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For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

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Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#151

Post by grecy »

dredmorbius wrote: post #146
grecy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While creative and highly independent, Proenneke was by no means self-sufficient. I agree 100%. He also had a rifle, canoe, hiking boots etc that all would have been replaced from the outside world over the years. I loved his comment about solo canoeing in his lake: "I always knew that to swim was to die, but I never had a problem". The water is so cold up here, you'll be dead in less than a minute if you swim in t…

It's actually possible to swim in very cold water -- "polar bear" swimmers do this regularly, and Lynne Cox notably has swum for extended times in 40F and 25 minutes in 32F water during her Antarctic swim. She seems to have a unique ability to maintain core temperatures despite a very cold environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Cox The two biggest dangers are panic and shock when you first enter the water, h…

Have you ever experienced it yourself?

My first summer up here it was a beautiful sunny day and my friends were telling me about how people die in the lake every year. Being a very strong swimmer and from Australia, I didn't believe them.

They bet me $1000 I couldn't stay in the water 5 minutes, which I thought I would have a good go at. I've swum in water below 40F before. I honestly didn't last 30 seconds before I was scared I would not be able to get out again, because I could not feel my extremities at all. It was surreal.

I know it sounds crazy, though it's worth noting more than one professional canoer / kayaker has died in the Yukon from capsizing their craft only a few hundred meters from shore.

We had a guy die not 5 minutes from town last summer, and some local Alaskans did the same thing just over the border.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#152

Post by grecy »

cgh wrote: post #144
grecy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should say that - the reason I said "way past -40" is because all the thermometers I can find don't go past -40. Even the digital ones just say "-40.0C" at about 6pm, and won't show anything else until 17 hours later when the sun comes back, and they creep up a few degrees.

Someone else just mentioned it, but I used to live in northern BC and our "red liquid" thermometers recorded temps down to about -60C or so. Coldest I can recall as a kid was -54C. We still walked to school.

Awesome, I'll have to keep a lookout for one.

I rode my bike in yesterday at around -45C. The snow drifts were too big today, so I walked for 35 minutes instead.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#153

Post by Androsynth »

madaxe wrote: post #132
lkrubner wrote: post #92

There were 4 children, and one died. I have often wondered why the world's homo sapien population did not grow faster during the period 200,000 BC to 10,000 BC. In his book Extinct Humans, Ian Tattersall has argued that fully modern homo sapiens took shape around 200,000 BC and left Africa around 150,000 BC. http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/08133... The growth of the population was very slow. So…

Also, don't forget that agriculture only arose recently, in the grand scale of things - somewhere around 20,000 years ago, and these folks had agriculture - in fact, their suffering is largely based around the fact that they're attempting agriculture in isolation, which doesn't really work with a "tribe" of their scale. You have to have trade, as, as we saw with them, if you lose your seed stock (carrots, almost rye)…

>before everyone migrated for the cushy disease and war-ridden life agriculture offers

Cushy unless youre a peasant.

>Survival was a bitch until we figured out farming and trade

I think this is a misconception leftover from earlier eras. But I don't think it is the commonly accepted scientific viewpoint anymore. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#154

Post by callmevlad »

scoot wrote: post #140
callmevlad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather was born in Abakan, and published several books on the history of the region. He visited Agafia several times by helicopter with my uncle, after the other members of her family had passed. When I was around 15, he showed me a video of their first encounter with her, and to this day I cannot get the image of the pure terror on her face out of my mind. She had multiple visitors before, but something abou…

It turned out that this was the first visit where someone in the crew had brought video equipment, and Agafia would later tell my grandfather that she thought this thing would 'steal her soul.' Sorry? It might as well have been a log on his shoulder. Now, if it was viewing video of herself on this camera that brought a look of "pure terror" to her face (that you can't get out of your mind to this day, no less) I coul…

The video was shot on approach to her home/shack from the helicopter (which was a ways off). I called my dad to see if he can locate the video somehow (my grandfather passed away several months ago), and I'm trying to find the book he wrote which touches on this experience.

This is vague recollection at this point, but I do believe that the family did have knowledge of photography (my grandfather visited her 10+ years after this family became 'famous' through Russian press) and the father did not approve of their pictures being taken at first. I can see how that, combined with their deeply religious and isolated world view, could have been a cause for her superstition.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#155

Post by callmevlad »

fjarlq wrote: post #121
callmevlad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather was born in Abakan, and published several books on the history of the region. He visited Agafia several times by helicopter with my uncle, after the other members of her family had passed. When I was around 15, he showed me a video of their first encounter with her, and to this day I cannot get the image of the pure terror on her face out of my mind. She had multiple visitors before, but something abou…

Corrected link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Arriv%C3%A9e_d%27un_train_e...

Thanks for the correction. It looks like I can no longer edit my comment to update it.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#156

Post by FireBeyond »

bostonpete wrote: post #68

> having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost I'm no scientist, but I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees. Maybe this was a mistranslation...?

I've been reading a book called "Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places " (http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Adventures-Worlds-Frozen-Places/d...):

"One degree of frost was one degree below freezing Fahrenheit. An explorer might write in his journal of fifty degrees of frost - negative eighteen degrees Fahrenheit"

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#157

Post by FireBeyond »

thetrb wrote: post #75
bostonpete wrote: post #68

> having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost I'm no scientist, but I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees. Maybe this was a mistranslation...?

To me that reads as "-40 degrees Celsius" since in Celsius 0 degrees is exactly where water freezes.

Most likely -8F, per my comment upthread.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#159

Post by doomlaser »

Someone wrote: post #139
saalweachter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me a little jealous of the quality of sky they must have had.

It isn't that hard to see satellites in the sky. The ISS, in particular, can be very bright, to the point where you can see it in daylight ( http://www.hobbyspace.com/SatWatching/ , http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2009/06/18/how-to-se... ) The 1950 ones would have been a lot harder to spot, of course, but might at times have reflected the light of the below-the-horizon sun.

There weren't any man made satellites until 1957. And I don't think there were any that stayed up for very long until the mid to late 60s/70s, though I could be wrong on that.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#160

Post by alexkus »

callmevlad wrote: post #93
kenjackson wrote: post #15

As a boy there was a common game that friends would play, which was -- if Newton were to come back today, what technology would he be most shocked about. I found this quote interesting, and I think shows how hard it may be to predict such things: "What amazed him most of all," Peskov recorded, "was a transparent cellophane package. 'Lord, what have they thought up—it is glass, but it crumples!'"

My grandfather was born in Abakan, and published several books on the history of the region. He visited Agafia several times by helicopter with my uncle, after the other members of her family had passed. When I was around 15, he showed me a video of their first encounter with her, and to this day I cannot get the image of the pure terror on her face out of my mind. She had multiple visitors before, but something abou…

> 'steal her soul.'

That's a bit Crocodile Dundee isn't it?

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