[HN Gopher] The disappearance of a Soviet skiing party in 1959
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The disappearance of a Soviet skiing party in 1959
Author : lermontov
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-05-10 15:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Sounds like documentary fodder for Werner Herzog.
| abalaji wrote:
| Related: this is a very well produced video on the Dyatlov Pass
| Incident
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RigxxiilI
| erentz wrote:
| See also this episode which includes a newer Katabatic Wind
| theory proposed by a Swedish expedition. I personally found
| this the most plausible theory I've heard so far.
|
| https://youtu.be/3NsAVMd8Hek
| jandrese wrote:
| Isn't this more of a continuation of the Snow Slab theory?
| They set up the tent for the night and the high winds
| dislodged the slab and caused it to smash into the tent,
| forcing the students to cut their way out and seek alternate
| shelter. The bit about the students trying to shovel snow on
| top of the tent that they had just cut up in an attempt to
| stabilize it is dubious IMHO. Plus if they had time to dig
| snow they had time to grab their coats and boots. The reason
| they ran away in their night clothes is because they thought
| they were about to be hit by a real avalanche and also their
| gear was buried under a huge clump of snow.
|
| 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.
| pimlottc wrote:
| The Futility Closet podcast also did an episode on this topic:
|
| https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/04/26/podcast-episode-55...
| matsemann wrote:
| An longform article was also in a Norwegian newspaper a few weeks
| back about the same incident. Contains some more images and
| illustrations:
| https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https:/...
|
| Is there a reason it's popping up multiple places lately?
| macintux wrote:
| This recent simulation may have solved the mystery.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120
| wavefunction wrote:
| I find the simulation convincing in terms of physics but not
| in terms of the forensic facts of the case as documented at
| the time.
| macintux wrote:
| Other discussions of this topic...
|
| The avalanche theory, recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954120
|
| General discussions:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876298
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828346
| goatlover wrote:
| Most people who've looked deeply into this case dismiss the snow
| slap theory. At any rate, it's one of 70 something theories, with
| new ones coming out every six months or so, and new book every
| year. The most recent book has the tent moved as part of a
| staging coverup after a tree fell on the tent near the cedar
| tree, causing all the various hiker injuries. You can find out
| about that and most of the other theories and books here:
| https://forum.dyatlovpass.com/
|
| 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.
| autokad wrote:
| I tend to disagree. most other theories ( such as a tree fall )
| only considers the injuries and doesn't fit together as a
| story.
|
| 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
| munk-a wrote:
| I think we've got as much to work on here as the poetry of
| Sappho - history is sometimes cruel with facts and denies us
| the nice clean resolution we all crave. A lot of the evidence
| in this case is confused and questionable and while I think
| that some theories are certainly less likely than others (the
| weapons test related theories seem far fetched given that
| there is any surviving evidence at all) I think this will
| sadly remain a mystery unless we manage to uncover more
| primary evidence at the site that can disprove certain
| accounts and narrow down on the truth.
|
| 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.
| goatlover wrote:
| There's other reasons for the tree fall theory, and it
| includes suspicion that the tent was moved. Reasons given are
| that Igor would not setup the tent in such an exposed
| location when tree shelter was just a kilometer downhill,
| plus it was off their plotted course, and the contents of the
| tent seemed a bit disorderly for someone who was a bit of
| control freak like Igor. That and the injuries, distribution
| of the hikers and various clothing make more sense if the
| initial event took place near the cedar tree.
|
| 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.
| j4pe wrote:
| Sixty years on, the most interesting thing about the case is
| enthusiasts' refusal to consider the most plausible explanation
| because it doesn't deliver the same satisfaction as less likely
| theories like government conspiracy. Granted, the incident took
| place in a society where the government frequently covered up
| fatal accidents, but that environment doesn't make the wind
| slab explanation any less likely.
|
| 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.
|
| --
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26447924
| goatlover wrote:
| But there isn't a single most plausible explanation. There
| are at least several, and they're not all conspiratorial. The
| infrasound and katabatic wind are two of those. From debating
| with people who have espoused different theories, I don't
| think it's because they don't like the mundane explanation.
| It's because they don't think the snow slab or whatever other
| mundane theory explains all the evidence as well as the one
| they espouse. I don't think any theory stands out as the one
| true account, because the evidence is too spotty.
|
| 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.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think most people who look deeply into the case get caught up
| in crazy conspiracy theories and get lost in the forest.
|
| 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.
| goatlover wrote:
| Thing is that the snow slab wasn't evident 24 days later when
| the tent was found, the tent poles weren't pushed down, there
| was a working flashlight on the tent or a snowbank nearby
| that was undisturbed, and it makes little sense for Igor,
| Zina and Rustem to climb back up the slope in a weakened
| state if they knew the tent was inaccessible from tons of
| frozen snow on top of it. Also, there was nine of them with
| an unburied snow axe they could have used to dig the tent out
| rather than walk an hour downslope at night in the rocky,
| snow drifty, unknown terrain with insufficient clothing to
| try and survive the night.
|
| 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?
| bb123 wrote:
| God this story is so over-represented on the Internet. There must
| be other interesting mysteries and stories from this period in
| Soviet history, surely?
| jandrese wrote:
| Would you rather read about the Tunguska event again?
| raghus wrote:
| I recommend this book: Dead Mountain by Donnie Eicher. It is a
| well-researched read of the incident:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17557470-dead-mountain
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The explanation offered by Kuryakov (that it was a snow slab that
| fell on the tent) seems very plausible to me).
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(page generated 2021-05-12 23:00 UTC)