This is not really suspicious. I regularly went foraging for shrooms in Ukraine with my gram gram, but I was not allowed to pick anything, of course. It requires expertise.
In that part of the world, this is very common, and so are the cases of people poisoning themselves because they think they are good at it.
If you can't relate - think of all the "gun people" who think they are experts on gun safety and then they end up shooting themselves by accident.
It is not common at all. You have maybe several people dying every year, which is in the "hit by lightning" territory. It's very well-publicized whenever it happens, which probably helps keep the numbers low. But this is a very unusual way to die.
Just like for road accidents, death is a wrong measure, as it really depends on your health, i.e a 20 years forager will survive whereas an 80 years old one would die. Many mushrooms are liver-toxic, so if you already have hepatitis (very common in Russia), you're probably more prone to die from a poisonous one.
Intoxication leading to hospitalization is a better measure.
Given approximately everyone's heard of it, and warnings about it, but also that I don't personally know anyone who tells me that they personally do this, my guess is in the order of 1% of the population. Might be more, might be less.
1% of Russia would be 1.5 million (and given this thread, 412k for Ukraine).
According to the 2014 survey https://fom.ru/Obraz-zhizni/11711 , 75% Russians have ever went to pick up mushrooms, and 40% have done it in the last year before the survey. 8% personally know people who suffered from mushroom poisoning.
This corresponds to my expectations: I'm from a neighbouring country, Belarus, and basically almost everyone around me has been picking up mushrooms.
That's not just a culinary experience, but a way to relax: go to forest, disconnect from the world, unwind. (People also pick up blueberries and lingonberries for the same reasons.)
Oh, and my classmate died from mushroom poisoning.
In Finland it’s pretty common to go mushroom hunting. Between 1969-2006 eight people died because of mushroom poisoning. Three of them died 20-30 years after the initial poisoning due to kidney transplant issues. So at least here it’s not very common to get killed by mushrooms even though many people enjoy foraging.
And to add: in spring time many Finns pick a deadly poisonous mushroom (Gyromitra esculenta) and boil it 2x5min to remove the poison and cook it as a delicassy after that. Never heard anyone get poisoned by it.
Funny fact is that in Russia it is not considered poisonous. There is a special category of “provisionally edible” or “conditionally edible” mushrooms - those that are poisonous if eaten without preparation
This is not an accurate take. It does not require some great expertise to identify edible mushrooms, and in cultures where mushroom consumption has been common for hundreds of years (such as Russia), basic identification techniques are well known.
There are some edible mushrooms with poisonous look alikes - there are plenty other edible mushrooms without those deadly cousins. If this gentleman had made it 70+ years without issue, it is rather unlikely he would have some issue now.
As the saying goes: there are old foragers and bold foragers, but there are not old and bold foragers.
>If you can't relate - think of all the "gun people" who think they are experts on gun safety and then they end up shooting themselves by accident.
eating a poisonous mushroom seems way easier. Less steps, less oversight, a calmer activity that doesn't provoke a crowd response.
but , in theory, that would also be exactly the alibi you'd want for a believable story: "gun nut shoots himself to death by accident" when you're being a sneaky vindictive government who wants to rid itself of someone.
It's kind of as easy as 'boating accident'; and whenever poison/russia is combined in a sentence it's pretty easy to make accusations given the storied history of political poisonings in that region.
I think people just like to slip those political jabs in wherever they can to try to take a poke at those of use who think the 2nd amendment has a place in a free society. I've cleaned my guns hundreds of times over the past couple of decades and never been close to being shot. Not only that, but I keep one with me most times when I'm out and about (where allowed by law). It's a few standard safety rules to those who are petrified of guns and gun ownership.
It's also happening as the growing ranges of mushrooms change. You can have a poisonous look alike expand into an area and catch experienced local mushroom hunters that weren't aware of it.
It makes me wonder about the amount of commonality there is in the toxins in mushrooms, and if some quick litmus or chemical sniffing test could be developed.
I remember some years ago I read an article about some Russian tourists in Sweden who got really sick after picking and eating mushrooms. I don’t think any of them died but several of them needed to spend time in the hospital if I remember correctly.
Same thing happened in Slovenia to some illegal migrants who tried to live off the land while making their way further into Europe: they picked up mushrooms that looked a lot like a safe species in their home country but was in fact highly poisonous. I believe at least some died.
