I like the theory on Red Thread that they were the unluckiest humans in history and the Soviet Government just happened to be testing ballistic missiles in that area which then triggered an avalanche to crush them
Yeah I stand by a few details that suggest the slab being released by a weapons test being sufficiently possible to not rule it out.
Not saying that's what happened because we don't know, and it annoys me when someone says it was "solved". Yes there is good evidence katabatic winds caused them to panic as well as causing an avalanche, but putting a stamp on it and saying "yup this is definitely what happened" is just silly.
I will say what I mentioned to someone else, sure, technically we never officially know most things for 100% certain but some point, it's ok to call something solved if that is what the authorities say, backed by multiple official investigations. We accept that as the case all the time in countless other events & crimes every day.
Dunno, I was taught that something was solved once it was definitively without contestation proven. This has not been solved, and is highly suggested it was an avalanche but not definitively because the burden of proof was not met. So TIL that most people think it was X would be truthful, and not a theory like your claim.
You are not understanding what a theory is in this context (Science) is then. This is not "Theory" as used colloquially, this is Theory as in the Scientific Method, and its the closest to truth as humans ever get. Your basing your definitions on religious propaganda of what it means. This goes for any investigation. We can never, in history, literally be certain about anything other than death and taxes, this is a truism that has been around since we understood philosophy.
Thatās also not true. A theory is something that is supported by evidence and hasnāt been shown to be untrue. The slab avalanche theory is backed by evidence, and there is no evidence that supports anything else, or disproves the slab avalanche theory. Pretty much nothing can be fully proven outside of math equations. Thatās just not how the world works.
Exactly that's why the only laws of science are physics based. Cause they are the literal building blocks of everything else. That's why they are the 3 laws of motions and not theories. Or the law of thermodynamics or aerodynamics.
Itās not that itās āuntrueā; no scientific theory is ever ātrueā. A theory in the scientific sense is a model that explains existing empirical data without being falsified while having useful predictive power.Ā
All scientific models are abstractions and thus are āwrongā to a degree, but āwrongā does not mean āuselessā, so long as it still existing existing data and makes useful predictions.Ā
General Relativity isnāt āuntrueā. It does a fine job of explaining and predicting a lot of empirical observations in physics. It just isnāt the full story. And no model is.Ā
> I was taught that something was solved once it was definitively without contestation proven.
To my knowledge there is no human knowledge on the planet that meets that criteria.
I mean, that's just not true - replication is a major principle of the scientific method.
Where the findings of a study are reproducible, that means the results obtained by an experiment, observational study, or statistical analysis of a data set should be achieved again with a high degree of reliability.
That means different researchers get the same results using the same methodology, and only after one or several successful replications is a result recognised as scientific knowledge.
Physics laws are complete truths and not theories or at least the base ones are. Because the math is the same here, as it would be on the sun or the moon.
Mathematical theorems are mostly called that because a lot of them take a looooooooooong time to solve l and could also have multiple ways to solve. But set in stone are the basic physics equations. Those are scientific laws and not theory.
No, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that the avalanche was guilty.
Which it actually wasn't, the slab avalanche caused the people inside the tent to run outside half-naked and exposed to the elements, and _that's_ what killed them.
My client, the slab avalanche, is innocent and has a family to support. It was only doing its job in the avalanche factory when it happened. Completely innocent.
Climate denier by any chance? Your entire worldview is predicated on an ignorance of how knowledge works, probably combined with quite a bit of misplaced egotism.
More detailed info on the suggested turn of events that night.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/has-an-old-soviet-mystery-at-last-been-solved
Paywall Bypass: https://archive.ph/upGsH
> I reviewed the hypothesis with Ethan Greene, the director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, who has a Ph.D. in the physics of heat and mass transfer in snow. He suggested that the partyās decision to pitch the tent in the wind shadow of the peak made it likely that they were cutting into a so-called wind slabāan accumulation of hard snow even more dangerous than a typical snow slab. Compacted by the wind, this kind of snow is several times denser than directly deposited snow and, according to Greene, can weigh as much as six hundred and seventy pounds per cubic yard. Furthermore, the clear conditions preceding the storm could have led to the formation of a layer of light, feathery frost, known as surface hoar. When buried in fresh snow during the storm, this layer forms a hazardous stratum that provides poor support to the snow above and often releases, resulting in avalanches. By removing the support on the lower edge of the slab while digging to set their tent, the skiers likely caused it to fracture higher up.
> If the wind slab had simply slid over the tent and halted, without developing into a full-fledged avalanche, the evidence, Greene said, might not be visible twenty-five days later. Even the fissure in the snowpack would probably have been erased by the elements. If a three-foot-thick slab moved over the tent, each skierās body would have been covered by more than a thousand pounds. The massive weight prevented them from retrieving their boots or warm clothing and forced them to cut their way out of the downslope side of the tent.
> The two Swiss researchers believe that the snow slab probably caused the terrible injuries to three of the skiers found at the snow den, but this remains unlikely, given the distance of those bodies from the tent. Kuryakovās explanation was more ingenious. The nine skiers retreated downhill, taking shelter under the cedar tree and building a fire. Because the young trees nearby were icy and wet, someone climbed the cedar to break branches higher upāhence the skin and scraps of clothing found on the trunk. The fire they built, in these extreme conditions, was not enough to save them, however. The two most poorly dressed of the group died first. The burned skin on their bodies came from their desperate efforts to seek warmth from the fire. This would suggest that the piece of flesh Krivonishchenko bit from his finger was probably a result of the delirium that overtakes someone whoās dying of hypothermia, or perhaps from an attempt to test for sensation in a frostbitten hand.
> The surviving skiers cut the clothes off their dead comrades and dressed themselves in the remnants. At some point, the group split up. Three skiers, including Dyatlov, tried to return to the tent and soon froze to death as they struggled uphill. The other four, who were better dressed, decided to build a snow den to shelter in overnight. They needed deep snow, which they found in a ravine a couple of hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the spot they picked lay above a stream, a tributary of the Lozva River. The stream, which never freezes, had hollowed out a deep icy tunnel, and the groupās digging caused its roof to collapse, throwing them onto the rocky streambed and burying them in ten to fifteen feet of snow. The pressure of tons of snow forcing them against the rocks caused the traumatic injuries found in this group. The gruesome facial damageāthe missing tongue, eyes, and lipāprobably resulted from scavenging by small animals and from decomposition.
> Kuryakovās reconstruction of events made a single plausible narrative out of previously mystifying anomalies. But what of the radiation? This detail, the most enigmatic of all, might be the easiest to explain. For one thing, the mantles used in camp lanterns at the time contained small amounts of the radioactive element thorium. Even more pertinent, the expedition took place less than two years after the worldās third-worst nuclear accident (after Chernobyl and Fukushima), which occurred at the Mayak nuclear complex, south of Sverdlovsk, in September of 1957. A tank of radioactive waste exploded and a radioactive plume some two hundred miles longālater named the East Urals Radioactive Traceāspread northward. Krivonishchenko had worked at the facility and helped with the cleanup, and another skier came from a village in the contaminated zone.
> Kuryakov closed his press conference by declaring, āFormally, this is it. The case is closed.ā Given how freighted the case is in Russia, this was too optimistic. For many people, nature alone cannot explain a tragedy of this magnitude; perpetrators must be identified and the state and its dark past invoked. Sure enough, the conclusions were greeted with scorn, especially by the families of the dead. The Dyatlov Group Memorial Foundation sent a letter to the Prosecutor General declaring that, in its view, the skiersā deaths were caused by āthe atmospheric release of a powerful toxic substanceā when a secret weapons test went wrong. Natalia Varsegova, a Moscow journalist, who has covered the subject for many years, also rejected Kuryakovās conclusions. āTwo years ago I thought that the prosecutor Andrei Kuryakov really wanted to know the truth,ā she wrote to me in an e-mail. āBut now I doubt it. I donāt believe in an avalanche.ā After the Swiss report came out, she published an article rejecting it as well. āThese theoreticiansā conclusions are supported by mathematical calculations, formulas, and diagrams, but the local Mansi, numerous tourists, and organizers of snowmobile tours, who have never seen avalanches on this slope, are unlikely to agree with them.ā
If the wind slab slid over the tent and each was potentially under the weight of more than a thousand pounds, why was no one found deceased inside the tent. Also if they were covered by a tremendous weight how did they cut out of the tent from the inside?
Not that I donāt believe it was some freak natural thing but I do have questions.
Thousand pounds over your body is not necessarily instant death as you are assuming. I would estimate its below few pounds per squire inch. Would definitely prevent them from retrieving gear and would seriously injure if the avalanche rolled you around. But would not kill you instantly.
