Pod Insights Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder Ep. 103 | Russia's DEADLIEST Mystery Has Never Been Solved | Dyatlov Pass About this episode Get 40% off select Lola Blankets products at https://lolablankets.com with code CCCM at checkout.
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In 1959, a group of skilled trekkers met a terrifying and mysterious end in the Russian wilderness - some found barefoot in the snow, others with inexplicable trauma.
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Transcript 13,470 words · 3 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
0:30 Speaker 01 The Northern Urals, February 1959. There's literally nothing out here. No roads, no towns, no cell towers, no power lines, and frankly, no sign that anyone has ever been here at all. Except for markings carved into trees by people of a culture that have lived nearby for centuries. And above the tree line, the forests disappear, turning into a place known as Dead Mountain. Nine people were heading toward it. They were young, and they were experienced, and they knew exactly how dangerous it was. But something went wrong. Not in the way you'd expect, like an accident or a wrong turn in bad weather. Something stranger than that.
1:14 Speaker 01 Something that over 60 years later, no one has been able to explain. This is the story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. Today, we are diving into an absolutely insane case. One that many of you may know, but I wanted to just get my teeth into it and really just dig into the details to maybe make some sense of it. And if you don't know this case, all the better. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go mock right to the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this confusing, mysterious case together.
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2:55 Speaker 00 And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
3:14 Speaker 01 The Soviet Union was changing in the late 1950s. Stalin was dead, and Nikita Khrushchev took power in 1953. And it felt like, for the first time in a generation, ordinary people had room to breathe. And the restrictive air of wartime was finally letting up. And new freedoms, however small, were opening up across the country. And one of those freedoms was the outdoors. Walking clubs, skiing clubs, something the Soviets called "sports tourism," organized expeditions into the wilderness, sanctioned by the state but fueled by an energy that the state couldn't quite control. And young people especially took to it. And for students in a system that governed nearly every aspect of their lives, the mountains
3:58 Speaker 01 offered something that nothing else really seemed to be able to: escape. So at the Ural Polytechnical Institute in Sverdlovsk, now Yaya Ketyr ibork, sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, I'm doing my best, the skiing and mountaineering club was one of the most popular organizations on campus. UPI had grown into Russia's biggest technical school by the 1950s and was deeply tied to local industry. It produced engineers, physicists, radio specialists, and more. Serious students training for serious careers. But on the weekends and holidays, those same students strapped on skis and disappeared into the Urals. And they did it for the same reason anyone does something dangerous.
4:42 Speaker 01 It makes them feel alive. You know, there's no better feeling than just going Mach 5 down a double black diamond. You know what I mean? I've been there. Not of my own volition, but I just got stuck at the top of a mountain one time and that was the only way I could get down. That was terrifying, but also exhilarating. But anyway, in the summer of 1958, while trekking through the Altai Mountains, a fifth-year radio engineering student named Igor Dyatlov told his hiking companions about a plan. He wanted to lead an expedition to the northern Urals in winter and become the first to reach the peak of the Otorin Mountain in February. The most brutal month of the year. And everyone knew Otorin.
5:24 Speaker 01 They knew the terrain around it was hostile and very dangerous. But four people immediately showed interest. Nikolai Thibault Brynyel, Rustin Slobodin, Yuri Kryvchenko, and Yuri Yudin. And by January 1959, Dyatlov had assembled a group of 10, 8 men and 2 women. And the Sverdlov City Route Commission approved the expedition and confirmed the group on January 8, 1959. Now, the route was classified as Category 3, which is the highest difficulty rating for such a trip. And it required covering 300 kilometers of wilderness. Every member of the group already held Grade 2 certification with ski tour experience.
6:08 Speaker 01 So completing this expedition would earn them that coveted Grade 3 status, also the highest. And Dyatlov would plan for the trip to take 16 to 18 days. But it wouldn't take that long in reality. So let's get to know the crew. Igor Dyatlov was born on January 13. 1936 and he liked to build things just to see if he could. And as a schoolboy fresh out of 7th grade, he joined UPI hiking trips alongside his brother. And he brought a portable radio he'd made himself with him, which in 1951 was almost unheard of, guy was pretty smart. And by his second year at UPI, he designed and put a shortwave radio together that the group used on expeditions in the Sayan Mountains.
6:52 Speaker 01 And he also built a small camp stove and carried it on every hike following. People described him as very disciplined and calm under pressure, the kind of leader who stayed steady when things went sideways and treated everyone around him with respect. And he was a thoughtful man who never rushed his decisions. And allegedly, on one trek, a group member secretly ate a can of condensed milk from their shared supplies. And when the man confessed, Igor didn't respond emotionally, didn't shame him, he simply went quiet for a moment and then said, quote, "When we return to Spurlovsk, you will pay the cost of the condensed milk to the group's cash desk," unquote. That was Igor, fair, measured, in control.
7:35 Speaker 01 And he had 16 hikes under his belt, nine of which he led himself. And he was 23 years old, pretty young. And he was dating a girl named Zenaida or Zina Kolmagorova. Now, Zina also studied radio engineering at UPI and was a member of the university's tourist society. And she was popular and very well-liked and described as the "engine of the university." But she was also tough in ways that surprised people. She'd been on six expeditions and on one previous hike, she was bitten by a viper. And despite the pain, she refused to lighten her pack because she didn't want to cause her companions any hardship. So she was, she was tough as nails, Zina was. And she was seeing Igor at the time of this expedition.
8:20 Speaker 01 And her ex-boyfriend Yuri was also in the group. So whatever tension that might have created, the diaries don't show it, which we'll get into. Then there's Ludmila Dubenina, who was 20 years old, who also went by Luda. And Luda- was the youngest in the group and a fourth-year engineering and economics major at UPI. And she was born on May 12th, 1938, and she loved singing and photography, and she was very good at taking photos as well. And many of the photos later recovered from the group's cameras were hers, which again, we'll get into later. Though 20 years young, she wasn't fragile. And during a hike through the eastern Sayan Mountains in 1957, she was accidentally
9:03 Speaker 01 shot in the leg by a hunter traveling with the students. What? But not unlike Xena, she just endured the pain for the rest of the trip. I swear, it's, I swear it's like a woman thing. We just like, we feel like we have something to prove. Like, I admire these women because they're just like, dah, we're just tough, we're just tough. Ladies are tough. I'm just saying. I just, props to these ladies. And then she would go on to apologize to the others for the trouble she caused. Just a queen, a queen in and out. And she led a category-two expedition through the southern Urals in 1958. And a fellow hiker from that trip, Galina Batilova, remembered, quote, "Luda proved
9:47 Speaker 01 herself to be a wise, firm, thoughtful, and fair leader. She was always attentive to us, the beginners, and helped us in everything," unquote. And she was one of the only women in the Dyatlov group, but she was the real deal. She was serious and she was tough. And then there was Yuri Doroshenko, who was 21 years old and also a fourth-year radio engineering student at UPI. And he would sit on the board of the UPI sports club, and he was the tallest member of the group and was brought up in a very poor family. And the jacket he typically wore was not properly equipped to handle the cold environments he found himself in. And despite his shyer nature, he had a reputation for being the upbeat one in any room.
