
Dyatlov Pass Incident - signa11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident
======
seibelj
If you like this sort of thing, the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit [0] is a
great resource. Some plausible theories include avalanches and military
experiments [1] [2].

You could waste many days reading through Wikipedia's Unusual Articles [3]. If
you like aliens, here are two worthwhile reads:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Walton_UFO_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Walton_UFO_incident)

Good luck sleeping with the lights off tonight :)

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/)
[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1u031h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1u031h/by_far_my_favorite_unresolved_mystery_the_dyatlov/)
[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2q5bih...](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2q5bih/dyatlov_pass_a_slightly_different_theory/)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles)

~~~
madaxe_again
There's also this, from two years back, which defies explanation - mysterious
lights on/in the Pacific ocean.
[http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption](http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption)

I've seen my share of "weird shit in the sky". I've seen a bolide in broad
daylight, which was literally a "holy shit drop to your knees in awe" moment,
but I've also on a few occasions seen patterns of lights moving in impossible
fashions - high speed motion, instantaneous vector changes, followed by insane
acceleration and disappearance. They're usually orange. An explanation I've
heard for this sort of thing is car headlamps reflecting in a temperature
inversion - but the last I saw these was while camping in the taklamakan, a
long way from anything or anyone else.

I'm a physics graduate, an amateur astrophotgrapher, a pilot with an expired
license, and I can identify aircraft, satellites, and so-forth - but some
stuff I can't explain.

I also saw bona fide ball lightning and St elmo's fire a few years back
driving across the Russian steppe, between astrakhan and volgograd - huge
electrical storm, but as we were heading towards it, we kept seeing little
sparks of bright white light zooming up from the road into the clouds, and as
we were coming into the storm, we noticed the barbed wire fences along the
road glowing with purplish plasma. Cows in the field were sporting furry
plasma pompons on the tips of their horns. Absolutely nuts.

Anyway. I reserve all judgment on the question of LGM, but it'd be foolhardy
to say all unexplained phenomena simply don't exist.

~~~
sandworm101
Night + sea + strange green lights...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash)

~~~
madaxe_again
The green flash is just the sun retracting over the horizon - you can see it
off the west coast of most places.

Also, the Taklamakan is a desert, not a sea...

~~~
sandworm101
It can appear anywhere you have a clean horizon, such as while flying. It can
be so dramatic that any time I hear of green light moving in such a situation
I point to green flash phenomena.

------
sandworm101
I don't get the mystery. They were asleep in the tent at night. Then something
happened, presumably near the door, that caused them all to panic. Nine people
panicking in a tent, at night, in 1950s Russia. They wouldn't have had lights,
at least not the fancy flashlights were are used to today. So someone opened
up the tent wall with a knife and they all fled into the night.

Depending on weather, once you are 10+ feet from the tent in the dark, you
could be in big trouble. The trail of bodies flows from there. Some walk, some
stay put, others move later, some fall/slip and are injured... nothing here
seems very odd.

Now, what happened to freak them out? It could be any number of things. The
sound of a suspected avalanche coupled with a tent pole failing could start a
panic. An aircraft could sound like an avalanche. An aircraft dropping a few
flares could also put them in fear of incoming weapons. Or it could just have
been someone shouting something at exactly the correct time. The power of
suggestion is hard to fight in such a group. The group feeds on itself.
Someone says "run" and the herd moves.

~~~
pc86
And yet you would expect nine experienced hikers in 1950s Russia to be smart
enough not to slice open a tent wall with a knife in the middle of night and
go running out into the snow.

~~~
arethuza
I've panicked badly while staying in a fairly remote bit of Scotland in a tent
by myself - middle of the night some large animal blundered onto my tent, made
a lot of noise and scared the wits out of me. I was camped in a narrow bit of
ground between a steep mountainside and the sea at the head of a sea loch
(fjord) - to show you how irrational I was I thought it was a bear even though
there haven't been bears in Scotland for over a thousand years!

Felt pretty silly when I noticed a large herd of deer not far away the next
day.

I suspect having more people with me would have made us react even more
irrationally. I'm a pretty experienced hiker and generally fairly level
headed....

~~~
Cerium
I woke up once to what I thought was the sound of Velcro outside my tent. I
called out to my cousin (his backpack was leaning against the tree next to my
tent) that it is too early and I was trying to sleep.

Unzipped the tent and took a look out. The sound was a bear ripping my
cousin's backpack open. He did not leave any food inside, but had let some
food touch the pack and left a scent.

I quickly closed the tent and let the rest of the group run the bear off.

~~~
arethuza
I don't think I could camp anywhere that had bears!

~~~
wavefunction
@Cerium I'm not aware of any such requirement per se, mostly just that it's
good advice. We used to tie our food up but you have to pick the right tree or
the bear will simply climb up the tree or pull the tree over to bring the food
within reach.

~~~
Cerium
The regulations are not national, but enforced by individual park services. As
far as I'm aware all national parks with bears require proper food storage.
Many states have regulations as well. A quick search shows that parks in New
York with bears require their use during the summer.