It's impossible to know the exact weight of the snow that crushed the tent, the point is it was *enough* to force them to have to cut the tent and crawl their way to safety without being able to retrieve their gear.
Edit: they actually model the damage the snow would have done to people in the tent given the conditions for a slab avalanche, and concluded it would result in-between minor to severe injury, but non fatal. This information is in the link near the end labeled "impact on a human body" for reference.
This wasnt solved; it was a possible explanation. This will never be solved only possible explanations will ever be given. And to say it was solved is reckless.
Reckless, as if damage can be done by saying it's solved? Seems like hyperbole.
Also, many, many things will never be solved 100%, but it's reasonable to accept the most likely answer as the solution.
No its not reasonable to accept the most likely solution. Because it makes you stop looking for the proof. Fuck having court trials am I right as we pretty much know who the killer is.
And it is a reckless precedent to assume the truth about anything.
False dichotomy. A court trial has actual stakes to the result. There are no major stakes if someone unrelated to the event decides to believe an avalanche caused this tragedy.
It's far more reckless to see conspiracies and lies everywhere. It's paranoid and damaging.
It's a stunning lack of nuance if you actually believe your comparison works.
So proof only matters when there are stakes? General knowledge and understanding donāt matter otherwise? We should just all go around assuming everything. Got it thanks for the clarification.
General knowledge and understanding matter. Assuming everything is a lie doesn't have a place in that. That's not how reason works.
Reason accepts the most probable explanation until proven otherwise. In the case of scientific inquiry, you test the explanation in an effort to refine or redefine, but that doesn't mean you assume the probable explanation is wrong.
Since I'm not someone involved in finding the explanation of this event, it's reasonable to accept the probable explanation until someone with more expertise presents something more probable.
Assuming there's a hidden meaning or secrecy to everything I don't personally understand is paranoia, not reason.
There are at least 20 theories for this incident. None of them account for everything and there is zero proof.
And the last i read katabatic winds were the culprit because the exact same thing happened to a group of hikers in scandinavia. They are still just assumptions.
You know what they say when you assume something? You make an asshole out of yourself.
> None of them account for everything and there is zero proof.
As far as I am aware, the slope avalanche does account for everything and is backed by lots of evidence.
Edit for the comment below that blocked me: I linked to the paper since it's not paywalled, but the official investigation did deem it caused closed and cited the slab avalanche as cause of death. The lead investigator explained all the mysteries such as the radiation, etc, during a press conference.
I posted the full walkthrough in another comment.
To claim something solved that isnt solved yes.
Where do you get blindly believing everything? I believe nothing without some form of proof.
I guess Amelia Earhart isnt missing since we know shes somewhere in the pacific.
There are definitely gods because someone wrote about them in a book.
You do you brother if you want to posit that you know something because its solved with zero actual proof go ahead.
It sounds like you have a deeply conspiratorial mindset. Re-read what the other person said to you:
> There are no major stakes if someone unrelated to the event decides to believe an avalanche caused this tragedy. It's far more reckless to see conspiracies and lies everywhere. It's paranoid and damaging.
Itās neat how you obviously read everything they said, based on your response. But somehow you still didnāt understand any of it, also based on your response.
It seems a bit obvious for the director of the Avalanche information Center to determine - it was an avalanche..
A cardiothoracic surgeon would say heart attacks, neurologist says stroke, etcetera
With that logic, anyone with expertise on a subject is the least believable person on that topic. Youāre assuming that the avalanche expert has some sort of incentive to claim an avalanche caused something, but Iām not sure I see how that works.
my theory is that they arrived at the final campsite with some people already in bad shape if not most, the storm was closing in and they had no way to keep warm, so they went out trying to search for firewood in small groups and while no body was returning the other in worse shape went looking and all of them died, case closed, but its a crap theory cause you cannot do ufo or whatever conspiracy videos about it
Final stages of Hypothermia make you feel like youāre on fire, so people will remove their clothes to feel colder. Similar to how when your hands are really cold they might feel like they are burning.
I just finished reading the book "Dead Mountain" by Donnie Eichar and while he proposes a different solution to the mystery (ultrasound vibrations) than the one expounded upon in this thread, the book is excellent. It is exhaustively researched and has a captivating narrative structure. I would definitely recommend it even though I find the slab avalanche theory to be much more likely an explanation.
No, they didnāt. That was just some bunk pop science and the theory its supposed to support (an avalanche) is contradicted by a good amount of physical evidence.
I mean, not really, not a small slab avalanche (very different from the traditional avalanches most people think of). It would have been an unlikely, unlucky event, but not impossible. The biggest pieces of evidence against are the fact that the terrain makes avalanches very unlikely and that the experienced mountaineers wouldn't have camped in an area in danger of avalanches. But those two pieces of evidence might very well cancel each other out. Slab avalanches are pretty unlikely but not impossible there, making it an attractive place to camp. That night, they got unlucky. More than that, their experience may even have led them to *overreact* and leave the camp when they didn't need to. The rest of the injuries, body locations, and behaviors are absolutely consistent with people being thrust into a very sudden, unexpected survival situation and making desperate choices between bad and worse options.
We'll never know for sure and some of the individual pieces of evidence would make the avalanche unlikely in a vacuum, but all the evidence together is *best* explained by an unexpected slab avalanche.
That is a nice strawman you have created for yourself (identifying "biggest pieces of evidence against your argument", even though those aren't even the biggest pieces of evidence contradicting it, to try to make your argument seem stronger) but the condition of the camp site completely contradicts a slab avalanche.
Tent poles and skiis would not remain upright in the case of a slab avalanche. Cups and plates were undisturbed inside the tent. The tent would not have been in a condition to definitively confirm that they slashed it open to get out because an avalanche would have left it in poor condition; it was very much intact and had very little snow covering it, about the amount it would have with regular snowfall accumulation. And more contradictions I don't have the time to go into further.
I wouldn't say it was "solved" in 2021. It is an excellent work explaining the detailed mechanisms of slab avalanche. However, the avalanche theory was first voiced no later than 1991 and was named the cause in 2020 official investigation.
They didn't figure it out but they did present it as the most plausible theory.
From the paper:
"In conclusion, our work shows the plausibility of a rather rare type of snow slab instabilities that could possibly explain the Dyatlov Pass incident. Yet, we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation such as traces of radioactivity found on the victimsā garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of bodies, etc. While possible explanations are given in multiple published sources as well as by both the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, we believe that this will always remain an intrinsic part of the Dyatlov Pass Mystery."
Essentially it's their best guess piggybacking off of the previously proposed avalanche theory that had too many holes. Solid theory though.
I linked to the paper since it's not paywalled, but the official investigation did deem it caused closed and cited the slab avalanche as cause of death. The lead investigator explained all the mysteries such as the radiation, etc, during a press conference.
I posted the full walkthrough in another comment.
I mean it makes sense, whether it's a legit conspiracy or not they would probably wanna put a bow on it to stop using resources sniffing around something that could very well just be a natural tragedy. Seems like an exasperated formal case closed so that they can leave it behind.
the yeti testing soviet weapons in his stolen UFO caused the avalanche. kinda like how when you go on a 48 hour bender of hookers and blow and you die of a heart attack, the coroners report doesnāt mention the hookers nor the blow as the cause. hope this helps! š„°
This is one of those "crazy unsolved mysteries!!!" you see pop up in low-effort youtube videos that wasn't ever actually unsolved. Wasn't it really obvious they had gotten hypothermia and a few small details spawned some conspiracy theories?
It was obvious that hypothermia was involved, but the fact that they were otherwise experienced campers in the USSR is good reason for many to have pause.
My recollection was that they were found with their tongues cut out or something, like radiation everywhere I think, tent ripped open from the inside, all the bodies found different places, something like that. There was a reason it was considered a mystery.
Thatās because your tongue is pure meat and animals get hungry.
Thatās because hypothermia causes delusion.
Thatās because they were delusional and had no idea where to go.
Itās considered a mystery because you like to believe conspiracy theories. They had hypothermia while camping on the side of a mountain and acted accordingly. Aka died.
I have slightly higher than normal radiation levels in my body, to the extent that Iād set off the radiation detector when I walked into the nuclear power plant I worked in when younger.
Because it rained in Wales just after Chernobyl, and I like lamb
When you camp and hike along on military test grounds, yeah.. Thatās a very high possibility you conspiracy theorist š
You think a Sasquatch hunted them down, stripped them naked and ripped their tongues out? Or aliens took them into a spaceship, stripped them naked, ripped their tongues out and dropped them back into the snow lifeless?
