It’s often said that a man dies twice. The first death happens when their bodies become lifeless. But their supernatural death occurs when their name is spoken for the last time… as their memory becomes forgotten for all of eternity.
According to an urban legend (and backup horror story) a man named Oleg lived in the city center of Kharkov, Ukraine.
Oleg was a PH.D student on his way to deliver his priceless one hundred and fifty page thesis on a fall afternoon in 1978 when he accidently left the priceless document on the seat of the train. And in an instant, this man’s life’s work was gone.
It’s said that the PHD student spent the next several days panicking in a failed effort to recover any trace of the vanished document. He tried to request an extension, but his repeated appeals were denied.
Oleg went on to become a legend in the 80’s throughout the Ukraine, as a hermit who lived alone and gradually slipped into madness. Rumors were rife about the wild-eyed man when he began obsessively covering any flat surface he met with cryptic inscriptions… many of which made hateful references to the educational administration.
His writing appeared everywhere throughout the city on numerous fences, buildings, and even covered the walls of his own apartment.
Some reports have suggested that the inscriptions continued to appear until he died in a Ukrainian psychiatric hospital in 1999.
Of course, this story occurred in the age of paper and typewriters. But this could just as easily happen to any one of you. Every day, lives are destroyed by critical data loss. If you forget to back up, it can mean the end of a relationship, the end of a career, or something much more sinister.
A single data loss incident is all it takes to destroy someone’s life. And can turn a promising young genius into a real-life mad scientist.
Protect yourself and those you love from tragedy and eternal obscurity. Back up your data so that you don’t become another data loss horror story.