[HN Gopher] Russian family lived alone in the Siberian wildernes...
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       Russian family lived alone in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years
       (2013)
        
       Author : baxtr
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2024-11-12 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
        
       | skzv wrote:
       | The Vice documentary mentioned in the article is really great
       | [0].
       | 
       | Best of luck to Agafia.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68
        
       | hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
       | I wish I could do that in Canada. Not totally isolated but a few
       | kms from a main road with a chalet and something. Solar for
       | power, Starlink for network and I can die in that chalet.
       | 
       | But building and maintaining are going to be hell because I know
       | exactly zero about those.
        
         | cgh wrote:
         | Literally the only things stopping you from doing this are
         | money (to buy a rural lot somewhere, tools, a truck and so
         | forth) and time. You can learn most of your skills with YouTube
         | and practise, not kidding. Thanks to YouTube, we renovated a
         | borderline crappy house, built outbuildings, landscaped, etc.
         | with essentially no construction experience. I am still kind of
         | amazed by this.
        
         | hindsightbias wrote:
         | Watch this series, you'll be able to do anything.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/fCcLhdLaxnM?si=fy4D20GyFenA4cqo
         | 
         | But it's a 100X easier to just buy the materials.
        
       | alexey-salmin wrote:
       | > When in recalling the "first world war" with Karp Osipovich the
       | geologists engaged him in conversation about the last one, he
       | shook his head: "What is this, a second time, and always the
       | Germans. A curse on Peter. He flirted with them. That is so."
       | 
       | It's almost the "which one, first or second?" joke but IRL
        
         | cgh wrote:
         | "Always the Germans". My Dutch friends will laugh pretty hard
         | at this. It fits in with yelling "Hey, where's my bike?" at
         | German tourists (the Nazis confiscated Dutch bicycles in WW2 to
         | limit movement) and referring to people from the eastern part
         | of the country as "spare Germans".
        
           | IncreasePosts wrote:
           | At a certain point, we gotta say "Hey, Germany, you don't get
           | to be a country no more, on account of you keep attacking THE
           | WORLD"
        
             | christophilus wrote:
             | For those not in the know, it's a reference to Norm
             | MacDonald:
             | 
             | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdtafGdIVM&pp=ygUWbm9ybSBtYW
             | N...
        
           | usrnm wrote:
           | Yeah, but Peter actually flirted with the Dutch, not Germans.
           | Nobody just sees any difference ;)
        
             | kgeist wrote:
             | Back in Peter the Great's times the Dutch and Germans were
             | called with the same word in Russian. I think it was the
             | case in English, too. IIRC that's why they call it
             | Pennsylvania Dutch, even though it's German.
        
               | stvltvs wrote:
               | It's Deutschland after all.
        
       | idunnoman1222 wrote:
       | All the kids died of pneumonia caught from the visiting
       | geologist. What a cute story.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Well. I wonder if the new gift of salt in their diet
         | contributed to kidney failure.
        
           | scns wrote:
           | The most important thing the Beduins take to the desert is?
           | 
           | Salt
        
         | nighthawk454 wrote:
         | > In the fall of 1981, three of the four children followed
         | their mother to the grave. According to Peskov, their deaths
         | were not, as some have speculated, the result of exposure to
         | diseases to which they had no immunity. Both Savin and Natalia
         | suffered from kidney failure, most likely a result of their
         | harsh diet. But Dmitry died of pneumonia, which might have
         | begun as an infection he acquired from his new friends.
        
       | madarco wrote:
       | I'm not sure... several parts of this story seem unbelievable to
       | be honest.
        
         | chikenf00t wrote:
         | What parts seem unbelievable?
        
       | tsimionescu wrote:
       | I remember watching a documentary about them, without much
       | context. The old lady who is still living alone out there was
       | talking a lot about how the Patriarch (an Orthodox equivalent of
       | the Pope, more or less) corrupted their old faith, and she was
       | cursing his name a lot. By the way she was speaking, I thought
       | she was talking about some events that must have happened during
       | her father's life, maybe his childhood - I assumed she was upset
       | about some communist era Patriarch who probably was too friendly
       | with the regime or something.
       | 
       | Looking it up later, I realized she was an Old Believer, and the
       | Patriarch she was cursing was in fact Nikon, who corrupted their
       | faith in 1652... I found it deeply fascinating how powerful and
       | alive this almost 400 year old grudge was to this woman.
        
         | kgeist wrote:
         | It's basically Old Believers' entire identity - opposition to
         | the official church.
        
         | JacobThreeThree wrote:
         | Give them some smartphones with social media and it'll be
         | forgotten in a generation.
        
           | Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
           | Or, it will be amplified, and will become the basis of a
           | religious-nationalist movement.
        
             | blooalien wrote:
             | > "Or, it will be amplified, and will become the basis of a
             | religious-nationalist movement."
             | 
             | ^^^ If history is any indicator, this is the _much_ more
             | likely outcome. ^^^
        
       | dingdingdang wrote:
       | This story sure has done the rounds. I like it both in the
       | particular and thematically speaking so perhaps there's a good
       | non-tragic variation* on it out there to be found..?
        
       | leshokunin wrote:
       | Those poor people missed TikTok, Tiger King, and all the other
       | amazing things we have to offer.
       | 
       | Glad they lived what they wanted
        
         | ivan_gammel wrote:
         | When I was 6 years old I was confused just like you about the
         | age of things.
         | 
         | I mean, they were discovered before the Digital Age and missed
         | only The Beatles and TV.
        
       | fuzztester wrote:
       | Reading the post title, the film Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa
       | comes to mind.
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala_(1975_film)
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa
        
         | sampo wrote:
         | The book is even better.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | Well, that brought up a memory from childhood. My parents
         | borrowed this on a tape and my brother and I would go about
         | calling the Sun "a very great man" and the Moon "another great
         | man" because that's what the character says about them.
        
       | kunley wrote:
       | Very Russian story: must-have big drama, old grudges, extreme
       | distances and overwhelming sadness.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-12 23:00 UTC)