The general rule here is that you only ever pick mushroom species somebody has thoroughly introduced you to - books and "I think we ate those at our friends house the other day" are considered quite reckless.
Foraging for mushrooms does not require huge amounts expertise. It requires a little bit of common sense.
If you regularly went foraging, it would have been possible for you to learn a few easily identifiable and unmistakable mushrooms. At least in the Nordics (and I assume it would be the same near by), it is quite easy to teach another person a few mushrooms to forage for when you can show the mushrooms growing in the wild and explain the few identifying traits.
Across the whole world, 100 people die of mushroom poisoning each year [0]. You don't think it's suspicious that this man, who was well educated and presumably experienced in mushroom foraging, happened to die of it within weeks of the failure of Russia's moon lander? After all the other poisonings and baroque assassination methods used on so many others who had troubled or embarrassed Putin's regime?
> think of all the "gun people" who think they are experts on gun safety and then they end up shooting themselves by accident.
It happens, particularly "glock leg". But to be frank a lot of those "sat down in their office/study, looked down the barrel of the gun and accidentally pulled the trigger" deaths are suicides staged as accidents for the benefit of their family. Put a cleaning kit on the desk and there won't be many questions.
That's more a question of proximity of events. Falling out of a window is not really suspicious. Falling out of a window while being on a crytical path for money laundering investigation into money laundering of Putin's inner circle ...
They say that on 9th of August he went foraging, on 10th of August he ate the mushrooms and went from his dacha to Moscow, he felt bad on that day. In the morning of 11th of August he had ambulance called for him. He was in hospital until 30th of August when he died.
> It's very common for people to die of mushroom poisoning in Russia?
Mushrooming is common, poisonings are quite rare, because there is no reason to take mushrooms you don't know - there are enough ones that are clearly good and you can easily throw out anything which is even a little doubtful. Common poisonous ones look very distinct, and you can easily avoid the doubtful ones. And most of poisonous ones won't kill you (though you may wish you were dead for a while). Really bad ones will, but those are widely known and nobody sane would touch them.
I knew many people who regularly collected mushrooms, and did it myself, never heard any cases of fatal poisoning. It's not that it doesn't happen at all, but - especially among people who do it regularly - it's pretty rare and usually happens when people try something "exotic" or buy from untrusted third party.
In this particular case, of course, it's pretty clear shat happened - same thing tgat happened to all thise people falling out of the windows and the same thing that happened to Utkin and Prigozhin. Putin happened.
It's quite suspicious given Putin's tendency to murder/assassinate people with poisons and 11th floor jumps, especially given the recent failure in the space program. I'm not sure why we're not supposed to be suspicious of any high profile person dying in Russia given Putin's penchant to have people killed or imprisoned when they embarrass him. No idea how Navalny isn't dead yet unless Putin just wants to break him in Russian prison.
I hope he wasn't eating gyromitra esculenta, the false morel. It contains a volatile toxic substance that metabolizes into monomethylhydrazine, a rocket propellent.
At 77 years, he certainly knew what he's picking up, it's not that hard to learn edible mushrooms, poisonous mushrooms and ignore the rest which may be edible but also not.
This is not remotely what the "common knowledge" about mushroom foraging is in Eastern Europe. There is a "funny" story in Bulgaria how the most famous mushroom foraging expert in Bulgaria a few decades ago died because he made a mistake when foraging.
Plenty of edible mushrooms are just "twins" of poisonous mushrooms, using animal's knowledge to not eat them, without expending the metabolic cost to actually produce poison.
> There is a "funny" story in Bulgaria how the most famous mushroom foraging expert in Bulgaria a few decades ago died because he made a mistake when foraging.
Do you have a citation or evidence for this? I ask because a while ago another commenter on HN said that the president of a mushroom society in Boston died from the same thing, and when I looked and searched I could find no mentions of this.
Without additional evidence I'm putting all claims of "Mushroom expert does from mushroom misidentification!" into the "old wives tale/bullshit bucket". These types of stories just seem to be the ones that people love to talk about and share, even if they originate as a falsehood. Again, not saying it's not possible, but I am saying without a reasonable citation I'm discounting it as BS.
If I've understood the previous commenter correctly, he's talking about a виц (comes from German witz, cognate of wit in English) which is a funny story joke that spreads by word of mouth. Here is the one in question:
Yeah, if I understand your point and link: this is not something that actually happened, it's just a joke, but after enough retellings for some reason people think that it is real.
