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Comment by renegade-otter | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

It's like few cases per season per million people eating wild shrooms.

How many millions of people go mushroom hunting?

Plenty.

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).

1%?!

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.

Wow, OK, I'm surprised by those numbers.

Probably many millions? It's a pretty popular thing to do in Eastern Europe.

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.

Ah, just wait until another Russian scientist or business person gets hit by lightning.

Suicide by lightning twice to the back of the head is on the rise in that part of the world.

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.

I'll remember to skip the "mushroom delicacy" when I visit Finland :]

The internet recommends boiling outside to avoid poisonous vapors.

It must taste incredible.

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.

The people I feel for are the ones that change countries and mistake a deadly lookalike for what is an edible mushroom in their country.

Google is letting me down but I believe something like this happened to a Vietnamese family in the UK.

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.

Sounds like your gram gram was overly careful.

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.

If you take a 6 year old mushroom foraging you tell them not to eat any mushrooms without showing you first, because it requires an expert ;)

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?

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/05/17/1175494...

> baroque assassination methods

It's gravity!

> 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 ...

Falling out a window is pretty much suspicious unless you're trying to demonstrate how safe the window is (they are, but not that safe)

Obligatory story about Garry Hoy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Garry_Hoy

Does it say they were foraging or that the mushrooms were wild?

> 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.

It's very common for people to die of mushroom poisoning in Russia?

> Does it say they were foraging or that the mushrooms were wild?

Both: https://charter97.org/ru/news/2023/8/31/561949/

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?

According to official stats https://www.rospotrebnadzor.ru/activities/recommendations/de... around 30 people die of mushroom poisoning in Russia every year. (And around 1000 suffer from such poisoning every year.)

holds person underwater at the beach

It's not suspicious at all! People go swimming and get into trouble with rip tides all the time! Nothink to see here.

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.

I'm just curious -- what types of mushrooms did you collect?

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.

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