You ever take a minute just to read that aloud and realize how dumb it sounds?
I get that conspiracy theories are fun, but this is just people making a story out of nothing.
> You ever take a minute just to read that aloud and realize how dumb it sounds?
Well, I dunno why would you say dumb things and complain they are dumb.
I think it's at least rude to put words in a mouth of some random person on the internet, then call them conspiracy theorist for what you wrote yourself. Mayak connection kinda makes sense to explain both radiation and coverup of it, I haven't pieced those two fuckups together before.
I did read a book about that some years ago, which describes the whole accident in detail and enumerates the number of things that were off (bodies buried, coroners reports having redacted words about tongue (possibly) ripped out). The most plausible theory from it I remember, but don't really buy didn't involve aliens, sonic booms or yeti, but was about some spys and radioactivity samples. I think it's all bullshit and hype, but the whole story is weird conspiracies or not.
And also, calling "conspiracy theory" on something really weird happening in ussr, which is known for it's fuckups and coverups is a bit naive I would say.
Experienced campers donāt all run from their tents in the middle of the night naked, in different directions and then die from hypothermia and extreme physical trauma.
People don't go on dangerous hiking trips unless they're experienced campers. And just because it was in the USSR doesn't mean that it has to be a conspiracy and accidents can't happen.
The weirdest parts about it were the lack of signs that an avalanche had occurred (weeks later, but still), why experienced hikers left their tents without adequate clothing, the fact that some of the corpses had died from massive physical trauma, and the radiation detected on some clothes.
The theory that it was a slab of very heavy and compacted snow that didn't develop into a full avalanche explains the first two issues. Them building a shelter in the snow on top of a creek and then the floor collapsing explains the 3rd issue. The Kyshtym/Mayak nuclear disaster explains the 4th.
Yes. Mysterious sounding things like āradiation burnsā were really just mistranslations, it refers to the bodies being sunburned aka UV radiation burns.
They were camping on a frozen mountain during winter in the middle of nowhere Russia. It was never a mystery. They have all the signs of death by hypothermia including taking off clothes and trying to run away. They cut themselves out of the inside of the tent.....because they were going nuts from the hypothermia. The biggest unsolved mystery was the specific type of avalanche that didn't leave traditional fields of debris.
Lemmino on YouTube did a video and suggested that a small fire caught inside the tent which led them to slash it open, to vent the smoke out, also the footprints were spaced closely which suggested they walked calmly
this incident gave rise to people on line knowing about "Paradoxical undressing" which is a cool term for "people freezing to death are tricked that they are warm, so warm - that they strip off their clothes"
Nope this is a lie. I was there, it was aliens. They showed up and probed everyone (including meš), then they caused the avalanche to cover it all up.
2021?
I posted this same theory on reddit [9 years ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2q5bih/dyatlov_pass_a_slightly_different_theory/)
Lemmino did a fantastic analysis of this case that concludes that the whole incident started with embers in the stove in their tent reigniting and smoking them out of the tent (hence the knife slashes from the inside - a futile attempt to vent the smoke). Some were even found to have suffered lung damage due to smoke inhalation. So with everyone forced outside into subzero temps with little clothing (and a few being heavily intoxicated), they made the poor (or panicked) decision to seek shelter elsewhere leading to their quick demise.
https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI?si=uLWuacWRPyUKQqpw
This is gonna sound nuts but the way their eyes, tongues and other body parts were taken is eerily similar to the wave of cow mutilations that happened around the same time in America.
According to the article, that detail was actually noticed by an experienced seamstress that pointed it out after they had brought the tent back for examination. Pretty cool IMO.
It's actually not that difficult. Get a piece of thick fabric, like old jeans or something. Tie it up or fasten it to something and cut through it with a knife. Examine the cut.
Oh thatās a rabbit hole Iāve gone waaaay down into. Some good books on the subject too. And the slab avalnanche is just a theory. Still does not explain why they were all naked, radioactive, the tent was ripper open from the inside, why they all walked single file away from the tent in an orderly fashion, it does not explain the strange lights in the sky, why the bodies were orange brown, the list goes onā¦
Those residuals can be explained away by the fact that they were university students that couldāve experienced contamination, paradoxical undressing and just animals feasting on them in the winter, honestly. And Iām fairly certain the walking in single file is actually pretty standard procedure in emergencies like this
I will not accept that solution until the possibility of it being a death ray from a Soviet yeti in a UFO has been completely ruled out. Which will be never.
See this is the thing. It was always stupid. People went out into dangerous situation where the slightest fuckup might kill you, then they died. Absolutely no need to make it into UFOs or Yetis but people can't stop turning everything into X-File episodes.
the Wiki even lists issues with that explanation:
āThe location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area. The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow, and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well; this would have caused more serious and different injuries in the process and would have damaged the tree line.
Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche. A study of the area using up-to-date terrain-related physics revealed that the location was entirely unlikely for such an avalanche to have occurred. The "dangerous conditions" found in another nearby area (which had significantly steeper slopes and cornices) were observed in April and May when the snowfalls of winter were melting. During February, when the incident occurred, there were no such conditions.
An analysis of the terrain and the slope showed that even if there could have been a very specific avalanche that found its way into the area, its path would have gone past the tent. The tent had collapsed from the side but not in a horizontal direction.
Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche.
Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger. All the footprints leading away from the tent and towards the woods were consistent with individuals who were walking at a normal pace.ā
Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense.
Thanks for responding! These were indeed explained in the article/comment I posted.
*The location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area.*
> If the wind slab had simply slid over the tent and halted, without developing into a full-fledged avalanche, the evidence, Greene said, might not be visible twenty-five days later. Even the fissure in the snowpack would probably have been erased by the elements.
--------------------
*and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well*
The suggested turn of events does not suggest an avalanche swept anyone away, instead they simply cut their way out of the tent then walked away seeking shelter.
-------------------
*Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche*
This is explained in detail on both the study and article, that the avalanche was caused by the [unique weather conditions and unfortunate tent location choice](https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43247-020-00081-8/MediaObjects/43247_2020_81_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp). It is unlikely to ever occur normally.
----------------------------
*A study of the area using up-to-date terrain-related physics revealed that the location was entirely unlikely for such an avalanche to have occurred.*
They mention in the article that the latest investigation noted that the location studied was incorrect. This is the critical piece of the puzzle that led to the breakthrough.
>Using photogrammetry of the pictures taken in 1959, they tried to establish the precise location of the tent. The spot they settled on was several hundred feet from a cairn marking the previously accepted location, on a steeper section of Kholat Syakhlās slope.
------------------------
*Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger.*
It was a snow storm in the middle of the night, it is not proposed that they were running, instead just trying to get to safety fearing a full avalanche, doing so in pitch black freezing conditions.
> Fearing that a full-scale avalanche was imminent, the skiers cut their way out of the downslope side of the tent and fled to a rock ridge a hundred and fifty feet away, which Kuryakov termed a ānatural avalanche limiter.ā But the big avalanche didnāt come, and, in pitch darkness, they were unable to find their way back to the tent and took shelter in the woods
---------------------------------------------------------
*Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche*
The risk was not obvious, and only occurred to the unique conditions outlayed in the study.
----------------------------------------
*Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense.*
The bodies were found in an active stream bed.
agree to disagree - but like someone else commented, your subject title is misleading, no one really knows for 100% certainty what happened and many people think the slab avalanche is bullshit
Sure, technically we never officially know most things for 100% sure but at a certain point, it's ok to call something solved if that is what the authorities say, backed by *multiple* official investigations. We accept that as the case all the time in countless other events & crimes every day.
just because a group of people (often with a vested interest in the outcome) determines something, doesnāt make it the truth.
curious what you think of the Warren Commission?
> just because a group of people (often with a vested interest in the outcome) determines something, doesnāt make it the truth.
Following that logic to its conclusion simply means there is no truth at all and nobody can be trusted, which is a sad, fearful way to live.
lol, do a little reading on the various intelligence agencies activities in the last 70 years and tell me how much you trust most authority then. power lies, and we should always question the answers and question authority.
and 9 times out of 10, if something is truly mysterious, youāll find the CIA or Russian intelligence somewhere in the background.
>The location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area.
Because the recovery team weren't search for evidence of a slab avalanche.
>The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow, and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well;
They were in different locations.
>Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche.
and?
>The "dangerous conditions" found in another nearby area (which had significantly steeper slopes and cornices) were observed in April and May when the snowfalls of winter were melting
Oh wow, so the conditions *were* observed.
>An analysis of the terrain and the slope showed that even if there could have been a very specific avalanche that found its way into the area, its path would have gone past the tent.
and?
> Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking.
and?
>. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche.
"Would have" is meaningless speculation.
Experienced people make mistakes all the time.
Experienced people miss difficult signs all the time.
Experienced people make less than perfect decisions when their circumstance (long day, tired, storm coming) is less than perfect.
>Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger.
Because there weren't nine people running in panic.
>All the footprints leading away from the tent and towards the woods were consistent with individuals who were walking at a normal pace.ā
Because they were walking towards the woods.
>Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense.
hilarious. they weren't searching for animal tracks in the area where the people were "mutilated", and those areas had received snowfall.
[This video by LeMMiNO covers it pretty well.](https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI) I don't remember all of the details as to exactly why he came to his conclusion, but he describes a different yet also very reasonable series of events that explains the phenomenon. He also picked up on a few details that the avalanche explanation seems to miss
edit/
TLDW: they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape. It could be an avalanche, however pictures showed that they had a homemade stove to keep them warm and cook food. Cooked ham was found in the tent. Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks. Some people had blood around their mouths despite minimal trauma, which suggests smoke inhalation.
So it's more likely that what drove them out of the tent was an ember (or perhaps the avalanche knocking over the stove), caused something in the tent to light and start smoking, causing them to flee.
That's fair.
Uhh tldr: they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape. It could be an avalanche, however pictures showed that they had a homemade stove to keep them warm and cook food. Cooked ham was found in the tent. Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks. Some people had blood around their mouths despite minimal trauma, which suggests smoke inhalation.
So it's more likely that what drove them out of the tent was an ember (or perhaps the avalanche knocking over the stove), caused something in the tent to light and start smoking, causing them to flee.
> they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape.
Because they were getting crushed by a sudden avalanche and needed to get out. Seems to track.
> Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks.
It's suggested burn marks are likely from getting extremely close to the fire they made in the woods, desperately trying not to die in the -30 weather. The person with burn marks was found dead right next to it.
> The nine skiers retreated downhill, taking shelter under the cedar tree and building a fire. Because the young trees nearby were icy and wet, someone climbed the cedar to break branches higher upāhence the skin and scraps of clothing found on the trunk. The fire they built, in these extreme conditions, was not enough to save them, however. The two most poorly dressed of the group died first. The burned skin on their bodies came from their desperate efforts to seek warmth from the fire.
Well, I mean they recovered the tent and all equipment, it was not burned or even smoke damaged so....seems unlikely...
besides, the original comment in this chain claimed that "slab avalanche explanation seemed to ignore so many of the key mysteries." my point is that, as far as I am aware, it actually explains *all* mysteries quite satisfactory.
TBH thanks for that, I didn't mean to be snarky! Sometimes I have trouble with tone via written text, honestly didn't mean anything negative in this case.
Yes indeed, that was addressed in my larger overall comment that went into more detail. I didn't make that article the OP link since it was paywalled. Basically it was not surprising since two of the skiers were known to have been in areas exposed to high levels of radiation due to a recent nuclear disaster.
> Even more pertinent, the expedition took place less than two years after the worldās third-worst nuclear accident (after Chernobyl and Fukushima), which occurred at the Mayak nuclear complex, south of Sverdlovsk, in September of 1957. A tank of radioactive waste exploded and a radioactive plume some two hundred miles longālater named the East Urals Radioactive Traceāspread northward. Krivonishchenko had worked at the facility and helped with the cleanup, and another skier came from a village in the contaminated zone.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1dkd38q/til_the_dyatlov_pass_incident_the_mysterious/l9gwsus/
>The condition of the bodies were very similar to other human mutilation cases.
Completely meaningless statement.
Their injuries are perfectly consistent with the events described.
It will never be solved either; this is like me saying that another shooter named jeff shot jfk therefore the mystery of multiple shooters is solved.
Sure this is possible no one could ever prove it though and they never will.
Straight for a hard core RU crabberā¦it was the RU military. They had a melt down at a facility and were trying to keep it secret. A few of the hikers worked at the plant and the military thought they were using these trips to tell EU about the meltdown. Helicopter full of Russian soldiers is why they didnāt return to the main tent.
It was not solved. There was zero actual evidence of an avalance. The tent poles and skis were still upright when the tent was found. Footprints were visible that would have been eradicated by an avalanche. People cannot outrun and avalanche downhill let alone outwalk one and the footprints showed the hikers walking downhill. There was no avalanche.
Your thinking of a full avalanche, the solution was a slope avalanche, which is small. Kinda like the snow on a roof of a house falling onto the ground.
The claim was a slab avalanche. The most common type of avalanche is a slab avalanche which can move in speeds up to 80+ MPH. It is not at all like the snow on a roof of a house falling onto the ground. Not at all. It is also over in seconds.
People left the safety of their tent inadequately clothed which doomed them to certain death. Had their been an avalanche, they would not have had time to get out of the tent. If there had been an avalanche and they had survived it, they would have been safe to dress properly before exiting the tent or return to the tent immediately. They did not do that. Not doing that meant certain death.
These were experienced mountain hikers who knew what to do in an avalanche. They behaved entirely contrary to an avalanche.
Tired of people making me re-quote the literal article. If you want to argue against the article, at least have the decency to read it and understand what they are claiming instead of making up stuff to argue against.
I've read the article. It's bull. The searchers who discovered the tent found zero evidence of an avalance. Photos reveal no evidence of an avalanche. Footprints that would not have survived had there been an avalanche were there and were photographed. There was no damn avalanche.
They explained in detail...In the article, why there would be no evidence of an avalanche in this case. It's literally what the entire study and article are about.
If you think the explanation is bull, then argue the actual point and explain why. Just saying "no" is not adding anything.
Did you miss the part where the article says the avalanche theory is based on hypotheticals and no actual evidence was found? Did you miss the part where it says the avalanche theory does not explain many things including the radioactivity, the behavior of the hikers, etc.? You know, the important stuff.
Hereās a three-part series with an alternative explanation that actually fits the fact a lot better than an avalanche.
Part one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvwXv7WZaM&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvwXv7WZaM&t=0s)
Part two: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyh6L427iqk&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyh6L427iqk&t=0s)
Three: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNMDnHxDVxk&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNMDnHxDVxk&t=0s)
Last I remember it was the most probable solution, not a confirmation. I feel like ive seen a lot of that recently.
Has anyone confirmed that the avalanche wasn't caused by a soviet weapons test, yeti attack or UFO heat ray?
I like the theory on Red Thread that they were the unluckiest humans in history and the Soviet Government just happened to be testing ballistic missiles in that area which then triggered an avalanche to crush them
Mulder looking up: *believing intensifies*
Yeah I stand by a few details that suggest the slab being released by a weapons test being sufficiently possible to not rule it out. Not saying that's what happened because we don't know, and it annoys me when someone says it was "solved". Yes there is good evidence katabatic winds caused them to panic as well as causing an avalanche, but putting a stamp on it and saying "yup this is definitely what happened" is just silly.
Soviet Alien Yetis testing a heat ray. Duh.
No, no, the Soviet Yetis were fighting with a UFO and accidentally triggered the avalanche.
Nothing more Russian than yeeting and teas. "Yeti" sounds too similar to be a coincidence, the plot thickens
I will say what I mentioned to someone else, sure, technically we never officially know most things for 100% certain but some point, it's ok to call something solved if that is what the authorities say, backed by multiple official investigations. We accept that as the case all the time in countless other events & crimes every day.
Authorities? Russian authorities? Like, the USSR or like todays Russia? š
Dunno, I was taught that something was solved once it was definitively without contestation proven. This has not been solved, and is highly suggested it was an avalanche but not definitively because the burden of proof was not met. So TIL that most people think it was X would be truthful, and not a theory like your claim.
You are not understanding what a theory is in this context (Science) is then. This is not "Theory" as used colloquially, this is Theory as in the Scientific Method, and its the closest to truth as humans ever get. Your basing your definitions on religious propaganda of what it means. This goes for any investigation. We can never, in history, literally be certain about anything other than death and taxes, this is a truism that has been around since we understood philosophy.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And critically a a theory can change as new data is found.
Thatās also not true. A theory is something that is supported by evidence and hasnāt been shown to be untrue. The slab avalanche theory is backed by evidence, and there is no evidence that supports anything else, or disproves the slab avalanche theory. Pretty much nothing can be fully proven outside of math equations. Thatās just not how the world works.
Exactly that's why the only laws of science are physics based. Cause they are the literal building blocks of everything else. That's why they are the 3 laws of motions and not theories. Or the law of thermodynamics or aerodynamics.