I see the original commenter I replied to said it was just a "tale", but I don't think that's how most readers would interpret that comment. Saying something "happened a few decades ago" is oddly specific if it's just a joke/tale.
Also, the whole point of their comment was to emphasize how foraging for mushrooms is dangerous - using an old wives tale as "evidence" for your position would be a very odd choice indeed.
It is very much an old wives tale. I was not trying to make it sound otherwise. It is just representative of the attitude locals have to foraging: it is popular, but it is understood to be dangerous and mishaps still happen.
To become an expert you have to be a little bit adventurous. Average forager knows and gathers maybe 10 species of mushrooms that are hardest to mistake for anything else and leaves alone anything that looks just a little bit different.
It is true that there are "twins" but they are not the commonly foraged ones. Common ones are quite easily distinguished from the poisonous ones, and those that have bad twins, the twins also taste pretty bad (extremely bitter, etc.) If you don't try to eat every possible edible mushroom as a sport but stick to the most easily recognized ones you'll be fine.
You are reading too much in what I said. Of course weird things are happening in an unstable dictatorship like Russia and this guy might have been assassinated for one reason or another. That does not mean it is not nice to give people context about the culture in that end of the world though.
I think you make it sound more exotic than it is. People pick mushrooms around the world. Slightly more common in SE-Europe, a bit less so than a few decades ago. People tend to stick to the 1-2 species they know best, poisonings are extremely rare.
Fair point, but I am surprised to hear that. My US friends (New England) have been extremely surprised when they hear that foraging for mushrooms is common where I come from (on the rare occasions when this comes up).
It is also pretty common in parts of the US. They probably don't know about that either. I know people who go morel hunting every spring in the midwest (Iowa and Illinois, specifically).
77 is long past the point at which we usually ask people to retire from safety-critical roles. Even when retirement isn't forced, regular evaluation is strongly encouraged for people that old. For instance, consider this statement from the American College of Surgeons:
> Although age-related deterioration varies from individual to individual, gradual decline in overall health, physical dexterity, and cognition generally occurs after the age of 65. For this reason, it is recommended that, starting at age 65 to 70, surgeons undergo voluntary and confidential baseline physical examination and visual testing by their personal physician for overall health assessment. Regular interval reevaluation thereafter is prudent for those without identifiable issues on the index examination. Surgeons are encouraged to also voluntarily assess their neurocognitive function using confidential online tools. As a part of one’s professional obligation, voluntary self-disclosure of any concerning and validated findings is encouraged, and limitation of activities may be appropriate.
Perhaps not every death is intentional, but with many intentional deaths, unintentional ones will sometimes be grouped in, and the intentional deaths must affect moral which will affect the number of quality people willing to step up into roles, allowing for lower quality people stepping up causing lower quality outcomes until everything is a shell of its former self. Killing people for bad results seems to be a losing proposition.
Wild mushroom foraging is pretty common in Eastern Europe. Warnings about it in elementary school was why I was scared of eating mushrooms for a decade (admittedly a rather childish overreaction ;). Every few years I will hear about someone getting severely ill. Context: growing up in Bulgaria in the 90s and 00s.
in other words something like 30% of population goes foraging for mushrooms at least once a year and once a year someone dies. It's so rare that they write about it in the newspaper
Picking wild mushrooms is super common in Scandinavia. I had some mushrooms my wife picked for dinner yesterday. You read about maybe 1-2 deaths or serious illnesses a year in the newspaper, and it always makes national news. So yes it happens, but it's probably quite literally a 1-in-a-million event.
It's unlikely enough for such cases to get in the news.
But these type of news are quite regular, so mushroom poisonings are not rare that much to be suspicious.
In this case what's outstanding is the person, not circumstances.
People legit do die from mushrooms though. We had an incident locally a few months ago involving a restaurant that served a kind of mushroom that needs to be cooked, but didn't cook them (allegedly).
Read the article, he has been sick for two weeks before dying. This looks a lot like regular shroom poisoning, he wasn't too young either, and I guess that, at >70 years old in Russia, you start to be more vulnerable.
I guess that political murder could be an easy explanation, in which case it's really, really subtle, which - huh - isn't really what the FSB is known for ?
The thing about the mafia — and the Russian government today is more mafia than anything — is that you can’t continue to make empty threats. Even if everyone in your protection racket is paying up, and no one is squealing or making waves, you still need to remind people _why_ they keep paying you.