10:30 Speaker 01 Despite his shortcomings, he was just always ready to help. But he was also impulsive, and allegedly, this made him somewhat famous at school for taking on a bear with a geologist's hammer while out on a wilderness trip. That... Is the most Russian thing I've ever heard in my life. And as mentioned, he'd previously dated Zina, but the breakup appeared to be smooth, and things between him, Zina, and Igor stayed civil, by all accounts. And then there was Yuri Krivanashenko, another Yuri, who was 23 years old, born on February 7, 1935. Now, his real name was Georgi, but his friends called him Yuri. And he'd recently graduated from UPI, and he worked as an engineer
11:14 Speaker 01 at the Chelyabinsk facility, better known as the Mayek Nuclear Complex, which was a facility that processed plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program, tucked away in the closed city of Chelyabinsk. But Yuri was an artist at heart. And he played the mandolin, and he wrote poetry. And his parents lived in an apartment in central Sverdlosk, and it became a place where the hiking group often gathered. And he constantly looked for any chance to entertain, whether through jokes, or music, or what have you. And in September of 1957, the Mayek plant suffered what became known as the Kostim disaster, where an underground tank of high-level nuclear waste exploded. And it's regarded as
11:57 Speaker 01 one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. And the explosion poisoned a stretch of land larger than some European countries, over 23,000 square kilometers. And Yuri worked on the cleanup along with some other 38,500 people, including Mayek employees, construction workers, and military. And according to his brother, there was, quote, "a fairly large emission of radiation", unquote. Possibly a slight understatement, if we've learned anything from Chernobyl. But by 1958, Yuri tried to leave Mayek, citing, quote, "complete unwillingness to work in the system", unquote. And he was 23 years old now when he joined the expedition. And then there was Rustem Sloboten,
12:41 Speaker 01 and he was 23 years old as well. And he was also a UPI graduate, but he would go by the nickname Rustik. And his father was a well-respected academic, a doctor of agricultural sciences who ran a department- at the Ural Research Institute of Agriculture. And Rustam was athletic, honest, but he was also a bit quiet and a little shy, but the kind of quiet that came with a good sense of humor underneath. And he also liked playing his mandolin and brought it along on hiking trips, including this one. And then there was Alexander, or Sasha Golevatav, who would be 24 years old at the year of the expedition. Now Alex was a fourth-year physics major at UPI, and before that, he'd earned a degree
13:25 Speaker 01 from the Sverdlovsk Mining and Metallurgy College in heavy nonferrous metals. In other words, metals that don't have iron in them, basically. I didn't know what it meant when I first read it either. But people described him as reserved and thoughtful despite having a very difficult run of poor health as a child. But he was normally very serious, though photos from the trip show him smiling and loose with this particular group. And his friend, Valentina, saw him as, quote, "a true altruist and a caring comrade, a person who does not light up the team and does not often joke, but is always engaged in a generally useful routine, a kind of grey horse on whose unnoticed labors and merits
14:08 Speaker 01 the success of the event rests," unquote. So before UPI, he had spent time at a secretive institute in Moscow designated only as Institute 3394. Sounds suspicious. And his pay didn't line up with what a typical graduate would earn, but he did manage to land a spot in a classified ministry department right out of school. Next, there was Nikolai Thibault Brignol, who was also 23 years old. And this name stood out, not only because it's a bit of a mouthful, but because it's also French, aristocratic, and the family even had their own coat of arms.
14:48 Speaker 01 Nikolai, sometimes called Kolya or Thibault by his friends, was born on July 5, 1935, in Osinky, a town that housed a branch of the Gulag Siblog, and his father, Vladimir, was serving a 10-year prison sentence there at the time of Nikolai's birth, because the Gulag is just a big shit hell prison, basically. And his mother, and older brother, and sister were likely forced to the same place as "the family of the enemy of the people." Now Vladimir had been a mining engineer educated at Germany's Friedberg Mining Academy, and had helped shape development plans for the Urals mining industry. But none of that protected him under Stalin.
15:31 Speaker 01 And Nikolai graduated from UPI in 1958 with a civil engineering degree. And at the time of the expedition, he was working in construction in Sverdlovsk. And in photos, he's the one you notice first. The tall, floppy hat with the crooked grin. And everyone who crossed paths with him spoke of the same traits: energy, humor, and just warmth. And he was beloved by younger members of the sports club. And he'd carry their gear when they struggled, and fix their packs to ease the weight on their backs. And Yuri Udin said that Nikolai was the one who guided him through his first real trips into the Siberian wilderness. And before leaving for the expedition, Nikolai promised his mother this would be his last hiking trip.
16:15 Speaker 01 Then there was Semyon Zolotaryov, who was 37 years old, so the oldest of the group, the outsider, if you will. He was the stranger to everyone on the expedition. Now, Semyon was born on February 2nd, 1921, in the Kuban region of southern Russia. And he grew up in a Kosak family, known for their military strength and horsemanship. And at 20, he was drafted into the Red Army. And he fought from Stalingrad to Berlin, earned four military decorations, and did it all without suffering a single wound. And just to note, only 3% of Soviet soldiers who served from beginning to end survived the war, so.
16:57 Speaker 01 This guy was built different, basically. So, once the fighting finally stopped, he struggled to find footing. The Moscow Military Engineering School shut down, and the Leningrad Military Engineering School suffered the same. But he eventually landed at the Minsk Institute of Physical Education and graduated in 1951, then moved south to teach at the Pedagogical Institute. I just know the Russians that watch this are screaming at me. I am, I am doing my best. I looked at the pronunciations, but I, it's, it's hard using them in sentences, so I apologize. But he would receive a formal reprimand from the institution within four months of starting and decided to walk away. And by the mid 1950s, he found himself settled at the Korovskaya tour in the base of the
17:42 Speaker 01 Sverdlovst region, working as a senior tourism instructor. And in the meantime, he studied for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. And he was 37 and single, which raised eyebrows in that era. And he also had gold cap teeth and a mustache. And beneath his clothes, tattoos inked across his body that he kept covered up. And one of them was a five-pointed star, a shape described as "Beet's Heart Fire", along with the name Gina and his birth year. And also a cryptic, untranslatable inscription, which was roughly "Der Mazuraya". I have no idea.
18:23 Speaker 01 But this was reportedly a formula common amongst Soviet soldiers, where the letters stood for the first initials of friends and the word for friendship. Now, his real name was Semyon, but for reasons unknown, he asked everyone to just call him Sasha. And he had originally been approved for a different expedition with the Sogrin Group, but just three days before departure, he learned Dyatlov's team was leaving on the same date, and their route was 10 days longer, so he switched. And at the last minute, Dyatlov was told they'd be joined by someone he'd never met. And Lyudia wrote in her diary, quote, "At first, nobody wanted this Zolotaryov, for he is..."
19:06 Speaker 01 Stranger, but then we all agreed because you can't refuse. Unquote. But he would eventually win them over and Xena would write, "With us is senior instructor of the Korov Sport Base Alexander Zolotaryov. He knows a lot of songs. It's just happy somehow that we are learning new songs." Unquote. And the pictures show him keeping the pace, laughing and fitting in with people half his age. But before he left, he told his students something strange and he would say, quote, "This whole world will start talking about this track." Unquote. And he didn't explain any further, saying only that, quote, "They will soon find out about everything."
19:50 Speaker 01 Unquote. Very, very ominous. So hold on to that fact. And now the 10th member was Yuri Yudin. Now Yuri was 21 years old and a fourth year student at UPI studying economics and geology. And he was quiet and generally kept to himself. And he had rheumatism, which was a heart condition he'd been born with. So his body was always working against him. But still, he joined the expedition anyway because he was very close with this group of people. And he was the 10th and final member of the Dyatlov Expedition. So 10 hikers boarded a train in Sverdlovsk at 9:05 PM, the night of January 23rd, 1959.
20:32 Speaker 01 And they were sharing a ride with the Blinnov Group, a separate hiking party bound for a different destination. So the mood was just kind of chaos. And Xena's diary paints the scene saying, quote, "Where are my felt boots? Can we play mandolin on the train? We forgot the salt." Unquote. And the boys made a pact. They, quote, solemnly swore not to smoke the entire trip. Unquote. So excitement just filled the air. Everybody was just pumped to do these trips. And late night conversations about love became a running theme on the trip. And most of them, according to the group diary, were, quote, provoked by Z Kolmagorova. But they also created a satirical newspaper together dated
21:16 Speaker 01 February 1st, that they titled “Evening O'Turton Number One,” and this was a fairly popular team ritual among Soviet expedition groups. It read like the inside jokes of people who genuinely liked each other’s company. And it advertised a “philosophical seminar on love and tourism,” held daily in the tent with lectures, “presented by Dr. Thibault and candidate of Love Sciences Dubenina,” and “can one stove and one blanket warm nine tourists?” These are a silly bunch. And a science section reported that the “snowman lives in the northern Urals, near
21:58 Speaker 01 O'Turton Mountain,” and the technical news section mocked Kolvato’s attempt at building a drag sled, saying “Good while riding on the train, by car, and on horseback. For cargo transportation on snow is not recommended.” That’s just so goofy! But on January 24th, Yuri, the one with the really long last name that starts with a K that I’m not going to say over and over again, I’m going to say Yuri K, got himself into a bit of trouble during a layover at Sarav Station. And as Lyuda’s diary tells it, “Our hero decided to walk around the station handing a cap for change after singing a song. Yuri had to be rescued.”
