▲ 121 points
back
38 comments
Related: this is a very well produced video on the Dyatlov Pass Incident
See also this episode which includes a newer Katabatic Wind theory proposed by a Swedish expedition. I personally found this the most plausible theory I’ve heard so far.
Isn't this more of a continuation of the Snow Slab theory? They set up the tent for the night and the high winds dislodged the slab and caused it to smash into the tent, forcing the students to cut their way out and seek alternate shelter. The bit about the students trying to shovel snow on top of the tent that they had just cut up in an attempt to stabilize it is dubious IMHO. Plus if they had time to dig snow they had time to grab their coats and boots. The reason they ran away in their night clothes is because they thought they were about to be hit by a real avalanche and also their gear was buried under a huge clump of snow.
The rest of the story about how one set of students tried to build a fire out in the open but it wasn't enough to save off the freezing wind and the other group tried to build a biovac out of a snowbank and were crushed when it collapsed is completely plausible. It even makes sense if they thought the slope was about to avalanche, it would be too risky to try to go back and retrieve the gear, even as they were literally freezing to death.
You don't run downhill from a pending avalanche, and the footprints going down from the tent don't indicate any running or falling, which would be likely in those conditions at night.
The Katabatic Wind says they thought the tent was about to be destroyed by the wind, exposing them to deadly cold from the high winds. So they sought shelter in the forest below. It's one of several wind theories. But agreed that if they had the teime to stabalize the tent with packed snow, they had time to grab their shoes and warmer clothing. All the theories are flawed in one way or another.
They ran to the nearest forest to escape the pending avalanche. It probably wasn't quite so cold at the moment they started to flee, but then the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped precipitously.
The Futility Closet podcast also did an episode on this topic:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/04/26/podcast-episode-55...
This is a better one on the real Dyatlov incident. By Dyatlov himself, straight from the horse's mouth.
I think you might be mistaken. The above video is about the Dyatlov Pass incident (hiking expedition led by Igor Dyatlov). The video you linked is interview of Anatoly Dyatlov about the Chernobyl Explosion. Different Dyatlov but still cool though!
Most people who've looked deeply into this case dismiss the snow slap theory. At any rate, it's one of 70 something theories, with new ones coming out every six months or so, and new book every year. The most recent book has the tent moved as part of a staging coverup after a tree fell on the tent near the cedar tree, causing all the various hiker injuries. You can find out about that and most of the other theories and books here: https://forum.dyatlovpass.com/
Personally, having familiarized myself with this case over the past three years from various podcasts, forums, videos and even a couple of the books, I'd say the snow slab is no more or less likely than infrasound, katabatic wind, tree fall, military test or murder theories. Reason being that the evidence is incomplete and ambiguous, with the actions of the higher up authorities suspicious enough that there could have been some sort of cover up.
Sixty years on, the most interesting thing about the case is enthusiasts' refusal to consider the most plausible explanation because it doesn't deliver the same satisfaction as less likely theories like government conspiracy. Granted, the incident took place in a society where the government frequently covered up fatal accidents, but that environment doesn't make the wind slab explanation any less likely.
There was a discussion a while back on "trapped priors" in Bayesian reasoning, where you might "correctly" update your beliefs in the wrong direction based on your subjective experience of evidence that should contradict your prior beliefs (1). It seems like you see this behavior everywhere, these days, especially when it comes to conspiracy thinking: any data can be taken as evidence to support the conspiracy theory, whether it's "Q" or a sixty-year-old backcountry disaster.
--
> Sixty years on, the most interesting thing about the case is enthusiasts' refusal to consider the most plausible explanation because it doesn't deliver the same satisfaction as less likely theories like government conspiracy.
One could make a similar statement about many folks' refusal to entertain ideas outside of the mundane for fear of looking stupid. Interestingly, this behavior seems more common amongst intelligent people (who perhaps are compromised by their pride of their intelligence, but not so confident in their intelligence as to lack that insecurity).
Really. Horror only happens in the movies? What if one of the Dyatlov party went bananas? There were some terrible injuries. And the radiation? (Two years after Mayak.)
We live in a world where six people were just killed by someone who didn't get invited to their party. This clean, sanitized theory wants to pin Dyatlov on physics.
But there isn't a single most plausible explanation. There are at least several, and they're not all conspiratorial. The infrasound and katabatic wind are two of those. From debating with people who have espoused different theories, I don't think it's because they don't like the mundane explanation. It's because they don't think the snow slab or whatever other mundane theory explains all the evidence as well as the one they espouse. I don't think any theory stands out as the one true account, because the evidence is too spotty.
