mystriddlery: > More often than not, however, there was no meat and the late 1950s were remembered as their “hungry years.” When a hard frost killed everything in their garden in 1961, and the family was reduced to eating bark, Akulina died of starvation rather than seeing her children go hungry. The rest of the family were saved by a single grain of rye from which they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop.
Damn these people made some *tough* decisions. Can’t believe this hasn’t been turned to a movie yet.
mrshatnertoyou: >After Savin, Natalia and Dmitry were buried, the geologists tried to persuade Karp and Agafia to leave the forest and return to their surviving relatives in their old village. But neither of them would hear of it. They rebuilt their old cabin and stayed in the wilderness they called home.
>Karp Lykov was around 90 years old when died in his sleep in 1988 and was buried on the mountain slopes by his last surviving child, Agafia. A quarter of a century later, now aged 70 herself, she remains there alone. She did briefly stay with Old Believer relatives in her father’s old village but, having lived her entire life in the wilderness, she could not cope with even basic civilisation and was compelled to return to the forest.
Civilization was too much for them.
flyingsaucerinvasion: they began to see satellites at night. They reasoned they must be the device of man, but if I recall, they didn’t dwell on it much. I would have been flabbergasted if I were there, especially since they sometimes heard explosions and saw things falling out of the sky. They found a piece of a proton rocket not far from their homestead.
canadianmooserancher: Living without salt was the thing they missed. You just never know what it might be until it’s gone. Very humble
TooShiftyForYou: It can be difficult to spend a few days isolated with your immediate family just over the holidays. Can’t imagine doing that for 42 years.
wonder-maker: I think the most interesting part was the visit by the geologists. The family had been away from civilization for so long that their immune systems couldn’t handle a visit from outsiders and some of them died from diseases the geologists carried but were immune to themselves.
Reminded me of how explorers of old nearly wiped out entire civilizations inadvertently with the diseases they carried.
codece: They should do an episode of *Black Mirror* like this.
Right after 9/11, an American couple and their young children, fearing that WWIII has begun, flee deep into the Alaskan wilderness. They live there without any contact with the outside world, assuming it has all been destroyed.
Fifty years later, a group of ethnologists discover the family. They have never seen social media. They don’t even know what a meme is. They have been living this whole time retelling episodes of *Seinfeld* from memory, passed down as oral history.
_Mr-Skeltal_: Here’s what the Russians thought was there in 1981. Not surprisingly there’s no sign of the house. The area is so barren, any man-made structure would be plotted on this map: https://i.imgur.com/IYIrGbC.jpg
US Department of Defense map of that area from – https://i.imgur.com/6XxyDWd.jpg
You can see the house put them at the confluence of three rivers, which provided a lot of opportunity for fishing and trapping.
Location on Google Earth and other images… I definitely recommend checking it out as there’s Panoramio photos of her house and the terrain around the area.
https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Lykova¶ms=51.46100_N_88.42687_E_&title=Lykova
The nearest town is 41 miles to the northwest on the north side of that big lake. It appears to be a village of about 200 people. There’s a 4WD road on the US map 25 miles north of her house, but it appears to be long gone and no longer shows up. It would be quite a hike out of there, many days. Floating downriver to the nearest town would be Abaza, 105 miles away. Those mountains are incredibly remote, I have to say, and it’s interesting that it doesn’t appear to have been settled by any native peoples… it’s just completely barren.
It’s interesting to think that during the Cold War there might very well have been other structures out there, but the occupants weren’t lucky enough to survive, and their remains may still be out there waiting to be found.
Aeroflot 593, which went down in 1994 with a kid at the controls of an Airbus A310, was about to begin the traversal over that remote terrain. Fortunately it went down 15 miles from a large town.. had it been further along on its route, the crash site may never have been found. Flights between China and Europe go over that region every day, so some lucky Redditors may get a glimpse at that remote terrain someday.
GAZAYOUTH93X: The Lykov Family.