22:42 Speaker 01 And the police actually detained him briefly. And that same day, a drunk on the evening train accused them of taking his vodka, and the conductor intervened and handed the man off to the police. But the Sarav stop wasn’t all trouble, and the group also had quieter moments, when they gave a talk to local schoolchildren about tourism. And the kids allegedly became so attached to Xena that when the group left, “the kids yelled and cried, asking Xena to stay with them.” So they would leave and pull into Ivdel around midnight, January 25th. So with nowhere to sleep except the station, they set up their tent right there on the station floor and just spent the night. And Vizhay would be the end of the line, the last settlement.
23:26 Speaker 01 Before the wilderness swallowed everything. So they arrived via bus around 2:00 PM and said goodbyes to the Blinnov group, who continued on a different path. And that evening, they would go to a local club and watch a film called Symphony in Gold. And Lauda wrote in her diary afterward, saying, quote, "This is real happiness, so difficult to describe with words. The music is just fabulous." Unquote. So the group spent the next day in Visay, preparing their equipment. And around 10:00 in the morning, they wrote home one last time. And after lunch at 1:30 PM, the group caught a ride on a logging truck headed for the 41st District Settlement. And from there, they pushed on to a place called the Second Northern Settlement,
24:09 Speaker 01 effectively a ghost town left behind when the loggers moved on. And they had crossed the threshold. Civilization was now behind them. And their route tracked north along the Lozva River Valley, and then turned to follow the Espia River toward the Highland ridgeline. And this beautiful landscape would change as they progressed. Thick forest along the river valleys gave way to scattered trees, and the trees thinned more and more. And then, there was really nothing, just open barren expanses above the timberline. And the indigenous Manzi people had a name for the mountain at the far end of the ridgeline, Holat Syak, or Dead Mountain. I'm gonna go ahead and say Dead Mountain, because that other one is really hard to say.
24:54 Speaker 01 But along the way, the group spotted markings carved into the trees by the Manzi, all trail signs left by people who had traveled this land long before any of them were even born. So on the morning of January 28, Uden would make the hardest decision of his life, and his joint pain would severely flare up. And the rheumatism was becoming unbearable. And his body was just telling him just what his mind didn't want to hear. He couldn't go on. So he handed off what equipment he could to Doroshenko, so the group could put it to use. And Lauda pressed a small teddy bear into his hands as a goodbye gift. And then he watched them ski away, and he was devastated. But little did he know, this would
25:36 Speaker 01 So now, there were nine, and they pushed along the Loesva, skiing in formation, rotating who led every 10 minutes or so. And the snow was lighter than the previous year. January 29th was Yuri Doroshenko's birthday, and Zina marked it in her diary, saying, "Today is Yurka's birthday. We go first to Loesva, then we turn to Ospea. Surroundings are beautiful." And by January 30th, the cold had become routine. And one diary entry reads, "Today is a third cold night on the bank of Ospea River. We are getting used to it. The stove does a great job." And come January 31st, the weather started to turn ugly, with gusting winds and heavy snow.
26:20 Speaker 01 And at this point, they couldn't see more than a few meters ahead, and they tried to push up toward the pass, but the mountain wouldn't let them. So they retreated to the Ospea Valley, now running behind schedule. And that night, Dyatlov wrote the last entry in the group diary, saying, "Can't imagine such a comfort somewhere on the ridge, with a piercing wind hundreds of kilometers away from human settlements." So they got a late start on February 1st, and they found a wooded valley where they dug out la bas, which is the supply cache that you bury into the snow, and stashed roughly 55 kilometers of surplus food and equipment for the return trip.
27:01 Speaker 01 And Yuri Kay's mandolin went into the pile along with spare boots, and they planned to come back for all of it. And after lunch, Dyatlov led the group up toward Dead Mountain. And they covered about 2 kilometers before conditions kept deteriorating, and the sky would close in, preventing them from figuring out where they were or where they were heading. So instead of cutting through the pass as planned, they veered west and ended up heading straight toward the summit. And this is where Dyatlov made a choice. The tree line was only a kilometer and a half behind them, promising forested ground, shelter from the wind, a safer place to sleep. But he chose to stay on the exposed slope.
27:46 Speaker 01 The plan was simple: survive just one cold night, then it'd be a warm overnight the following day at Lake Loontasoptor, about fourteen and a half kilometers ahead. So, they set up camp on the northeastern side of Dead Mountain, about three hundred meters below the peak, the ground beneath them angled at roughly thirty degrees. And after that, there was silence. Because sometime after dark, something happened. There is no diary entry that describes it, no photograph that captures it, and no one survived to explain it. And every single thing we know about the night of February first, nineteen fifty-nine,
28:30 Speaker 01 is pieced together from what was left behind. So here is what the evidence tells us. Nine people ate dinner in their tent around six or seven in the evening on the slope of Dead Mountain. And the weather outside was absolutely savage. Winds blowing at hurricane force twenty to thirty meters per second, and temperatures plunging to minus forty degrees Celsius, and a full snowstorm raging across the ridge. And the stove was packed away in its case and never actually assembled. In the evening, Torton, the joke newspaper that they made at the beginning of the trip, was near the entrance of the tent. And everything about the day had seemed normal.
29:14 Speaker 01 Then something changed, because someone cut the tent open from the inside. But not just one cut. First, small horizontal slits near the roof. These were described later as viewing slits, as though someone was trying to see what was happening outside without leaving the shelter. Then came the larger cuts: one long vertical slash, and two horizontal tares ripped wide enough for a person to climb through. So it looked like, first, they looked, and then they ran. Nine people left the tent and walked into a blizzard wearing almost nothing. Because every pair of boots ...behind, jackets, raincoats, backpacks,
29:59 Speaker 01 and cut food sat on plates, which was either a meal half-prepared or just completed. All of it was abandoned, and they left with what they were sleeping in, with two exceptions, though. Zolotaryov and Thabo Brignol were later found better dressed than everybody else, with some footwear. So the first theory is that they may have been outside the tent when whatever happened began, and were already partially clothed, because eight or nine sets of footprints led downhill. And a search party radiogram would later describe, quote, "We managed to identify footprints of eight or nine people, starting from the tent and going about one kilometer
30:42 Speaker 01 down the slope, and then they were lost. One person was in boots, the other were only in socks and barefoot," unquote. So the footprints were preserved in a way that seems almost impossible, because the compressed snow had hardened into pedestals that held their shape while the wind scored away everything around them. And the group moved in single file, and a tall man walked at the back, with his prints partly covering the ones ahead. And a few trails peeled off from the main line but circled back. And the overall impression, according to one analysis, was an organized and uneventful
31:21 Speaker 01 descent, that they just essentially walked downhill, which is just wild to think about. Nine people slash opened their own shelter in the middle of the night, abandoned every piece of survival gear they own, and stepped barefoot into minus forty-degree winds. And they walk. They don't run. They walk. So whatever drove them out of that tent was terrifying enough to make them leave everything behind, but not terrifying enough to make them run. And also, just why cut the tent? The entrance was right there, so that in and of itself is just very odd. But one possible explanation was that the cuts were made on the side of the tent opposite
32:06 Speaker 01 Where the wind was primarily hitting, where the hikers slept. So if something was blocking the entrance, like snow, debris, or the threat of something outside of it, then cutting through the walls closest to their heads was the fastest way out. But just why not grab your boots and coats, or just anything for that matter? Because in minus forty degree weather, leaving without insulation is a death sentence, essentially, and they all knew that. They were all extremely smart individuals. So whatever happened gave them no time, or at least made time irrelevant. And after roughly 500 meters, the footprints disappeared beneath fresh snow. So nothing more from that point on in terms of footprints.