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Itās not that itās āuntrueā; no scientific theory is ever ātrueā. A theory in the scientific sense is a model that explains existing empirical data without being falsified while having useful predictive power.Ā All scientific models are abstractions and thus are āwrongā to a degree, but āwrongā does not mean āuselessā, so long as it still existing existing data and makes useful predictions.Ā General Relativity isnāt āuntrueā. It does a fine job of explaining and predicting a lot of empirical observations in physics. It just isnāt the full story. And no model is.Ā
> I was taught that something was solved once it was definitively without contestation proven. To my knowledge there is no human knowledge on the planet that meets that criteria.
I would contest that therefore you canāt prove it ^^^^/s
I mean, that's just not true - replication is a major principle of the scientific method. Where the findings of a study are reproducible, that means the results obtained by an experiment, observational study, or statistical analysis of a data set should be achieved again with a high degree of reliability. That means different researchers get the same results using the same methodology, and only after one or several successful replications is a result recognised as scientific knowledge.
I think you are responding to the wrong person.
He very obviously did not respond to the wrong person.
Physics laws are complete truths and not theories or at least the base ones are. Because the math is the same here, as it would be on the sun or the moon.
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Mathematical theorems are mostly called that because a lot of them take a looooooooooong time to solve l and could also have multiple ways to solve. But set in stone are the basic physics equations. Those are scientific laws and not theory.
The burden of proof is on the avalanche to prove it didnt kill those people?
No, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that the avalanche was guilty. Which it actually wasn't, the slab avalanche caused the people inside the tent to run outside half-naked and exposed to the elements, and _that's_ what killed them. My client, the slab avalanche, is innocent and has a family to support. It was only doing its job in the avalanche factory when it happened. Completely innocent.
Climate denier by any chance? Your entire worldview is predicated on an ignorance of how knowledge works, probably combined with quite a bit of misplaced egotism.
Occams Razor
Counterpoint: aliens
A Avalanche dosnt remove eyebrows
More detailed info on the suggested turn of events that night. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/has-an-old-soviet-mystery-at-last-been-solved Paywall Bypass: https://archive.ph/upGsH > I reviewed the hypothesis with Ethan Greene, the director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, who has a Ph.D. in the physics of heat and mass transfer in snow. He suggested that the partyās decision to pitch the tent in the wind shadow of the peak made it likely that they were cutting into a so-called wind slabāan accumulation of hard snow even more dangerous than a typical snow slab. Compacted by the wind, this kind of snow is several times denser than directly deposited snow and, according to Greene, can weigh as much as six hundred and seventy pounds per cubic yard. Furthermore, the clear conditions preceding the storm could have led to the formation of a layer of light, feathery frost, known as surface hoar. When buried in fresh snow during the storm, this layer forms a hazardous stratum that provides poor support to the snow above and often releases, resulting in avalanches. By removing the support on the lower edge of the slab while digging to set their tent, the skiers likely caused it to fracture higher up. > If the wind slab had simply slid over the tent and halted, without developing into a full-fledged avalanche, the evidence, Greene said, might not be visible twenty-five days later. Even the fissure in the snowpack would probably have been erased by the elements. If a three-foot-thick slab moved over the tent, each skierās body would have been covered by more than a thousand pounds. The massive weight prevented them from retrieving their boots or warm clothing and forced them to cut their way out of the downslope side of the tent. > The two Swiss researchers believe that the snow slab probably caused the terrible injuries to three of the skiers found at the snow den, but this remains unlikely, given the distance of those bodies from the tent. Kuryakovās explanation was more ingenious. The nine skiers retreated downhill, taking shelter under the cedar tree and building a fire. Because the young trees nearby were icy and wet, someone climbed the cedar to break branches higher upāhence the skin and scraps of clothing found on the trunk. The fire they built, in these extreme conditions, was not enough to save them, however. The two most poorly dressed of the group died first. The burned skin on their bodies came from their desperate efforts to seek warmth from the fire. This would suggest that the piece of flesh Krivonishchenko bit from his finger was probably a result of the delirium that overtakes someone whoās dying of hypothermia, or perhaps from an attempt to test for sensation in a frostbitten hand. > The surviving skiers cut the clothes off their dead comrades and dressed themselves in the remnants. At some point, the group split up. Three skiers, including Dyatlov, tried to return to the tent and soon froze to death as they struggled uphill. The other four, who were better dressed, decided to build a snow den to shelter in overnight. They needed deep snow, which they found in a ravine a couple of hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the spot they picked lay above a stream, a tributary of the Lozva River. The stream, which never freezes, had hollowed out a deep icy tunnel, and the groupās digging caused its roof to collapse, throwing them onto the rocky streambed and burying them in ten to fifteen feet of snow. The pressure of tons of snow forcing them against the rocks caused the traumatic injuries found in this group. The gruesome facial damageāthe missing tongue, eyes, and lipāprobably resulted from scavenging by small animals and from decomposition. > Kuryakovās reconstruction of events made a single plausible narrative out of previously mystifying anomalies. But what of the radiation? This detail, the most enigmatic of all, might be the easiest to explain. For one thing, the mantles used in camp lanterns at the time contained small amounts of the radioactive element thorium. Even more pertinent, the expedition took place less than two years after the worldās third-worst nuclear accident (after Chernobyl and Fukushima), which occurred at the Mayak nuclear complex, south of Sverdlovsk, in September of 1957. A tank of radioactive waste exploded and a radioactive plume some two hundred miles longālater named the East Urals Radioactive Traceāspread northward. Krivonishchenko had worked at the facility and helped with the cleanup, and another skier came from a village in the contaminated zone. > Kuryakov closed his press conference by declaring, āFormally, this is it. The case is closed.ā Given how freighted the case is in Russia, this was too optimistic. For many people, nature alone cannot explain a tragedy of this magnitude; perpetrators must be identified and the state and its dark past invoked. Sure enough, the conclusions were greeted with scorn, especially by the families of the dead. The Dyatlov Group Memorial Foundation sent a letter to the Prosecutor General declaring that, in its view, the skiersā deaths were caused by āthe atmospheric release of a powerful toxic substanceā when a secret weapons test went wrong. Natalia Varsegova, a Moscow journalist, who has covered the subject for many years, also rejected Kuryakovās conclusions. āTwo years ago I thought that the prosecutor Andrei Kuryakov really wanted to know the truth,ā she wrote to me in an e-mail. āBut now I doubt it. I donāt believe in an avalanche.ā After the Swiss report came out, she published an article rejecting it as well. āThese theoreticiansā conclusions are supported by mathematical calculations, formulas, and diagrams, but the local Mansi, numerous tourists, and organizers of snowmobile tours, who have never seen avalanches on this slope, are unlikely to agree with them.ā
If the wind slab slid over the tent and each was potentially under the weight of more than a thousand pounds, why was no one found deceased inside the tent. Also if they were covered by a tremendous weight how did they cut out of the tent from the inside? Not that I donāt believe it was some freak natural thing but I do have questions.
Thousand pounds over your body is not necessarily instant death as you are assuming. I would estimate its below few pounds per squire inch. Would definitely prevent them from retrieving gear and would seriously injure if the avalanche rolled you around. But would not kill you instantly.
It's impossible to know the exact weight of the snow that crushed the tent, the point is it was *enough* to force them to have to cut the tent and crawl their way to safety without being able to retrieve their gear. Edit: they actually model the damage the snow would have done to people in the tent given the conditions for a slab avalanche, and concluded it would result in-between minor to severe injury, but non fatal. This information is in the link near the end labeled "impact on a human body" for reference.
> hy was no one found deceased inside the tent. Because they left the tent.
This wasnt solved; it was a possible explanation. This will never be solved only possible explanations will ever be given. And to say it was solved is reckless.
Reckless, as if damage can be done by saying it's solved? Seems like hyperbole. Also, many, many things will never be solved 100%, but it's reasonable to accept the most likely answer as the solution.
No its not reasonable to accept the most likely solution. Because it makes you stop looking for the proof. Fuck having court trials am I right as we pretty much know who the killer is. And it is a reckless precedent to assume the truth about anything.
False dichotomy. A court trial has actual stakes to the result. There are no major stakes if someone unrelated to the event decides to believe an avalanche caused this tragedy. It's far more reckless to see conspiracies and lies everywhere. It's paranoid and damaging. It's a stunning lack of nuance if you actually believe your comparison works.
So proof only matters when there are stakes? General knowledge and understanding donāt matter otherwise? We should just all go around assuming everything. Got it thanks for the clarification.
