WEBVTT - The Family Who Vanished Into Siberia for Over 40 Years 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:08.000 In the summer of nineteen seventy eight, in the heart 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:13.640 of Siberia, a team of four young Soviet geologists made 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:19.400 an astonishing discovery. Flying in a helicopter over a remote 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.040 stretch of forest more than one hundred and fifty miles 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.360 from the nearest human settlement. 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.479 They spotted what looked like a clearing. Below. 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:33.600 Inside that clearing was a large garden plot with rows 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:37.720 of potatoes. Next To it was what looked like a shelter. 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.000 Yeah, it must have been very much a surprise for 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.240 these geologists when they crossed the Tiger in a helicopter 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.280 in the nineteen seventies and suddenly saw the vegetable plot 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:50.760 in the middle of the Tiger, in a place where 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:52.440 this was basically unthinkable. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:58.120 Were people actually living out there, deep in the Siberian Woods, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:03.520 one of the most unforgiving landscapes on Earth. The geologists 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:08.080 didn't see anyone, but they marked the mysterious location on 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.760 their map and promised to return. 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:13.720 A few weeks. 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:18.320 After making camp at a nearby river, the geologists decided 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:22.759 to investigate. It was a ten mile hike through thick 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:33.160 strands of birch and Siberian pine, absolutely pristine undisturbed wilderness. 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.600 Very slow walking because the forest floor is not very solid. 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.360 It's covered with layers and layers of fallen trees, and 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:41.399 basically you have to balance on trees all the time 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.240 while you sink into the ground with your boots. 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.200 And then there are stretches. 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.520 Where you can't really walk. You're beastly walking along a 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:51.480 river and you know them. If you fall, the river 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.040 will carry you hundreds of meters downstream before you managed 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.000 to reach the coast and cut out of the water. 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.480 So kind of norse breaking that whole high. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.560 But as the geologists approached the spot marked on their map, 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.440 they found signs of life. First a footpath well worn 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:15.880 and straight, then a walking stick leaning against a tree. 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:20.880 There were definitely people living out there, but who were they. 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:25.720 In remote places like Siberia, running into another person could 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:29.320 be more dangerous than running into a bear. The leader 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:34.680 of the geologists was a woman named Galina Kismanskaya. In 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:38.480 her backpack, she brought some gifts for their new friends, 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:44.960 but on her hip she carried a revolver. The geologists 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.720 arrived at the clearing, and sure enough there was the 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:56.680 garden green with summer life, potatoes, onions, turnips, But where 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:03.720 were the gardeners. They approached a ramshackle cabin blackened by 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.800 years of rain and cooking fires. There was only one 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:13.320 tiny window to let in the sunlight. Slowly, a low 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:18.840 door swung open, and outstepped an old man. He had 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.640 a wild head of graying hair, a thick beard, and 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:28.000 bare feet. His rough hewn clothes were patched and repatched. 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.640 He looked like a figure straight out of a fairy tale, 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.280 a relic of a distant past. They all stared at 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:43.040 each other, somewhat stunned. Galina Pismanskaya broke the silence. She said, 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:46.440 greeting's grandfather, We've come to visit. 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:48.760 In his younger days. 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.200 The old man might have chased the geologists away or 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.120 run off into the hills at the first sign of 0:03:56.160 --> 0:04:00.720 their arrival, But the wild haired hermit was tied now. 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.280 He didn't have the energy to fight or flee. Instead, 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.240 he spoke in a soft, raspy. 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:13.200 Voice, Viil, since you have traveled this far, you might 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:14.000 as well come in. 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:19.360 It would take several more visits for the shocking reality 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.720 to sink in. The four Soviet geologists were the first 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:28.960 outsiders this family had seen in more than forty years. 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:40.880 Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:45.240 your host Danish Schwartz, and this is Exit Strategy, the 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.880 family who vanished into Siberia for over forty years. 