The evidence suggestive of a conspiracy includes injuries to hands and faces of the five hikers not found in the ravine, which is consistent with fighting. There are some other injuries which could be consistent with being bound and being hit with a hard object like a rifle butt or baton. The newest book presents evidence for mining explosives in the area, and people knowing about the accident prior to the search party finding the tent. I'm not saying any of that is true, only that it's somewhat plausible.
I think it's fascinating that modern theories seem to mostly or entirely disregard the possibility that they were murdered by a small group of locals that attacked their camp in the middle of the night. That would have to be included on the obviously plausible list given the unusual and intense blunt force injuries that so many of them suffered. The article of course rather comically dismisses the premise as though it warrants no attention.
Maybe some people didn't like them traversing their land, didn't appreciate the spectacle of it, or wanted to keep outsiders out. All very common themes historically. They tracked them, chose an opportune time and attacked them to make a point to outsiders. It's not even necessary that the primary objective was to intentionally murder them, merely to beat them severely and prompt the group to leave, which in those conditions could easily result in everyone dying regardless.
Infrasound as a premise is absurd and can be safely dismissed, they wouldn't have all neglected to properly cover themselves, and they wouldn't have all reacted similarly as in such intense group fear. No group collectively simultaneously panics in such a stupid manner and somehow magically mass brute-force injures themselves all at different locations; as they were not fools and did have an understanding of the elements. They very rapidly fled in terror for their lives, as if attacked suddenly / caught off guard - whether by other people, by a falling tree (and fear of more), or slab of ice. You probably don't flee a mile to a streambed out of fear of a falling tree however, and you don't entirely abandon your group for dead back there (a falling tree/s scenario presents plausible time to regroup and seek clothing). The group of three in the streambed was killed / murdered later, as the article notes they could have never likely made it there if their injuries had existed prior (they were not killed by magic falling trees); they were probably tracked to the streambed area and attacked, after initially successfully fleeing the original attack on the camp. Those in the streambed fled over a mile, which is a very intense thing to do in such conditions; you only do that if you believe you can't safely go back to the camp for some very good reason (where going back means very plausible death; they abandoned their comrades in fleeing so far, keep that in mind). So who/what murdered the people in the streambed? The reasonable explanations drop to only a few very quickly. The girl in the streambed was found in a very unusual backward facing position [1], she looks like she was turning away, trying to escape when she died. The attack group found them and finished the job.
You slash one side of the tent to go the other direction away from the attack party, and possibly to avoid being spotted fleeing if at all possible.
I think most people who look deeply into the case get caught up in crazy conspiracy theories and get lost in the forest.
I thought the snow slab/mini avalanche explanation was plausible, fit the circumstances, and didn't require people acting improbably.
This is also one of those cases where the actual facts have gotten mixed in with speculation, confusion, and in some cases outright fabrication which makes it harder to study. Sifting through the information to find the ground truth is one of the hardest parts of trying to figure out what happened.
Thing is that the snow slab wasn't evident 24 days later when the tent was found, the tent poles weren't pushed down, there was a working flashlight on the tent or a snowbank nearby that was undisturbed, and it makes little sense for Igor, Zina and Rustem to climb back up the slope in a weakened state if they knew the tent was inaccessible from tons of frozen snow on top of it. Also, there was nine of them with an unburied snow axe they could have used to dig the tent out rather than walk an hour downslope at night in the rocky, snow drifty, unknown terrain with insufficient clothing to try and survive the night.
It's possible the snow slab melted enough to blow or slide away during those 24 days, but then we're making an assumption that it existed in the first place. Which is no different from assuming the wind made a low frequency sound that scared the hikers out of the tent, or fill in whatever missing X caused them to leave the tent.
I think there's lots of odd things that go unexplained even if one can think of a reason to leave the tent like a small avalanche. Why were the two Yuri's left to attend a smile fire that they froze around? Why were the four found in the ravine several meters from the alleged snow den? Why did the lead investigator think that a radiation test in the middle of nowhere was necessary? Did he really see burned tree tops? Unfortunately, the pictures that are available today are very incomplete, including pictures of the tent, footsteps, bodies where they were found, etc.
Which raises another question. Do we have all the papers and photos from the original case?
> it makes little sense for Igor, Zina and Rustem to climb back up the slope in a weakened state if they knew the tent was inaccessible from tons of frozen snow on top of it.
That's a speculative statement. "it makes little sense" as an argument is weak on its own, but is 10x weaker when it's based on supposition you just invented regarding the state of their tent and their somehow knowing that state well.
The state of their tent was such that they abandoned it for the forest below in the snow slab theory. But yes, any motivation from that night is speculative, including the one where Igor decides to pitch the tent on the slope because he doesn't want to lose progress the next day, or that he wanted the group to challenge themselves.
