Exit Strategy: They Vanished Into Siberia for Over 40 Years [from Very Special Episodes]

27:31So you have to have firewood. You have to have clothes and decent repair. You have to have a way to keep your toes from getting frostbite.

27:39Dana Schwartz:That's Winaya Tebow. She was the first female champion on Alone, the History Channel's Wilderness Survival Challenge. Winaya also holds the record on Alone for total time spent out in the wild, 123 days. Winaya also competed on an extra challenging season of the show set in the Canadian Arctic. So she knows better than most people what it feels like to live completely off the grid, to be wholly reliant on nature and your own skills to survive. I would say that a lot of the mundane and a lot of the petty concerns start to fall away because everything, there's no room for abstractions. It's really just what is before you every day.

28:27And your whole focus is warmth, shelter, food, water. So it really brings you to the heart of what it is to be human, to be an animal. And that's the kind of clarity. It's very easy to see what's important and what's not important from a place like that. And I find a lot of beauty in it.

28:53Dana Schwartz:The central preoccupation for the Lykoves was, of course, food. Growing food. Foraging for food. Hunting and fishing for food. And then preserving and storing enough of that food to sustain them through the endless Siberian winter. Potatoes were essential to the Lykov family's diet. They kept a two-year store at all times. Without potatoes, a single crop failure would mean certain death. To keep the stored potatoes from rotting, they cut them into discs and dried them in the sun on sheets of birch bark. The Lykovs ate boiled potatoes, fresh or dried, with every meal. Even their version of bread was mostly potatoes.

29:43Dana Schwartz:They took dried potatoes, rye berries, and hemp seeds and ground it all up into a thick paste. They formed the paste into patties and cooked them on a wood-fired griddle. The result, in Pieskov's words, looked like fat black pancakes. When Karp first met the geologists, he refused all of their gifts from the outside world, except for salt. That was the only thing that he missed in his nearly 40-year isolation. Imagine all of those meals of boiled potatoes and black bread without a grain of salt. True torture is how Karp described it. Foraging was only possible during the few months when the taiga wasn't blanketed in snow.

30:33Dana Schwartz:There were wild onions and nettles in the spring. Mushrooms, raspberries, huckleberries, and currants in the summer. And finally, in late August, pine nuts. The Lykovs could always be found with a pocket full of pine nuts. Agafia said they gnawed on them like squirrels all day long. Without pine nuts, the Lykovs wouldn't have had enough protein in their diet. Even with Dimitri's hunting skill, elk meat was a rare luxury, and fish were only available in the summer and fall before the Abakan River froze over.

31:11Dana Schwartz:The Lykov family knew what would happen if they didn't have enough food. They spoke in hushed tones of the summer of 1960. A late June snow and heavy rains killed everything in the garden. On top of that, the pine trees failed to produce their life-saving seeds. Over the long winter, the Lykovs finished the last of the dried potatoes from their stores. Then the situation turned desperate. They ate straw. They ate bark. They ate their leather belts. They went weeks without real food. That's when their mother, Akalina, died of starvation, the rest of the family barely surviving until the spring.

32:01Dana Schwartz:What happened next was a small miracle They had run out of rye seed because the last crop had failed But when the snows melted, a single green blade of rye grass sprouted in the garden It was their only hope for rebuilding the rye crop The Lycoves built a special fence around that lone blade of rye grass And guarded it desperately against squirrels and mice By the end of the season, the single sprig produced 18 grains of rye. The Lycoves saved those 18 seeds, planted them the next spring, and slowly crawled back from the brink. It was four years before the Lycoves had enough rye to make their black bread.

32:49Dana Schwartz:Winaya says most of us have never experienced true hunger. But the Lycopes would have understood what all wild animals know instinctively, that in nature there are times of plenty and times of scarcity. And like all animals, humans are built for survival. Hunger is uncomfortable, but it's also very natural. We evolved to go through deep periods of famine and abundance. And granted, the Siberian taiga is a far more extreme environment than most of our ancestors did it in. There have been humans doing this from the entirety of human evolution. and the fact that you sometimes go without means that you are so incredibly appreciative of it when it is there in a way that people who have not known that level of lack really can't understand.

