I ended up on this wikipedia page after reading a third party site page linked here by @Leo so they get some credit for this. I won't be linking the 3rd party site because the same page had unrelated NSFL WPD-tier graphic content and didn't contain any additional information beyond the wikipedia page and the guide page I'll link at the end.
1959: ten students and recent graduates of a Soviet polytechnic university decide to make a very long (200 mile) hike/ski trip through a section of the Ural mountains. All of the hikers were very experienced, the group leader (a radio engineering student that had been doing cold weather hiking for over a decade) especially so. The original group consisted of eight men and two women. They took a train and then a bus north to their departure point, the tiny village of Vizhai (population ~200). After spending the night and finalizing their loadouts, they began their trek further north on January 27th. The next day, one of the male hikers turned back due to an arthritis flare-up. Other than this, so far so good.
Everything mostly went as planned until the night of February 2nd, per diaries recovered in the aftermath. Visibility dropped due to a snowstorm and the group deviated slightly from their planned course. Not the end of the world. They set up camp that night on the side of the Kholat Syakhl mountain.
The group was expected to return to Vizhai on or within a few days of February 12th, and notify their university outdoors club of their successful return via telegram. This did not happen, and on February 20th once a minor delay began looking unlikely, the families of the hikers demanded a search and rescue operation. Initially the university club headed the search but after several days without success the police and military became involved, bringing search helicopters.
The campsite was found on February 26th, in a state that seriously confused the searchers. The tent had been torn open from the inside, and all of the hikers' gear including most of their shoes remained in the tent with no bodies inside or nearby. The first two bodies were found 1.5 kilometers away at the treeline, shoeless and in their underwear, followed by three more buried in snow between the first two and the ruptured tent. All five of these deceased were determined to have died of hypothermia.
The remaining bodies were not recovered until two months later on May 4th under 13 feet of snow, in a ravine 250 feet further into the woods from the first two bodies. Of these remaining four, only one had died of hypothermia, the rest had died of severe chest trauma, internal bleeding subsequent to chest trauma, and a skull fracture. Here's where it gets weirder: none of the trauma deaths had any soft tissue damage indicating a fall or a crush. Additionally, two of them were missing their eyeballs and other various tissues.
Nobody knows why they ripped their way out of the tent in such a hurry that they couldn't even put on their shoes. The most obvious explanation is an avalanche, but there was no indication an avalanche had occurred when the site was discovered. Alternative explanations range from infrasound tones generated by wind driving them all insane simultaneously, to ayylmaos , to military tests of parachute mines that exploded mid-air above their campsite ("orange floating spheres" had been reported in the areas around the site). Some of the clothes of the dead were found to be radiologically contaminated (ie radioactive), but apparently not all. The official public investigation ended almost immediately after this fact surfaced, so there is some speculation that radiological weapons were involved and the KGB shut the whole thing down.
There's also some shit about the oldest member of the group being a runaway Nazi or something that stole the identity he was using at the time of the trip after DNA testing revealed he was unrelated to the family he was supposedly a part of.
The nakedness of some of them is relatively easy to explain compared to the rest of the story: end-stage hypothermia causes the victim to feel hot, and undressing in similar situations has been documented.
I personally lean towards parachute mine tests as the most likely explanation: the sounds convinced the group that an avalanche was imminent, causing them to rapidly flee the tent. The subsequent hypothermia deaths were, well, hypothermia, and the trauma deaths would be explained by a blast shockwave of the parachute mines leaving no external signs of injury. The missing eyeballs are creepy but could've been eaten by scavenger animals, except that one of the missing eyeball bodies was found face-down under ice. Who knows?
https://ermakvagus.com/Europe/Russia/Cholat- Syachil/Kholat Syakhl.htm This site has more detailed info than wikipedia along with scans of documents and photos related to the incident (ESL warning).
If you really want to see the bodies, https://allthatsinteresting.com/dyatlov-pass-photos has some of the pictures and https://dyatlovpass.com/morgue has the rest, along with more info.
Atlas Obscura article https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/31-days-of-halloween-dyatlov-pass-incident
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It's all super easily explained by a small avalanche (or maybe even just things sounding like an avalanche was imminent) that spooked them.
-They were in a bad spot for an avalanche, the way their tent was found was perfectly consistent with a small avalanche having partially covered it (remember, "no evidence of an avalanche" doesn't mean anything: the search party didn't get there until 4 weeks later)
-The "radioactivity found on clothes" was miniscule amounts on one guy who worked in a lab that used radioactive materials.
