Kopalchen can save lives - but only for a select few. This dish will kill a stranger. One such incident occurred in the 1970s. 
Not for everyone
The traditional cuisine of the northern peoples is generally not for everyone. Yes, there are masterpieces in it - for example, stroganina. And ordinary products after heat treatment taste very good: protein- and fat-rich milk and deer meat, game, meat of large marine animals (from walruses to whales), river and sea fish. Additional vitamins and minerals are provided by berries and herbs.
But the Nenets, Mansi, Komi, Khanty, Chukchi, Eskimos, Evenks, Nganasans and other peoples have recipes that are very outlandish for people from the south. It is unlikely that it would have occurred to you to consume raw warm deer blood or boiled heart, seal eyes or fish offal. Unusual traditional dishes also include a thick “blood” soup with the unpronounceable name vilmullirilkyril (boiled deer intestines, offal, internal fat and blood), ngaibat (fresh raw deer meat with fermented raw blood as a sauce), kaniga (partially digested contents of deer stomach)… Kiviak is also a source of bewilderment - a gutted seal carcass stuffed with guillemots (small birds), which is fermented under pressure for up to one and a half years. The decomposed mass of guillemots is used for food. And for dessert - akutak, ice cream made from walrus or seal fat with berries.
But the strangest and most dangerous delicacy is kopalchen (aka kopalkhem, aka kymgut). 
Kopalchen
Kopalchen is fermented meat (and not rotten or rotten, as some people think). Eskimos and Chukchi make it from walruses and seals: the meat and internal organs of the animal rolled into a huge roll must be sprinkled with herbs and placed in a hole near the coast - and under a tight lid. The meat is slowly fermented in a cool pit for several months, and then it can be eaten. Northerners use copalchen as an excellent canned food - several tens of kilograms of high-calorie meat can feed a family for a long time in the winter.
Kopalchen is also prepared from reindeer by the Nenets, Chukchi and Evenks. They select a young individual and do not allow it to eat for several days so that the digestive tract is cleared, and then they strangle it (carefully so as not to damage the skin). Then the entire carcass is placed in a swamp and covered with peat. The place is marked with a stake or flag. If a hungry Nenets or Chukchi wanders across the tundra and finds a kopalchen, he can eat it, but according to custom he must then prepare a new one and bury it.
The deer decomposes for at least six months and then digs out. Having cut off the mold, the Nenets or Mansi cut the meat and eat it with salt, often frozen. Sometimes kopalchen eat fresh deer lungs. The putrefactive process makes the meat sour. Although this dish emits a bad, pungent odor, it is considered a delicacy. A man needs a small piece for a whole day of vigorous activity in the cold. 
Kopalchen
Anyone other than the northerners themselves cannot eat copalchen - cadaveric poisons: neurin, putrescine, cadaverine and others. Even if you eat a little, there is almost no chance of survival. Northern residents can eat it because they are accustomed to such food from childhood and develop immunity to poisons, like scavenger animals. In addition, the acidic environment of the stomachs of the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic coasts destroys the larvae of Trichinella, but a southerner can easily catch trichinosis after tasting copalchen. But this is even the best case scenario.
“We must look for Kopalchen, otherwise we will die!”
Forensic expert Andrei Lomachinsky describes a case from the Brezhnev era in his book of short stories. Topographers under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Duzin flew to Taimyr. In the helicopter there were two pilots, three topographers and one Nenets Savely Peresol - as a guide who was well acquainted with the area. During the flight, something happened to the control system, and the Mi-8 crashed to the ground. The crew escaped with bruises, abrasions and some serious fear. As soon as we got out of the crumpled car, it caught fire. So they ended up practically empty-handed - in Taimyr. Without communication, clothes and food. It was September, so death from frost was not yet in danger. It remained to be expected that when they did not return, rescuers would be sent for them. 
Taimyr.
But several days passed - and no one. They ate lemmings and mice, lingonberries and cloudberries, and mushrooms. And at night it gets colder. We thought, that’s it, we’ll disappear. And the Nenets is all about kopalchen - into the swamp, he says, we need to go, find kopalchen - we will eat our fill, take it with us and go to Kheta (this is such a village), and then to Khatanga. And then they’ll send a helicopter for us.
The pilots still did not agree - we still have to go hundreds of kilometers, we won’t get there. But they became interested in Kopalchen. Peresol told me that the Nenets bury reindeer in swamps, mark the place and then eat it. In general, he promised to find Kopalchen - so that he could continue to wait for rescuers. In the evening, the Nenets returned: Savely brought a whole deer leg to the camp. I can’t say that kopalchen seemed delicious: the taste was rancid, disgusting, but there was nothing to do - we held our noses, started eating and ate, ate, ate... until we were too full. 
Siberian Nenets
The next morning, Kopalchen made himself known. Vomiting, liver pain, loss of consciousness. Only Savely Peresol is completely fine. The next day the end came: in the morning the pilot and Duzin died, then the mechanic. Two topographers lay unconscious. Peresol tried to save them with the help of magical rituals, but he could not appease or persuade the spirits of the tundra.
Just at that moment the helicopter that we had been waiting for arrived. The military began to provide first aid to the topographers, but only one was saved; the second died at night. After a long investigation and a bunch of examinations, Peresol was given a suspended sentence for “accidental murder by poisoning.”
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