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

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

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

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

#31

Post by ekianjo »

danielmorozoff wrote: post #20
Mikeb85 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary reason many people who shared their faith fled major cities was because of Communist religious purges No, it's because all the Orthodox that existed in cities realised the schism was stupid. Most of the 'Old Believers' moved to whatever remote part of Siberia or Alaska long before the communists existed. And those that do still exist, live in a timewarp, and are more akin to a cult than an Orthodox comm…

Though the schism happened long before the Lykovs, the communist party led a strong campaign to destroy christian organizations in the early 20s-40s (right around the time the lykovs left). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(... Here is another example of a community of old believers in Alaska (1968) with an article in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/a-17th-c…

The communists not only destroyed the christians communities but also massacred anyone belonging to the bourgeoisie. It started with the Cheka.

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

#32

Post by rdtsc »

rdtsc wrote: post #9
aresant wrote: post #2

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

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 th…

(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...

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

#34

Post by rusanu »

T0T0R0 wrote: post #14
narrator wrote: post #4

Primitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : 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.

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…

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

[1] http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/...

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

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

#35

Post by rusanu »

danielmorozoff wrote: post #3

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

The Danube delta has a fairly large population of old believers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipovans

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

#36

Post by 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.

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

#37

Post by rusanu »

betolink wrote: post #8
narrator wrote: post #4

Primitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : 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.

I'm a fan of these videos! if I get stranded on an Island my only hope is to have enough battery and this guy's videos on a usb drive =)

The first video would be one that would show you how a large battery and a USB drive are not enough for survival, if only you would have something to watch the video on :)

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

#38

Post by tmptmp »

narrator wrote: post #4

Primitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : 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.

A very humbling experience, great videos and great efforts.

I wonder, how many years (centuries) might have gone into inventing, discovering and perfecting even this "primitive" technology.

Not to undermine his efforts, but this guy could do all this "so fast" mostly because he is working in a rather comfortable and secure environment of modern and more civilized times, whereas the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on.

Kudos to this guy and more kudos to all those anonymous primitive hackers who created such an incredible technology.

Lesson to take: I should stop complaining about those little inconveniences and discomforts I encounter in my modern life.

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

#39

Post by fennecfoxen »

wyager wrote: post #27
andrewvijay wrote: post #21

Found them gave them pneumonia and killed them.

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

It doesn't even need to be contact with "modern" people, just with people.
Post reply on HN