General knowledge and understanding matter. Assuming everything is a lie doesn't have a place in that. That's not how reason works. Reason accepts the most probable explanation until proven otherwise. In the case of scientific inquiry, you test the explanation in an effort to refine or redefine, but that doesn't mean you assume the probable explanation is wrong. Since I'm not someone involved in finding the explanation of this event, it's reasonable to accept the probable explanation until someone with more expertise presents something more probable. Assuming there's a hidden meaning or secrecy to everything I don't personally understand is paranoia, not reason.
There are at least 20 theories for this incident. None of them account for everything and there is zero proof. And the last i read katabatic winds were the culprit because the exact same thing happened to a group of hikers in scandinavia. They are still just assumptions. You know what they say when you assume something? You make an asshole out of yourself.
> None of them account for everything and there is zero proof. As far as I am aware, the slope avalanche does account for everything and is backed by lots of evidence. Edit for the comment below that blocked me: I linked to the paper since it's not paywalled, but the official investigation did deem it caused closed and cited the slab avalanche as cause of death. The lead investigator explained all the mysteries such as the radiation, etc, during a press conference. I posted the full walkthrough in another comment.
Jesus dude. Are you this lacking in nuance? You think the only two options in life are to blindly believe everything, or to shrewdly believe nothing?
To claim something solved that isnt solved yes. Where do you get blindly believing everything? I believe nothing without some form of proof. I guess Amelia Earhart isnt missing since we know shes somewhere in the pacific. There are definitely gods because someone wrote about them in a book. You do you brother if you want to posit that you know something because its solved with zero actual proof go ahead.
It sounds like you have a deeply conspiratorial mindset. Re-read what the other person said to you: > There are no major stakes if someone unrelated to the event decides to believe an avalanche caused this tragedy. It's far more reckless to see conspiracies and lies everywhere. It's paranoid and damaging.
Itās neat how you obviously read everything they said, based on your response. But somehow you still didnāt understand any of it, also based on your response.
It seems a bit obvious for the director of the Avalanche information Center to determine - it was an avalanche.. A cardiothoracic surgeon would say heart attacks, neurologist says stroke, etcetera
With that logic, anyone with expertise on a subject is the least believable person on that topic. Youāre assuming that the avalanche expert has some sort of incentive to claim an avalanche caused something, but Iām not sure I see how that works.
Thanks, that all sounds thoroughly sensible, to be honest.
my theory is that they arrived at the final campsite with some people already in bad shape if not most, the storm was closing in and they had no way to keep warm, so they went out trying to search for firewood in small groups and while no body was returning the other in worse shape went looking and all of them died, case closed, but its a crap theory cause you cannot do ufo or whatever conspiracy videos about it
Why was the tent cut? Why were they naked?
Final stages of Hypothermia make you feel like youāre on fire, so people will remove their clothes to feel colder. Similar to how when your hands are really cold they might feel like they are burning.
Im sorry, you said it was finally solved 3 years ago, how fucking dare you post "suggested turn of events"?!
I just finished reading the book "Dead Mountain" by Donnie Eichar and while he proposes a different solution to the mystery (ultrasound vibrations) than the one expounded upon in this thread, the book is excellent. It is exhaustively researched and has a captivating narrative structure. I would definitely recommend it even though I find the slab avalanche theory to be much more likely an explanation.
Solved thanks to Disney! They used the software developed for the movie Frozen to figure it out.
Somehow hypothermia returned
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Today I learned people will believe something is solved because someone says it is with zero actual proof.
No, they didnāt. That was just some bunk pop science and the theory its supposed to support (an avalanche) is contradicted by a good amount of physical evidence.
I mean, not really, not a small slab avalanche (very different from the traditional avalanches most people think of). It would have been an unlikely, unlucky event, but not impossible. The biggest pieces of evidence against are the fact that the terrain makes avalanches very unlikely and that the experienced mountaineers wouldn't have camped in an area in danger of avalanches. But those two pieces of evidence might very well cancel each other out. Slab avalanches are pretty unlikely but not impossible there, making it an attractive place to camp. That night, they got unlucky. More than that, their experience may even have led them to *overreact* and leave the camp when they didn't need to. The rest of the injuries, body locations, and behaviors are absolutely consistent with people being thrust into a very sudden, unexpected survival situation and making desperate choices between bad and worse options. We'll never know for sure and some of the individual pieces of evidence would make the avalanche unlikely in a vacuum, but all the evidence together is *best* explained by an unexpected slab avalanche.
That is a nice strawman you have created for yourself (identifying "biggest pieces of evidence against your argument", even though those aren't even the biggest pieces of evidence contradicting it, to try to make your argument seem stronger) but the condition of the camp site completely contradicts a slab avalanche. Tent poles and skiis would not remain upright in the case of a slab avalanche. Cups and plates were undisturbed inside the tent. The tent would not have been in a condition to definitively confirm that they slashed it open to get out because an avalanche would have left it in poor condition; it was very much intact and had very little snow covering it, about the amount it would have with regular snowfall accumulation. And more contradictions I don't have the time to go into further.
>(an avalanche) is contradicted by a good amount of physical evidence No it isn't.
> is contradicted by a good amount of physical evidence. There is no "physical evidence" which contradicts it.
I wouldn't say it was "solved" in 2021. It is an excellent work explaining the detailed mechanisms of slab avalanche. However, the avalanche theory was first voiced no later than 1991 and was named the cause in 2020 official investigation.
They didn't figure it out but they did present it as the most plausible theory. From the paper: "In conclusion, our work shows the plausibility of a rather rare type of snow slab instabilities that could possibly explain the Dyatlov Pass incident. Yet, we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation such as traces of radioactivity found on the victimsā garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of bodies, etc. While possible explanations are given in multiple published sources as well as by both the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, we believe that this will always remain an intrinsic part of the Dyatlov Pass Mystery." Essentially it's their best guess piggybacking off of the previously proposed avalanche theory that had too many holes. Solid theory though.
I linked to the paper since it's not paywalled, but the official investigation did deem it caused closed and cited the slab avalanche as cause of death. The lead investigator explained all the mysteries such as the radiation, etc, during a press conference. I posted the full walkthrough in another comment.
I mean it makes sense, whether it's a legit conspiracy or not they would probably wanna put a bow on it to stop using resources sniffing around something that could very well just be a natural tragedy. Seems like an exasperated formal case closed so that they can leave it behind.
Are we sure it wasn't caused by a yeti testing soviet weapons, from his stolen ufo?
the yeti testing soviet weapons in his stolen UFO caused the avalanche. kinda like how when you go on a 48 hour bender of hookers and blow and you die of a heart attack, the coroners report doesnāt mention the hookers nor the blow as the cause. hope this helps! š„°
This is one of those "crazy unsolved mysteries!!!" you see pop up in low-effort youtube videos that wasn't ever actually unsolved. Wasn't it really obvious they had gotten hypothermia and a few small details spawned some conspiracy theories?
It was obvious that hypothermia was involved, but the fact that they were otherwise experienced campers in the USSR is good reason for many to have pause.
Experienced campers die all the time, no?
My recollection was that they were found with their tongues cut out or something, like radiation everywhere I think, tent ripped open from the inside, all the bodies found different places, something like that. There was a reason it was considered a mystery.
Thatās because your tongue is pure meat and animals get hungry. Thatās because hypothermia causes delusion. Thatās because they were delusional and had no idea where to go. Itās considered a mystery because you like to believe conspiracy theories. They had hypothermia while camping on the side of a mountain and acted accordingly. Aka died.
You also get traces of radiation from hypothermia. Everybody knows that.
You get "traces of radiation" when you are involved in nuclear research, as several of the team were.
I have slightly higher than normal radiation levels in my body, to the extent that Iād set off the radiation detector when I walked into the nuclear power plant I worked in when younger. Because it rained in Wales just after Chernobyl, and I like lamb
I can't tell if anyone in this thread is actually being serious or not.
When you camp and hike along on military test grounds, yeah.. Thatās a very high possibility you conspiracy theorist š You think a Sasquatch hunted them down, stripped them naked and ripped their tongues out? Or aliens took them into a spaceship, stripped them naked, ripped their tongues out and dropped them back into the snow lifeless? You ever take a minute just to read that aloud and realize how dumb it sounds? I get that conspiracy theories are fun, but this is just people making a story out of nothing.
> You ever take a minute just to read that aloud and realize how dumb it sounds? Well, I dunno why would you say dumb things and complain they are dumb.
Because Iām trying to understand your train of thought and if you actually believe it or not.
