How Frozen Helped Solve a Sixty Year-Old Cold Case (Nerdist Now)

[Music] here's how frozen helped solve a 60-year-old cold case this is nerdist now if you've ever been challenged to connect adina menzel to a mysterious russian cold case from the 1950s and some sort of strange six degrees of kevin bacon-ass game well your life just got way easier national geographic recently reported how swiss scientists with the help of disney animators may have finally cracked the weird mystery surrounding the infamous diatlov pass incident now for those who don't know the outlaw pass incident involved a group of nine russian hikers who passed away in the northern ural mountains also known as the dead mountains back in 1959. the mystery surrounding these tragic deaths of these unfortunate hikers made the case a perfect target for all manner of conspiracy theories of the nine that were recovered six of them were diagnosed with hypothermia as the cause of death but it gets a little bit stranger than that two of the hikers were found under a cedar tree near the remains of a fire three others were found in intervals of hundreds of feet from said tree and four more were discovered in a ravine another 250 feet away the two hikers who were discovered under the tree had burned hands and the three hikers who didn't succumb to hypothermia died from physical trauma similar to that of a vicious attack they were all also in various forms of undress with articles of clothing scattered about and some of their tents had been cut open from the inside out almost like they were attempting to escape something inside their own tent everything from animal attacks to russian military experiments to yetis have been thrown around over the years as possible explanations for what happened when avalanches didn't seem to correctly line up with the geography and the causes of death according to national geographic many argued that the avalanche theory initially proposed in 1959 still didn't seem to stack up the team's tent encampment was said to have cut into the snow on a slope with an incline seemingly too mild to permit an avalanche weather records also showed there was no significant snowfall on the night of february 1 1959 that could have triggered an avalanche and the bizarre injury seemed atypical of what avalanche victims actually endure swiss scientist johann gom the head of the snow avalanche simulation laboratory at the swiss technical institute epfl has another explanation they recently published in the journal communications earth and environment gome is also a really big fan of the 2013 disney animated film frozen particularly the realistic movement with how the digitally animated snow worked in the movie he was so blown away by it he eventually reached out to disney to ask for a favor after hopping on a jet and flying to los angeles gome met with the team of animators behind frozen snow physics and he asked if he could get a copy of the animation code that they used during that film's production disney agreed to give gome the animation code and then he modified it so his lab's avalanche models could simulate the impacts that avalanches would have on the human body basically he ran a bunch of tests as to what would happen if you were suddenly attacked by about thirty thousand olafs hi now gom worked with geotechnical engineering professor alexander puthran on this project to make a simulation of the kolatsyakal the so-called mountain of the dead avalanche and i hope i pronounced that properly but they also needed realistic values for the forces and pressures human beings would experience during an avalanche so they turned to general motors and this is where things once again get a little bit dark according to puthran we discovered that in the 1970s general motors took 100 cadavers and broke their ribs hitting them with different weights at different velocities this study was used to see what happens to the human body during a car crash and that data was ultimately used to test the safety of seat belts some of the cadavers in those tests were braced with rigid supports while others were not and this worked as a great variable because on the slopes of the kolatsyakala mountains the hikers had placed their bedding atop their skis meaning that the avalanche which crashed down upon them as they slept struck an unusually rigid target similar to some of the tests that gm conducted during the 1970s with the frozen animation codes and gm studies in hand gom and pushrin showed that a block of snow could handily break the ribs and skulls of people which would explain why some of these hikers incurred such horrible brutal injuries now sure this revelation is admittedly backed up by years of scientific research and coding but ultimately we have elsa anna and all of the hard-working animators on frozen to thank for finally helping solve this 62 year old cold case but tell us what's your favorite still unsolved mystery do you think tangled could be used to explain jimmy hoffa's whereabouts let us know in the comments below and for all the latest and greatest in the world of pop culture stay tuned to [Music] nerdist.com [Music] you

Channel: Nerdist

Views: 29,156

Rating: 4.8767333 out of 5

Keywords: Nerdist, Nerdist Now, Dan Casey, Frozen, Conspiracy Theory, Disney, Dyatlov Pass

Id: fcWobvDXzHI

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021