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.560 Hey, welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English, 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.480 joined as always by Danish Swartz and Zaren Burnett. Hi. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.280 You know, you know when we first started talking about 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.000 this show, which is like twenty twenty three, that's two 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:11.680 Olympics ago, that's seventy five plus episodes ago. But this 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.400 story was one that's always been on the list of 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:17.040 Oh we got to tell that that story in Siberia 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.640 about the people who went uncontacted for forty years. So 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:22.200 I'm really glad we're doing it today. 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:26.120 I found this fascinating. There's a few stories in history 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.159 that I've come across of like supposed people who lived 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:33.240 in isolation, and spoiler alert, most of those are just hoaxes, 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.120 Like most stories about people who live in complete isolation 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.760 are not actually true. So this was genuinely fascinating because 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:41.440 it's like, oh, no, this actually happens. 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:43.680 I had never heard of this, but I was blown 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.080 away by them just raw dogging humanity, like they did. 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.680 When news made it to Moscow that there was a 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:57.599 family living alone in Siberia, cut off from the world 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.240 for four decades, it was like someone had discovered a 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:06.039 walking wooly mammoth. Here were people living in the late 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.000 nineteen seventies who didn't know anything about World War II, 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:14.200 the moon landing, or television. They had more in common 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:19.440 with nineteenth century peasants than modern Russians. The old man's 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:24.520 name was Karp Laikhov. His daughters were Natalia and Agafia. 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:30.400 At first, the geologists had a hard time understanding what 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.920 they were saying. They were definitely speaking Russian, but their 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:39.320 words were strange, old like the way people talked in 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.800 the Middle Ages, and their voices were strange too, more 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:51.320 like singing than speaking. After some stilted conversation, Piecemenskaya finally 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.039 asked the question that was on the geologist's mind from 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.800 the moment they spotted the clearing in the forest, How 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.880 did you come to live here so far away from 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.560 other people without hesitation. Karp explained that he and his 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.920 wife came out here because they were commanded by God. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:13.960 We're not allowed to live with the world. 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:18.520 Karp's wife had died many years ago, but he and 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:24.040 the family faithfully soldiered on. In addition to Natalia and Agafia, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:29.559 Karp had two grown sons, Saviine and Dimitri, who lived 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:31.880 a few miles away in their own cabin. 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:33.720 They would all meet soon. 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.440 A few years after the geologists first made contact with 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:45.160 the Lykov family, a journalist named Vassili Piskov flew out 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:46.680 to Siberia. 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:46.800 To meet them. 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.360 He wrote about the Lycoves in a series of newspaper 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.520 articles and a book that captured Russia's imagination. 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.440 When I heard about that story, I found it fascinating, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.000 not only because it's a unique story. 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.360 Sorry, there's probably I. 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.200 Couldn't think of any other people who had this kind 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:10.520 of experience, like being completely isolated in a remote forest 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.240 area in Siberia for almost forty years, or more than 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.640 forty years. But the story was also interesting because so 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:24.120 many things in Russian history had to happen for Agafya 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.239 to end up in the place where she is now. 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:32.120 That Yen's Muling a German journalist who lived four years 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.240 in Moscow and wrote a book about his travels called 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:40.320 A Journey into Russia. The Lykovs were members of a 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:46.280 long persecuted religious sect known as the Old Believers. Old 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.880 Believers trace their origins to a contentious split with the 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:55.680 Russian Orthodox Church centuries ago. In the sixteen hundreds, a 0:08:55.760 --> 0:09:00.199 priest named Nikan became the leader of the Russian Orthodox 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:04.000 Church in Moscow. He caused an uproar by changing some 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:08.559 religious practices to better align with the Greek Orthodox Church. 