Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 103 | Russia's DEADLIEST Mystery Has Never Been Solved | Dyatlov Pass

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

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The Northern Urals, February 1959, there's literally nothing out here. No roads, no towns, no cell towers, no power lines, and frankly, no sign that anyone has ever been here at all, except for markings carved into trees by people of a culture that have lived nearby for centuries. And above the tree line, the forests disappear, turning into a place known as Dead Mountain. Nine people were heading toward it. They were young, and they were experienced, and they knew exactly how dangerous it was. But something went wrong, not in the way you'd expect, like an accident or a wrong turn in bad weather, something stranger than that. Something that over 60 years later, no one has been able to explain.

This is the story of the Dietlov Pass incident. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that I like. to consume and I know you do too you sick twisted beautiful intellectually minded freak! Today we are diving into an absolutely insane case, one that many of you may know, but I wanted to just get my teeth into it and really just dig into the details to maybe make some sense of it. And if you don't know this case, all the better. So without further ado, let's unbeckle our seat belts go mock-fraved to the highway slam on the bricks and bustle the windshield into this confusing mysterious case together.

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And it felt like for the first time in a generation, ordinary people had room to breathe, and the restrictive air of wartime was finally letting up. And new freedoms, however small, were opening up across the country. And one of those freedoms was the outdoors, walking clubs, skiing clubs, something the Soviets called sports tourism organized expeditions into the wilderness, sanctioned by the state, but fueled by an energy that the state couldn't quite control. And young people especially took to it. And for students in a system that governed nearly every after,

of their lives, the mountains offered something that nothing else really seemed to be able to. Escape. So at the Ural Polytechnical Institute in Svirdlovsk, now, Yeyakatiri Bork, sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, I'm doing my best. The skiing and mountaineering club was one of the most popular organizations on campus. And UPI had grown into Russia's biggest technical school by the 1950s and was deeply tied to local industry. It produced engineers, physicists, radio specialists, and more. Serious students training for serious careers. But on the weekends and holidays, those same students strapped on skis and disappeared into the Urals.

And they did it for the same reason anyone does something dangerous. It makes them feel alive. You know, there's no better feeling than just go and mock five down a double black diamond. You know what I mean? I've been there. Not of my own volition, but I just got stuck at the top of a man. one time and that was the only way I could get down. That was terrifying, but also exhilarating.

But anyway, in the summer of 1958, while trekking through the Altai Mountains, a fifth year radio engineering student named Igor Diatlov told his hiking companions about a plan. He wanted to lead an expedition to the Northern Urals in winter and become the first to reach the peak of the Otortan Mountain in February. The most brutal month of the year.

And everyone knew O-Tor-Tor-Tor-Tor-Tor-E. And everyone knew O'Torten. They knew the terrain around it was hostile and very dangerous. But four people immediately showed interest. Nikolai Thibault Brigni, Rustin Slobodin, Yuri Krivenyshika, and Yuri Uddin. And by January 1959, Diatlov had assembled a group of 10, eight men, and two women.

And the Svordloff City Route Commission approved the expedition and confirmed the group on January 8, 1959. Now, the route was classified as category three, which is the highest difficulty rating for such a trip. And it required covering 300 kilometers of wilderness. Every member of the group already held grade two certification with ski tour experience. So completing this expedition would earn them that coveted grade three status, also the highest. And Diatlov would plan for the trip to take 16 to 18 days. But it wouldn't take that long in reality.

So let's get to know the crew. Igor Dietlav was born on January 13, 1936, and he liked to build things just to see if he could. And as a schoolboy, fresh out of seventh grade, he'd joined UPI hiking trips alongside his brother, and he brought a portable radio he'd made himself with him, which, in 1951 was almost unheard of. Guy was pretty smart. And by his second year at UPI, he designed and put a shortwave radio together that the group used on expeditions in the Sian. mountains. And he also built a small camp stove and carried it on every hike following. People described him as very disciplined and calm under pressure, the kind of leader who stayed

steady when things went sideways and treated everyone around him with respect. And he was a thoughtful man who never rushed his decisions. And allegedly on one trek, a group member secretly ate a can of condensed milk from their shared supplies. And when the man confessed, Igor didn't respond emotionally, didn't shame him. He simply went quiet for a moment and then said, quote, When we return to Sperdlosk, you will pay the cost of the condensed milk to the group's cash desk, unquote. That was Igor, fair, measured, in control. And he had 16 hikes under his belt, nine of which he led himself, and he was 23 years old, pretty young. And he was dating a girl named Zanaida or Zina Kolmagarava. Now Zina also studied radio engineering at UPI and was a

