The Mystery of the 9 Russian Hikers found Dead

the mystery of the nine Russian hikers found dead the Dyatlov pass incident 1959 just to the east of the Ural Mountains located on the east set river is the Russian city of Yekaterinburg known during the Soviet era as Sverdlovsk in the local cemetery is a group grave dating back to 1959 and contains the bodies of 9 members from the Ural Polytechnical Institute who all died in mysterious circumstances while hitchhiking in the North Ural mountain range 1959 may have been at the height of the Cold War full of tension and mistrust but it was also a proud time to be a Soviet citizen as the People's Revolution was achieving so many great and glorious things or so the Soviet press would have had you believe for the Soviet satellite Luna 1 had just been launched and become the first man-made object to pass by the moon and the 3rd Soviet Antarctic expedition had concluded and had been a resounding success so against this inspiring backdrop of progress and achievement or a group of 10 people eight men and two women who set off on a hitchhiking expedition all of the more highly experienced hikers and skiers and the purpose of their trip was to gain their grade 3 hiker certificate which was at the time the highest such award in the Soviet Union their goal was to reach otorten mountain the route daya chosen to get there was graded as the most difficult possible so it was going to be a real challenge for them all all but one of the expedition members were in their 20s and it was led by a 23 year old radio engineering student igor dyatlov after travelling north by train and lorry the group set off from the village of vizhai on January 27th 1959 as a safety precaution off told his local sports club that he expected to return to the zai by February 12th and would send them a telegram when he did so by all accounts things started off well enough for the group though the next day one of the group started to have knee and joint pain and was forced to turn back the rest of the group now nine people continued on their hike after this point none of them were ever seen alive again February 12 came and went and the sports club received no telegraph from Dyatlov but no one was at first worried as it was not unusual for these types of hikes to overrun over a few days but by February 20th friends and relatives had become concerned and the Institute organized its own search teams made up of volunteer teachers and students a few days later the army and local police joined in assisted by snowmobiles planes and helicopters it was not until February 26th that the group campsite was found in the slopes of qalaat Ciotti this meant in the local dialect dead mountain on account that very little wildlife was ever found there so the local mansi hunters rarely hunted there and this might explain why the camp was not discovered until then but the searchers found was strange indeed the groups tent was heavily covered in snow and had collapsed it had been ripped open from the inside and judging by the adjacent tracks it seemed that the group had rushed down the slopes wearing only what they had been sleeping in the group's tracks led to the edge of the forest nearly a mile away the searchers found three bodies along the way from the missing group including the leader Dyatlov who it seemed had attempted to return to the camp the three bodies were found separately over an 1,100 foot stretch of the slope at the actual treeline the searchers found a further two bodies dressed only in their underwear with no footwear on next to what was left of a small fire their hands and feet were burnt although they had tried desperately to stay warm a tree next to them had all its branches broken up to a height of 18 feet which suggested that one of them had tried to climb up it to get a good vantage point an inquest would later conclude that all five had died of hypothermia this is where the body loses more heat than it can keep or produce and you freeze to death the final four bodies of the expedition were not found until May 4th they were found 250 feet inside the forest from where the others had lit the small fire their bodies were under 13 feet of snow at a shallow ravine these four were slightly better dressed than the others it is suggested that they had taken more clothes off of those who had died first for warmth the cause of their death was different from the others in the group firstly it seems they did not die at the same time three of the group members had lethal bone fracture injuries associated with high pressure impacts that could not be caused by a human being and will more commonly associated with a fatal car crash much has been made of the fact that the woman in this group had her eyes tongue and part of her lips missing but this was thought to be all part of the decomposition process she was found facedown in some running water beneath the snow the official inquest simply concluded that compelling natural forces were what killed the hikers and this was mainly due to the temperature being well below freezing at the time at the time of their deaths none of the expedition were properly dressed none of them were wearing a complete set of shoes some of them had only one shoe others had no shoes or wore only socks or were barefoot many possible explanations for this strange incident have been put forward and several factors are taken for granted by these theories and backed up by the official investigation team these were one that it was nighttime - that it was very cold and three they were all dead before or shortly after dawn the next day were they attacked by local men zee tribesmen though they were on Manzi territory the men Z were not an aggressive or territorial people and the cola Rocky Mountain held no particular sacred significance or value to the Manzi tribe in fact it was an exceedingly poor hunting ground rarely visited by Mansi hunters victim of a robbery it seems highly unlikely as nothing of value seemed to have been taken from the campsite there were no other sets of tracks in the area and the injury inflicted on some of the expedition members but now been done by anything human an animal or pack of animals that attacked them although further south of the hikers campsite were dangerous animals such as brown bears and wolves it was unlikely they would have wandered that far north especially as the hunting there was so poor also no animal