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.880 Nikon's wildest move was to change the way that Russian 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.920 Orthodox Christians made the sign of the Cross. Instead of 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:21.440 holding up two fingers like they'd always done, Nikon wanted them. 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:22.880 To use three fingers. 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.640 Three fingers who did he think they were Greeks. There 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.880 was huge outcry over these changes, and Nikon had a 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:37.240 powerful ally in Russia's Tsar Alexey, who turned Nikon's new 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.280 rules into law. People who refused to perform Nikon's three 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.000 fingered salute became enemies. 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:45.240 Of the state. 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.760 The result was a schism, a rupture within the Russian 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:51.880 Orthodox Church and. 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.120 The people who came to enormous The Old Believers basically 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:59.320 rebuilt against all of these changes, including the political changes 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.040 that were going on and all of the things that 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:02.880 suddenly entered Russia from the West. 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:04.720 They were not happy about that. 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.280 They thought it was against their traditions. They thought it 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:10.080 was all the work of Satan, and that's where they 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:14.079 decided not to follow the reforms of their patriarch and decided. 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:15.760 To escally break away from the Church. 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.320 And the Orthodox Church henceforth referred to them as the 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:23.640 Old Believers because they stubbornly stuck to their old dogmas. 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:25.920 They never caught themselves the old Believers. 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.600 They caught themselves the true Believers because they put somewhere 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.880 goselves the only like the tall spiers of traditional Orthodoxy. 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.160 There's a famous Russian painting of a woman known as 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:44.480 the Boyarina Morozova. She was one of the original Old Believers. 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.280 The painting shows the Boyarina, a wealthy and dignified woman, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.560 being dragged through the muddy street of Moscow on a 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:58.360 horse drawn sledge. As she's carted off to prison, the 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.840 Boyarina holds two defiant fingers in the air. 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.200 She basically spat in the Tsar's face, spat in the 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.440 face of the church, and defiantly went to her death 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:12.000 maintaining the faith. 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.840 That's Peter de Simone, a historian of Russian Old Believers. 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:22.680 He says, entire communities chose mass suicide rather than give 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:27.360 in to Nikan and Czar Alexe, who they called the Antichrists. 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:32.760 Other old believers tried to escape persecution by fleeing to 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:37.000 remote corners of the Russian Empire, like Siberia. 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:39.960 And so that had been this kind of approach for 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:41.880 a lot of early communities was get out to the 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:44.360 outskirts where they can't find us, because look what they 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:45.880 are doing to us when they catch us in the 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.679 late sixteen hundreds, very early seventeen hundreds. We don't want 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:51.680 that to happen, and we don't necessarily want to have 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:55.000 to kill ourselves either, And so maybe we can spread 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:56.560 out and we'll be saved that way, and we can 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:58.440 preserve our way of life. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.720 That's how the ancestor of the Laikov family originally came 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.400 to live in Siberia. They were one of these old 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.719 believer families that fled into the wilderness to practice their 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:15.760 religion undisturbed. Any intrusion from the outside world would set 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:19.880 them running deeper into the forest. Soon they became known 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:26.319 as runners. Karp Laikov, the patriarch the geologists met, grew 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.319 up in an old Believer family outside of the Siberian 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:34.560 town of Aba Khan, but at some point the Soviets 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:36.080 discovered their settlement. 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.880 What happened in the nineteen thirties is that Soviets planning 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.320 teams came into these remote settlements and told people they 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:45.760 could no longer live the way that they had been living. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:48.160 They told the old believers that they had to send 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.760 their children to state schools, and they also told them 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.880 that things that they were planting and the fish that 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.760 they were catching no longer belonged to them, but to 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:58.840 the state. And for the old believers, of course that 0:12:58.960 --> 0:12:59.840 was inacceptable. 