-The injuries on the ones found in the stream were from falling through snow (weakened by the stream underneath)
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TBH going for the bland explanation is probably the truth most of the time.
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I 100% agree with the radioactivity part; they were all students at an engineering school that had a nuclear program so the contamination was most likely just due to that
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That makes sense, but what I'm not getting is this part:
Am I understanding this correctly? It sounds to me like they're saying that the kids had major internal bleeding but no external wounds. But that doesn't make any sense at all so I must be misunderstanding something
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Yes, they died of internal injuries with no signs of external impact. IMO this is best explained by Soviet military aerial parachute mine detonation tests that were allegedly conducted in the area around the same time as the incident, where the aerial explosions could have produced shockwaves strong enough to break ribs or skulls and rupture arteries at ground level without any direct physical contact.
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That makes sense. Do you think that's why one of them rushed out with a camera? Like maybe they thought they were under attack by aliens or something and wanted to take pictures of their attackers. It sounds crazy I know, but if you got suddenly woken up in your tent in the middle of the night by massive flashes of light followed by concussive air vibrations, it would seem pretty weird to you and you might not be thinking too clearly about mundane explanations for the event
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I mean yeah, quite possibly. Or he already had it on his neck while sleeping and didn't take it off. It's very hard to tell.
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I think all the conspiracy theories are just because nobody wants to admit these young kids with promising futures died because they were drunk and r-slurred and got in a fight. The kids were afraid of someone but it wasn't a monster, it was each other.
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The official reports claim there were no alcohol containers found besides an unopened bottle of antiseptic alcohol but knowing college kids...
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found the incel
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and that's how you know the reports are fabricated
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I really miss Cryptid Corner. I'm unironically mildly upset that @PlsNoCoal got outed as not being real because in the wake of the scandal she discontinued her spooky story hour.
Anyway, this story filled that nostalgic void, so thanks for sharing.
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Keep yourself safe
Lmao no, it's a skinwalking
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That mystery may never be solved
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SPAL IS FREEEEEEE I WAS ALWAYS ROOTING FOR YOU DUDE
Every now and then I go down one of these creepy rabbit holes, I find them very entertaining even though I am entirely atheistic/practical when it comes to these things (ayylmaos as commonly described cannot exist). IMO all of these stories have some kind of practical explanation that obeys existing laws of physics, but some of them like this one are ambiguous and fun to speculate on.
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Thank you so much! It's really heartwarming to find out how many people here at rdrama missed me. I missed you too!
As far as this case, maybe it's just the fact that I've been watching the new True Detective series lately, but I'll tell you that I've occasionally seen some weird stuff that I have no explanation for.
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Whyd you delete your blog. normal anxiety about modern overly online life or something
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I didn't: people just forgot the address. They were searching for the URL thequestioner.substack.com when they should have been searching for questioner.substack.com
I'm pretty sure that Google puts me lower in the search results because of my forbidden wrongthink (I'm probably associated in their algorithm with "spreading misinformation") so unless you do a pretty precise search for my blog you may have difficulties
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Ah true, typical drama information quality
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The only True Detective season I've seen is the first one with McConaughey and Harrelson (which was incredible, especially as a southeast native). Are any of the others worth seeing?
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IMO True Detective kind of has a formula where they have some some of weird crime with hints of the supernatural, but at the end it turns out to be a totally mundane explanation. Eventually that pattern will get old, but for now it still works.
I watched season 1 and thought it was fantastic, then season 3 (which was also pretty good). Season 2 got absolutely terrible reviews so I never even bothered watching it. Currently at the beginning of Season 4 which seems interesting so far. Minor issues annoy me (like one of the policewomen having metal cheek piercings despite being 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle) but generally it seems to be off to a good start.
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The bad reviews for s2 are why I dropped it, so I'll at least try out s3 now. S1 was sooooooo frickin aesthetically nice.
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They really nailed the modern H.P. Lovecraft vibe in season 1
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Season 3 is good. Season 2 has Vince Vaughn engaging in urban warfare or somethibg.