of the university's tourist society. And she was popular and very well liked and described as the engine of the university. But she was also tough in ways that surprised people. She'd been on six expeditions, and on one previous hike, she was bitten by a viper. And despite the pain, she refused to lighten her pack

because she didn't want to cause her companions any hardship. So she was tough as nails, Zena was. And she was seeing Igor at the time of this expedition. and her ex-boyfriend, Yuri, was also in the group. So whatever tension that might have created, the diaries don't show it, which we'll get into. Then there's Ludmila Dubanina, who was 20 years old, who also went by Luda.

And Luda was the youngest in the group and a fourth year engineering and economics major at UPI, and she was born on May 12th, 1938, and she loved singing and photography, and she was very good at taking photos as well. And many of the photos later recovered from the group's cameras were hers, which again, we'll get into later. Though 20 years young, she wasn't fragile. And during a hike through the eastern Cyan Mountains in 1957, she was accidentally shot in the leg by a hunter traveling with the students.

What? But not unlike Zena, she just endured the pain for the rest of the trip. I swear it's like a woman thing. We just like we feel like we have something to prove. Like, I admire these women because they're just like, ah, we're just tough. It's tough. Ladies are tough. I'm just saying it.

I'm just props to these ladies. And then she would go on to apologize to the others for the trouble she caused. Just a queen, a queen in and out. And she led a Category 2 expedition through the Southern Urals in 1958. And a fellow hiker from that trip, Galena Batilova remembered, quote, Luda proved herself to be a wise, firm, thoughtful, and fair leader. She was always attentive to us, the beginners, and helped us in everything. Unquote.

And she was one of the only women in the Diotlob group, but she was the real deal. She was serious, and she was tough. And then there was Yuri Doroshenko, who was 21 years old, and also a fourth year radio engineering student at UPI. And he would sit on the board of the UPI Sports Club, and he was the tallest member of the and was brought up in a very poor family. And the jacket he typically wore was not properly equipped to handle the cold environments he found himself in.

And despite his shyer nature, he had a reputation for being the upbeat one in any room, despite his shortcomings. He was just always ready to help. But he was also impulsive. And allegedly, this made him somewhat famous at school for taking on a bear with a geologist hammer while out on a wilderness trip.

That, is the most Russian thing I've ever heard in my life. And as mentioned, he'd previously dated Zena, but the breakup appeared to be smooth, and things between him, Zena, and Igor stayed civil, by all accounts. And then there was Yuri Krivonashenko, another Yuri, who was 23 years old,

born on February 7, 1935. Now, his real name was Georgi, but his friends called him Yuri. And he'd recently graduated from UPI, and he worked as an engineer, engineer at the Cholabinx facility, better known as the Mayak Nuclear Complex, which was a facility that processed plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program, tucked away in the closed city of Cholabink's. But Yuri was an artist at heart. And he played the mandolin and he wrote poetry.

And his parents lived in an apartment in central Svardlosk and it became a place where the hiking group often gathered. And he constantly looked for any chance to entertain, whether through jokes or music or what have you. And in September of 1957, the Mayak plant suffered what became known as the Khashdim disaster, where an underground tank of high-level nuclear waste exploded, and it's regarded as one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. And the explosion poisoned a stretch of land larger than some European countries, over 23,000 square kilometers. And Yuri worked on the cleanup, along with some other 38,500 people, including Mayak employees, construction workers, and military. And according to his brother, there was, quote, a fairly large emission of radiation, unquote.

Possibly a slight understatement, if we've learned anything from Trinople. But by 1958, Yuri tried to leave Mayak citing, quote, complete unwillingness to work in the system, unquote. And he was 23 years old now when he joined the expedition. And then there was Rustem Slobodan, and he was 23 years old as well. And he was also a UPI graduate. But he would go by the nickname Rustic. And his father was a well-respected academic, a doctor of agricultural sciences who ran a department at the Ural Research Institute of Agriculture.