33:46It's not intellectual. It's not easy to verbalize.

33:50Dana Schwartz:It's deeply, deeply visceral.

33:56Dana Schwartz:For the Lykovs, life in the taiga wasn't all toil and trouble. The old believer calendar was filled with holidays and feast days dedicated to saints. On these days off, the Lykovs would read from the Bible, sing special prayers, and the family would sit down to a lavish meal of rye porridge, a real treat, maybe with some strips of dried meat or fish. Without a TV or radio, the Lykovs entertained themselves by retelling and reliving their own family history. There was the great panic when Agafia temporarily lost track of time. There was the time that carp fell out of a pine tree. He was fine. The year seven made everyone a pair of leather boots.

34:46Dana Schwartz:And the time when a huge bear scared Agafia so badly that she stayed in bed for six months. Even the Lykovs' dreams took on a life of their own. One of the family's favorite stories was the time Agafia dreamed that she found a massive pine cone as big as the cabin. Dimitri had to pick out the massive pine nuts with an axe. Each delicious seed was big as a boulder. But life in the wilderness, its beauty and devastation, was always lurking around the corner.

35:24Dana Schwartz:In 1981, just a few years after their first contact with the outside world, three of the Lykov children died in rapid succession. The youngest, Dmitry, was the first to go. It was October, and he contracted pneumonia after setting fish traps in the nearly frozen river. The Lykovs rarely got sick. When they did, they healed themselves with nettle tea, rhubarb root, and lots of prayer. But that didn't work this time. When the geologists learned that Dimitri was burning up with fever and gasping for breath, they offered to call in a helicopter and send their doctor with antibiotics. But Dimitri refused, saying that wasn't allowed.

36:13Dana Schwartz:Quote, A man lives for however long God grants. Dimitri died that night. Seven was the next to go. After his brother's death, Seven complained of stomach pains and diarrhea, but refused to eat. Then, one bitter cold December day, he insisted on helping the family dig up the last of the potato harvest before the ground froze. He then collapsed in his bed, never to rise again. Natalia stayed by Savin's bedside as his condition worsened. When he passed away, Natalia was despondent. She said she would die next of grief. And she did ten days later. After helping bury Savin in the frozen earth, Natalia took to her bed and lost consciousness.

37:07Dana Schwartz:Her final words to Agafia were, I pity you. You are left alone. Ten years later, Natalia's words came true. In 1988, Agafia's father died. Her whole family was gone now, and Agafia was left to fend for herself in the Siberian wilderness. How could she possibly survive on her own?

37:40What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. Sky Pop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Sky Pop Protein Soda now at Target, Walmart, or Kroger. When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University, we find ways to remove barriers, not build them. Like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on-campus programs. That means flexible and engaging online courses and resources, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more.

38:17Online nationally or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen.edu. And now, another appliance triumph from your friends at Grand Appliance. Meet Chad. With the laundry piled high, Chad's washer died days before a two-week vacation with his family of five. But Chad didn't panic. I just called Grand Appliance. They recommended a large capacity Samsung option with a super speed wash mode that washed everything in no time. Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered it next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance.

38:52Shop GrandAppliance.com to learn more.

39:00Dana Schwartz:Agafia, the youngest Lykov daughter, stayed in the family's remote Siberian encampment after the deaths of her mother, siblings, and finally her father. For 35 years, she was completely alone.

39:18During the storm, I covered my face with the cloth and lay face down. On ze other side, with my back to the wind, my face to the ground.

39:29Dana Schwartz:That's Agafia Lyko, remembering a severe storm, from the film The Forest in Me, by British filmmaker Rebecca Marshall. Rebecca first read about Agafia in 2013 and was instantly captivated. As a person who, like many of us now, feels quite surrounded by lots of images and busyness all the time and pressure from a million things going on every single day, reading a story about a family who had fled into the forest and when they were discovered in 78 didn't even know really that the war was over, and then realizing that they have actually lived in total isolation with no technology, no modern technology.