So it’s absolutely in Putin’s interests to keep assassinating his adversaries, and not to disclaim credit even if the deaths are not ordered by him. Random deaths reinforce Putin’s power just fine — it’s worse if you don’t know, if the threat of extrajudicial killing is random rather than predictable.
He's probably dead this time. He was a dead man walking after his little rebellion anyway. Also, most of Wagner leadership died on that crash, including Utkin. He'd have to fake everybody's death.
As an active mushroom hunter (living in Russia), can confirm that it is likely.
Mushroom gathering is extremely popular here, so experienced mushroom hunters are looking for second and third tier mushrooms, which are not that edible and have nasty mimics.
So there is a moment when you confuse a champignon to a death cap, or Kuehneromyces mutabilis(summer stump mushroom) to Galerína margináta(deadly as the death mushroom), or parasol mushroom to fly agaric.
Especially if you have bad eyes.
Source: mushrooms in my stomach that I gathered and ate today.
Is it a sarcasm?
We have tens of people dying from mushroom poisoning each year.
Usually with stories like "grandma fried some mushrooms, whole family died, dad in coma".
I am just Russian who live in Russia and have some local context here.
You are free to call me a troll, but I think you are just devaluing opinions that you don't like.
At least I can speak about local mushroom eating traditions and dangers from first hands - I do it from childhood.
As an active mushroom hunter (born in Russia), can confirm that this is extremely unlikely and uncommon. People who have done this since birth know how distinguish between mushrooms, and usually stick to the variety that they love the best. In Russia, the mushroom of choice is the "White Mushroom" (or Porcini, King Bolete) or Rejik (Milky cap) and Chanterreles, and a few others, and that's it, with the top 2 being the most sought after.
I've been doing this for over 35 years, and always go after the same mushrooms, and have never been poisoned. So, very unlikely someone much older would make a mistake, sounds like foul play.
This article[1] from 20 years a ago paints a different picture.
> Russians Dying--Literally--for Favorite Fungi
> Like most Russians, Sergei Kayava and his family considered themselves mushroom experts--but the assumption proved fatal.
> On July 8, he and his family eagerly dished up helpings of buttery fried forest mushrooms prepared by his mother-in-law.
> “She is very good at cooking mushrooms. She boiled them and then fried them and then served them with boiled potatoes. It was delicious,” Kayava recalled Saturday.
> But the dish killed Kayava’s wife, Marina, 40, and her father. Collecting mushrooms earlier that day, Kayava’s in-laws mistook the deadly blednaya poganka, or pale toadstool, for the innocuous and tasty syroyezhki mushroom.
...
> The mushroom season has just begun and lasts until late September, but already at least 95 people have died in Russia and Ukraine, a casualty figure much higher than normal for this time of year.
So although this seem unlikely that the top Russian rocket scientist died from mushroom poisoning it isn't out of the question or that ridiculous.
Amanita Phalloides is the only one I know of you can easily die from (others are possible, but harder to overdose or need some other preconditions), but it is also one that you can easily mistake for some Agarici (Agaricūs?).
I know of a case where someone ate conserved ones (thought it's Agaricus) way after they were collected and actually survived, but only barely with a liver transplant if I remember correctly. Because the reaction is hours delayed it's also not easy to find out the cause for your bad state.
Yeah, after a few years of Reddit, I started calling this kind of thing "internet advice"... ok for a discussion, but often contradictory or wrong (if I happen to know the topic in depth).
For example, people give advice to grown men and women about how to proceed with their divorce or financial planning. Lots of up votes to lend credibility.... but if you dig into their history, the advice giver is 14 years old according to their other posts on other subreddits.
Yeah absolutely! It's crazy and I think one of the reasons why I really need to cut down my internet and reddit usage down somewhat.
For a topic like this, that I know nothing about, I am mildly curious and don't want to research it in-depth to get an answer as this would be a wildly bad use of my time, so i rely on others that seem more knowledgeable, but the problem is, who do you believe and what can you trust when you do this? To really know, you have to verify, but to do so on a mild interest topic, is not worth it, therefore how much of this general consumption is ultimately of any use or has much of a point.
Worse, I wonder in which topics my view is now warped, as I read some comment somewhere that I accepted as truth at the time and I now believe it although cannot remember the source.
