Russian "Mole People" Cult Unearthed

Survivalists spend a great deal of time preparing for a future in which they imagine huddling in a bunker with stacks of gold and "survival seeds" will become a reasonable lifestyle. Recently a Russian Islamic cult was discovered putting this way of life to the test. Members of the cult and their families resided with their leader in an underground bunker for more than a decade, with some of the younger children having never seen the light of day.

The group - known as the "Fayzarahmanist" sect - was named after its 83-year-old organizer Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state, according to a report by state TV channel Vesti.

Satarov was described as a former deputy to a Sunni Islamic cleric in the 1970s. His followers were encouraged to read his manuscripts and most were banned from leaving their eight-storey underground bunker which had been dug in the basement of a building, Vesti said.

Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the sect and have said it will be disbanded if it continues its illegal activities, such as stopping its members from seeking medical assistance or education.

Contrary to what you might expect from certain popular films, these Russian mole people are neither mutants nor cannibals, but merely normal underground dwellers - or, I suppose, as normal as one can expect underground dwelling religious fanatics to be. While I support religious freedom, it seems to me that any organization this extreme and controlling is pretty much by definition dangerous to its own members at the very least, if not to outsiders as well.