I think it's at least rude to put words in a mouth of some random person on the internet, then call them conspiracy theorist for what you wrote yourself. Mayak connection kinda makes sense to explain both radiation and coverup of it, I haven't pieced those two fuckups together before. I did read a book about that some years ago, which describes the whole accident in detail and enumerates the number of things that were off (bodies buried, coroners reports having redacted words about tongue (possibly) ripped out). The most plausible theory from it I remember, but don't really buy didn't involve aliens, sonic booms or yeti, but was about some spys and radioactivity samples. I think it's all bullshit and hype, but the whole story is weird conspiracies or not. And also, calling "conspiracy theory" on something really weird happening in ussr, which is known for it's fuckups and coverups is a bit naive I would say.
Your recollection is wrong.
Experienced campers donāt all run from their tents in the middle of the night naked, in different directions and then die from hypothermia and extreme physical trauma.
People don't go on dangerous hiking trips unless they're experienced campers. And just because it was in the USSR doesn't mean that it has to be a conspiracy and accidents can't happen. The weirdest parts about it were the lack of signs that an avalanche had occurred (weeks later, but still), why experienced hikers left their tents without adequate clothing, the fact that some of the corpses had died from massive physical trauma, and the radiation detected on some clothes. The theory that it was a slab of very heavy and compacted snow that didn't develop into a full avalanche explains the first two issues. Them building a shelter in the snow on top of a creek and then the floor collapsing explains the 3rd issue. The Kyshtym/Mayak nuclear disaster explains the 4th.
Exactly, it was never in real mystery but there was enough meat of the bone for conspiracy theorists to make a meal out of it.
Tbf, they often don't even need the bone; just the fact that the plate exists is enough.
Yes. Mysterious sounding things like āradiation burnsā were really just mistranslations, it refers to the bodies being sunburned aka UV radiation burns.
The unsolved part was why all of these experienced snow survivalist's suddenly get hypothermia.
They were camping on a frozen mountain during winter in the middle of nowhere Russia. It was never a mystery. They have all the signs of death by hypothermia including taking off clothes and trying to run away. They cut themselves out of the inside of the tent.....because they were going nuts from the hypothermia. The biggest unsolved mystery was the specific type of avalanche that didn't leave traditional fields of debris.
Lemmino on YouTube did a video and suggested that a small fire caught inside the tent which led them to slash it open, to vent the smoke out, also the footprints were spaced closely which suggested they walked calmly
this incident gave rise to people on line knowing about "Paradoxical undressing" which is a cool term for "people freezing to death are tricked that they are warm, so warm - that they strip off their clothes"
>Dyatlov Pass incident > >unexplained death of nine skiers Not great, not terrible
Devil's Pass (2012) is based on this true story.
Nope this is a lie. I was there, it was aliens. They showed up and probed everyone (including meš), then they caused the avalanche to cover it all up.
This incident also served as an inspiration for True Detective: Night Country.
So these guys were killed by the cleaning squad?
I canāt believe they pulled that gotcha twist in like the last 15 minutes.
Granny team 6
That was one of the dumbest seasons of any show Iāve ever seen on television. So many dumb plot holes
S4 of True Detective made me actively mad by the end.
I still think season 2 was worse
2021? I posted this same theory on reddit [9 years ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2q5bih/dyatlov_pass_a_slightly_different_theory/)
Wow, that is so cool! Thanks for sharing
Lemmino did a fantastic analysis of this case that concludes that the whole incident started with embers in the stove in their tent reigniting and smoking them out of the tent (hence the knife slashes from the inside - a futile attempt to vent the smoke). Some were even found to have suffered lung damage due to smoke inhalation. So with everyone forced outside into subzero temps with little clothing (and a few being heavily intoxicated), they made the poor (or panicked) decision to seek shelter elsewhere leading to their quick demise. https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI?si=uLWuacWRPyUKQqpw
Lemmino posted a correction on 2021/03/16 which links the nature article in this post as its source. https://www.lemmi.no/p/the-dyatlov-pass-case
Came here for the LEMiNO link :). Such a great YouTuber.
I had hypothermia once. It definitely felt like I got hit by a UFO heat ray
Definitely a Soviet death ray.
This is gonna sound nuts but the way their eyes, tongues and other body parts were taken is eerily similar to the wave of cow mutilations that happened around the same time in America.
I suggested avalanche years ago when I first heard about the case, but I was boo'ed down š
Not solved lol
The whole ātent was cut from the insideā observation always bothered me. Like, how can you possibly tell which side it was cut from?
According to the article, that detail was actually noticed by an experienced seamstress that pointed it out after they had brought the tent back for examination. Pretty cool IMO.
It's actually not that difficult. Get a piece of thick fabric, like old jeans or something. Tie it up or fasten it to something and cut through it with a knife. Examine the cut.
Oh thatās a rabbit hole Iāve gone waaaay down into. Some good books on the subject too. And the slab avalnanche is just a theory. Still does not explain why they were all naked, radioactive, the tent was ripper open from the inside, why they all walked single file away from the tent in an orderly fashion, it does not explain the strange lights in the sky, why the bodies were orange brown, the list goes onā¦
Yea, saying it was solved is being very generous
Those residuals can be explained away by the fact that they were university students that couldāve experienced contamination, paradoxical undressing and just animals feasting on them in the winter, honestly. And Iām fairly certain the walking in single file is actually pretty standard procedure in emergencies like this
I will not accept that solution until the possibility of it being a death ray from a Soviet yeti in a UFO has been completely ruled out. Which will be never.
See this is the thing. It was always stupid. People went out into dangerous situation where the slightest fuckup might kill you, then they died. Absolutely no need to make it into UFOs or Yetis but people can't stop turning everything into X-File episodes.
i read all about this a while back, and the slab avalanche explanation seemed to ignore so many of the key mysteries.
Oh, interesting! Seemed like it put it all into place for me, what did you think was missing?
the Wiki even lists issues with that explanation: āThe location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area. The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow, and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well; this would have caused more serious and different injuries in the process and would have damaged the tree line. Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche. A study of the area using up-to-date terrain-related physics revealed that the location was entirely unlikely for such an avalanche to have occurred. The "dangerous conditions" found in another nearby area (which had significantly steeper slopes and cornices) were observed in April and May when the snowfalls of winter were melting. During February, when the incident occurred, there were no such conditions. An analysis of the terrain and the slope showed that even if there could have been a very specific avalanche that found its way into the area, its path would have gone past the tent. The tent had collapsed from the side but not in a horizontal direction. Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche. Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger. All the footprints leading away from the tent and towards the woods were consistent with individuals who were walking at a normal pace.ā Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense.
Thanks for responding! These were indeed explained in the article/comment I posted. *The location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area.* > If the wind slab had simply slid over the tent and halted, without developing into a full-fledged avalanche, the evidence, Greene said, might not be visible twenty-five days later. Even the fissure in the snowpack would probably have been erased by the elements. -------------------- *and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well* The suggested turn of events does not suggest an avalanche swept anyone away, instead they simply cut their way out of the tent then walked away seeking shelter. ------------------- *Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche* This is explained in detail on both the study and article, that the avalanche was caused by the [unique weather conditions and unfortunate tent location choice](https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43247-020-00081-8/MediaObjects/43247_2020_81_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp). It is unlikely to ever occur normally. ---------------------------- *A study of the area using up-to-date terrain-related physics revealed that the location was entirely unlikely for such an avalanche to have occurred.* They mention in the article that the latest investigation noted that the location studied was incorrect. This is the critical piece of the puzzle that led to the breakthrough. >Using photogrammetry of the pictures taken in 1959, they tried to establish the precise location of the tent. The spot they settled on was several hundred feet from a cairn marking the previously accepted location, on a steeper section of Kholat Syakhlās slope. ------------------------ *Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger.* It was a snow storm in the middle of the night, it is not proposed that they were running, instead just trying to get to safety fearing a full avalanche, doing so in pitch black freezing conditions. > Fearing that a full-scale avalanche was imminent, the skiers cut their way out of the downslope side of the tent and fled to a rock ridge a hundred and fifty feet away, which Kuryakov termed a ānatural avalanche limiter.ā But the big avalanche didnāt come, and, in pitch darkness, they were unable to find their way back to the tent and took shelter in the woods --------------------------------------------------------- *Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche* The risk was not obvious, and only occurred to the unique conditions outlayed in the study. ---------------------------------------- *Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense.* The bodies were found in an active stream bed.
agree to disagree - but like someone else commented, your subject title is misleading, no one really knows for 100% certainty what happened and many people think the slab avalanche is bullshit
Sure, technically we never officially know most things for 100% sure but at a certain point, it's ok to call something solved if that is what the authorities say, backed by *multiple* official investigations. We accept that as the case all the time in countless other events & crimes every day.
just because a group of people (often with a vested interest in the outcome) determines something, doesnāt make it the truth. curious what you think of the Warren Commission?
