Name: Two theories for an unsolved Soviet mystery
Uploaded: 2021-05-18T08:43:03.000Z
Duration: 10 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is the last photo taken by a group of experienced Russian hikers, the night they

Here, in the remote Ural Mountains in Western Siberia.

They were on an advanced winter hiking trip, trekking hundreds of kilometers through frozen

The photo shows them digging a platform in deep snow, to pitch their tent along the slope

which translates from the language of the indigeous people of the region, the Mansi,

Hours later, the hikers abandoned the tent and all of their equipment in the dark.

Weeks later, a search party found the tent, half-destroyed, and covered in snow.

Frozen bodies, most of them barefoot and wearing just their sleeping clothes, were found 1,500

Meaning something drove the group from the tent so fast, there wasn't even time to

or put on the heavy winter gear necessary to survive the conditions outside.

It would take another 2 months to locate the rest of the group.

All of them dead, their autopsies revealing severe injuries that were hard to explain.

Dozens of theories, from alien encounters to government cover-ups, have developed ever

But basically every theory tries to answer the same question:

What made them leave their tent in the first place?

The deeper you go into the Dyatlov Pass incident, named after the group's leader, 23 year

old Igor Dyatlov, the less things tend to add up.

So, for the sake of this video, and explaining what potentially happened that night,

This is a rough diagram showing where the bodies of the 9 hikers were found in relation

stitched together from hand-drawn maps made during the initial investigation and from

These six died of hypothermia, the rest from traumatic internal injuries.

These two visuals will help piece together a picture of what happened to the group after

The search party found footprints leading away from the tent that disappeared into the

Continuing in their direction led to the discovery of the first two bodies.

Under a cedar tree 1,500m downslope from the tent.

They were wearing almost nothing, and had built a small fire.

Three more were found after that in a straight line from the tree, as if they were trying

Which in -30 degree temperatures and without proper clothes, was basically impossible.

The last four weren't found until about 2 months later.

Buried under four meters of snow in a ravine.

And this is where the investigation starts to get more confusing.

Because, unlike the rest of the group, three of them had experienced severe internal trauma.

Dubinina and Zolotaryov had multiple broken ribs, and Thibeaux-Brignolle had a major skull

Internal injuries that their autopsy reports determined were fatal.

The investigation's forensic expert compared their injuries to the “trauma that results

Zolotaryov and Dubinina were missing their eyes, and Dubinina was missing her tongue.

She, along with Kolevatov, were wearing clothes that were contaminated with excessive amounts

In spite of many unanswered questions, the lead Soviet investigator, Lev Ivanov, closed

He concluded that no crime was committed, citing the hikers' lack of external injuries,

and that all their valuables were intact.

And that the cause of death was “overwhelming force, which the hikers were not able to overcome.”

Since then, dozens of theories have attempted to explain what happened that night in 1959:

Most of these theories lack substantial evidence.

And some of the more disturbing elements of the case are aren't so mysterious after

The missing soft tissue, Zolotaryov and Dubinina's eyes and Dubinina's tongue, for instance.

Their bodies were found in a creek, and Dubinina in particular was found face down.

The coroner concluded at the time that these were “post-mortem changes” due to natural

decomposition after months of exposure to running water.

But two theories in particular, each involving an “overwhelming force,” offer plausible

solutions to the two most important questions of the case.

What drove the hikers to abandon the tent the way they did,

and what could have caused the tremendous internal injuries that some of them sustained.

One of these theories has been considered, and debunked, for years.

Because this area isn't considered prone to avalanches, and the internal injuries don't

match those typically found in avalanche victims,

who mostly die from asphyxiation after being swept away by snow,

But a scientific paper published in January 2021 demonstrates that the hikers could have

been hit by a very specific kind of avalanche.

GAUME: My name is Johan Gaume, and I'm a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Johan Gaume, and his colleague, geotechnical engineer Alexander Puzrin,

developed a model that simulates a rare type of avalanche that could have impacted the

ARCHIVE: The entire slab moves almost instantaneously.

As it races down the slope it breaks into large blocks.

At its actual speed, it becomes evident why the wind slab is called the “big killer.”

A slab avalanche occurs when a heavy concentration of snow forms on a less concentrated weak

GAUME: And when the weak layer fails, this failure will propagate across the slope and

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Two theories for an unsolved Soviet mystery

ultimately

scenario

overwhelming

reveal