as "evidence" for your position would be a very odd choice indeed.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#68

Post by UncleOxidant »

andsoitis wrote: post #10

What is recommended reading for getting started with mushroom foraging? It seems like such an interesting activity.

"All that the Rain Promises and More" by David Arora is a good place to start. But I'd recommend that you go out with your local mycological society to make sure you're identifying them correctly before you try eating any. Me personally, I stick to 2 types of mushrooms: chantrelles and boletes. They're hard to misidentify in my area.

Re: Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

#70

Post by throwaway2990 »

tonymillion wrote: post #51
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #36

Is Russia running out of windows or what?

I know right… reading the list of mysterious deaths had more falls than twitters stock price.

This may have made more sense 6 months ago but now doesn’t seem to?
Post reply on HN