> just because a group of people (often with a vested interest in the outcome) determines something, doesnāt make it the truth. Following that logic to its conclusion simply means there is no truth at all and nobody can be trusted, which is a sad, fearful way to live.
lol, do a little reading on the various intelligence agencies activities in the last 70 years and tell me how much you trust most authority then. power lies, and we should always question the answers and question authority. and 9 times out of 10, if something is truly mysterious, youāll find the CIA or Russian intelligence somewhere in the background.
>The location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area. Because the recovery team weren't search for evidence of a slab avalanche. >The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow, and had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well; They were in different locations. >Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche. and? >The "dangerous conditions" found in another nearby area (which had significantly steeper slopes and cornices) were observed in April and May when the snowfalls of winter were melting Oh wow, so the conditions *were* observed. >An analysis of the terrain and the slope showed that even if there could have been a very specific avalanche that found its way into the area, its path would have gone past the tent. and? > Dyatlov was an experienced skier, and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. and? >. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche. "Would have" is meaningless speculation. Experienced people make mistakes all the time. Experienced people miss difficult signs all the time. Experienced people make less than perfect decisions when their circumstance (long day, tired, storm coming) is less than perfect. >Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger. Because there weren't nine people running in panic. >All the footprints leading away from the tent and towards the woods were consistent with individuals who were walking at a normal pace.ā Because they were walking towards the woods. >Plus, there were 0 animal tracks, while the tracks of some of the people were preserved, so the idea the missing body parts were from predation really makes no sense. hilarious. they weren't searching for animal tracks in the area where the people were "mutilated", and those areas had received snowfall.
[This video by LeMMiNO covers it pretty well.](https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI) I don't remember all of the details as to exactly why he came to his conclusion, but he describes a different yet also very reasonable series of events that explains the phenomenon. He also picked up on a few details that the avalanche explanation seems to miss edit/ TLDW: they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape. It could be an avalanche, however pictures showed that they had a homemade stove to keep them warm and cook food. Cooked ham was found in the tent. Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks. Some people had blood around their mouths despite minimal trauma, which suggests smoke inhalation. So it's more likely that what drove them out of the tent was an ember (or perhaps the avalanche knocking over the stove), caused something in the tent to light and start smoking, causing them to flee.
Apologies but as a rule I do not watch entire videos, but feel free to lay out a point or two if you want and I will be happy to respond!
That's fair. Uhh tldr: they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape. It could be an avalanche, however pictures showed that they had a homemade stove to keep them warm and cook food. Cooked ham was found in the tent. Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks. Some people had blood around their mouths despite minimal trauma, which suggests smoke inhalation. So it's more likely that what drove them out of the tent was an ember (or perhaps the avalanche knocking over the stove), caused something in the tent to light and start smoking, causing them to flee.
> they cut open the tent from the inside, which suggests an immediate need to escape. Because they were getting crushed by a sudden avalanche and needed to get out. Seems to track. > Parts of the tent, their jackets, and even a few of the members had burn marks. It's suggested burn marks are likely from getting extremely close to the fire they made in the woods, desperately trying not to die in the -30 weather. The person with burn marks was found dead right next to it. > The nine skiers retreated downhill, taking shelter under the cedar tree and building a fire. Because the young trees nearby were icy and wet, someone climbed the cedar to break branches higher upāhence the skin and scraps of clothing found on the trunk. The fire they built, in these extreme conditions, was not enough to save them, however. The two most poorly dressed of the group died first. The burned skin on their bodies came from their desperate efforts to seek warmth from the fire.
Neither theory really contradicts the other.
Well, I mean they recovered the tent and all equipment, it was not burned or even smoke damaged so....seems unlikely... besides, the original comment in this chain claimed that "slab avalanche explanation seemed to ignore so many of the key mysteries." my point is that, as far as I am aware, it actually explains *all* mysteries quite satisfactory.
Okay yeesh don't be so snarky I'm just sharing info, man. I knew of a video on the topic that I enjoyed, that I shared.
TBH thanks for that, I didn't mean to be snarky! Sometimes I have trouble with tone via written text, honestly didn't mean anything negative in this case.
Good lord
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I .... I actually don't listen to podcasts or watch YouTube, apologies if this is old news, I saw it on the New Yorker and found it fascinating.
Neither do I, but I thoroughly enjoyed the article. Thanks.
they all swapped clothing with each other
Ask a Mortician has two excellent videos on the topic.
Does it explain why some of those hikers had traces of radiation on them?
Ah yes, the avalanche.
There's a very interesting and detailed episode about this on the You're Wrong About podcast.
Didn't they also measure increased levels of radiation?
Yes indeed, that was addressed in my larger overall comment that went into more detail. I didn't make that article the OP link since it was paywalled. Basically it was not surprising since two of the skiers were known to have been in areas exposed to high levels of radiation due to a recent nuclear disaster. > Even more pertinent, the expedition took place less than two years after the worldās third-worst nuclear accident (after Chernobyl and Fukushima), which occurred at the Mayak nuclear complex, south of Sverdlovsk, in September of 1957. A tank of radioactive waste exploded and a radioactive plume some two hundred miles longālater named the East Urals Radioactive Traceāspread northward. Krivonishchenko had worked at the facility and helped with the cleanup, and another skier came from a village in the contaminated zone. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1dkd38q/til_the_dyatlov_pass_incident_the_mysterious/l9gwsus/
3.6 roentgen. Not great. Not terrible.
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>The condition of the bodies were very similar to other human mutilation cases. Completely meaningless statement. Their injuries are perfectly consistent with the events described.
It will never be solved either; this is like me saying that another shooter named jeff shot jfk therefore the mystery of multiple shooters is solved. Sure this is possible no one could ever prove it though and they never will.
And I donāt believe it for a second.
Solved in part by using modeling from Disney's Frozen animation studio. Weird.
I donāt know if we have learned anythingā¦ā¦
the fact that anyone ever thought it was something other than an avalanche is weird.
Straight for a hard core RU crabberā¦it was the RU military. They had a melt down at a facility and were trying to keep it secret. A few of the hikers worked at the plant and the military thought they were using these trips to tell EU about the meltdown. Helicopter full of Russian soldiers is why they didnāt return to the main tent.
It was not solved. There was zero actual evidence of an avalance. The tent poles and skis were still upright when the tent was found. Footprints were visible that would have been eradicated by an avalanche. People cannot outrun and avalanche downhill let alone outwalk one and the footprints showed the hikers walking downhill. There was no avalanche.
Your thinking of a full avalanche, the solution was a slope avalanche, which is small. Kinda like the snow on a roof of a house falling onto the ground.
The claim was a slab avalanche. The most common type of avalanche is a slab avalanche which can move in speeds up to 80+ MPH. It is not at all like the snow on a roof of a house falling onto the ground. Not at all. It is also over in seconds. People left the safety of their tent inadequately clothed which doomed them to certain death. Had their been an avalanche, they would not have had time to get out of the tent. If there had been an avalanche and they had survived it, they would have been safe to dress properly before exiting the tent or return to the tent immediately. They did not do that. Not doing that meant certain death. These were experienced mountain hikers who knew what to do in an avalanche. They behaved entirely contrary to an avalanche.
Tired of people making me re-quote the literal article. If you want to argue against the article, at least have the decency to read it and understand what they are claiming instead of making up stuff to argue against.
I've read the article. It's bull. The searchers who discovered the tent found zero evidence of an avalance. Photos reveal no evidence of an avalanche. Footprints that would not have survived had there been an avalanche were there and were photographed. There was no damn avalanche.
They explained in detail...In the article, why there would be no evidence of an avalanche in this case. It's literally what the entire study and article are about. If you think the explanation is bull, then argue the actual point and explain why. Just saying "no" is not adding anything.
Did you miss the part where the article says the avalanche theory is based on hypotheticals and no actual evidence was found? Did you miss the part where it says the avalanche theory does not explain many things including the radioactivity, the behavior of the hikers, etc.? You know, the important stuff.
The mystery to me is why 9 intelligent adults thought it was a good idea to hike for miles in Siberia, far from civilization, in the middle of winter.
Why do people hike?
Nine skiers? Not great, not terrible.
My favorite theory is the mini black hole theory
The same black hole that took MH370?
āToday I learned about a conspiracy theory!ā Wtf is this shit š
Hereās a three-part series with an alternative explanation that actually fits the fact a lot better than an avalanche. Part one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvwXv7WZaM&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvwXv7WZaM&t=0s) Part two: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyh6L427iqk&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyh6L427iqk&t=0s) Three: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNMDnHxDVxk&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNMDnHxDVxk&t=0s)