And Rustim was athletic, honest, but he was also a bit quiet and a little shy. But the kind of quiet that came with a good sense of humor underneath. And he also liked playing his mandolitan. and brought it along on hiking trips, including this one. And then there was Alexander or Sasha Glevetov, who would be 24 years old at the year of the expedition. Now, Alex was a fourth year physics major at UPI,

and before that he'd earned a degree from the Svurdlovsk mining and metallurgy college in heavy non-ferrous metals. In other words, metals that don't have iron in them, basically, I didn't know what it meant when I first read it either. But people described him as reserved, and thoughtful, despite having a very difficult run of poor health as a child. But he was normally very serious, though photos from the trip show him smiling and loose with this particular group. And his friend, Valentina, saw him as, quote,

A true altruist and a caring comrade, a person who does not light up the team and does not often joke, but is always engaged in a generally useful routine, a kind of gray horse, on whose unnoticed labors and merits the success. of the event rests." So before UPI, he had spent time at a secretive institute in Moscow, designated only as Institute 3394.

Sounds suspicious. And his pay didn't line up with what a typical graduate would earn, but he did manage to land a spot in a classified ministry department right out of school. Next, there was Nikolai Thibaut Brignoll, who was also 23 years old. This name stood out not only because it's a bit of a mouthful, but because it's also French, aristocratic. And the family even had their own coat of arms. Nikolai, sometimes called Koliya or Thibbo by his friends,

was born on July 5, 1935 in Ossinki, a town that housed a branch of the Gulag Siblag, and his father, Vladimir, was serving a 10-year prison sentence there at the time of Nikolai's birth, because the Gulag is just, a big shit hell prison, basically. And his mother, an older brother and sister, were likely forced to the same place

as the family of the enemy of the people. Vladimir had been a mining engineer educated at Germany's Friedberg Mining Academy and had helped shape development plans for the Ural's mining industry. But none of that protected him under Stalin. And Nikolai graduated from UPI in 1958 with a civil engineering degree.

And at the time of the ex-euroble expedition, he was working in construction in Svirdlofsk, and in photos he's the one you notice first, the tall, floppy hat with the crooked grin. And everyone who crossed paths with him spoke of the same traits, energy, humor, and just warmth. And he was beloved by younger members of the sports club, and he'd carry their gear when they struggled and fix their packs to ease the weight on their backs. And Yuri Udun said that Nikolai was the one who guided him through his first real trips into the Siberian wilderness. And before leaving for the expedition,

Nikolai promised his mother this would be his last hiking trip. Then there was Semyon Zolotariov, who was 37 years old, so the oldest of the group, the outsider, if you will. He was the stranger to everyone on the expedition. Now, Semyon was born on February 2nd, 1921, in the Cuban region of southern Russia, and he grew up in a Cossack family, known for their military strength and horsemanship.

And at 20, he was drafted into the Red Army, and he fought from Stalingrad to Berlin, earned four military decorations, and did it all without suffering a single wound. And just to note, only 3% of Soviet soldiers who served from beginning to end survived the war. So, this guy was built different, basically. So once the fighting finally stopped,

he struggled to find footing. The Moscow Military Engineering School shut down, and the Leningrad Military Engineering School suffered the same. But he eventually landed at the Minsk Institute of Physical Education and graduated in 1951, then moved south to teach at the pedagogical institute. I just know the Russians that watch this are screaming at me. I am doing my best. I looked at the pronunciations, but it's hard using them in sentences, so I apologize. But he would receive a formal reprimand from the institution within form. months of starting and decided to walk away. And by the mid-1950s, he found himself settled at the

Khorovska tour in the base of the Svordloft region, working as a senior tourism instructor. And in the meantime, he studied for his master's certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking, and he was 37 and single, which raised eyebrows in that era. And he also had gold-cap teeth and a mustache. And beneath his clothes, tattoos inked across his body that he kept covered up. And one of them was a five-pointed star, a shape described as Beats Heart Fire, along with the name Gina and his birth year. And also a cryptic, untranslatable inscription, which was roughly Dermazua'eia. I have no idea. But this was reportedly a formula common among Soviet soldiers where the letters stood for the first initials of friends and the word for friendship. Now his real name was Semyon but for reasons unknown he asked everyone

to just call him Sasha and he had originally been approved for a different expedition with the Sogrin group but just three days before departure he learned Diatlov's team was leaving on the same date and their route was 10 days longer so he switched and at the last minute diatlov was told they'd be joined by someone he'd never met. And Lyuda wrote in her diary, quote, At first, nobody wanted this Zolotariov, for he is a stranger. But then we all agreed, because you can't refuse, unquote. But he would eventually win them over.