32:51 Speaker 01 But one flashlight was found partway down the slope, 450 meters from their tent, switched on, but its battery died. And another flashlight sat on top of the tent itself, resting on a thin layer of snow, completely uncovered, like someone had set it there after the storm had already begun. And a broken piece of ski lay 20 meters from the tent as well. And the next evidence would be found a kilometer and a half away at the tree line. But what happened in that gap between the tent and the forest is completely unknown, because there was no signs of struggle at the campsite, besides them cutting holes into
33:32 Speaker 01 the tent, just their own prints, walking calmly downhill into the dark. So this is the central hole in the story. Whatever happened on that slope, only nine people witnessed it, and none of them survived to say a word. So before leaving for the expedition, Dyatlov had made a simple promise. When the group made it back to Visai, he would wire the UPI Sports Club to confirm their safe return. And that telegram was due by February 12th at the latest, but February 12th came and went with no word. Yet, nobody panicked just yet, because it wasn't unusual for groups like this to show up a few days late. And Dyatlov had even mentioned to
34:16 Speaker 01 before setting out that the trip could easily rung long. But by February 15th, people started asking questions. And Galina Radosteva from the UPI Routing Commission and Igor Krivanishenko, Yuri's younger brother, pushed the University Trade Union Committee to contact Visai directly. And they wanted to know one thing: had the group come back? Because they haven't heard anything. And Visai's response was short: they hadn't returned. And no telegram had arrived. And things should have escalated there, but they didn't. And Lev Gordo, the head of the UPI Sports Club, told the parents of Lyuda and Sasha that he had received a telegram from Dyatlov about a delay.
35:01 Speaker 01 But that was a lie. And Gordo figured the group would show up on its own and decided to manage the families rather than sound an alarm, which is insane. So on February 17th, Rima Kholotova, Sasha's sister, went looking for Gordo, but his office was empty. And it was the families who finally forced action. And they complained directly to the local head of the Communist Party even. And bad publicity was the one thing Soviet officials couldn't tolerate. And pressure from above moved faster than concern from below. So on February 20th, relatives demanded a rescue operation. And the first search parties were mobilized the next day.
35:44 Speaker 01 So the scale of effort was enormous. And Colonel Georgi Ortukov from the UPI Military Department was put in charge. And volunteer teams of students and faculty spread across the region. And groups under Boris Slobstov and Moise's Axelrod and Olog Grebennik. And the Blinov and Sogran expeditions, just back from their own treks and familiar with the landscape, joined without hesitation. And Vladislav Karolen's team, already operating nearby, would join the search too. And even guards from the Ivdelak prison system would join. And also, seven officers from the MVD, the main law enforcement in Russia, and Mancy
36:26 Speaker 01 Hunters who had spent their lives navigating this wilderness would join as well. And specialists even dispatched from Moscow, aircraft scanning the terrain from above out of Ivdel. But they were all coming together to find the missing group. But the Blinnov group would bring troubling news, because they had run into severe snowstorms near Dead Mountain. But officials would choose to take this as grounds for hope, because maybe the Dyatlov group had simply dug in somewhere, riding out the weather until conditions improved. So Slovstov's team was flown by helicopter to the area around Mount Oorten on February 23rd. And by the following day, they had covered the mountain and come up empty.
37:09 Speaker 01 No flags, no markers, and nothing to suggest the hikers had ever set foot there, and the group had fallen short of their destination. And the next day, Slovstov's team spotted ski tracks in the snow and followed them. And on February 26th, they found the tent. And it sat on the slope, partly caved in, draped in snow. And Slovstov knew it the moment he saw it, because he had helped put it together three years earlier, stitching two smaller tents into one to give the group more room. But it was empty, and everything the hikers had carried with them was still inside. Nine backpacks, nine pairs of shoes, minus one.
37:51 Speaker 01 Fur coats, blankets, food, including biscuits, condensed milk, sugar, the stove, an axe, a saw, cameras, notebooks, and the group's planned route. And the evening Oorten was found inside, that joke newspaper. And outside, a pair of skis stood upright in the snow, and an ice axe rested near the entrance. And Dyatlov's jacket had been tossed a short distance away. And inside the pockets, a folding knife on a carabiner and a small pocketbook. And pressed between the pages was a picture of Xena. And snow covered the northern side of the tent, and maybe 15 to 20 centimeters deep at this point. And the texture and weight of it told searchers it had blown in on the wind. So it hadn't
38:36 Speaker 01 been pushed there by anything sudden or violent. And back in Ivdel, the tent was strung up across the biggest room in the local police headquarters, so it could be studied and pictures could be taken. And at first, everyone came to the same conclusion, that outsiders had ambushed the hikers and torn through the canvas from the outside. But then came the break. An investigator, Vladimir Korotayev, young and new to the case at the time, recalled how it happened. A woman had been called to the station to help mend his uniform, and she glanced at the tent hanging on the wall. And he said, quote, "She took one look at the tent and spoke with confidence that the cuts were made from inside.
39:18 Speaker 01 This changed the course of the investigation entirely," unquote. And formal confirmation came weeks later. And Ginrietta Torquina, a senior forensic specialist at the Sverdlovsk Crime Lab, spent nearly two weeks examining the tent from April 3rd to April 16th, 1959. And her conclusion matched exactly what the seamstress had seen at a glance, which is pretty impressive of the seamstress, but the cuts came from inside the tent. So the hikers weren't attacked. They had done this themselves. So whatever happened on that slope, they were trying to get out, for whatever reason. So the day after the tent was discovered, searchers found the first bodies.
40:00 Speaker 01 So at 11:00 a.m. on February 27th, two members of the search party, Koptalov and Sherevin, spotted something dark near a large cedar tree, a kilometer and a half downhill from the tent. And Slavstov's account, recorded it in Criminal Files, would describe this moment, saying, quote, "While looking carefully around the area, Mikhail, or Sherevin, noticed something dark close to a cedar tree. There was a flat area next to the cedar, and on this were remains of a fire. About two or three meters from the fire, they found Yuri Doroshenko, frozen without his clothes and with his hand burned. And a little to the side, they found Yuri Kurvanashenko in the same state," unquote.
40:45 Speaker 01 So Doroshenko... And Krivonashenko, the two remaining Yurys, lay in the snow in their underwear, a few meters from the charred remnants of a small campfire. And Yuri Kay's right foot was bare, and his left foot had a single brown sock on it, which was torn. And another sock lay near the fire, half burned. And Doroshenko wore woolen socks, layered under a thinner pair. But neither men had anything close to adequate protection from the cold. And above them, the cedar told its own intriguing story. Because the branches had been snapped off as high as five meters up, meaning someone had climbed in the dark and the freezing wind either to look back toward the tent
41:31 Speaker 01 or to break off wood for the fire. And lower branches, about five centimeters thick, had been sawed off with a finished knife. And some of those branches were found next to the dying fire. And Yuri Kay's hands had third-degree burns, the kind you can't sustain if you've already lost consciousness. So he was awake for those burns. And Prosecutor Tempolov's record of the scene states, "On the backs of his hands, the skin is torn. Between the fingers, there is blood. The index finger is also torn. The skin of the left shin is torn and covered in blood. There are no more visible injuries on his body." Unquote. And Yuri Kay had bitten a piece of his flesh from his own knuckle, and it was still in his mouth when they found him.