------
lb1lf
While I enjoy a good mystery as much as the next guy (Though preferably ones
which does not involve several people losing their lives!), it would seem
rather plausible that these students were simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

The military tested some weapon in a remote area, unaware or indifferent to
the fact that people were around; the students are awoken in their tent in the
middle of the night by loud explosions and shockwaves; heck, I'd get up and
run like hell, too.

Then hypothermia and/or a fall into a ravine did them in.

When the armed forces realize that a whole group of students died as a result
of weapons testing, they were probably more than happy to leave it as a
mystery, rather than stepping forward and claiming responsibility.

There. No yeti required.

~~~
ravingraven
It's the little details that are hard to explain, like the missing tongue or
the brain damage.

~~~
zdkl
Neither are that hard to explain plausibly, and the wikipedia page does so.
Brain damage could come from concussive forces applied from the blasts of the
(speculated) explosive ordnance tests, this would in turn explain the absence
of external soft tissue trauma? The tongue part, as is the case for a lot of
missing limb story, sounds like some critter found a soft, yummy looking part
of the corpse and made away with it.

The bigger mystery IMO, is the absence of reported blast marks or damage to
the terrain one would expect from testing explosives.

~~~
stared
> The bigger mystery IMO, is the absence of reported blast marks or damage to
> the terrain one would expect from testing explosives.

Mid air?

~~~
vocatus_gate
Many HE munitions are airburst, because they cause greater damage from aerial
deployment than they do close to the ground. For example nuclear weapons are
detonated 1-2 miles above the ground. Considering that fact it doesn't rule
out a conventional military munition.

------
natch
With present knowledge of wilderness medicine, this is not a mystery at all,
although it was at the time. Everything is explained by the odd effects of
hypothermia. Someone missing a tongue after death is explained by hungry
animals.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=paradoxical+undressing+in+hypother...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=paradoxical+undressing+in+hypothermia&ia=web)

~~~
guard-of-terra
They were originally inside a tent, which was count cut through. Then they
left without boots. That's not paradoxical undressing, is it?

~~~
Avshalom
It's like this: you're in a tent becoming hypothermic--maybe the night was
colder than your equipment was good for, maybe you got wet-- you hit the
delirium stage and feel great so you decide to go out. You can't work the
zippers because of course you're half frozen in reality so in the unlogic of
delirium you just cut open the tent and step out. In that delirium you don't
so much paradoxically undress as simply not-get-dressed.

~~~
restalis
Wouldn't this theory be among the considered ones for the investigation in a
country like Russia, experienced with cold related issues? And why would they
have been so inclined to make this secret for over forty years?

~~~
Avshalom
They didn't keep it secret there was an official investigation, it got written
up in newspapers, people wrote books about it.

------
xabi
Kholat is a game developed by independent studio IMGN.PRO, inspired by true
events known as the "Dyatlov Pass Incident".

[http://kholat.com/en/index.php](http://kholat.com/en/index.php)

~~~
jsemrau
Looks fantastic. Never heard of the game, how do you usually market it?

------
anton_gogolev
There are photos of their bodies when they were found, as well as photos from
the morgue. They are quite gruesome and can be found with Google Image Search
by "дятлов тела" or "дятлов морг" keywords.

~~~
vocatus_gate
I'd read a lot about the incident but never seen those photos, pretty
gruesome.

------
gyakovlev
if you want a quick read thru the story and some speculations there is an
awesome page for that:

[http://dyatlov.looo.ch/en/](http://dyatlov.looo.ch/en/)

make sure you hit the play button if the music does not play automatically

------
j1vms
It's possible (maybe even likely) a key piece of evidence as to what happened
is missing. And also, given what's known so far, that piece of evidence has
not been found and thus remains unknown to anyone but the hikers. I wonder if
any of the 9, before perishing, had tried to leave a clue as to what happened
at the tent.

------
hoodoof
I like any unsolved problem that includes "Yeti" as a possible solution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident#Yeti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident#Yeti)

~~~
bshimmin
They made a mediocre (but reasonably watchable) film about this called
"Devil's Pass" (or "The Dyatlov Pass Incident" in some regions) - I won't
spoil it for you, but their possible solution made "Yeti" look quite mundane.

~~~
hoodoof
"Russian yeti" as opposed to....? "Canadian yeti" maybe?

~~~
pimlottc
You know, like an African swallow vs a European swallow.

------
xxr
Donnie Eichar's book _Dead Mountain_ is a good, fun read on it.

~~~
DonaldFisk
This suggested that they were freaked out by infrasound caused by a Karman
vortex street caused by wind flowing around Холатча́хль.