And Zina would write, quote, With Us is senior instructor of the Korov sport base Alexander, Zolotariov. He knows a lot of songs, it's just happy somehow that we are learning new songs. unquote. And the pictures show him keeping the pace, laughing, and fitting in with people half his age. But before he left, he told his students something strange. And he would say, quote, This whole world will start talking about this track. Unquote. And he didn't explain any further, saying only that, quote, they will soon find out about everything. Unquote. Very, very ominous. So hold on to that fact. And now the 10th member was,

Yuri Uden. Now, Yuri was 21 years old, and a fourth year student at UPI studying economics and geology. And he was quiet and generally kept to himself. And he had rheumatism, which was a heart condition he'd been born with. So his body was always working against him. But still, he joined the expedition anyway, because he was very close with this group of people. And he was the 10th and final member of the Diehlav expedition. So 10 hikers boarded a train in Svordlovsk at 9.05 p.m. the night of January 23rd, 1959.

And they were sharing a ride with the Blinnov group, a separate hiking party bound for a different destination. So the mood was just kind of chaos. And Zena's diary paints the scene saying, quote, Where are my felt boots? Can we play mandolin on the train? We forgot the salt. Unquote. And the boys made a pact. They, quote, solemnly swore not to smoke the.

the entire trip, unquote. So excitement just filled the air. Everybody was just pumped to do these trips. And late night conversations about love became a running theme on the trip, and most of them, according to the group diary, were, quote, provoked by Z. Kolmogorava, but they also created a satirical newspaper together,

dated February 1, that they titled, Evening O'Ton Number 1, unquote. And this was a fairly popular team ritual among Soviet expedition groups. It read like the inside jokes of people who genuinely liked each other's company. And it advertised a, quote, philosophical seminar on love and tourism, unquote,

held daily in the tent with lectures, quote, presented by Dr. Thibault and candidate of love sciences Dubinina, unquote. And quote, can one stove and one blanket warm nine tourists, unquote? These are a silly bunch. And a science section reported that the snowman lives in the northern Urals near O'Torton Mountain."

And the technical news section mocked Colvato's attempt at building a drag sled, saying, quote, good while riding on the train by car and on horseback, for cargo transportation on snow is not recommended, unquote. That's just so goofy. But on January 24th, Yuri, the one with the really long last name with that starts with a K, that I'm not going to say over and over again, I'm going to say Yuri K, got himself into a bit of trouble during a layover at Sarov Station.

And as Lauda's diary tells it, quote, Our hero decided to walk around the station, handing a cap for change after singing a song. Yuri had to be rescued, unquote. And the police actually detained him briefly. And that same day, a drunk on the evening train accused them of taking his vodka, and the conductor intervened and handed the man off to the police.

But the Sarov stop wasn't all trouble. And the group also had quieter moments when they gave a talk to local school children about tourism. And the kids allegedly became so attached to Zina that when the group left, quote, the kids yelled and cried asking Zena to stay with them, unquote. So they would leave and pull into Ivdell around midnight January 25th. So with nowhere to sleep except the station, they set up their tent right there on the station floor and just spent the night. and Vishey would be the end of the line. The last settlement before the wilderness swallowed everything.

So they arrived via bus around 2 p.m. and said goodbyes to the Blindov group, who continued on a different path. And that evening, they would go to a local club and watch a film called Symphony in Gold. And Lauda wrote in her diary afterwards saying, quote, This is real happiness, so difficult to describe with words.

The music is just fabulous, unquote. So the group spent the next day in Visei preparing their equipment, and around 10 in the morning, they wrote home one last time. And after lunch, at 1.30 p.m., the group caught a ride on a logging truck headed for the 41st district settlement. And from there, they pushed onto a place called the second northern settlement. Effectively, a ghost town left behind when the loggers moved on. And they had crossed the threshold. Civilization was now behind them. And their route tracked north along the Lozva River Valley, and then turned to follow the Aspia River toward the Highland Ridge Line. And this beautiful landscape would change as they progressed. Thick forest along the river