footprints were found in the area nor did the hikers have any wounds resembling an animal attack an avalanche had occurred forcing them to flee the Avalanche theory at first glance looks like a possible answer considering the heavy deposits of snow on the crushed tent also there is the fact that the tent was cut open from the inside and everyone had seemed to rush down the hill seemingly in a panic with great urgency but though the cutting of the tent from the inside cannot be satisfactorily explained the Avalanche Theory can be dismissed the build-up of snow on one side of the tent was probably due to nearly a month of snow drift before the campsite was found by the search team and if there had been an avalanche how come the tracks of the fleeing hikers could still be seen so clearly leading away from the camp and most experts agree that the topography surrounding the campsite does not lend itself well for conditions that could cause an avalanche among other things it was not steep enough for avalanche to occur in fact no avalanche had ever been recorded in that particular area was it to do with a Soviet military secret project there were rumors that parachute bombs were being tested nearby and that one drifted way off course and detonated near the campsite could this have startled all nine sleeping hikers into a panic thinking they had just heard the boom that often accompanies the start of an avalanche was it radioactivity it was said that some of the hikers abandoned clothes were radioactive while others were not could it be that earlier that day a few of the party stumbled on some secret military project and got contaminated only to be tracked down by the military and forced to flee into the night were they the froze to death or met a tragic death in the ravine an interesting unanswered question would be why did the investigation team check for radiation in the first place not exactly something you do if you are investigating the tragic deaths of a group of young hitchhikers a government cover-up it is true that the Soviet authorities took a keen interest in the case and sent officials to monitor the progress of the investigation and there did seem that officials higher up put pressure on the investigation team to wrap things up as quickly as possible but this was pretty much a common practice and a strictly run an oppressive regime like the Soviet Union over the years the events of that fateful incident have been the subject of many conspiracy theories this is not helped by the fact that the Soviet Army closed the areas for three years after the incident claiming it was for safety reasons leading to further speculation that they had something to hide the infrasound theory a more colorful theory is the wind around the mountain that night cause what is known as a Karman vortex Street effect which can produce infrasound which can cause panic attacks in humans so the theory goes that this happened that night causing the group mental and physical distress and induced the group to panic and flee down the hill and mass hysteria then they got disoriented in the darkness split up and succumbed to the elements the science backing of this theory is at best questionable partying that went wrong as we all know college students across the world have a reputation for partying so could it have been some wild letting off steam escapades after several days of hard hiking that involves alcohol and impossible drugs that led to erratic and foolish behavior the investigators briefly looked at this possibility and then quickly dismissed it they explained that all the hikers were of good moral character with no history of alcohol or drug abuse the investigators also pointed out that the only alcohol taken on the trip was for medical purposes and that the flask containing it was found full and unopened it is conceivable that the Soviet authorities would cover up a possibility like this so they could portray their deaths as a heroic tragedy involving a group of clean living and dedicated young communists rather than some decadent morally corrupt youths who died to partying and heiress behavior possible explanation without an overall theory something either startled or forced them to flee down the hill and travel a considerable distance with little clothing on and none or incomplete Footwear the conclusion that the tent was cut from the inside may not have been correct the fleeing hikers had split into three main groups one group seemed to freeze to death while trying to get back to the campsite another chose to build a fire but due to the freezing temperatures this was not enough to keep them from freezing to death to the last group fled through the forest and what must have been pitch-black darkness and later were found at the bottom of a small ravine with severe impact damage could it be they had fallen into the ravine and got injured that way or had built a snow shelter as experienced hikers have been told you so but the structure had collapsed on them in a series of cave-ins killing them one by one the immense weight of the snow caving in or falling into a ravine might explain the crushing impact injuries many of that group suffered and a last tantalizing anomaly is the picture the investigators took of the crushed and ripped hikers tent which was meant to hold all 10 of the original hikers but the picture clearly shows a tent that would struggle to hold half that number the area surrounding the site of the incident was later renamed Dyatlov pass in honor of the ill-fated expedition leader igor dyatlov and the incident has now become an unexplained mystery with many questions still left unanswered so what do you think caused the hikers to act as they did we'd be interested to hear your theories please add your comments below you

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Keywords: simple history, animated history, educational, education, The Dyatlov Pass incident, russian, russia, soviet, mystery, who dunnit, curious, weird, question, hiker mystery, Ural, Sverdlovsk, Dyatlov, Игорь Алексеевич Дятлов, Kholat Syakhi, Mansi tribesmen, crime, investigation, avalanche, cold, Radioactivity, Infrasound, theories, theory, explanation, ravine, unsolved mysteries, solved, yeti, bigfoot, Dubinina, Igor Dyatlov, Zolotaryov, Slobodin, Kolevatov, Krivonischenko, Doroshenko, Yuri Yudin, Kolmogorova

Id: FZvRPoon7e8

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019