[Here is an RT Documentary](https://youtu.be/BFK3DJ7Kn6s) & [this is one from VICE](https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68)
Both are pretty good. Must watch
Terri_Schiavo275: Well did they send a man to help her for Christ’s sake?
reggie-hammond: Interesting ending. Mostly because I had read about this family back in the 90’s and thought for sure they were by now extinct.
dockellis13: This reminds of a book i read about a guy who goes searching for hermits living in the mountains in china. After meeting one and talking to him, the hermit asked “who is this chairman mao you keep talking about?”
jrm2007: They had a different perspective based on living so little contact with anyone else: IIRC, they continued to complain decades later about being cheated on some potatoes they bought from a trader.
reddit_is_now_shit: You can find more information here:
TIL a Russian family, fleeing Soviet persecution, lived isolated in the forest for 40 years, and had no idea that WW2 had happened until their discovery in 1978
byu/CopperknickersII intodayilearned
TIL A Russian Family lived alone in the Taiga for over 40 years without outside human contact, unaware of WWII
byu/Deadmonton87 intodayilearned
TIL For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II
byu/themattt intodayilearned
TIL in 1936, a Russian family fled into the tiaga forest to escape religious prosecution, and lived in isolation for 40 years, completely avoiding any knowledge of World War 2.
byu/Manbearcatward intodayilearned
TIL in 1978 Soviet geologists discovered a Russian family in Siberia that had been lost for 40 years, unaware of WWII.
byu/vienno intodayilearned
TIL a Russian family lived in total isolation from civilization for over 40 years in Siberia
byu/p3asant intodayilearned
TIL that for 40 years, a Russian Family lived alone in the Taiga, unaware that WWII happened
byu/creditphoenix intodayilearned
TIL a Russian family lived for 42 years in the Siberian taiga, totally isolated from human contact.
byu/WalkingBoy intodayilearned
TIL that a Russian family of 6 lived alone in the harsh forests of the taiga for forty years before being discovered in 1978 and one of the family members is still living there, a region deemed inhabilitable by some of the most fierce animals equipped for hardcore surviving.
byu/Windows7Guy100 intodayilearned
TIL For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II | History
byu/kuttymongoose intodayilearned
TIL that a Russian family took a few possessions/seeds, fled into the forest as political refugees and were cut off from all human contact for 40 years until they were discovered by a group of geologists who accidentally saw their settlement from a helicopter.
byu/jovialbeam intodayilearned
TIL A Russian Family Lived in the Wilderness of Siberia for Over 40 Years Without Human Contact
byu/kapuasuite intodayilearned
TIL That for 40 Years, a Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact while living in the Siberian Taiga and were unaware that WWII ever happened. The family of six were later discovered by Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia.
byu/Reagansmash1994 intodayilearned
TIL a Russian family cut off from all human contact for 40 years
byu/eligoins intodayilearned
TIL For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of WWII
byu/SpecularAWG intodayilearned
TIL that a Russian family of 6 lived alone in the harsh forests of the taiga for forty years before being discovered in 1978. One family member is still living out there, a region deemed uninhabitable by some of the fiercest and best equipped animals for surviving, yet this one girl manages.
byu/InfinityReality intodayilearned
TIL that a family lived in the Siberian wilderness for over 40 years without human contact.
byu/dragoncast97 intodayilearned
gergek: There is a book about this family called [Lost in the Taiga](https://books.google.com/books/about/Lost_in_the_Taiga.html?id=k29mAAAAMAAJ&hl=en) written by Vasily Peskov. Someone gave me a copy a few years back and it was an amazing read. It must have gone out of print though because it is EXPENSIVE on amazon.
Traveling_wonder: A documentary about this family led viewers to believe that Karp began having sexual relations with his daughter(s) when their mother died.
The brother became adept at hunting because the father kicked him out of the house once he reached puberty. He was worried that his daughters and son would begin having ‘relations’. Which is an amazing quote from him considering that he was sleeping with his own daughters.
UnseenPower: I remember this story. It was sad to read about her telling the geologists to go and she watched them walk away. She was all alone but wouldn’t follow them.
TuddFudder: Proof that WWII never happened
astouffer: The book is called Lost In The Taiga and is no longer in print. Be on the lookout for used copies or try your local library.
Thegoodthebadandaman: Man it would had sucked if the Germans had somehow miraculously won and taken over the whole of Russia. One day the family would stumble upon German troops, finding it odd that they were there before suddenly being shanked with bayonets for being part of the untermensch.
Zizerix: Would love to hear some tails of the son spending days in the wilderness hunting.
Passthepogs: Not surprising, without TV or newspapers I wouldn’t know about any big world event……9/11, Princess Diana, MJ, Leicester winning the Prem, ISIS, Nelson Mandela, cold war etc
imNOTaprofessional: Anyone know what’s happened to the last remaining child? It ends with a desperate plea for help, sounds like it’s around 2011.