Dyatlov Pass Mystery Solved?

January 28, 2021 2:20 PM

From National Geographic, "The bizarre deaths of hikers at Russia's Dyatlov Pass have inspired countless conspiracy theories, but the answer may lie in an elegant computer model based on surprising sources. A 62-year-old adventure mystery that has prompted conspiracy theories around Soviet military experiments, Yetis, and even extraterrestrial contact may have its best, most sensible explanation yet—one found in a series of avalanche simulations based in part on car crash experiments and animation used in the movie Frozen."

"In an article published today in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers present data pointing to the likelihood that a bizarrely small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the gruesome injuries and deaths of nine experienced hikers who never returned from a planned 200-mile adventure in Russia’s Ural Mountains in the winter of 1959."

posted by yasaman (22 comments total)

That's a really fascinating read. Combining computer simulation of snow from Frozen with data about cadavers used to test seat belts is ingenious and makes sense but it's a rather macabre combination.

I'll read the full paper because I'm fascinated by this but I will admit to doing a quick search for "radioactivity" to find:

"Yet, we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation such as traces of radioactivity found on the victims’ garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of bodies, etc."

So, it's still aliens, even if they did cause the highly unique avalanche.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:42 PM on January 28, 2021 [9 favorites]

It's linked in the NatGeo article as well, but it was news to me that the radioactivity might be explained by thorium in the camp lanterns. No idea if the traces of radioactivity found there are in fact in line with radioactive camp lanterns, but it's an angle I hadn't seen before.
posted by yasaman at 2:53 PM on January 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

METAFILTER: it's still aliens, even if they did cause the highly unique avalanche.
posted by philip-random at 2:56 PM on January 28, 2021 [18 favorites]

I thought the prevous "fled the tents on hearing an avalanche, did not realize that the avalanche was just between them and the camp and did not bury the tents, quickly succumbed to hypothermic confusion, with a couple of them collecting clothes from the others (whether after death or not) and trying to make it down the mountain" explanation covered pretty much everything about the behavior in a believable fashion.
posted by tavella at 2:57 PM on January 28, 2021 [10 favorites]

As far as the radioactivity is concerned, the Soviet Union conducted 36 nuclear tests in 1958, with a total of 16K+ kilotons (more than all previous years combined), ending when a moratorium took effect at the beginning of November, and some at an island in the Arctic Ocean directly north of Dyatlov pass, so it’s conceivable to me that there could have been one or more layers of pretty radioactive snow in any avalanche that might have hit those poor young men.
posted by jamjam at 3:33 PM on January 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

I thought the previous "fled the tents on hearing an avalanche" hypothesis didn't necessarily account for the blunt force trauma on the bodies.

those poor young men

The group of hikers was composed of seven men and two women.
posted by yasaman at 3:45 PM on January 28, 2021 [15 favorites]

Fascinating, thank you for posting!
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:49 PM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

IIRC, the ones with injuries were the group with more clothes and farther down the mountain, who were found in a ravine buried under snow. So either falling into the ravine or being swept into it by a second avalanche would account for injuries.
posted by tavella at 3:49 PM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was hoping that Frozen thing was going to take us in a different direction.

“The first team sent to bring back Elsa wasn’t seen again; what we found in the Pass after the squalls passed and the mountain’s roars faded was all that was left of the second, and the reason the third team turned back. It was only after all our other options had been exhausted that we decided to send the only emissary we believed wouldn’t share their fate, the heir-in-waiting, sole remaining member of the royal lineage and last hope of salvaging the kingdom.”
posted by mhoye at 3:50 PM on January 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

I thought the previous "fled the tents on hearing an avalanche" hypothesis didn't necessarily account for the blunt force trauma on the bodies.

Yeah. This mystery showed up a lot in the "Was it..........ALIENS/GHOSTS/YETIS/MOLE PEOPLE/ETC????????" type books I read as a young teen, and the blunt force trauma and radioactivity were the "evidence" that aliens were involved. Or maybe Yetis, or Alien Yetis.
posted by sideshow at 5:03 PM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

There is a tv show that was just released based on this event: Перевал Дятлова.
posted by Shusha at 5:12 PM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

As far as the radioactivity is concerned, the Soviet Union conducted 36 nuclear tests in 1958, with a total of 16K+ kilotons (more than all previous years combined), ending when a moratorium took effect at the beginning of November, and some at an island in the Arctic Ocean directly north of Dyatlov pass, ...

