In the 1930s a family of Old Believers vanished into the Siberian taiga. Geologists found them in 1978 — six people who'd never heard of WWII or the Moon landing. One daughter, Agafia, still lives there alone.
Smithsonian's classic retelling: in 1978 geologists in a helicopter spotted a garden deep in the taiga and found the Lykovs, who had not seen another human being in four decades.
Born in the wilderness around 1944, she has outlived her parents and siblings and still refuses to leave the mountain where she was raised.
To understand why Karp Lykov ran, you need the 17th-century church schism his sect never accepted — and the Soviet persecution that drove them into hiding.
The full arc of the family's flight, discovery and slow unraveling, told with archival footage of the Lykovs meeting the modern world for the first time.
A visit to Agafia today: prayers at dawn, chopping firewood, fending off bears, and a life lived almost exactly as it was a century ago.
VICE's dispatch from the taiga on what it actually takes to resupply, film and survive a trip to one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth.
The practical reality of her isolation — the diet that killed three of her siblings, the single helicopter lifeline, the helper who moved in nearby.