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Comment by lb1lf | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I personally think this makes the most sense too. Occam's Razor and all that. I'm in the Army and there's all kind of ordinance detonation stuff that happens way out in the middle of nowhere, where no one's presumed to live. Especially in Russia, it's entirely plausible to me that they tested some bomb or munition not expecting a group of student hikers to be out there.

Army EOD stepping in. *ordnance, common typo.

What do you think of the chest trauma being caused by airdropped anti personnel mines? Or other smallish explosive?

Wouldnt these leave some evidence via empty canisters? The wiki said scrap metal was found near by. But I'd imagine there would be some more obvious evidence near the ground when the rescue team arrived.

From one of the write-up sites, they claim that several higher-ranking military officials were fired following the incident. It's equally likely it was just a coincidence, but personally I'm leaning towards that.

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

> It was claimed that Dubinina was found lying face down in a small stream that ran under the snow and that her external injuries were in line with putrefaction in a wet environment, and were unlikely to be related to her death.

The brain damage is not out of the question if they were victims to a close range weapons test.

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.

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

Mid air?

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.

It was some time before they were found, and the snow might have hindered identification of that.

Missing tongue was most likely an animal scavenging.

I agree - a likely explanation.

A halfway decent examination should show if it was torn on bitten through... Writing this I realise it must have been bitten through by either external means (animal) or localized (bit off own tongue) or it would have been mentioned as another mystery.

But for me, one thing that is harder to explain is the skull fragment. For that, there would have definitely been tooth or tool marks. Unless of course, she fell....

Why would you run like hell away from your tent without your boots in the Ural mountains night?

For me, plausible explanation is that indeed somebody did not want them alive but wanted it to look natural. Scared them away from their tent at gunpoint. Had to hit their toughest guy in the head.

They also had some people with stange past in that group.

> Why would you run like hell away from your tent without your boots in the Ural mountains night?

-Because you are sound asleep one moment, only to find yourself in the midst of a number of explosions the next? That would unsettle me no end, for sure.

Not saying that I know for sure what happened; only that the simplest explanations often are the best.

I do find it rather unlikely that Soviet armed forces (if they were testing something suffiently secret to 'justify' killing any accidental spectator, even their own citizens) would even let people enter the area; much easier (and less drastic!) to just tell people to turn around 'for security reasons' and be done with it than letting them get too close, then killing them.

Now, death by negligence/indifference in the course of military action, on the other hand, would hardly be a first.

(And if someone WANTED them dead, the area does appear to lend itself well to making people disappear; doubly so when under a regime which had taught people not to ask too many awkward questions.)

It would be rather surprising if anyone but Soviet authorities of one variety or the other was involved in activities which couldn't be allowed to come to light in the area, so I (perhaps too lightly) discount options like a secret CIA infiltration mission, yetis, aliens, poachers, rum runners...)

Unsettle is one thing; fleeing without boots and not returning to pick them up is another thing.

This is practically uninhabited area and it is really huge and cold. Even of Soviet armed forces wanted, they could not "tell people to turn aroud".

> I do find it rather unlikely that Soviet armed forces [...] would even let people enter the area

"What, that pass, in februari? Not like anybody will be stupid enough to be hiking there." or "No, if we tell people not to go, they'll want to know what we're doing over there. Best just keep quiet about it." or a combination of both.

If this is true it's an even bigger sensation than a yeti so I'm not buying your "simple" explanation.

Why would military misadventure be a bigger sensation than an encounter with a Yeti? If the latter was proven to be true I would be far more amazed than if it was just a military accident.

Military misadventure happens all the time. When I was growing up near a military base in Norfolk, Virginia, a family who was friends with ours had a blast of machine gun fire rip through their car while traveling with the mother, father, and baby inside. Luckily nobody was injured.

How would that be a sensation?

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