It's plausible, as it happens elsewhere, but has anyone checked to see if this
does actually ever occur on Холатча́хль?

~~~
xxr
Not that I know of, but how often does it occur where it does occur? That is,
how long would you have to leave a recording device there to invalidate the
infrasound hypothesis?

------
unknownzero
Have to put a plug in here for the Astonishing Legends, podcast they do great
work and are pretty damn entertaining. I would highly recommend anyone
interested in this and similar events check out their two part series on it
[http://www.astonishinglegends.com/portfolio/ep023-dyatlov-
pa...](http://www.astonishinglegends.com/portfolio/ep023-dyatlov-pass-part-1/)

------
dmerrick
The extremely-talented folk-metal band Kauan recently released an album about
this[0]. It's worth checking out if you like ambient, moody, atmospheric
music.

[0] [http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/10/22/stream-kauans-new-
album...](http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/10/22/stream-kauans-new-album-about-
the-mysterious-death-of-nine-hikers-in-1959/)

------
drdeadringer
I heard recently of the book "Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the
Dyatlov Pass Incident" by Donnie Eichar ... which apparently goes into the
whole thing via access to records, photos, interviews, the hiker's journals,
and so forth.

The book's on my short list of reading.

~~~
scottm01
I can't believe this book wasn't mentioned earlier in the thread! I finished
it last month and won't spoil anything, but the author ends up with a pretty
good theory. The book goes into great detail about the investigation and
examines and discards plenty of possible explanations (including every "Well
of course it must have been..." suggested here so far!)

It's also an interesting look at young people in the Soviet Union at that
time.

------
CydeWeys
This is one of those happenings that captures popular imagination and keeps
coming up over and over again. I wrote about it when I first heard of it
almost a decade ago, and received a steady stream of conspiracy theorist
comments thereafter: [http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/02/27/dyatlov-pass-
acciden...](http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/02/27/dyatlov-pass-accident/)

I've resolved myself to never knowing the truth of what happened both here and
for many other things. It's really hard to let it go like that, but at some
point you're just making a bigger and bigger intellectual itch that can never
be scratched.

------
mattlong
There's a great Stuff You Missed in History Class on this [1].

If I'm remembering correctly, one theory is that their canned food was tainted
with a bacteria (not terribly uncommon for the time) that caused mental issues
which triggered the bizarre chain of events of them leaving their shelter is
various states of undress.

[1] [http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-dyatlov-pass-
inc...](http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-dyatlov-pass-incident/)

------
klakier
Interesting that Polish wikipedia has more information about this than
English. It says that military accident was not likely.

------
hackney
I believe it was a migu that killed them. Yeti type animal. Why? Possibly
because of the Russian military activity nearby, most likely. I doubt there
was provocation on the hikers part. The physical damage was definitely
animalistic and no doubt if men had killed them it would have been an entirely
different story

------
protomyth
The Trivia section is funny and shows you why we have so many Devils Lakes in
the US (oh, spirit, must be the Devil!!)

I do love the name Kholat Syakhl (Dead Mountain). That must mean EVIL!!! (asks
native) Oh, yeah, nothing to hunt on that mountain, try that one over there
called Lunt-Husap-Sjahyl (Mountain of Goose Nests).

------
holmerica
Yeah but what about the Radiation? It's only mentioned in passing in this
article but I've read this story in other places where it is covered in
greater detail.

~~~
Smushman
Once you accept they were attacked by a Yeti it is a minor jump to conclude
this Yeti, or perhaps all Yetis, are radioactive, don't you think?

------
collinmanderson
Randall Munroe thinks the "explanation seems pretty clear".

[https://xkcd.com/1501/](https://xkcd.com/1501/)

------
torrent-of-ions
Any chance they just all took drugs or something?

~~~
stefs
maybe, but i don't it's likely. experienced hikers wont chug e's for fun if
they're in a potentially dangerous situation. the undressing is due to
hypothermia, as explained above. the missing tongue is most likely due to
foxes or other predators, they eat the soft tissue first.

an avalanche+hypothermia is the most likely explanation.

~~~
guard-of-terra
There are photos of this place and tent on it. No signs of avalanche and
inclination is very mild.

It's kind of hard to explain why they did not take boots or at least return
for them.

~~~
lb1lf
>It's kind of hard to explain why they did not take boots or at least return
for them.

-That's presumably just what (probably, obviously this is pure conjecture on my part) the three bodies found apparently heading back to the tent were trying to do? Return to retrieve their kit, that is?

I'd reckon fleeing in panic is why they didn't pause to put on their boots and
kit in the first place; something caused them to leave in a hurry. What that
something was, however, we obviously do not know; my money would be on
munitions testing, but YMMV.

Now, I didn't see any details in the Wikipedia article or on the (fabulous!)
looo.ch site that the rescuers found any inexplicable tracks in the snow,
suggesting either that whatever tracks there was had blown over OR that
whatever scared them was airborne or at the very least a fair distance from
their tent - or, for that matter that the rescuers happened to be encouraged
to leave out some details, further indicating the authorities were involved.

I agree an avalanche sounds very unlikely, though - both based on the terrain
and the fact that at least some of the victims were experienced mountaineers;
they simply wouldn't have set up camp anywhere they deemed vulnerable to an
avalanche in the first place.