valleys gave way to scattered trees, and the trees thinned more and more, and then there was really nothing, just open barren expanses above the timber line, and the indigenous Manse people had a name for the mountain at the far end of the ridgeline. Ho-Lat-Siyak, or Dead Mountain. I'm going to go ahead and say dead mountain because that other one is really hard to say. But along the way, the group spotted markings carved into the trees by the Mansi. All trail signs left by people who had traveled this land long before any of them were even born. So on the morning of January 28th, Udin would make the hardest decision of his life and his joint pain would severely flare up. And the rheumatism was becoming unbearable. And his body was just telling him just what his mind

didn't want to hear. He couldn't go on. So he handed off what equipment he could to Dorishenko, so the group could put it to use. Lyuda pressed a small teddy bear into his hands as a goodbye gift, and then he watched them ski away, and he was devastated. But little did he know this would save his life. So now there were nine, and they pushed along the Lozva, skiing in formation, rotating who led every ten minutes or so. And the snow was lighter than the previous year. January 29th was Yuri Dorishenko's birthday, and Zina marked it in her diary saying, quote, Today is Yurka's birthday. We go first to L'Ospah, then we turn to Aspia. Surroundings are beautiful, unquote. And by January 30th, the cold had become routine. In one diary entry reads, quote,

Today is a third cold night on the bank of Ospea River. We are getting used to it. The stove does a great job. Unquote. And come January 31st, the weather started to turn ugly. with gusting winds and heavy snow. And at this point, they couldn't see more than a few meters ahead, and they tried to push up toward the pass, but the mountain wouldn't let them. So they retreated to the Osbia Valley, now running behind schedule.

And that night, Diatlov wrote the last entry in the group diary, saying, quote, Can't imagine such a comfort somewhere on the ridge, with a piercing wind hundreds of kilometers away from human settlements." Unquote. So they got a late start on February 1st. and they found a wooded valley where they dug out Labaz, which is the supply cache that you bury into the snow,

and stashed roughly 55 kilometers of surplus food and equipment for the return trip. And Yuri Kay's mandolin went into the pile along with spare boots, and they planned to come back for all of it. And after lunch, Diatlov led the group up toward Dead Mountain. And they covered about two kilometers before conditions kept deteriorating, and the sky would close in, preventing them from figuring out where they were or where they were heading. So instead of cutting through the pass, as planned, they veered west and ended up heading straight toward the summit.

And this is where Diatlov made a choice. The tree line was only a kilometer and a half behind them, promising forested ground, shelter from the wind, a safer place to sleep. But he chose to stay on the exposed slope. The plan was simple. Survive just one cold night. Then it'd be a warm overnight the following day at Lake Luntusophtur, about 14 and a half kilometers ahead. So they set up camp on the northeastern side of Dead Mountain. About 300 meters below the peak, the ground beneath them angled at roughly 30 degrees. And after that, there was silence. Because sometime after dark, something happened. There is no diary entry that describes it, no photograph that captures it, and no one survived to explain it.

And every single thing we know about the night of February 1st, 1959, is pieced together from what was left behind. All right, I want to take a moment to call you out, okay? Yeah, you. I know you've been putting off your doctor's appointments. I've been guilty of it too. I've been known to. You know, you have that tooth that's aching in the back of your mouth or that rancers. that rash that's in a weird spot or you just need to vent to somebody, but you just like can't be

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And a full snowstorm ranging across the ridge. And the stove was packed away in its case and never actually assembled. And the evening, Torton, the joke newspaper that they made at the beginning of the trip, was near the entrance of the tent. And everything about the day had seemed normal. Then something changed because someone cut the tent open from the inside. But not just one cut. First, small horizontal slits near the roof.

These were described later as viewing slits as though someone was trying to see what was happening outside without leaving the shelter. Then came the larger cuts, one long vertical slash, and two horizontal tears ripped wide enough for a person to climb through. So it looked like, first they looked, and then they ran. Nine people left the tent and walked into a blizzard wearing almost nothing, because every pair of boots stayed behind, jackets, raincoats, backpacks, and cut food sat on plates, which was either of, a meal half prepared or just completed, all of it was abandoned, and they left with what they were sleeping in. With two exceptions though,

Zoletariov and Thubo Bregnol were later found better dressed than everybody else, with some footwear. So the first theory is that they may have been outside the tent when whatever happened began, and were already partially clothed, because eight or nine sets of footprints led downhill, And a search party radiogram would later describe, quote,

