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The disappearance of a Soviet skiing party in 1959
- abalaji 5y agoRelated: this is a very well produced video on the Dyatlov Pass Incident https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RigxxiilI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RigxxiilI
- erentz 5y agoSee 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. https://youtu.be/3NsAVMd8Hek https://youtu.be/3NsAVMd8Hek
- jandrese 5y agoIsn'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.
- goatlover 5y agoYou 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.
- jandrese 5y agoThey 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.
- pimlottc 5y agoThe Futility Closet podcast also did an episode on this topic: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/04/26/podcast-episode-55-the-dyatlov-pass-incident/ https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/04/26/podcast-episode-55...
- rurban 5y agoThis is a better one on the real Dyatlov incident. By Dyatlov himself, straight from the horse's mouth. https://youtu.be/N8__v9EswN4 https://youtu.be/N8__v9EswN4
- abalaji 5y agoI 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!
- matsemann 5y agoAn 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://www.nrk.no/viten/xl/ni-studenter-ble-funnet-omkomne-i-dyatlov-pass-_-djatlovpasset_-de-dodes-fjell-i-uralfjella-1.15401481 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https:/... Is there a reason it's popping up multiple places lately?
- macintux 5y agoThis recent simulation may have solved the mystery. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120
- wavefunction 5y agoI find the simulation convincing in terms of physics but not in terms of the forensic facts of the case as documented at the time.
- macintux 5y agoOther discussions of this topic... The avalanche theory, recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120 General discussions: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876298 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828346
- goatlover 5y agoMost 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/ 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.
- jandrese 5y agoI 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.
- goatlover 5y agoThing 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?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoThe explanation offered by Kuryakov (that it was a snow slab that fell on the tent) seems very plausible to me).
- inter_netuser 5y agoSounds like documentary fodder for Werner Herzog.
- type0 5y agoOr a feature film, Werner did one about another curious mystery called "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
- raghus 5y agoI 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 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17557470-dead-mountain
- darig 5y agoI recommend this premise from def comedy jam: White People Shit.
- bb123 5y agoGod this story is so over-represented on the Internet. There must be other interesting mysteries and stories from this period in Soviet history, surely?
- jandrese 5y agoWould you rather read about the Tunguska event again?
- unobatbayar 5y agoNever heard about Tunguska event, why does it also happen to be in Russia?
- codezero 5y agoLarge land mass is prone to planetary events.
- apple4ever 5y agoWell this is the first I've heard of it.
- a-nikolaev 5y agoFor Russian-speaking people, one interesting investigation of Dyatlov incident is ongoing here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDZTS1BXsSHUkZeVK5T1q7w/featured 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...)
- 4oh9do 5y agoThis 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.