The soviet purges touched every family in the USSR. Many families ceased to exist, shot by the authorities, many others died in the cold snows of Siberia cutting and hauling logs to build their camps as they were simply dropped off in the middle of the Taiga in high winter with little in the way of tools or food.
The latest number of the people who were killed by Communism (from Chinese studies oddly enough, very recently)is 147,000,000 souls and most of them were Russian. Socialism is the worst scourge to ever be visited upon humanity.
This is what a real state-sponsored SHTF scenario looks like.
I am struck by the father’s inability to make a bow and arrow or a spear. In our information laden society nearly everyone has a pretty good idea how to begin to build weapons and trial and error would eventually lead you to success.
Put your sons and grandsons in the Boy Scouts. Many of the the techniques needed to survive a SHTF are taught in that organization.
Read Solzhinitson’s books on the purges. It was hell on earth.
Probably more Ukrainians than Russians.
This was Russia in the first half of the 20th century. The Lykov's were probably of peasant stock which meant they had limited education and probably knew little to nothing of stone knapping. We in America on the other hand have some knowledge of stone knapping due to Indians being a stone age people right up until the dawn of the 20th century.