"Family’s Balcony Death in Switzerland Appears to Be Suicide, Police Say/The investigation suggests that the victims jumped from the seventh-floor balcony 'one after the other,' the police said."

The NYT reports. 

The police said on Tuesday that their investigation suggests that the four people — a 40-year-old man, his 41-year-old wife, her twin sister, and the couple’s 8-year-old daughter — plunged to their deaths in Montreux in western Switzerland in succession. A fifth person, the couple’s 15-year-old son, also apparently jumped from the seventh-floor balcony but survived, and he is in a coma....

Investigators said they found a stepladder on the balcony, there was no sign of a struggle and no witness heard any sounds or shouting coming from the apartment or the balcony before the family fell, they said.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the family was “very interested in conspiracy and survivalist” theories, and had stocked up on an “impressive” amount of food that occupied most of the apartment, the police said.

“The family lived in near autarky,” the statement said, “removed from society.”

From the Wikipedia article "Autarky":

In Stoicism the concept of autarky represents independence from anything external, including independence from personal relationships, so as to immune one from vagaries of fortune. The Stoic sage is autarkic by being dependent only on his own virtue....

Early socialist movements used these autarkic efforts to build their base with institutions like the Bourse de travail, socialist canteens and food assistance....

Right-wing totalitarian governments that have also strived for autarky, developing national industry and imposing high tariffs but have crushed other autarky movements....