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:05.079 So the Lycoves and four other families ran, moving higher 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:09.199 into the mountains, but in less than a decade they 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:14.760 were discovered again. Stalin sent troops into the Siberian preserve 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.200 to look for deserters. Carp Lyikov and his brother were 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.720 out collecting wood when they were spotted by a soldier. 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.760 According to Karp, his brother tried to run away and 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:31.760 the soldiers shot him in the back, killing him. The 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:37.400 Lykove's worst fears were realized. The Russian government was still 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:43.480 persecuting and killing old believers. The Antichrist was still alive. 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.079 And well in the form of Stalin. The only solution 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:51.600 was to break away from society entirely and hide away 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:57.800 with God in the mountains. By that time, carp Lyikov 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:02.120 had married his wife Akalina and had two young children. 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.800 Rather than risk living among the other old believers, they 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.240 made the bold decision to strike out on their own. 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.080 They thought they didn't have any alternative. 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.120 Then they thought that they don't run away from everything, 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.400 then eventually they would be found and they would be 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:21.720 forced to give up their lives and the way they 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.160 had been living their lives. So for them it was 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.720 kind of the only way out was to hide deep 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.920 in the forest and try to isolate themselves completely from 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.880 a world which they thought had completely lost its way. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.680 The Lykovs chose to run one last time. They stopped 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:42.440 running hundreds of miles from the nearest human being in 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.720 a ramshackle cabin along the Aba Khan River. 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.560 Basically, their family considered themselves to be the only true 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.600 Christians left in the wood. At that time, the family 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:57.640 consisted of Karblikov, the father, his wife, and two children. 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.760 And then after they had left and established their little 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.320 hut in the woods, they had two more children in 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.720 this isolation, deep in the Tiger and therefore more than 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:16.240 forty years without basically any contact with the outside world. 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.760 The journalist Vasili Piskov was one of the very few 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:25.080 people who got to know the Lakov family. Far from 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:29.920 being backwater hillbillies, as it's easy to imagine them, each 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:34.600 member of the Lakov family had a distinct personality and 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:39.160 a particular role to play in the family's survival. Karp 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.920 Lyakov Papa, was approaching eighty when the geologists met him, 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.960 but still strong and healthy. Karp was the undisputed leader 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.880 of the family's tiny forest kingdom. He even wore a 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:57.200 special monks hat that was taller than the others. Karp 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.160 was the prayer leader, choor giver, and chief protector of 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.840 the family from the world. 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:05.560 With the outsiders. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.600 Karp was good natured and friendly, but also quick to 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:14.000 lay down the law when something wasn't allowed. According to 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.880 Karp's old believer code, a lot of things weren't allowed, 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:23.320 eating food with the geologists, accepting their medicine, or watching 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:28.760 their small TV. The oldest Laikov's son was Savine, the 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.600 rule keeper of the family. Savin knew the Bible and 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.440 old believer rituals by heart, and would even correct his 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.880 father if he misread a prayer or didn't bow low 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:44.360 enough to the ground. Savin was also a master leather worker. 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:48.480 He built his own tools for transforming elk and deer 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:55.120 hides into handcrafted belts and slings. Natalia was the second oldest. 0:16:55.600 --> 0:17:00.160 When the children's mother died from starvation in nineteen sixty one, 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:05.720 Natalia took on her mother's many difficult responsibilities, like making 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:11.840 the family's clothing from scratch. They grew and harvested hemp 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:16.080 whose rough fibers could be turned into thread. It's a 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.800 super labor intensive process that's hard enough with the right 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:26.200 tools and downright backbreaking with the improvised methods Natalia had 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:35.719 to work with. The next Laikhov child was Agafia. Unlike 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:40.240 her older siblings, Agafia was born after the Laikos entered 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:45.240 their Siberian isolation, so the forest and her family were 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:50.320 all that she knew. Filmmaker Rebecca E. Marshall recorded Agafia's 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.560 birth story for her twenty twenty four film The Forest 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:54.960 in Me. 