The disappearance of a Soviet skiing party in 1959
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The rest of the story about how one set of students tried to build a fire out in the open but it wasn't enough to save off the freezing wind and the other group tried to build a biovac out of a snowbank and were crushed when it collapsed is completely plausible. It even makes sense if they thought the slope was about to avalanche, it would be too risky to try to go back and retrieve the gear, even as they were literally freezing to death.
The Katabatic Wind says they thought the tent was about to be destroyed by the wind, exposing them to deadly cold from the high winds. So they sought shelter in the forest below. It's one of several wind theories. But agreed that if they had the teime to stabalize the tent with packed snow, they had time to grab their shoes and warmer clothing. All the theories are flawed in one way or another.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/04/26/podcast-episode-55...
Personally, having familiarized myself with this case over the past three years from various podcasts, forums, videos and even a couple of the books, I'd say the snow slab is no more or less likely than infrasound, katabatic wind, tree fall, military test or murder theories. Reason being that the evidence is incomplete and ambiguous, with the actions of the higher up authorities suspicious enough that there could have been some sort of cover up.
I thought the snow slab/mini avalanche explanation was plausible, fit the circumstances, and didn't require people acting improbably.
This is also one of those cases where the actual facts have gotten mixed in with speculation, confusion, and in some cases outright fabrication which makes it harder to study. Sifting through the information to find the ground truth is one of the hardest parts of trying to figure out what happened.
It's possible the snow slab melted enough to blow or slide away during those 24 days, but then we're making an assumption that it existed in the first place. Which is no different from assuming the wind made a low frequency sound that scared the hikers out of the tent, or fill in whatever missing X caused them to leave the tent.
I think there's lots of odd things that go unexplained even if one can think of a reason to leave the tent like a small avalanche. Why were the two Yuri's left to attend a smile fire that they froze around? Why were the four found in the ravine several meters from the alleged snow den? Why did the lead investigator think that a radiation test in the middle of nowhere was necessary? Did he really see burned tree tops? Unfortunately, the pictures that are available today are very incomplete, including pictures of the tent, footsteps, bodies where they were found, etc.
Which raises another question. Do we have all the papers and photos from the original case?
That's a speculative statement. "it makes little sense" as an argument is weak on its own, but is 10x weaker when it's based on supposition you just invented regarding the state of their tent and their somehow knowing that state well.
The snow slab story fits all the other evidence: there was a massive slide of ice that rolled over the tent and burring it.
the hikers that were not seriously injured cut themselves and quickly made their way down the hill to find some safety from further avalanches, but some where found just wearing underwear. those stayed put around a quickly made camp fire, which is why they also appeared 'tanned' as they stayed too close to the flames. it was a very windy-cold night.
The others tried to make their way back to camp; however, finding camp in a windy storm at night was hard and they failed. I think it was 2 had fallen into a ravine, and the rest died due to the elements.
Ironically, those in their underwear lived the longest
The USSR wasn't a monolithic evil big brother that could disappear people without anyone noticing - people did notice and we've got a lot of evidence of crimes that were supposed to go disappear in the wind. But a lot of evidence was intentionally tainted or manipulated for a wide variety of reasons.
The only thing we're really certain of is that a lot of heads rolled at the time that were really unnecessary.
I don't know whether that's more plausible than all the other theories where the tent was setup on the slope, but a lot of people have thought the evidence never quite fit. That could be because the search party disturbed the tent and its contents tramping around when they were looking for the hikers. Or it could possibly be because someone knew of the hikers demise some time earlier and staged the tent to cover their butts just in case they were blamed for it.
There was a discussion a while back on "trapped priors" in Bayesian reasoning, where you might "correctly" update your beliefs in the wrong direction based on your subjective experience of evidence that should contradict your prior beliefs (1). It seems like you see this behavior everywhere, these days, especially when it comes to conspiracy thinking: any data can be taken as evidence to support the conspiracy theory, whether it's "Q" or a sixty-year-old backcountry disaster.
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The evidence suggestive of a conspiracy includes injuries to hands and faces of the five hikers not found in the ravine, which is consistent with fighting. There are some other injuries which could be consistent with being bound and being hit with a hard object like a rifle butt or baton. The newest book presents evidence for mining explosives in the area, and people knowing about the accident prior to the search party finding the tent. I'm not saying any of that is true, only that it's somewhat plausible.
Maybe some people didn't like them traversing their land, didn't appreciate the spectacle of it, or wanted to keep outsiders out. All very common themes historically. They tracked them, chose an opportune time and attacked them to make a point to outsiders. It's not even necessary that the primary objective was to intentionally murder them, merely to beat them severely and prompt the group to leave, which in those conditions could easily result in everyone dying regardless.
Infrasound as a premise is absurd and can be safely dismissed, they wouldn't have all neglected to properly cover themselves, and they wouldn't have all reacted similarly as in such intense group fear. No group collectively simultaneously panics in such a stupid manner and somehow magically mass brute-force injures themselves all at different locations; as they were not fools and did have an understanding of the elements. They very rapidly fled in terror for their lives, as if attacked suddenly / caught off guard - whether by other people, by a falling tree (and fear of more), or slab of ice. You probably don't flee a mile to a streambed out of fear of a falling tree however, and you don't entirely abandon your group for dead back there (a falling tree/s scenario presents plausible time to regroup and seek clothing). The group of three in the streambed was killed / murdered later, as the article notes they could have never likely made it there if their injuries had existed prior (they were not killed by magic falling trees); they were probably tracked to the streambed area and attacked, after initially successfully fleeing the original attack on the camp. Those in the streambed fled over a mile, which is a very intense thing to do in such conditions; you only do that if you believe you can't safely go back to the camp for some very good reason (where going back means very plausible death; they abandoned their comrades in fleeing so far, keep that in mind). So who/what murdered the people in the streambed? The reasonable explanations drop to only a few very quickly. The girl in the streambed was found in a very unusual backward facing position [1], she looks like she was turning away, trying to escape when she died. The attack group found them and finished the job.
You slash one side of the tent to go the other direction away from the attack party, and possibly to avoid being spotted fleeing if at all possible.
One could make a similar statement about many folks' refusal to entertain ideas outside of the mundane for fear of looking stupid. Interestingly, this behavior seems more common amongst intelligent people (who perhaps are compromised by their pride of their intelligence, but not so confident in their intelligence as to lack that insecurity).
We live in a world where six people were just killed by someone who didn't get invited to their party. This clean, sanitized theory wants to pin Dyatlov on physics.
Is there a reason it's popping up multiple places lately?
The avalanche theory, recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120
General discussions:
It first says:
> About a hundred feet downhill, the search party found “very distinct” footprints of eight or nine people, walking (not running) toward the tree line. Almost all the prints were of stockinged feet, some even bare.
But then a few paragraphs down, says:
> Something had happened that induced the skiers to cut their way out of the tent and flee into the night, into a howling blizzard, in twenty-below-zero temperatures, in bare feet or socks.
So first the article takes care to point out that the group was not running, only to then say that they were? Which is it? I expect the New Yorker to have better quality control than this.
I'm going to assume they used 'flee' in a more figurative sense, not literal, but such 'colorful' prose is sloppy in an article such as this.