For comparison, the distance between the Dyatlov Pass and Novaya Zemlya (where the tests happened) is about the same distance from Miami to Washington DC. I'm skeptical that a huge amount of radioactivity could have traveled that far, but I'll admit that I don't know what the prevailing winds are like in that part of the world.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:29 PM on January 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

Devil's Pass is a pretty good found footage horror movie about the hiker's mysterious deaths. That's all I got.
posted by Beholder at 6:39 PM on January 28, 2021

thanks for the link, Shusha - looks like i have my movie for the night squared away!
posted by lapolla at 6:51 PM on January 28, 2021

There's still too many what ifs and just sos in there for me to think it's close to definitive. Possibly, sure, but trying to counter conspiracies by replacing improbables with other improbables doesn't help that much. (I'm not saying this thinking that aliens or yetis did it or whatever, but as a general note on what I've frequently seen, of trying to explain away mysteries with more shaky ideas or data. That actually just makes it more likely people will believe the conspiracy. This may be the most likely cause, but I'm not convinced yet, and no I don't have any other ideas)
posted by blue shadows at 8:26 PM on January 28, 2021

the distance between the Dyatlov Pass and Novaya Zemlya (where the tests happened) is about the same distance from Miami to Washington DC.

Some fallout from US tests in Nevada is known to have reached as far as the east coast. Amounts/distances vary wildly depending on the atmosphere. Fallout from Fukushima (not much of an explosion) was recorded at many locations after crossing the Pacific Ocean.

The Soviets had several 'accidents' in the region in the previous year or two, including a huge one a few hundred miles due south at Kyshtym - fallout over 20,000 sq mi. 'Thorium'? Hah.
posted by Twang at 8:33 PM on January 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

The BBC did a long, elegiac, and very evocative version of this story in 2019 or 2020 which included diary excerpts, letters, pictures taken by the hikers, interviews with family members, accounts from members of an indigenous group which was at first blamed for the deaths, archival accounts from contemporary investigators, interviews with people we might describe as hobbyists, and etc.

The condition of the tent when the first rescuers arrived is hard for me to square with a simple model of the avalanche theory; the man who spotted the tent found a working flashlight sitting on top of it and the party's packs arranged neatly inside, for example.

It really is as if something happened which drew them out of the tent, and then some kind of shockwave or air blast blew them down the side of the hill.
posted by jamjam at 12:01 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fascinating! I heard about this incident on the Futility Closet podcast a while ago, this seems like the most plausible explanation so far.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:56 AM on January 29, 2021

Wikipedia doesn't make it sound like the tent was unscathed.

On 26 February, the searchers found the group's abandoned and badly damaged tent on Kholat Syakhl. The campsite baffled the search party. Mikhail Sharavin, the student who found the tent, said "the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group's belongings and shoes had been left behind."[16] Investigators said the tent had been cut open from inside.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:05 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Read a few articles (some legit, some not) about this over the years - and a few weeks ago Josh Gates devoted a two-hour episode of "Expedition Unknown" to it, and he trekked all the way out there. It was a brutally long, harsh trip. He presented the theories, did some analysis. Fascinating. watch. Here's a YT trailer/preview.
posted by davidmsc at 9:16 AM on January 29, 2021

There's still too many what ifs and just sos in there for me to think it's close to definitive.

Yeah but Occam's Razor definitely applies here. A localized avalanche and panic followed by hypothermia has far fewer untestable assumptions than competing explanations.

I mean one COULD do a 20,000 word Wall of Crazy explanation involving Soviet atomic sound weapons, UFO aliens, Yeti, a magnetic pole flip, faeries and the hollow Earth, but outside of getting one a History Channel special, multiplying uneeded entities won't do any good.
posted by happyroach at 12:44 PM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

I mean one COULD do a 20,000 word Wall of Crazy explanation involving Soviet atomic sound weapons, UFO aliens, Yeti, a magnetic pole flip, faeries and the hollow Earth, but outside of getting one a History Channel special, multiplying uneeded entities won't do any good.

This is a wonderfully vivid way to present the inverse of Occam's Razor as it applies to Dyatlov Pass.

Unfortunately, what I notice is yet another failure to mention the Alien Yetis.
posted by house-goblin at 8:01 PM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]