42:16 Speaker 01 So whether he did it to fight off sleep or to keep himself from screaming, no one knows. And Tempolov's notes on Doroshenko were, "His ear, lips, and nose are covered in blood." Unquote. And his skin had turned a deep brown or purple. And gray foam seeped from the soft tissue of his right cheek. And something dark and wet ran from his mouth. And the autopsy pointed to lung failure. Fluid flooding the airways, tissue battered by some kind of impact to his chest. So both men officially died of hypothermia. And the medical evidence lined up for the assessment. Swelling of-
42:56 Speaker 01 The brain membranes, darkened blood pooling in the heart, frostbite on their fingers and toes, and Vishnevsky spots on the stomach lining, a classic sign of death by freezing. But the burns, and the climbing, and the knuckle biting, these were not the actions of men who simply just laid down and froze to death. They fought for their lives. So three more bodies were found scattered along the slope between the cedar and the tent. And their positions told a story of hikers that had been trying to walk back uphill. Now, Dyatlov and Komogorova were discovered on February 27th, same as the first two bodies.
43:37 Speaker 01 And Slobodin wasn't located until March 5th, buried under a layer of snow. But they were found at stager distances from the cedar, about 300 meters, 480 meters, and 630 meters. Now, Komogorova made it closest to the tent, covering the most ground of the three before the cold would take her. And Dyatlov had a fur coat unbuttoned over a sweater and a long-sleeved shirt. Now, the shirt had started the trip on Yudin's back, but Yudin gave it to Doroshenko before turning around, it seemed. And Dyatlov had apparently taken it from Doroshenko's body at the cedar, because his socks didn't match, and he had been vomiting blood.
44:20 Speaker 01 And Komogorova had a bruise on her wrist, shaped like a baton strike. And Slobodin had a fracture in his skull. The official autopsy ruled it non-fatal, and his cause of death was recorded as hypothermia, same as the other two. But the crack in his skull raised questions that the ruling didn't answer. All three would die of the cold. At least, that was the official conclusion. But the blood Dyatlov was choking on, and the bruise on Komogorova's body, and the break in Slobodin's skull didn't fit a story where the only enemy was the weather. So that was very odd. Now, the last four bodies weren't found until the spring,
45:02 Speaker 01 more than three months after the tent was discovered, on May 11. So on May 4th, searchers located the remaining bodies in a ravine 75 meters deeper into the forest beyond the cedar, and they were buried under four meters of snow. And all four had come to rest in a creek submerged in the icy water that ran along the bottom of the ravine. Dubanina, Zolotaryov, and Kolovarov, and Thabo Brignol. Now, three of the four wore layers that clearly hadn't been theirs. Clothing had been taken from the bodies of those who died first in an attempt to survive.
45:41 Speaker 01 Now Dubanina had on Yuri Kay's trousers burned and torn, and her left foot and lower leg were bound in the shredded remains of a jacket. And Zolotaryov was wearing Dubanina's fur coat and hat. So they had tried to stay alive, but it wasn't enough. And the autopsies performed on May 9th revealed injuries that didn't quite fit in any hypothermia case. Because Dubanina's chest had been crushed. Ribs 2 through 5 on the right side fractured along two separate lines. And ribs 2 through 7 on the left side also fractured along two lines. And massive bleeding into the right chamber of the heart. And internal hemorrhaging throughout the chest cavity.
46:24 Speaker 01 And her tongue was gone. And her eyes were gone. And the soft tissue around her brow, her left temple, and her upper lip had been stripped away. And the cartilage in her nose was flattened and broken. She survived the initial trauma by 10 to 20 minutes. So it's possible she may have been conscious for all of it. And Zolotaryov's right side was devastated. Because five of his ribs were snapped and two more fractures were on his left side. And his rib cage had lost the ability to hold its shape, a condition called flail chest. And a gaping wound on the right side of his skull left the bone visible beneath.
47:08 Speaker 01 And his eyes were also missing. And a camera hung around his neck. Obviously, not the one that had been left behind in the tent, but a second camera, and the film inside had been soaked through after three months underwater. And he was found gripping a pen in one hand and small notepad in the other. And according to searcher Vladimir, Colonel Ortyakov snatched the notepad, looked at it, swore, and said, "He's written nothing." And that notepad never made it into the case file, and it would disappear entirely. Extremely suspicious. And Thabo Brignol's skull had been shattered with a deep splintered fracture running across both the top and the base of his head, and fragments of bone had been driven into his brain.
47:53 Speaker 01 And the forensic examiner said the kind of force required to cause this injury could not have come from any normal standing fall. And he compared it to being hit by a car. And Kolevatoff, by contrast, had almost nothing wrong with him. There were minor scrapes on his hands and face, and his neck was bent at an angle, which probably was just a result of the body stiffening after death or settling into the terrain. But there was no significant trauma, and he would die of hypothermia, same as the first five. And he was found sitting close to Zolotaryov, positioned, quote, "as if the latter was carrying or protecting him," unquote. And the forensic picture was jarring.
48:35 Speaker 01 And the medical examiner under interrogation on May 28, 1959, stated that the rib fractures on Dubanina and Zolotaryov had occurred while they were still alive, caused by, quote, "the action of a large force," unquote. And he added that the injuries, quote, "appearing in such a way without any damage to the soft tissue of the chest are very similar to the type of trauma that results from the shock wave of a bomb," unquote. And then there was the missing tissue: Dubanina's tongue, eyes, and lips, and Zolotaryov's eyes. And the official explanation pointed to simple bodily decomposition. Three months in running water will do terrible things to a body.
49:18 Speaker 01 But the medical examiner judged the soft tissue loss to have happened post-mortem, thanks to the stream. But pictures of Dubanina's body- Body from the morgue when she arrived told a different story because the areas around her mouth, nose and ears showed none of the ragged, widespread damage you'd expect from predators or scavengers. The destruction looked precise and her stomach held roughly 100 grams of dark brown matter, often misidentified in popular accounts as coagulated blood. And some researchers pointed to this as evidence that her heart was still beating and blood still circulating when her tongue was removed, which is horrifying to think about. But to
49:59 Speaker 01 this day, no one has ever explained with certainty what happened to these four people at the bottom of that ravine. So the criminal investigation was led by prosecutor/criminalist Lev Ivanov, who worked for Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office, and he opened the inquest as soon as the first five bodies turned up in late February. And the case drew unusual attention from above from the start. And Ivanov's superior, Evgeny Okishev, later noted that Glanov, the head of the Sverdlovsk Prosecutor's Office, had personally attended the initial autopsies at the morgue in Yvdel and stayed for three days. And in all of Okishev's years in the
50:42 Speaker 01 office, that had never happened before. And he called the situation, quote unquote, "highly unusual." And then the second secretary of the Regional Party Committee, A. F. Yestekun, stepped in and took control of the investigation. And prosecutors weren't the only ones running this case because the party was watching. Regardless of the drama, the first real theory investigators pursued was an attack by the Mance. A Mance shelter had been found northeast of the Dyatlov campsite with a trail running roughly 200 feet away. So it looked suspicious. Several young Mance hunters were arrested in March 1959 and interrogated. And investigator
51:22 Speaker 01 Vladimir Korotev later said that the suspects were, quote, "driven out half-dressed into the cold," unquote, during questioning. And under pressure, Grigory Kirikov told investigators that the Mance had no sacred sites anywhere near where the hikers died. Quote, "Our prayer mountain is located in the upper reaches of the Vizhay River," unquote. And another interviewee was more direct, saying, quote, "The Mance had no reason..." "to attack Russian tourists." And the theory quickly collapsed as the investigation continued. And only the hikers' own footprints had been found at the tent. And there were no signs of any sort of fight. And the valuables that were left untouched in the tent, along with cameras, alcohol,
52:06 Speaker 01 and gear, were untouched. And the Manzi themselves had joined the search to help them from the beginning. And when the Ravine IV were autopsied, the case became something else entirely. And forensic examiner Vos Ross Denny's conclusion was that the injuries that killed Dubanina Zoltaryov and Thabo Brignol could not have been inflicted by a human being. The force was way too extreme, and the skin was untouched. No person or standard attack could produce what was found inside those bodies. And that ruling essentially squashed every theory that was built around violence, including the Manzi, a fight within the group, or an ambush by outsiders. And then the investigation found something it wasn't looking for.