40:16It was this kind of combination of a total nightmare, scary nightmare, as well as actually maybe a slice of heaven.

40:28Dana Schwartz:Rebecca wanted to go and visit Agafia, but she quickly learned you can't just go and visit Agafia. Agafia Lykov has become something of a national treasure in Russia, a protected species. There's a whole bureaucracy. Rebecca sent application forms to the mayor of Abacan and the officials who ran the nature reserve where Agafia lived. After waiting a year for approval, Rebecca and her film crew began their journey into the wilderness. They flew from London to Moscow. Then they took a seven-hour flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk, a Russian city on the edge of Siberia. Then another seven-hour train ride to Tashtegol, a remote mining town outside of the Altai Nature Reserve.

41:20Dana Schwartz:By that point, Rebecca felt like she had traveled to the ends of the earth. But they weren't done yet. The last leg could only be made by helicopter. A rickety old Soviet model. It was noisy, but offered an amazing view.

41:44Just the trees just spread out as far as the eye can see. Just thousands and thousands and thousands of trees. Greens, browns, a silver river that just kind of reflects the sun at tiny points. Just snow on all the trees. It just looks pristine. You kind of think you're going to see signs of human life down there somewhere, but you just don't. We flew for two hours through the most incredible landscape, wearing these headphones to protect us from the noise of this just massive old helicopter. And we finally landed and sunk down to a flat area near the river. and I was so nervous to see Agafia because I'd obviously kind of read so much about her and I didn't know how she, you know, wanted to talk to us too much or how she would be.

42:45And we were getting out of the helicopter and then she appeared through the trees, you know, from her homestead with a great big grin on her face. It was incredible.

42:55Dana Schwartz:In 2015, Agafia was in her 70s, close to her father's age when the geologists first discovered the Lykovs in 1978. Like her father, Agafia was healthy and full of energy. The entire time Rebecca filmed her, Agafia chittered away in her sing-song voice and never stopped working. In Rebecca's film, Agafia talks about her daily survival, beginning always with prayer.

43:29Pray daily. Get up and read the midnight prayer, Palunachnitsa. Then in the morning hours, you pray on the move. There is so much to do. I realised the concept of leisure time and free time just doesn't really exist. Gafia was busy going, you know, all these activities that she had to do all the time to stay alive. It was like early September there were fish. So she was catching fish in this kind of trap and then opening them up and smoking them to preserve them. And what I understand is each part of the season there's like really important jobs to do. As any farmer knows, I'm also not a farmer, but there's certain things have to be done and if they are not later in the year, she would starve.

44:20Everything's very much weighted.

44:26Dana Schwartz:Rebecca and her team came dressed for the unpredictable Siberian weather with fleece and flannel and Gore-Tex. They peeled off layers as the frost melted in the afternoon sun and bundled up again for the frigid nights. Agafia was so agile, prancing around. and she seemed to wear similar clothes all the time, like these layers of kind of weighty-looking, dark-colored fabrics, cotton, old, patched, and a headscarf wrapped around her head inside a headscarf. When the Lykovs first visited the geologists' camp, the Soviets offered them use of their shower, hot water, soap, everything. But the Lykovs refused.

45:11Dana Schwartz:It wasn't allowed. Their ideas of cleanliness and sanitation were decidedly pre-modern. Handwashing was a ritual performed after coming in contact with something from the world, like a miniature baptism to be washed free of sin, not to remove dirt. So Agafia had this kind of real hardiness to her hands, to her face, to all her visible skin, to her teeth, her lips. There was a real, it was an ingrained kind of soil. I don't even want to say dirt because that kind of sounds like something dirty, but it wasn't. It's like there's nothing kind of dirty out there. It's just natural stuff of the forest.