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why did these kinds of stories stop happening after smart phones were invented
with a high quality camera and a million other things started to be carried in our pockets every day everywhere and yet no crazy stories anymore
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One of them actually left the tent with his film camera (and none of his other gear), which was noted as really weird by the investigators
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Idk man, Flight 370 disappeared in 2014. Everyone obviously assumes it crashed somewhere but weird shit happens (and it's always caused by something mundane)
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MH370 has been solved as well as you can with such a thing
Turbo neurodivergent pilot who would go home to play with a flight simulator, after being both a full time pilot and aviation teacher, planned the perfect suicide. He probably evaded detection of radars to pull it off without being intercepted, not to hide the crash site... Just a side effect of his plan and his mastery of geography from his expert level experience flying in the region for decades
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vampires are afraid of digital cameras
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paradoxical undressing/general hypothermia antics
Horseshit, these people weren't recovered for months, no shit they were scavenged. Wolverines can and do search avalanche paths for carrion.
Easy explanation: This is horseshit.
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I mean, if you kept reading you'd see that I mentioned each of these possibilities, but go off I guess
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Wow so mysterious was it a Biogfoot or Siberian natives or
IT WAS A SLAB AVALANCHE
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I left that out because it ruins the spookiness
There are several other parts of the story that are weird tho
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I enjoy being a party pooper
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Need more spookypoasts from you of this is your style
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Thanks, this is my first time doing a creepy post like this. Most of my other ones in this style (here and on other sites) have been comparatively boring explanations of normal accidents and disasters.
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It was an avalanche no?
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Probably, but the traumatic injuries remain unexplained
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It was most likely snow. Or at the very least snow is capable of causing those injuries.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-may-have-finally-unraveled-mystery-dyatlov-pass-incident-180976886
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00081-8
They weren't ignorant of avalanches and their campsite was properly placed though. It was either a complete freak weather occurrence throwing blocks of snow around or weapon testing that created those conditions.
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Agreed on all counts. They knew what they were doing at the very least.
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womanbrained comment
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I was able to intercept an entire pallet of Pfizers first vaccine shipment. 4000 doses at 2 shots per dose. I've got it stored in a chest freezer in my garage. Ive been injecting myself every day, sometimes multiple times a day if I can stand it. The symptoms were terrible for the first few weeks. There were times I was completely paralyzed with pain, contorted like the Edvard munch painting and frozen in agony for hours. I became stronger and some of the worst symptoms subsided over time. I've been vaxmaxxing for almost 4 months now and I feel as though I'm becoming something greater than human now. I will continue to administer the injections into the same arm as long as possible. I'm increasing the dosages as much as I can stand and will maintain my journal
Snapshots:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
[https://ermakvagus.com/Europe/Russia/Cholat- Syachil/Kholat Syakhl.htm](https://ermakvagus.com/Europe/Russia/Cholat- Syachil/Kholat Syakhl.htm):
ghostarchive.org
[archive.org](https://web.archive.org/https://ermakvagus.com/Europe/Russia/Cholat- Syachil/Kholat Syakhl.htm)
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://allthatsinteresting.com/dyatlov-pass-photos:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://dyatlovpass.com/morgue:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/31-days-of-halloween-dyatlov-pass-incident:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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My fav theory is that they ended up downwind of a chemical weapons test
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You mentioned the aliens but no details on the UFO sighting. It's the main reason this story has legs for conspiracy connoisseurs. I think they saw missiles being tested.
I think it's fairly obvious there was some sort of avalanche that made them abandon their tent and try to find a new campsite. But was it natural or a result of whatever the Russian military was doing out there?
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I haven't looked into this super deep but I figured the UFO sightings were either visibility flares or engine exhaust from either parachute mines or planes that dropped them or missiles. Given how notorious the USSR was for covering up stuff like this I think it's fairly likely that some kind of military explosion caused them to evacuate, and the details were never released to the public.
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Eyelash.
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It was a slab avalanche, or the yeti
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It's definitely one of my more favourite "mystery" stories. First time I read about it was also before the latest investigation results, so there was more unknown stuff & speculation.
In the end I think it is solved by now. The reason why it has become such a mystery is because it was quite some time ago and no one really cared & had resources to investigate properly. The dead bodies were found weeks after they died. Scavengers and nature had their way with them. And authorities didn't really care too much about it, not to mention that all of it was Soviet / Russian and thus Westerners didn't really get much information.
Less about hypothermia. They were scared of an avalanche and grabbed what they had and ran to the small grove. There they piled clothes on 1-2 people who were send out to find the camp (but they got lost). The rest tried to start a fire and/or climbed the trees iirc. Same reason: try to find their tents.
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