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:03.160 I was born here in the spring. I was christened 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.960 in the Yerna River. I was christened by my father. 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.920 My sister Natalia was my godmother. 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:16.000 Agafia quickly became a favorite among the outsiders. She was 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:21.359 childlike in her enthusiasm and curiosity about everything the geologists 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.520 told her about their world. But Agafia was also deeply 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.480 knowledgeable about her forest home and eager to show off 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:34.080 her skills to the geologists. Agafia says her family used 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:38.520 everything they could find from the forest, roots, hay grass, 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:40.920 birch roots more. 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:48.720 Really, that's how we lived. We used everything roots, hay grass, 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:50.800 all kinds, and birch roots. 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:57.920 Agafia was also the family's official timekeeper. Without clocks or calendars, 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:03.239 Agafia inherited as invented by Savin to keep track of 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:08.880 the hours, days, months, lunar cycles, seasons, and years based 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.600 on Biblical arithmetic. Every day started with a statement of 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:18.960 the date and year. According to Agafia, the geologists arrived 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:23.240 on June second, seven thousand, four hundred and eighty six. 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:26.960 She was the one who was responsible for counting the days, 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.600 making sure that they knew on what day they had 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:33.080 to pray, which prayer, and what holiday of the Orthodox 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.879 calendar it was, and was very important for them not 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.359 to get confused and not to lose single days so 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.800 that their lives would stay within the rhythms that had 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.000 been defined. For the Orthodox leaders, it was very important 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:49.040 for them to pray the correct prayer on each day 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.880 and to celebrate the correct saints on each day. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.320 The youngestly likeo of child was Dmitri, another favorite the 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:06.119 geologists and journalists. Before Dmitri, the Lykovs didn't eat meat 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:10.760 because Karp wasn't a hunter, but as the youngest Lycove grew, 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:14.680 it was like he became one with the taiga. Dmitri 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:19.359 had incredible endurance. He could chase a Siberian deer for 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.680 hours or even days on foot, until the animal collapsed 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.880 from exhaustion and he killed it with nothing more than 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:31.960 a sharpened stick. Dmitri would fish barefoot in the partially 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:36.600 frozen Abacan River. To keep his feet from getting frostbitten, 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.879 He'd stand on one leg like a flamingo. 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:40.520 Then switch. 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:46.200 Dmitri was also the family carpenter and craftsman. He could 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:50.320 build anything, a cook stove, a laithe for planning, boards, 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:55.320 a woven net for fishing. But his specialty was making tusa, 0:20:55.720 --> 0:21:02.200 traditional Siberian containers made entirely out of birch with Origami 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.119 like skill, Dmitri could make tusa as large as a 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.600 wash basin, or small enough to hold a handful of 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:14.760 pine nuts. Dmitri was the most curious about the geologists' 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:19.040 modern tools and gadgets. He was blown away by the 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.640 speed of their saw as it cut and plane boards. 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:27.320 Same with the chainsaw. Even a battery powered lantern was 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:28.680 a thing of wonder. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:31.120 For the younger Lycoves. 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:35.400 The sudden appearance of the geologists was like aliens arriving 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:40.119 from another planet. They were fascinated by the newcomers, but 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:46.000 also afraid for their entire lives. Karp Lycove had taught 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:50.600 his family about the dangers of the world. The entire 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:55.159 reason they lived this way in total isolation and separation 0:21:55.880 --> 0:22:00.960 was to avoid spiritual and physical contamination from the evils 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:05.480 of the modern world. But now the modern world was 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:09.720 at their doorstep. Would they have to run again? Where 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.960 could they even go? The biggest question the Lycoves had 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:19.000 to answer was were the outsiders harbingers of doom or 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:31.760 their salvation? When the Soviet geologists discovered the Lycoves in 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:36.639 nineteen seventy eight, they had so many questions. They learned 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:40.880 why the Lycoves had chosen this self isolation. For them, 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:46.040 spiritual survival meant complete separation from the modern world. But 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:50.520 how about the How how exactly did a family with 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:55.400 four children survive for nearly four decades in one of 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.119 the most extreme environments on Earth. 