46:01And she was harvesting carrots, the biggest carrots you've ever seen. I mean, she did wear gloves sometimes. But then when she took the gloves off, her fingers were black. Her nails were black and hard, with black cracks in the skin. But her face had this beautiful purity and, you know, like these amazing wrinkles. that you just thought, oh my goodness, we are ridiculous with all our potions and face creams and concerns about our ideas of beauty as well, you know. It was just refreshing to be in her presence.

46:40Dana Schwartz:But the most striking thing about Agafia is that she's truly alone out there. The family is dead. The geologists moved away decades ago. Every few months, a park ranger checks in on her and brings her a few supplies. She has animals now. Dogs, chickens, a family of goats, and way too many kittens. But isn't Agafia lonely? Doesn't she need human companionship and conversation like all of us? Of course she does. But the thing is, Agafia doesn't think of herself as alone. Her family is always with her. Especially her father, with whom she lived for several years after her siblings died. Agafia says that her father still visits her in her dreams.

47:34He comes to me in dreams. I see him less so lately. In the winter, I saw my father twice. One time, I saw him, he hugged me and put me on his knee. The second time, we were sitting somewhere.

47:51When she talked to me about her father visiting her in dreams, she talked about it as though it's a real thing. She says the last time my father visited me is less these days, but he used to come very often. And he was sitting down on a branch and the berries were glowing and it was, he broke a branch off for me. Her dreams are very vivid to her. and I don't really know where the line between

48:22Dana Schwartz:whether she thinks that those visits in her dreams are not real or real. Agafia also prays constantly. She prays day and night over her dusty old Bible. She writes down prayers and carries them in her pockets to recite while fishing or fetching wood. She's in constant conversation with God and also with the angels who watch over her and record her every thought and deed. She feels the presence of those angels so vividly, I believe, that she has that faith that keeps her from feeling so lonely. And also what I sensed layered on top of that is this kind of intimate relationship with that landscape that she is so deeply rooted in that she would be talking to us and then she would turn away and kind of carry on talking.

49:18And she talks about the fish have eyes that see her. It's an animistic kind of relationship that I think we can barely really conceive of.

49:30Dana Schwartz:Rebecca filmed Agafia in 2015 for a documentary called The Forest in Me. All of the clips you've heard of Agafia talking are from Rebecca's film. She was very generous to let us use them. Ten years later, Agafia is still out there. As of this recording, she's 80 years old, the last surviving Laikov since 1988.

50:05Dana Schwartz:Agafia had many offers to leave her Siberian outpost. In the 1980s, Agafia accepted an invitation to visit some long-lost cousins in an old believer community in Russia. Papa was against it, but in a rare show of disobedience, Agafia ignored him. Without hesitation, she boarded a helicopter. She rode in a train for the first time, then her first car. She spent a month with her newly discovered family. She ate real bread, fruit, and chocolate. She slept in a real bed. She held a newborn baby. It was 40 years ago, and she still remembers what it felt like when the baby fell asleep in her arms.

50:56Dana Schwartz:I took her in my arms. I sat her on my lap, and she just fell asleep right there. Agafia's cousins begged her to stay with them. They offered to build her her own cabin in the woods outside of town. She could come and go as she pleased. Agafia thanked them, but kindly refused. It was not her home. She was born in the Siberian taiga and felt one with the forest in ways that none of us can understand. Unless, of course, your name is Winaya Tebow. In season six of Alone, Winaya was one of only two contestants left when the producers pulled her out after 73 days. She had lost a dangerous amount of weight.

51:45Dana Schwartz:But if Winaya had her way, she wouldn't have quit. She wouldn't have left. And she thinks she understands why Agafia, at 80 years old, would still rather live alone in Siberia than anywhere else. Yeah, I really wanted to stay. Had I not already signed a contract and understood that I would be extracted once it got really dire, I really felt like I would have chosen to stay. And yeah, I think that a lot of people in her place would choose that because while there's a lot of deprivation, there's also incredible freedom in that life. There's something so beautiful and so pure and so deep about it.

