A light-coloured SUV sits in a channel of broken lake ice, water up to its windows, while a crowd of men in winter gear stands around it with long poles and timber beams. Russian YouTube user Yuri Danilov filmed the whole recovery and titled it “Дубинушка или русская смекалка”, which translates as “Dubinushka, or Russian ingenuity”.
Dubinushka: the hauling song behind the title
Russian viewers will recognise the joke in the title. “Dubinushka” is a famous Russian work song, a diminutive of dubina, a cudgel or heavy stick, traditionally of green oak. Labourers sang it while doing heavy manual work, shouting its refrain together so that everyone pulled at the same moment.
It is best known as a song of the burlaks, the barge haulers who dragged boats up the Volga and other rivers of the Russian Empire until steamships replaced them in the 1800s, and whom Ilya Repin painted in Burlaks on the Volga. The great bass Feodor Chaliapin made the song famous, and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote an orchestral Dubinushka in 1905. Calling a car recovery “Dubinushka” promises muscle and teamwork, and the opening shot delivers a crowd and a pile of timber ready for the job.
Video: Дубинушка или русская смекалка (published by Yuri Danilov).
How thick ice must be for a car
Driving onto frozen lakes is a winter routine in many northern countries, above all for ice fishing. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources publishes some of the clearest guidelines for new, clear ice:
- 4 inches (10 cm): people on foot and ice fishing
- 5–7 inches (13–18 cm): snowmobile or small ATV
- 9–10 inches (23–25 cm): small car or SUV
- 11–12 inches (28–30 cm): medium SUV or small truck
- 16–17 inches (41–43 cm): heavy-duty truck
White, snowy ice, formed when snow melts on the surface and refreezes, is only about half as strong, so the DNR says to double those figures. Ice is also weaker near inlets and over currents, and it can vary from a foot thick to an inch or two within a few steps.
If your car goes through the ice
The Minnesota DNR’s advice is blunt: the best time to escape is before the vehicle sinks. A car may float for anything from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on how airtight it is. Get out through the side windows, because water pressure can hold the doors shut, and keep a spring-loaded window-breaking tool within reach. In water 15 feet (about 4.5 m) or deeper, front-engine vehicles may sink at a steep angle and land on their roof.
Getting a sunken car out of a lake
Once everyone is safe, the car still has to come out, and quickly: fuel, oil and other fluids do not belong in a lake. In Minnesota, owners must notify the sheriff within 48 hours and remove a sunken vehicle within 30 days, or local government removes it and bills them two to five times the cost. Danilov’s crowd tackled the job the old way, with timber, poles and a lot of hands.
For a happier kind of ice driving, see tracks across a frozen lake in western Norway, and prepare for ordinary winter roads with 15 clever tricks for winter problems.
Incredible!!! No health and safety unnecessarily complicating the recovery and at very little cost. Hats off to them
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know why the rope they reeled up isn't gathered around the pivot they were turning?
ReplyDeleteand why it didn't look very taut!
DeleteDumb ass conspiracy theorists always looking for some complicated answer. Google Occam's Razor you profound idiots and try to wrap your minds around it.
Deleteropes is coiling just under the ice given the angle of the pivot had to be in relation to the pull needed,, if the pivot was completly upright i should imagine it would have pulled out,,
DeleteHow can you get all doubtful about this and say the rope is not taught and that the rope isn't even reeled up at the pivot????? go to 0:38 then check 2:42 you dunces, the pivot has raised up, and you can see the nice coiling that is PERFECT - the rope is very taught, you are blind to now see that, especially for how tightly wrapped around the pivot it is. Did you expect it to be a wild messy loose coiling around the pivot? Come on, if you have the mind to do this, it's not going to be some slop job. The angle of the pivot is just-so in that it causes the rope to slide down constantly in towards the ice and in the process pull the pivot out as it coils around the pivot. Come on!!!!!!!! And if they are driving on ice it is OBVIOUSLY an ice/snow town that has it's feet well grounded in the utilization of technology with ice/snow. User your fcking heads!
DeleteTaught? User your.. heads? You are unintelligible>
DeleteI agree with Mike and there is no need to abuse people because they may not understand engineering.
DeleteMy goodness, my words were unintelligible due to 2 auto-fills? Are you kidding me? You are that narrow minded to not understand because I made two obvious mistakes? You cannot see that "taught" obviously meant "taut", and "User" meant "Use". Just like all the other internet newfags that make an argument based off of spelling mistakes, as if it denotes the validity of it entirely and gives you some upper hand - when it's not about that at all. Great point there sir Mike, you disagree with my words or don't like that I have an opinion towards those that were calling this out as fake - so you call me out on two very blatantly obvious grammatical mistakes? Seriously? So I defended that this video is real, and you can only say my words go unreadable, because of TWO auto-fills, and you are too narrow minded to see the most obvious intended words using your programmed english syntax? If you're going to make an ass of me, at least have a genuine reason jackass.
