And it’s unlikely they all died simultaneously, barring freezing to death one night or some such. Imagine the horror when the first of them died, and then later the emotional state of the one (temporary) survivor.
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Per the article it appears that they were attempting to build a more substantial shelter but probably lacked the skills to complete it. (Or maybe they were just too focused on their immediate need for food to spend much time working on it.)
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So so so much this. We invented civilization for a reason. It’s a systematic elimination of all the random stupid shit that used to kill us.
Even when we did all live like that and were good at it we still all died all the time for stupid reasons. Nature works very very hard to kill us.
Even the ones that are real and genuine, like Primitive Technology– the guy doesn’t live like that. He goes home in his car to his house at night. It’s a hobby doing that stuff, just like camping is a hobby for many of us because we’re wise enough to know we’d never make it living that way.
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Edit to add one more data point- a few years ago, there was a shockingly-good reality show on PBS called Frontier House. They got a bunch of families to spend the summer living in period frontier cabins as would have been built by white invaders at the time. They were then rated by history and survival experts at the end as to whether they would survive the winter. To be clear, the houses already existed, and they had access to trade and food from a simulated local economy. Every single one of them died. This was with houses and food.
The common theme was they all WAY underestimated how much firewood it takes to survive a winter. The experts kept telling them, “you have to be chopping wood every single second you are not doing something else, and besides food nothing is more important than firewood. All of your kids should be chopping wood all day every day all summer”. It had many insights like that where peoples’ rosy misconceptions of a primitive lifestyle collide with the reality of it.
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I watched the Olympics on TV. Watch out, Simone Biles!
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Also, the places where humans could most easily survive without civilization are also the places that humans settled and civilized first. Nowadays, when you go someplace that is “far from civilization”, it is probably that way because it is too difficult to live in even with all the help that civilization can provide.
So if you’re trying to live away from civilization, you should be aware that you’re probably doing it in a place that even your prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors would have noped out of.
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Not everyone can be like the Lykov family. From the accounts I’ve read about them the living conditions were harsh to brutal most of the time.
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This is such an important piece of the puzzle. My folks live off the grid (but in a reasonable way, not a prepper kind of way). My dad spends almost all his free time making sure they have enough wood. He’s probably got two winter’s worth at any time, but he’s still always at it.
His neighbour is significantly less prepared and struggles big time throughout the entire winter (they lose water in the coldest months, for example).
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Maybe but I don’t see much difference between her and the murder suicide guy who thought his kids were reptites after mainlining q propaganda.
Up to that point he had apparently been an ok dude too.
To me it’s a murder suicide.
Just when women do it and don’t use a gun people have trouble seeing it for what it is.
I could be wrong, and I know I’m not being charitable. But I also think people need to stop making excuses for those in their lives who are behaving this way.
Killing your kid because you’re fucked up on social media propaganda so bad it’s breaking you down mentally is still… Well, that.
Just another person who gassed themselves until they believe the unbelievable until ultimately they do the unthinkable.
Why had no one gone for help? Six months they were there, no lean to, only grocery food. How do you watch your kid dying and not say “shit this is not working I need to save his life from my wrongness…”
In September or August when it was obvious there wouldn’t be shelter or food in time for winter they didn’t go say “about that RV…”
My sympathy reserves are low but yeah fuck her.
No matter what though it’s a fucking tragedy.
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I do have sympathy for the surviving family members – it’s got to be hard to know your family member screwed up that badly and you didn’t do anything to help. For the three people that died, I really only have sympathy for the kid. (No matter what else happened in their life, this was child abuse.) I can extend, if not sympathy, at least pity for the mother and aunt, in that I’m sorry to know that something fucked them up so badly that this was the result.
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Maggie Mae Fish did a video recently on “off-grid” youtube accounts, and how many of them are just grifters…
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Based on the statements from the family I think that “couldn’t” would be more accurate than “didn’t.” The sister/aunt said that she begged them not to do it, and when it was clear that they were going to do it no matter what she tried to get them to do it on a more survivable piece of land instead.
What else what she supposed to do? Tie them up and lock them in a basement somewhere?
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Fair. I also know from far less serious situations how “couldn’t” can still feel like “didn’t” to the survivors. Just because you did do everything reasonable to help, doesn’t prevent you from feeling like you did nothing.
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Thanks. That’s kind of what I’m stuck on and it’s hard for me to express it. But that’s why it makes me angry instead of just sad.
People have damn near no sympathy for Hamish Harding because of his wealth but he was lied to and manipulated into putting his kid and himself in a situation that killed them and, unlike this family, there was NO WAY OUT AGAIN once that sub went under. They believed there was, but they were definitely lied to about that. They boarded a death trap helmed by a malignant narcissist and died for it.
If that’s not sympathetic how the hell is this woman sympathetic? Both of them are firm examples of brutality of finding out. And both of them were able to be so because of some degree of privilege. There are plenty of people whose kid would be taken away and placed in foster care for soooo much less.
I don’t see how this person is more sympathetic for taking a more active role in the death of her kid just because she’s not rich, for instance. But I’m also just pissed off at the world and 90 percent of the folks in it right now.
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Yeah I don’t know what anyone really could have done other than call cps and make some kind of report. And I don’t know that they didn’t. It’s perfectly legal to go camping, after all. And it’s hard to get somebody busted for what you’re afraid they might do but haven’t when nothing about that is even really against the law. Maybe reporting him for being out of school after a while? But how would anyone find them there when it took all this time to find the bodies? It’s not like they could pop in for a wellness check. Once there was no further means of contact it’s pretty much over in terms of intervention. It’s also hard to turn your family over to the cops… for anything.
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On top of all that, there’s no guarantee the cops would actually bother to do anything. There have been plenty of cases of much more clear-cut domestic or child abuse where someone (especially women) has begged the cops for help, telling them that if they didn’t do something urgently one or more people would die, only for them to blow it off and just let the tragedy unfold.
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Yah, I have good friends here who, while not off-grid, do use wood for heat. It’s fairly common around here. They have a very efficient modern wood stove so they don’t need nearly the firewood volume that our ancestors did, but they are always thinking about, looking for, and producing firewood. I always bring them a truckload when I go over because I have more than I can use here in my silly on-grid house where the wood is strictly recreational. 
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Bart Simpson put it quite well. “Sprain your ankle and know it’s a death sentence.”
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I had to look this up, but I’m sure some of you have run into Richard Proenneke and his Alone in the Wilderness. I’ve bumped into this on PBS occasionally and find it fascinating. Is this guy real? If so, this man has skills. Survival skills! ETA: Not just survival skill, he has all kinds of different skills. This is the kind of man I think of who came of age in the first part of the 20th century, someone that could figure it, then do it.
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Doubtlessly orders of magnitude more experienced and skilled at “living off the grid” than these idealistic amateurs and yet Proenneke still depended on quasi-regular supply runs via seaplane and ski-plane.
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Thanks for the reply, glad someone saw it before this topic gets shutdown in 19 hours! I agree, he did require regular resupplies. I tend to notice the things that he had to bring, such as the augers, chisels and axe heads. But he made a lot of his own handles, which is super impressive.
Also, I wonder about the filming of his clips. He was supposed to be alone, using just a tripod, but there are shots where the cameras noticeably moving. Once striking example is when he’s paddling on a canoe, and the camera’s location is at the bow of the boat and it pans from him over to the shore. I guess there were times when he was not alone.
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