52:51 Speaker 01 And on May 18, 1959, Ivanov ordered radiation testing on the clothing and remains of the Ravine IV. And the chief radiologist of Sverdlovsk, Lavashov, ran the analysis. And the results were alarming, because Dubanina's brown sweater registered 9,900 radioactive decays per minute, almost double the Soviet safety threshold for workers who handled nuclear material. And after three hours of washing in a cold water current, the count dropped to 5,200. So that meant the contamination was from radioactive dust on the surface of the fabric. And Kolotov's pants and sweater waistband showed elevated readings as well.
53:35 Speaker 01 And only beta particles were detected, no alpha or gamma. But these were the bodies that had spent three months submerged in a creek. And Ivanov pointed out that the readings at the time of death would have been far higher, since the remains had been, quote, "intensively washed by melting water under the snow. Entire rivers flowed there." But there was a possible explanation for this, because as we We know from before, Krivonashenko had worked at the Mayak nuclear complex and participated in the cleanup of the Kishtem disaster. And Kovatov had also spent time at Chelyabinsk Forty. And Xena came from a village within the contamination zone of that same disaster.
54:17 Speaker 01 And a nuclear physicist named Igor Pavlov later analyzed the lavash of findings and concluded that the lack of alpha or gamma particles was consistent with contamination from Mayak, not from atmospheric fallout. And he called it, quote, "indirect evidence that the pollution comes from Mayak," unquote. And that it was, quote, "very likely that the contamination was received before the trip," unquote. Specialists told Ivanov his radiation results were a "soap bubble," or in other words, meaningless. But Krivonashenko's family wasn't so sure. And his parents had kept a suitcase of his belongings, including mittens and a hat and a sweatshirt.
54:59 Speaker 01 But his siblings were afraid of it, and they thought the contents might be radioactive. And after their mother died, they buried that suitcase. And then there were the bodies themselves. Their skin had changed color. Yuri Kunsyevich, 12 years old in 1959, attended five of the funerals and remembered their skin as having a, quote, "deep brown tan," unquote. And search team member Sergey Sogran described the color as, quote, "yellow not orange," unquote. Discoloration in the brown to orange range is a well-documented feature of death by extreme cold, so it did check out. And relatives also described the hiker's hair as having gone gray, though the autopsy reports never flagged this.
55:42 Speaker 01 And it's certainly possible that three months of exposure to freezing wind and ice can cause that kind of change through natural mummification. And the clothing found at the scene told a story of its own, because forensic expert Cherkina, who had examined the tent, was also present when the ravine forest clothes were removed during autopsy. And she recalled, quote, "When they took off their clothes and hung them on ropes, we immediately noticed that they had some strange light purple hue, although their natural colors were different. I asked Boris," the medical examiner, "don't you think the clothes are processed with something?" And he agreed. Something had changed the color of their clothing, but nobody could say what.
56:26 Speaker 01 And there were also the lights in the sky. Because a separate group of hikers camping roughly 50 kilometers south of Dyatlov site reported seeing "strange orange spheres drifting across the northern sky on the night the group died." And over the following weeks, similar glowing objects were spotted by people across the region, including soldiers and meteorological observers. And a mancy witness later told BBC reporter Lucy Ash, "We were coming back from the forest and we could see the village ahead of us. This bright burning object appeared. It was wider at the front and narrower in the back, and there were sparks flying of it."
57:07 Speaker 01 And search party member Vladislav saw one himself, and he described it as a "fireball moving across the sky like a missile." And a local newspaper, The Tajewerker, even printed a report about the fireballs while the hikers were still on their trek. And the editor got in trouble for running the story. Suspicious. But none of these sightings were included in the initial 1959 investigation. And the witnesses came forward later. And Ivanov was told to make it all go away. And he eventually admitted it as well. In an interview with a journalist, Stanislav Bogomolov, he said plainly, "I did it myself. I withdrew the radiation test report. I was told to remove everything that is irrelevant."
57:52 Speaker 01 And on May 28, 1959, the case was closed. And the radiological report had been signed by Levashov just one day earlier. And in the case file, a draft version of the closing resolution survives, including a full paragraph about radioactive contamination on the hiker's clothing and a note that, "None of them was in contact with radioactive substances at his work or study." And that draft is dated May 28. And it bears no signatures, and its pages have been crossed out with a blue pencil. And the final resolution, the public facing one- ...anyway, erases the radiation entirely.
58:33 Speaker 01 The official conclusion is stated that members of the Dyatlov group died due to, quote-unquote, "a compelling natural force they were unable to overcome." No further explanation. And Okishv later said that he had been planning a return trip to the past to investigate the ravine for deaths more thoroughly when Deputy Prosecutor General Yurikov flew in from Moscow and personally shut the case down. The files were locked away in a classified archive, and the mountain pass and surrounding area were declared off-limits to hikers for the next three years. And for 31 years, Lev Ivanov said nothing publicly. Then, in November 1990, he published an article titled "Mystery of the Fireballs"
59:18 Speaker 01 in the regional newspaper Leninsky Putt, roughly translated to Lenin's Way. And it was his first statement about the case in over three decades, and he did not hold back, saying, quote, "The study of the case now fully convinces. And even then, I stuck to the version of the death of student hikers from exposure to an unknown flying object. Based on the evidence gathered, the role of UFOs in this tragedy was quite obvious." Unquote. Aliens? It's aliens! Potentially. And he further confirmed the suppression of his findings, saying, quote, "When I reported to A.F. Yestokin about my findings, fireballs, radioactivity, he gave a completely categorical
1:00:01 Speaker 01 order to classify everything, to seal everything up, to hand it over to the special unit, and to forget about it." Unquote. And he closed with a line that has some fairly interesting implications, saying, quote, "All that remained was the sky and its contents, energy unknown to us, which turned out to be higher than human forces." Unquote. So Ivanov's UFO conviction should, of course, be taken with the big old grain of salt. And by 1990, he was an old man who hadn't touched the case in decades, but I feel like he was just waiting until he was close to death to say that- Truth personally, that's what I would do. But what do I know?
1:00:42 Speaker 01 And his writing is largely speculative, but the hard claims underneath hold up. Like that he was pressured to abandon entire lines of inquiry, that he pulled the radiation report on orders, and that the investigation was killed from Moscow. And the question was never whether the Soviet government suppressed evidence. The question was what they were suppressing and why? Which brings us to all of the theories. And the first and most widely believed is the avalanche theory. So in February 2019, Russian authorities reopened the case, but with a narrow scope. And only three natural causes were on the table. An avalanche, a slab avalanche, or a hurricane.
1:01:25 Speaker 01 And the possibility of a crime was ruled out before the investigation began. And on July 11th, 2020, Audrey Kurikov, deputy head of the Ural's Federal District, and directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office, that was a mouthful, had to say that a few times, announced the avalanche conclusion, saying, quote,
1:01:43 Speaker 02 "It was a heroic struggle. There was no panic, but in those circumstances, they had no chance of escape."
1:01:51 Speaker 01 Unquote. And Kurikov's reconstruction goes like this. "A slab of snow broke loose above the tent, and the hikers heard it coming. They cut the canvas and fled downhill." Well, they walked. So I don't know about this, but whatever. And wind and building snow collapsed what was left of the tent behind them, and they made it to the cedar and started a fire. And four of them eventually moved deeper into the forest, into the ravine, where they dug a platform of branches. And while digging, they set off a second collapse. And this one buried themselves under roughly three meters of snow. And that weight crushed their chests and skulls, and everyone else froze to death. And in 2021, researchers Johan Gom and Alexander Puzrin
1:02:36 Speaker 01 published a peer-reviewed study that added some scientific weight to the theory. And their model used 1959 weather data, General Motors crash test cadaver data, and notably, snow simulation code developed for Disney's Frozen. Way to pull through Elsa, you know? But they showed that a small but lethal slab avalanche was plausible even on a low angle slope triggered hours later by the hikers' own cut into the hillside combined with windblown snow stacking up above them. And Puzerin was very careful to say, quote, "We do not claim that now we have a final explanation of what happened, but we added plausibility to the avalanche theory," unquote.