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.480 You have to really be methodical, you have to really prioritize. 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:05.520 So there's you know, there's a structure of needs. There's 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.600 a hierarchy of needs, right keeping maintaining your body at 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.160 ninety eight point six that's huge, especially somewhere like Siberia. 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.080 So you have to have firewood, you have to have 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:17.800 clothes in decent repair. You have to have a way 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:19.840 to keep your toes from getting frostbite. 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:21.920 That's when I a tebow. 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.720 She was the first female champion on Alone, the History 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:32.000 Channel's Wilderness Survival Challenge Whenaya also holds the record on 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:36.280 Alone for total time spent out in the wild one 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.880 hundred and twenty three days. Whenaya also competed on an 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:45.080 extra challenging season of the show set in the Canadian Arctic. 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.640 So she knows better than most people what it feels 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:52.159 like to live completely off the grid, to be wholly 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:55.400 reliant on nature and your own skills to survive. 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:56.960 I would say that. 0:23:56.960 --> 0:23:59.560 A lot of the mundane and a lot of the 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:03.800 petty concerns start to fall away because everything there's no 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:07.639 room for abstractions. It's really just what is before you 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:13.920 every day, and your whole focus is warmth, shelter, food, water, 0:24:14.640 --> 0:24:17.080 So it really brings you to the heart of what 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:22.359 it is to be human, to be an animal. And 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:25.920 that's the kind of clarity. It's very easy to see 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.760 what's important and what's not important from a place like that, 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:32.920 and I find a lot of beauty in it. 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:39.560 The central preoccupation for the Lyves was, of course food, 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:45.040 growing food, foraging for food, hunting and fishing for food, 0:24:45.560 --> 0:24:49.159 and then preserving and storing enough of that food to 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:55.160 sustain them through the endless Siberian winter. Potatoes were essential 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:59.200 to the Lycove family's diet. They kept a two year 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:04.480 store at all times. Without potatoes, a single crop failure 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:09.160 would mean certain death. To keep the stored potatoes from rotting, 0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:12.239 they cut them into disks and dried them in the 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:16.600 sun on sheets of birch bark. The Lycoves ate boiled 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:21.439 potatoes fresh or dried with every meal. Even their version 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:27.320 of bread was mostly potatoes. They took dried potatoes, rieberries, 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:31.240 and hemp seeds and grounded all up into a thick paste. 0:25:31.720 --> 0:25:33.359 They formed the paste into. 0:25:33.160 --> 0:25:37.960 Patties and cooked them on a wood fired griddle. The result, 0:25:38.240 --> 0:25:44.280 in Piaskov's words, looked like fat, black pancakes. When Carp 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:48.320 first met the geologists, he refused all of their gifts 0:25:48.359 --> 0:25:52.720 from the outside world except for salt. That was the 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:56.600 only thing that he missed in his nearly forty year isolation. 0:25:57.520 --> 0:26:01.760 Imagine all of those meals of oiled potatoes and black 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:06.240 bread without a grain of salt. True torture is how 0:26:06.320 --> 0:26:11.000 Carp described it. Foraging was only possible during the few 0:26:11.080 --> 0:26:15.040 months when the Tiga wasn't blanketed in snow. There were 0:26:15.200 --> 0:26:20.600 wild onions and nettles in the spring, mushrooms, raspberries, huckleberries 0:26:20.600 --> 0:26:24.560 and currants in the summer, and finally, in late August, 0:26:25.160 --> 0:26:28.800 pine nuts. The lycoves could always be found with a 0:26:28.880 --> 0:26:32.320 pocket full of pine nuts. Agafia said they gnawed on 0:26:32.400 --> 0:26:36.040 them like squirrels all day long. Without pine nuts, the 0:26:36.119 --> 0:26:39.080 lycoves wouldn't have had enough protein in their diet. 0:26:39.840 --> 0:26:41.560 Even with Dimitri's. 0:26:41.040 --> 0:26:45.040 Hunting scale, elk meat was a rare luxury, and fish 0:26:45.080 --> 0:26:47.800 were only available in the summer and fall before the 0:26:47.800 --> 0:26:55.520 Abacan River froze over. The LYCoV family knew what would 0:26:55.560 --> 0:26:57.760 happen if they didn't have enough food. 0:26:58.560 --> 0:27:00.320 They spoke in hushed. 0:27:00.200 --> 0:27:04.840 Tones of the summer of nineteen sixty A late June 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:09.600 snow and heavy rains killed everything in the garden. On 0:27:09.720 --> 0:27:13.560 top of that, the pine trees failed to produce their 0:27:13.600 --> 0:27:18.080 life saving seats. Over the long winter, the ly Coves 0:27:18.200 --> 0:27:21.400 finished the last of the dried potatoes from their stores, 0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:27.679 and the situation turned desperate. They ate straw, they ate bark, 0:27:28.240 --> 0:27:32.399 they ate their leather belts. They went weeks without real food. 0:27:33.880 --> 0:27:38.000