I tend to disagree. most other theories ( such as a tree fall ) only considers the injuries and doesn't fit together as a story.
The snow slab story fits all the other evidence: there was a massive slide of ice that rolled over the tent and burring it.
the hikers that were not seriously injured cut themselves and quickly made their way down the hill to find some safety from further avalanches, but some where found just wearing underwear. those stayed put around a quickly made camp fire, which is why they also appeared 'tanned' as they stayed too close to the flames. it was a very windy-cold night.
The others tried to make their way back to camp; however, finding camp in a windy storm at night was hard and they failed. I think it was 2 had fallen into a ravine, and the rest died due to the elements.
Ironically, those in their underwear lived the longest
There's other reasons for the tree fall theory, and it includes suspicion that the tent was moved. Reasons given are that Igor would not setup the tent in such an exposed location when tree shelter was just a kilometer downhill, plus it was off their plotted course, and the contents of the tent seemed a bit disorderly for someone who was a bit of control freak like Igor. That and the injuries, distribution of the hikers and various clothing make more sense if the initial event took place near the cedar tree.
I don't know whether that's more plausible than all the other theories where the tent was setup on the slope, but a lot of people have thought the evidence never quite fit. That could be because the search party disturbed the tent and its contents tramping around when they were looking for the hikers. Or it could possibly be because someone knew of the hikers demise some time earlier and staged the tent to cover their butts just in case they were blamed for it.
I think we've got as much to work on here as the poetry of Sappho - history is sometimes cruel with facts and denies us the nice clean resolution we all crave. A lot of the evidence in this case is confused and questionable and while I think that some theories are certainly less likely than others (the weapons test related theories seem far fetched given that there is any surviving evidence at all) I think this will sadly remain a mystery unless we manage to uncover more primary evidence at the site that can disprove certain accounts and narrow down on the truth.
The USSR wasn't a monolithic evil big brother that could disappear people without anyone noticing - people did notice and we've got a lot of evidence of crimes that were supposed to go disappear in the wind. But a lot of evidence was intentionally tainted or manipulated for a wide variety of reasons.
The only thing we're really certain of is that a lot of heads rolled at the time that were really unnecessary.
I wish people would step back from conspiracy thinking and trying so hard to explain specific injuries and apply some occam's razor logic. eg people freaked out by an avalanche are going to bolt in their underwear; simplest explanation.
The footsteps indicate they walked down in an orderly fashion.
An longform article was also in a Norwegian newspaper a few weeks back about the same incident. Contains some more images and illustrations: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https:/...
Is there a reason it's popping up multiple places lately?
This recent simulation may have solved the mystery.
I find the simulation convincing in terms of physics but not in terms of the forensic facts of the case as documented at the time.
Other discussions of this topic...
The avalanche theory, recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120
General discussions:
This article is poorly written and inconsistent.
It first says:
> About a hundred feet downhill, the search party found “very distinct” footprints of eight or nine people, walking (not running) toward the tree line. Almost all the prints were of stockinged feet, some even bare.
But then a few paragraphs down, says:
> Something had happened that induced the skiers to cut their way out of the tent and flee into the night, into a howling blizzard, in twenty-below-zero temperatures, in bare feet or socks.
So first the article takes care to point out that the group was not running, only to then say that they were? Which is it? I expect the New Yorker to have better quality control than this.
I'm going to assume they used 'flee' in a more figurative sense, not literal, but such 'colorful' prose is sloppy in an article such as this.
I recommend this book: Dead Mountain by Donnie Eicher. It is a well-researched read of the incident: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17557470-dead-mountain
For Russian-speaking people, one interesting investigation of Dyatlov incident is ongoing here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDZTS1BXsSHUkZeVK5T1q7w/fea... - The author is an artist who is looking for anatomical anomalies in the photos from morgue (i.e. wrong length of the bone -> possible fracture, etc). He also tries to find the correspondence between the found abnormalities and omissions made in the autopsy reports (i.e. for one of the victims whose photo indicates that they might be missing an eye, the autopsy report conveniently describes only the other eye...)
Sounds like documentary fodder for Werner Herzog.
Or a feature film, Werner did one about another curious mystery called "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
God this story is so over-represented on the Internet. There must be other interesting mysteries and stories from this period in Soviet history, surely?
Would you rather read about the Tunguska event again?
Never heard about Tunguska event, why does it also happen to be in Russia?
Large land mass is prone to planetary events.
Well this is the first I've heard of it.
The explanation offered by Kuryakov (that it was a snow slab that fell on the tent) seems very plausible to me).