1:03:19 Speaker 01 So the avalanche theory at least makes the hikers' actions rational, right? It does make them rational. Because experienced hikers who hear a slab breaking above them would absolutely cut their way out and run. It explains the tent, the panic, the chest injuries. But there are problems with this theory. Because when searchers found the tent, there was no debris field and no pattern of the kind of displaced snow you'd expect after an avalanche. And the skis that stood upright near the tent were undisturbed. It's not hard to knock over skis in the snow, just gonna say that. They would not have stayed upright like that in the event of an avalanche. And the slope angle at the campsite measured 28 degrees, which is steeper than the area's
1:04:04 Speaker 01 average of 23, but still lower than typical slab avalanche terrain. And Jim McElwain, a professor of geo-hazards at Durham University, noted that slab avalanches generally require steeper ground. Dyatlov and Solotaryov were both experienced enough to recognize the avalanche-prone terrain. So it seems unlikely that they would settle there, knowing that that was an issue. It was cold and it was a crazy storm, but it's just like, would they put themselves in danger like that? I don't know. And the footprints. The footprints leading away from the tent showed people walking in an orderly fashion in a line, not running for their lives as one likely would trying to escape an avalanche.
1:04:48 Speaker 01 And the theory also has nothing to say about the radiation and the missing soft tissue or the lights in the sky. And defenders of the theory argue those are separate, unrelated phenomena. But ultimately, the families rejected the theory altogether, and honestly, so do I. And their lawyer, Yevgeny Sharonousov, said flatly, "The relatives will not accept this conclusion. Only a technogenic theory is possible. In effect, this investigation has not produced anything." And the next theory is katabatic winds, which are essentially cold, heavy winds rolling downhill at extreme speed. Now, in the Urals, they can appear suddenly and turn violent without warning.
1:05:31 Speaker 01 In the 2019 review, confirmed winds that night reached hurricane force, 20 to 30 meters per second with temperatures at minus 40. In the original 1959, investigators never factored this in, having arrived at the scene three weeks later when the weather had calmed down. And the theory holds that the wind made the tent uninhabitable, forcing an emergency evacuation. And it could explain why they left, but not why they cut their way out instead of using the entrance. And wind, no matter how extreme, doesn't produce the kind of targeted crushing fractures found in the ravine floor without leaving any sort of mark on the skin. That one, I'd just throw that one over my shoulder. I don't really buy that one either.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 And then there's infrasound. So in 2013, American filmmaker Donnie Iker published Dead Mountain, in which he proposed another theory. Wind flowing over the dome-shaped summit of the mountain, he argued, could generate a phenomenon called a Karman vortex streak. Or alternating spiral fortices that produce something called infrasound. And these are vibrations lower than human hearing, but are still capable of affecting the body. And a 2003 UK study found that roughly 1 in 5 people exposed to infrasound reported anxiety, fear, or difficulty breathing. And Iker's scenario was this. The infrasound combined with the roar of nearby vertices
1:06:59 Speaker 01 and the claustrophobic darkness of the tent caused overwhelming panic in the group, enough to make nine experienced hikers slash their way ...out and flee barefoot into a blizzard. And once down slope and beyond the infrasound's reach, they would have regained their composure. But by then, it was too late because they couldn't find the tent in the storm. But there is problems with this theory, of course, because infrasound doesn't explain the injuries, right? Iker attributes ravine force fractures to stumbling off the edge of the ravine in the dark, and the science itself is somewhat shaky. And as Snopes noted, "Acoustic scientists are far from sure that infrasound exposure
1:07:43 Speaker 01 causes even the mildest symptoms attributed to it, much less extreme panic." Unquote. And no person has ever been documented as having been killed by infrasound, and no study has shown it can induce the kind of simultaneous panic required for nine people to abandon shelter into lethal conditions. And then we get into the more plausible ones, in my opinion, and that is the government. Because the Dyatlov campsite sat between the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Chornalaguba, a Soviet nuclear testing ground. The northern Urals were easily within range of military facilities. And the 2019 investigation confirmed that rocket launches did, in fact, take place
1:08:27 Speaker 01 from the Kapustan Yar training range during the expedition period. But the launch site was "not visible from the past." And the glowing orange spheres seen by multiple witnesses have been attributed by some researchers to debris from R-7 intercontinental missile tests. And more specific versions of this theory looks to parachute mines, which are designed to detonate in midair before hitting the ground. And they can produce massive internal trauma with minimal surface damage, matching the ravines for autopsy findings almost exactly. And records indicate the Soviet military was testing parachute mines in the same mountain range during this period.
1:09:10 Speaker 01 And the timing does line up with the fireball sightings. But the flaw in this theory, because we're going to talk about the flaws in all these theories, is that no declassified documents have ever confirmed military activity at the specific location on that specific night. The sightings were dismissed as an illusion by the 2019 reinvestigation. So do with that what you will. That one right now, top of my list. Okay. Well, we're getting into more, but that's top. And then there's the Mancey attack theory, which was one of the favorites for investigators initially, but we kind of already debunked that. Because they claimed they attacked the hikers because they were on their sacred land, but the Mancey
1:09:51 Speaker 01 denied this and there was literally zero evidence that a fight had occurred. And not to mention, the forensic examiner's analysis says that no human being could have caused those injuries, especially in those elements. And then there's one of my other, I don't want to say favorite theories. Well, I guess, yeah, favorite theories, you know, and this one makes sense scientifically, if you know anything about hypothermia. And that is paradoxical undressing. Because between 20% and 50% of people who die from hypothermia experience something known as paradoxical undressing. Because as the body shuts down from extreme cold, the brain misfires, giving the victim a false sense of burning heat. You get really hot, so you want to take your clothes off. Which means they strip off their clothing,
1:10:35 Speaker 01 convinced they're actually burning alive. I can't even imagine experiencing that. But this explains why Doroshenko and Krivonashenko were found nearly naked at the cedar. But the picture is obviously more complicated than that. Because the evidence shows surviving members of the group deliberately removing clothing from those who had already died, even cutting it off in some cases, and then putting it on themselves. And Dubanina wore Krivonashenko's pants, and Zolotaryov wore Dubanina's coat. So these instances point to a calculated attempt to stay alive, and not so much a state of confusion. But paradoxical undressing may account for part of the group's missing clothes, which is what I actually
1:11:18 Speaker 01 think, for this theory. But it doesn't necessarily explain why the group fled the tent in the first place, obviously. And it has nothing to do at all with the crushed chests and shattered skulls. But I do think that's like, a small percentage of it. I'm just giving, you can give your own thoughts in the comments. I'm extremely curious to know your guys' thoughts, but- Mine right now is government and a little bit of hypothermia. And next is espionage. Because there is the question of Semyon Zolotaryov, a 37-year-old man in a group of 20-somethings. A war veteran who escaped war without a scratch during a time when 97% of soldiers who served that long didn't even survive. A man who used a name that wasn't his,
1:12:02 Speaker 01 carried hidden tattoos no one in the group knew about, and switched expeditions three days before departure for reasons he never explained. And he had also spent time in Lermanotov, a city that was closed to outsiders because of its connections to uranium mining. And at a Communist Party meeting, he was confronted about his brother's wartime collaborations with the Germans. And despite this, he was never expelled from the Party or removed from his role. So it seems like that kind of immunity doesn't come about without someone powerful standing behind you. So an espionage theory started to form, proposing that Zolotaryov and possibly also Krivonashenko, given his work at MIAC, were actually placed in the Hiken Group
1:12:46 Speaker 01 as part of an intelligence operation in the Urals. And the radioactive clothing in this version could point to a handoff of nuclear materials. But details that don't quite fit anywhere else start to make a bit of sense here. Like the second camera around Zolotaryov's neck. He fled with it instead of his gear. And the notepad that the Colonel found and seized from him and said like, "Oh, there's nothing written in here. Nothing to see here." And just lights it on fire. He didn't light it on fire, but it disappeared. And the gaps in his biographical info. And the false name. And after the funerals, seven of the nine were laid to rest together in Mikielovskoe, which was a section of a cemetery reserved for the university. But Zolotaryov and Krivonashenko
1:13:31 Speaker 01 managed to end up buried somewhere else apart from the group. Ivan Osko's cemetery. And in 2018, journalist Natalia Varsozova arranged the exhumation of the body in Zolotaryov's grave. And just getting the permit took a year, and it was only made harder by the The fact that no burial record for anyone named Semyon Zolotaryov existed in the city of Sverdlovsk. And a skull matching analysis by expert Sergey Nikitin scored 13 out of 24 possible comparison points, one more than what was needed for a positive identification. So the face appeared to match, but the DNA told a different story. And the first round of testing found no genetic connection between the exhumed remains of
1:14:16 Speaker 01 Zolotaryov's niece, Tatiana Skolbetta. So if the results held, it meant the body in the grave wasn't him. And then, a second test that was run by the more widely recognized geneticist Pavel Ivanov came back positive. So though the DNA ultimately did match, the two results directly contradicted each other, and no one has been able to explain why. And some researchers have floated the possibility that the remains belonged not to Semyon, but to his brother Nikolai, who worked for the Germans during the war and disappeared without a trace. And then, there are his cryptic last words before they set out, saying, quote unquote, "This whole world will start talking about this track."
