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

smithsonianmag.com

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

#71

Post by gbin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69
duaneb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on. I'm not sure what you're imagining pre-history to be like, but humans are generally the top of every food chain. It's also very rarely worth it to attack another human without desired resources. The big risk in Eurasia would be wolves, who would have to be very hungry. Non-pack animals usually are a threat w…

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

It is actually a fun fact when you think about the recent popularity of the Paleo diet and the anti-gluten sentiment.

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

#72

Post by andrewvijay »

zhemao wrote: post #30
andrewvijay wrote: post #21

Found them gave them pneumonia and killed them.

Only of them died of pneumonia. The scientists tried to save him by taking him to a hospital for modern medical treatment, but he refused.

Yes. It was a joke!

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

#73

Post by duaneb »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69
duaneb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on. I'm not sure what you're imagining pre-history to be like, but humans are generally the top of every food chain. It's also very rarely worth it to attack another human without desired resources. The big risk in Eurasia would be wolves, who would have to be very hungry. Non-pack animals usually are a threat w…

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

I'm not sure what I said has anything to do with agriculture. Could you explain why agriculture makes lone people safer? Humans are not going to be bear/lion/tiger food even alone if prepared properly. We are very dangerous/inefficient prey with just a sharp stick or two functional legs.

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

#74

Post by seanmcdirmid »

duaneb wrote: post #73
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

I'm not sure what I said has anything to do with agriculture. Could you explain why agriculture makes lone people safer? Humans are not going to be bear/lion/tiger food even alone if prepared properly. We are very dangerous/inefficient prey with just a sharp stick or two functional legs.

Agriculture encourages settlement, people can gather together for safety. Before that, they were moving around all the time, getting killed by a tiger was a realistic fear. Hunter gatherers had a tough life, even if successful on average.

If you've ever seen a brown bear...there isn't much you can do if you aren't armed with a gun, and even then....

Of course, the main benefit of agriculture was food security and surplus, allowing a whole bunch of activities not possible before.

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

#75

Post by duaneb »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74
duaneb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what I said has anything to do with agriculture. Could you explain why agriculture makes lone people safer? Humans are not going to be bear/lion/tiger food even alone if prepared properly. We are very dangerous/inefficient prey with just a sharp stick or two functional legs.

Agriculture encourages settlement, people can gather together for safety. Before that, they were moving around all the time, getting killed by a tiger was a realistic fear. Hunter gatherers had a tough life, even if successful on average. If you've ever seen a brown bear...there isn't much you can do if you aren't armed with a gun, and even then.... Of course, the main benefit of agriculture was food security and sur…

Brown bears don't generally like human, as I have found repeatedly when seeing them in the wild. Your fear is ungrounded and irrational. Step one: don't interact with bear. Step two: don't smell like dead animal. Neither of these are hugely difficult and are easy to grasp lessons.

At no point was predation a major problem for humans. Again, nutrition and infection would most likely dominate hunter gatherer mortality.

How many remains have we found of mauled humans?

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

#76

Post by StavrosK »

kornish wrote: post #19
jshmrsn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that if you have this guy's videos, you would be able to teach yourself how to survive and not starve to death.

I think the joke was that you'd probably starve to death before learning enough to survive from this guy's videos.

Yep. Not to mention that the guy makes it look easy, which means that he must have lots of experience with it.

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

#77

Post by rusanu »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69
duaneb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on. I'm not sure what you're imagining pre-history to be like, but humans are generally the top of every food chain. It's also very rarely worth it to attack another human without desired resources. The big risk in Eurasia would be wolves, who would have to be very hungry. Non-pack animals usually are a threat w…

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

Some claim that that hunter-gatherers spent most of the time for leisure and only 15-20 hours a week for foraging/hunting [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

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

#78

Post by seanmcdirmid »

duaneb wrote: post #75
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture encourages settlement, people can gather together for safety. Before that, they were moving around all the time, getting killed by a tiger was a realistic fear. Hunter gatherers had a tough life, even if successful on average. If you've ever seen a brown bear...there isn't much you can do if you aren't armed with a gun, and even then.... Of course, the main benefit of agriculture was food security and sur…

Brown bears don't generally like human, as I have found repeatedly when seeing them in the wild. Your fear is ungrounded and irrational. Step one: don't interact with bear. Step two: don't smell like dead animal. Neither of these are hugely difficult and are easy to grasp lessons. At no point was predation a major problem for humans. Again, nutrition and infection would most likely dominate hunter gatherer mortality.…

And yet a few people get killed by brown bears every year in glacier national park through no fault of their own.

Also as a PSA, playing dead works (better) for brown bears since they aren't so interested in dead things, never try that with a black bear who are more like scavengers. If you saw a bear in he states outside of northern Montana or Alaska (or yellow stone), it was just a black bear.

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

#79

Post by grecy »

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 live in the Yukon - when we are out Moose hunting in the fall we often wonder if we could survive the winter if we flipped our canoe with nothing more than we have with us.

Every time this article comes up, I have two questions I've never found a satisfactory answer to:

1. How did they light fires?

2. How did they cook and boil water? From experience pots and pans fail after much less than 40 years.

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

#80

Post by sn9 »

harperlee wrote: post #60
unixhero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You now have the "favorites" function, with which you can publicly mark articles. Perhaps a rank of the most favorite articles would do that.

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