4. Single Room, Single Location
As though they were straight out of the plot of the movie The Village, this family turned their backs on the world completely, ditching civilization by living on a mountainside! The Siberian mountainside was disturbed by a team of geologists in 1978, who discovered The Lykov Family. The Lykov’s fled religious persecution in 1936, during the darkest days of the Stalin regime and had resided on the side of the mountain in one room. They survived on potatoes, rye and hemp seeds, until the boy of the family learned to trap in the late 50s. Their diet became more extreme as the mother died when winter ruined their crops, relying on only bark and shoe leather to see them through. When discovered, the children had never seen another human outside of their family, their language fragmented after having only prayer books and a Bible as reading material. Amazingly, the family remained in their little room following the discovery, only accepting some equipment, no doubt to modernize their hermit-like lives.
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