1:14:59 Speaker 01 That one, I don't even know what to make of that one, honestly. It could just all be mixed up. I think military with him and hypothermia, I think it's all mixed right now. And then he would also say ominously, quote unquote, "They will soon find out about everything." So whether that was prophecy, a bravado, or something else entirely, no one knows, and I don't think we ever will know. But certainly, an odd thing to say if he didn't actually know something. And that brings us to my favorite, the fringe theories. The Yeti theory traces back to a single joke from the evening of Torton, where they had included a line about a snowman living near Torton.
1:15:42 Speaker 01 And the case file doesn't even contain the original document, only a typed transcript. But despite this, the joke has been cited by multiple documentaries as evidence of an actual encounter. I want to believe Yetis are real, but I don't believe this one, unfortunately. I don't believe this one. But that brings us to the UFO theory. Which draws on the orange sphere sightings and Ivanov's 1990 endorsement. Remember Ivanov said when he was, when he was really old and dying that there, this was UFOs. This was the theory. But more grounded analysis attributed those lights to R7 missile launches from Bakhinor, given that the campsite sat directly on the flight corridor to a Soviet nuclear testing ground, as we spoke about before. But one investigator proposed the hikers were actually killed after being mistaken
1:16:26 Speaker 01 for escaped prisoners from nearby Gulag camps. However, no prison breakouts were recorded during this period. And another theory that investigator put forward proposed that the hikers were actually killed after being mistaken for escaped prisoners from the nearby Gulag camps. However, no prison breakouts were recorded during this period. So I don't really buy that one either. So far, it's military UFOs for me, or espionage and a little bit of hypothermia. But others have suggested just a fight within the group stemming from romantic jealousy, perhaps spiraling into violence. And Donnie Eckhart called this highly implausible, though. The diaries show no meaningful friction and the group seemed very tightly knit and no human could have delivered those injuries found in the ravines.
1:17:10 Speaker 01 So that one is just kaput. So in 2020, the case was closed and an avalanche was cited as the cause. And the family said no. And they had been saying no for 60 years. And Kulvatoff's mother was never properly told her son had died. And after his funeral, she lost the use of her legs because the shock had taken them from her. And Dubanina's father went to the morgue and fainted when he pulled back the sheet covering his daughter's body. And in 1999, Yuri Kuntsevich, the 12-year-old boy who had attended five of the funerals and had never forgotten the color of their skin, established the Dyatlov Foundation in Yekenturimberg.
1:17:50 Speaker 01 And its mission is to keep the investigation alive and to maintain the Dyatlov Museum and to make sure nobody stopped asking questions. As the families and the foundation spent decades pressuring authorities to reopen the case. And when the 2019 reinvestigation finally produced its answer, the foundation's lawyer rejected it immediately. But the families had always believed the cause was technological, whether that was military, chemical, or nuclear was uncertain. But I, I really do believe it's. Whew, especially in today's time, man, like our government.
1:18:27 Speaker 01 Absolutely disgusting. So I must safely assume the Russian government equally if not more. I'm, I'm, I'm, I have just no doubts. I don't know. But let me know what you guys think down below. But a Swiss researcher involved in the 2021 study clearly understood the resistance, saying, quote, "For relatives, the avalanche theory is hard to stomach because it suggests that these seasoned hikers were somehow to blame for their own deaths," unquote. But still, six decades later, the families still do not accept any official explanation. And then there was Yuri Uden, the one who turned back. And he carried the weight of that decision for the rest of his life. And he would never get married or have children.
1:19:11 Speaker 01 And he held on to the small teddy bear Dubanina had pressed into his hands when he left. And he spent years at the magnesium plant near Perm, then moved into city government until he retired. But he at least kept hiking. And his theories about what killed his friends changed over the years, but they always aimed toward something man-made. And he believed they had stumbled into military tests, chemicals, radiation, or explosives, just something of that nature. And just like the families, he never once accepted a natural cause explanation. And in his final years, Uden withdrew from the world. And he mentioned to friends that he was working on a novel about what happened to the Pass, but no one ever found a manuscript,
1:19:54 Speaker 01 just stacks of newspaper clippings about the case, and scattered notes which appeared to be fragments of a man still trying to solve the thing that had defined his entire life. And Uden died on April 27, 2013, at the age of 75. His heart would finally give out, and his ashes would be laid to rest, beside the remains of his seven friends he lost on that tragic night. And the mountain pass was renamed in the group's honor, and a monument stands at the cemetery, and a memorial plaque was unveiled in Soli Comsk in 2016 for Uden. And the university touring club now bears Igor Dyatlov's name, and many pictures survived, with dozens of pictures
1:20:36 Speaker 01 Pulled from the group's cameras, the searchers recovered four of them along with loose rolls of film. And they showcased faces in the snow, smiling, shots of gear being sorted, and trail markings on trees, and the landscape closing in as the weather worsened. And the last unidentifiable frames on Kravonishenko's film shows figures barely visible through the wind and snow on the afternoon of February 1st. And these are the final images of the nine alive. And then there is frame number 34, and this is the last exposure on Kravonishenko's roll. And it's completely blurred, nothing but darkness and a bright eight-sided glow near the center, and faint smears of light scattered around it.
1:21:21 Speaker 01 And it has fueled decades of speculation into some of the fringe theories. The camera experts offer a dull explanation, saying the bright shape matches the eight-bladed aperture inside the undisturbed 22 lens that was fitted to his camera. That particular lens has a barrel that collapses for storage. And if it isn't pulled all the way out before firing, the result is just blurry, with diaphragm-shaped blobs of light, which is exactly what the frame shows. And tests run in 2012 produced identical results. And the camera shutter was found half-wound up, which suggests the exposure happened unintentionally, most likely while someone was advancing the film. And the investigators who processed the camera threw the image out, thinking it was
1:22:05 Speaker 01 too degraded to mean anything. And it's almost certainly nothing, but almost certainly is not definitely. And that gap between what can be explained and what can be proven is where this entire case lives, anyway. By 2009, the group's diaries had passed into Russia's public domain, and the original negatives from Kravonishenko's camera that were held for decades in Ivanov's personal collection eventually were handed over to the Dyatlov Foundation by Ivanov's daughter in 1997. But new researchers keep coming. And over the years, the case has been sealed, unsealed, reopened, shut down, declassified, and reclassified. And pieces of the file remain unaccounted for to this day.
1:22:50 Speaker 01 Around 75 theories in total have been examined. And every theory explains some of the evidence, but no theory explains all of it. So what happened on the night of February 1st to 2nd, 1959, on the slope of Dead Mountain remains formally and functionally unsolved. But please let me know what you guys think down below. A lot of you guys suggested this, so I'm sure a lot of you guys have opinions, so please let me know below. Also, let me know what other cases you want me to deep dive into. I always read the comments, and until then, I will see your beautiful face. Okay? Stay safe out there. Bye-bye.
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