DeleteI have to agree with H4, he's made an excellent point and you used grammar mistakes to make him seem like a moron. Mike, it's internet pedants like you that contribute absolutely nothing but go around acting like some esteemed intellectual because you are able to police everyone's words and use that to disprove them solely on the grounds of grammatical mistakes, dismissing any great points laden in their opinion. If you want to believe this video is fake, then go right ahead, but at least have the grounds to back it up with, and not just expect that pointing out grammatical errors makes you right, him wrong, or you any smarter.
Deleteh4rk4t do not listen to him! He is trying to troll you do not take the bait!
DeleteI love how clear you made that! People are just thin skinned these days and can't take any criticism, even soft criticism (yours wasn't so soft, but still, this is the internet, how can you get so butt-hurt haha!)
"I agree with Mike and there is no need to abuse people because they may not understand engineering."
DeleteGROW SOME THICKER SKIN YOU PUSSY!
A few ladies from the tractor factory could have "wenched" the car up faster.
Deleteengineering at it best..gj guys
ReplyDeleteIt is gathering, just on a single neat layer, so it's hard to see. The pivot seems to be actually rising slowly and each new round of the wire right next to the previous one.
ReplyDeleteU.S, still riding in Former Soviet Union engineered rockets to the International Space Station!
ReplyDeleteRussians are very good at "poor man solutions" than the Americans!! You know that!
ReplyDeleteLooks like the Obama space program. The guys will need to run in circles to get the car in orbit.
ReplyDeleteGood old Russian Know How.
ReplyDeleteНе бит, не крашен, ездил дедушка на дачу
ReplyDeleteGood old Russian know how? Is that what put it in the lake in the first place!? Crazy Russian Drivers :-D
ReplyDeleteum, that might have something to do with the can(s) of beer (see 3:15).
DeleteQdos to the guys, they knew what they were doing and did it well.
if you had noticed it is an english car, crazy english driver lol
DeleteGreat music - Anybody know who it's by?
ReplyDeleteThey probably did this already 100 times
ReplyDeleteGlobal warming is a bitch ain't it...
ReplyDeleteWhat I'd like to know is how they got the rope tied on to the vehicle. It had to be secured to something solid, and that was all submerged under water.
ReplyDeleteLast time I fished a truck out of the mud I duct taped the hook to a piece of pipe and fished until I hooked an axle, then pulled the tape loose. Surely they did something compairable.
DeleteI would say they did pretty dam good.....lol
ReplyDeletealiens did it.. lol
ReplyDeleteDoes nobody think how much rope it should be on this poll when they are finished? Where did the rope go???? Should have been much thicker poll than in the beginnig.
ReplyDeleteEven the rope is less in the end than in the beginning and the poll is higher. Taken the angel it's impossible togo up. The poll is just a "middel man" the pulling is done by a mechanical winch longer out..
ReplyDeleteOne thing for sure,, no Engineers in on this job.... plain and simple roughneck technology..
ReplyDeleteHow did it come there in the first place?
ReplyDeleteVODKA VODKA FOR EVERYONE!!!
ReplyDeleteSmart folks but nothing but salvage i'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm wondering the same thing. Why! Must have had something valuable in the car?
DeletePerhaps to keep the junk out of the lake and keep anything that hadn't leaked out already from doing so.
DeleteNice job but the car aint worth a crap now.
ReplyDeleteNote the beer can next to the driver's seat. Hmmm
ReplyDeleteA little wax and Armor All and she'll be just fine.
ReplyDeleteWould the car still be drivable? Doesn't the water wreck the whole electrics?
ReplyDeletebravo les russes, on a pas d'argent? mais de belles idées, vive le systeme D
ReplyDeleteEngine will be fine, if things were not left running. Electrics maybe.Needs some serious TLC though.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't look like an English car to me. Which make exactly? RHD yes. But then that includes Japan, Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia and Australia I know of. Not Russia though. I As a point of fact there is too much ignorant opinion from people with no understanding through education and experience of what they write here. Pointless waste of time to scan though uninformed opinion.
Study the subjects involved and validate your data before you express an opinion. Everything is possible when you understand nothing.
In a world of Health & Safety , they would be unlikely to be able to use this method of getting it out . But then in this world of Health & Safety it is unlikely to have gone in to start with ! Love the ice bearing capstan .
ReplyDeletehow did the van go from 1/2 way up the posts to completely. It is tied off to the cross bar yet mysteriously climbs the wooden supports.... and where is the part where someone gets into the water to attach the cable from the crossbar to the vehicles undercarriage.....staged.....
ReplyDeletethank you forever admin, good website.
ReplyDeletevvtftrd
ReplyDeleteشكرا مقال مفيد وعملي يطرح معلومات مناسبة يمكن الاستفادة منها في مختلف المجالات خاصة عندما يكون المحتوى واضحًا كـ شركة تنظيف خزانات بالدمام ومرتبًا ويقدم فائدة مباشرة للقارئ ومعرفة .
ReplyDelete