52:29And it is really hard, I'm going to say impossible, to find that when embedded in modern culture. And just all of the kinds of stresses that we encounter in modern life, they're not what our evolution prepared us for, right?

52:46Dana Schwartz:There's a reason why there's so much depression and stress disorders and such a slew of health issues that our ancestors never dealt with. Because we're not made to live the lives we do. We're made to live that life, that they were living, are living, that she is still living. To Agafia Lykov, the forest is family. The angels are watching. And the world, as she knows it, still goes on.

53:22Okay, to start, I want to just call out one sentence that I really loved. Even their version of bread was mostly potatoes. And brought me back to when we used to pull out band names from written phrases in the episodes. I think mostly potatoes is going to go on there for me. I love that. I didn't realize people could eat so many potatoes. 40 years, just potatoes. And I like potatoes. And keeping a two-year stockpile, too. I mean, they're running deep in potatoes. We had a bear incident here in New Jersey not too long ago where the schools, they didn't dismiss the kids. And we didn't know why. And this era, like, that's a little scary.

54:04Then we found out, like, well, it is scary. But for another reason, there's a giant bear roaming the school. and finally you know 45 minutes later they do release the kids there's no real announcement that things are safe but we come home we live about a mile from the school and i look out my window and i see the bear and it is just going to town on my garbage jason what did you do yeah i i call the police and i mean the police could not have been less interested in this they're like You want us to send someone? What do you do? You closed down the whole school because of this. And now, like, I have to get to my car.

54:45And so we waited him out. And that's what they did in the story, too. They waited him out six months. It was probably an hour for me. They didn't send out the dog catcher? Yeah, I think animal control was not going to control this animal. And my garbage was, they were ready to sacrifice that.

55:05Dana Schwartz:We're city people. Saren, I think this would be too tough to cast. Oh, yeah. It's a very specific ethnic group. Yes. And she's still alive. I don't know enough Russian actors, to be quite honest. Yes, she's still alive. Like, let's let her play herself in the movie. I did have a very special moment, though. I absolutely loved them sitting around retelling their family history over and over and over again. And then also including the retelling of dreams. I thought that was just fantastic. Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. This show is hosted by Dana Schwartz, Saren Burnett, and Jason English.

55:43Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Dave Roos. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs. Mixing and mastering by Chris Childs. Thanks to our voice actors, Katie Maddy and Chris Childs. Original music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. our executive producer is Jason English I also want to give a very special thanks to the filmmaker Rebecca E. Marshall for letting us use some audio from her documentary The Forest and Me we will put a link to that in the show notes so you can go and check it out Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts

56:30What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. With 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and 45 calories, Sky Pop Protein Soda offers four delicious flavors with big taste and real benefits. Light, refreshing, and ready for wherever your day takes you. It's anytime protein that helps you reach higher. Skypot Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Skypot Protein Soda now at Target, Walmart, or Kroger. When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University, we find ways to remove barriers, not build them, like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on-campus programs.

57:13That means flexible and engaging online courses and resources, tuition savings options if you qualify, exceptional student support, and much more. Online, nationally, or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit rasmussen.edu. And now another appliance triumph from your friends at Grand Appliance. Meet Jan. Her fridge died days before a dinner party, but she didn't panic. I just called my guy at Grand Appliance. He recommended a large capacity GE profile option with fingerprint resistant stainless steel and a convertible middle drawer.

57:49I can optimize for meat, beverages, snacks, or wine. Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance. Shop grandappliance.com to learn more. Ready to finally clean out your closet? With Trashy, you can donate your clothes, reduce waste, and earn cash rewards.

58:09Dana Schwartz:All in one simple step. Just fill a take-back bag, Send it in and get rewards cash back for every bag. And now with Trashy Unlimited, you get unlimited bags for just$48 your first year. Clean out, donate, earn rewards. Visit Trashy.io to get started. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.