One of the troubles with Reddit, is that upvotes give a post apparent credibility but are voted on by everyone and most of the people there aren't experts or know what they are talking about, so the reality is whatever sounds the best, sounds 'nicer' or more politically correct gets the upvote. The truth, which might not fit that mould, will get much more mixed results.
Same here... I also realize that over time I learn to predict what the top comment will be on certain topics. For example, in the AITA subreddit, I will always form my own opinion that is then "tested" by reading the most popular responses in the thread.
The problem is, just because redditors think that a response is correct does not mean that it is. But at some point, especially on topics you know less about, you may start to confuse this prediction with your own opinion. Scary stuff!
Heh, for me, I've been a little surprised sometimes by how people think ChatGPT is amazing, sure it's great tech, but people seem to be using it for all sorts of stuff and when I try it, I find that it ends up spewing generic nonsense but then I realise, this is the same nonsense I will get by googling very similar topics.
I tried Google Bard. It's hilarious. You ask it a non-trivial question... and it starts to give incorrect or contradictory answers within the same conversation. And if you correct Bard, well it just apologises and says "I am still learning".
Yes, many people enjoy making things up, and they are good at it, and it's hard to detect.
Reddit is particularly awful, but HN definitely isn't immune. The moderator's attitude to lying is generally very lame, eg here's someone admitting to habitually lying:
This is a very interesting post, thanks for sharing, and even if most are not doing it deliberately as this person is it confirms the issue with such sites.
Whatever you do, make sure your source is relevant to where you live. Every so often there's a tragic story about immigrants going foraging and poisoning their families because what they could safely identify and eat in their home country doesn't transfer to North America.
As a note, information you learn from one place doesn't really apply to another (ie: it's non fungible haha). In Oregon someone from the old country went foraging and died because a fungus here (poisonous) looked like a fungus there (edible).
"All that the Rain Promises and More" by David Arora is a good place to start. But I'd recommend that you go out with your local mycological society to make sure you're identifying them correctly before you try eating any. Me personally, I stick to 2 types of mushrooms: chantrelles and boletes. They're hard to misidentify in my area.
The vast majority of literature on the subject that I have seen uses drawings, not pictures... Probably part of the reason why this hobby has the reputation of killing people (in my country, Bulgaria, during the 90s and 00s). Not really answering your question, but it reminded me of...
As a contrepoint, when drawing you can emphasize on the specific features of the mushroom you're drawing whereas pictures are always being more ambiguous. And if the mushroom you're about to pick has unclear specific features, you should not pick it anyway!
Prigozhin fell from the sky in a plane so at least that one was still a fall. This isn’t even trying.
I’m just blown away by the gullible fools who see this dying totalitarian dystopia with statistics around birth and family life that are way worse than anything in the West as a beacon of resistance to decadence or something.
Of course I guess this isn’t new with Russia. Back in the Cold War it was naive elements of the left and now it’s naive elements of the right. They seem to excel at marketing themselves to the deeply disaffected. But there’s nothing there but a Potemkin village.
I don't think he is apologist in sense that he is justifying Russia's actions, but his point is that Russia is too large force for Ukraine to fight without receiving devastating damage, and in his view Ukraine should've considered negotiating peace deal and give up some territories.
No his point, that Russian fears of NATO is legitimate, is bollocks. He seems to see everywhere American Imperialism, and think in this frame.
Russian government did not give a damn about NATO expansion, it is a mafia with no ideology. They would have invaded anyway, under some other false pretense.
Keep in mind that Chomsky denied genocide made Khmer Rouge in 1970 and genocide in Srebrenica, _just_ _because_ _perpetrators_ _seemed _to_be_ against US imperialism.
Not really, they are just getting more creative. Too many falls from windows would make boring news. What's the weather like? Who else fell from the window today?
Do they think dangerous advice on mushroom foraging is relevant to the topic of someone maybe having died from eating the wrong mushroom sourced from mushroom foraging? Do you think it's not relevant? It might not be that interesting, but you and I already made an off-the-cuff remark into way more of a thing than it deserved.
Do you think a recently made AI generated book only available in English and from western shops has made its way to a 77yo Russian executive who probably learnt to pick mushrooms 50 years ago?
It does sound at least related to me. As in: people with less experience and less precision that you might expect from a rocket scientist could be misled easily, with the same outcome.
Advice given on a fungus identification forum.