For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

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I think It is the story that inspired Megre to write a book "Ringing Ceders". This now is the new bible for a whole generation of people who BUY CHOISE leads an alternative life style that is more about being in touch with nature rather then exploiting it. Some of them do move far out to the woods of siberia and this is great choise I think because too much poo there's in what we call "civilization" today...
Andy.
 
Thanks milius - great pictures - amazing that tourists would steal from them - says it all reall (sigh)
 
I made no comment about them interbreeding. I said that for 'people' to live alone is not a good idea.
There's no issue about having an extended family or tribal or clan network, or village mentality come to that. Just that individuals do not do so well alone M

Sounds like the last part of the "Rule of 4's" to me Mary :)

4 minutes without air
4 days without water
4 weeks without food
4 months without contact

Any of which can do the human being an awful lot of damage and quite possibly death. I am, however, led to believe that the contact doesn't have to be other human contact. Animal interaction such as feeding and talking to wild birds can help and even personifying inanimate objects (think "Wilson" in the Tom Hanks film Cast Away) can be other alternatives.
Clearly we are all different and the above is only a rule guide....and there's always exceptions to the rule.

I knew what you meant Mary lol :)

Cheers,

Bam. :)
 
That's a fascinating story, and probably a good message to send out to most who dream of a Walden-like life of living off the land: it's tough. With regards to living away from large communities, there's something referred to as 'Dunbar's number' which is the number of people individuals can maintain a proper social relationship, which has a limit of around 150 people. If you live in a community larger than that, you can't keep track of everyone and start to view individuals as the homogenous 'other'. There's quite a funny article that goes into it in slightly more detail: What is the monkeysphere?
 
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That's a fascinating story, and probably a good message to send out to most who dream of a Walden-like life of living off the land: it's tough. With regards to living away from large communities, there's something referred to as 'Dunbar's number' which is the number of people individuals can maintain a proper social relationship, which has a limit of around 150 people. If you live in a community larger than that, you can't keep track of everyone and start to view individuals as the homogenous 'other'. There's quite a funny article that goes into it in slightly more detail: What is the monkeysphere?

If anyone hasn't read the monkeyshpere article they should. There is a huge amount of real truth wrapped up in it that explains the world works. Its only two pages long and is probably the most concise, accurate explanation of the human condition I have ever read.
 
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If anyone hasn't read the monkeyshpere article they should. There is a huge amount of real truth wrapped up in it that explains the world works. Its only two pages long and is probably the most concise, accurate explanation of the human condition I have ever read.

An entertaining read, well worth a look. :)

The 150 people limit is however an approximate midpoint for 'Dunbar's number' it can be as many as 200 - 240. Rather than think of those 100 to 240 people as individuals at a moot or as survivors of a plane crash, think of them as several families working and living together, families with more children than might be the norm here, however if grandchildren are taken into account then those 240 people could be made up of twenty or so families, which does make it easier to keep those folks within your 'monkeysphere'.

Perhaps of interest is that the 'Hutterites', communally living Anabaptists (similar to the Amish) have a mechanism to ensure that their 'Monkeysphere' is kept at a manageable size. Once a 'colony' reaches a certain size it splits, business assets, agricultural tools are split as evenly as possible and individuals or families leave to form a daughter colony.
 
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I've never heard of the moneysphere thing. It it someone telling us (me) how many people I'm supposed to know or associate with? I fail to see the point.Everywhere around the world there are people living under all sorts of conditions in all sorts of arrangements at all levels of income and wealth. They all manage. It's been that way for a long time, too. It isn't like people even have to live in one place all the time, either. Whole populations have sometimes moved around to suit conditions. Only relatively recently have we drawn lines on maps to say where you can go and where you can't. It's true that men and women have left the cities to live by themselves or in community, nearly always for religious reasons. It still happens. Yet they are rarely cut off entirely from the rest of the world, even when they lived in isolated places. Indeed, they nearly always lived in isolated places. You in the U.K. should know that as much as anyone. They have have gone a little overboard in some of the places they chose to live, although the reasons seem to be unrelated to this Russian family. However, I think that the environment is a big influence on these matters and Russia is a big place. There's space and it sounds like they wanted "elbow room." But being an actual family is rather unusual compared with religious.We almost always overlay a story like that with our own notions and I suspect academics do that, too. Everyone imagines that they way they do things, or would if they could, is the only really logical way and we don't understand it when other's don't share our point of view. The European settlers to the New World, English, French and Spanish, saw the natives (everywhere, for that matter) as heathens and savages. The Europeans showed them what savage was. Some places in South America they're still doing that, too. Then there's the idea of wilderness, something I imagine is at the heart of the "true" bushcrafter/woodcrafter. Do you imagine the Indians, if I may use that old fashioned term, had a concept of wilderness? Well, to be frank, I didn't watch the video or read the story. But if someone were out to pull off the ultimate escape and evasion, it sounds like something admirable. It doesn't sound like it relates to Walden at all.
 

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