We managed to identify footprints of eight or nine people starting from the tent and going about one kilometer down the slope, and then they were lost. One person was in boots, the other were only in socks and barefoot. Unquote. So the footprints were preserved in a way that seems almost impossible because the compressed snow had hardened into pedestals that held their shape while the wind scored away everything around them. And the group moved in single file,

and a tall man walked at the back, with his prints partly covering the ones ahead. And a few trails peeled off from the main line, but circled back. And the overall impression, according to one analysis, was an organized and uneventful descent, that they just essentially walked downhill, which is just wild to think about,

nine people slash open their own shelter in the middle of the night, abandon every piece of survival gear they own, and step barefoot into minus 40 degree winds. And they walk. They don't run. They walk. So whatever drove them out of that tent was terrifying enough to make them leave everything behind, but not terrifying enough to make them run.

And also, just why cut the tent? The entrance was right there. So that in and of itself is just very odd. But one possible explanation was that the cuts were made on the side of the tent opposite where the wind was primarily hitting, where the hikers slept. So if something was blocking the entrance like snow, debris, or the threat of something outside of it, then cutting through the walls closest to their heads was the fastest way out. But just why not grab your boots and coats or just anything for that matter?

Because in minus 40 degree weather, leaving without installation is a death sentence, essentially, and they all knew that. They were all extremely smart individuals. So whatever happened gave them no time, or at least made time irrelevant. And after roughly 500 meters, the footprints disappeared beneath fresh snow. So nothing more from that point on in terms of footprints. But one flashlight was found partway down the slope, 450 meters from their tent. switched on, but its battery died.

And another flashlight sat on top of the tent itself, resting on a thin layer of snow, completely uncovered, like someone had set it there after the storm had already begun. And a broken piece of ski lay 20 meters from the tent as well. And the next evidence would be found a kilometer and a half away at the tree line. But what happened in that gap between the tent and the forest is completely unknown, because there was no signs of struggle at the campsite besides them cutting holes into the tent, just their own prints walking calmly downhill into the dark. So this is the central hole in the story.

Whatever happened on that slope, only nine people witnessed it, and none of them survived to say a word. So before leaving for the expedition, Diatlov had made a simple promise. When the group made it back to Visai, He would wire the UPI Sports Club to confirm their safe return. And that telegram was due by February 12th at the latest, but February 12th came and went with no word. Yet nobody panicked just yet, because it wasn't unusual for groups like this to show up a few days late. And Diatlov had even mentioned to Uden before setting out

that the trip could easily rung long. But by February 15th, people started asking questions. And Galena Radesteva from the U.P. P.I. Routing Commission, and Igor Krivani Sienko, Yuri's younger brother, pushed the University Trade Union Committee to contact Vizai directly. And they wanted to know one thing, had the group come back, because they haven't heard anything. And Visei's response was short. They hadn't returned. And no telegram had arrived. And things should have escalated there, but they didn't. And Lev Gordo, the head of the UPI Sports Club, told the parents of Laiuda and

Sasha that he had received a telegram from Diatlov about a delay. But that was a lie. And Gordo figured the group would show up on its own and decided to manage the families rather than sound an alarm, which is insane. So on February 17th, Rima Kolatova, Sasha's sister, went looking for Gordo. But his office was empty. And it was the families who finally forced action. And they complained directly to the local head of the Communist Party even. And bad publicity was the one thing Soviet officials couldn't tolerate. And pressure from above moved faster than concerned from below. So on February 20th, relatives demanded a rescue operation. And the first search parties were mobilized the next day. So the scale of effort was enormous. And Colonel Georgi Or Tukov from the

UPI military department was put in charge. And volunteered to be. teams of students and faculties spread across the region, and groups under Boris Slobstove and Moises Axelrod and Olaug Grebenik, and the Blinov and Sogrin expeditions, just back from their own treks and familiar with the landscape, joined without hesitation. And Vladislav Karlin's team, already operating nearby, would join the search too. And even guards from the Iv Delac prison system would join. And also seven officers from the MVD, the main law enforcement in Russia, and Mancy hunters who had spent their lives navigating this wilderness would join as well. And specialists even dispatched from Moscow, aircraft scanning the terrain from above out of Ivdel.

But they were all coming together to find the missing group. But the Blinnov group would bring troubling news, because they had run into severe snowstorms near Dead Mountain. But officials would choose to take this as grounds for hope, because maybe the Diatlov group had simply dug in somewhere riding out the weather until conditions improved. So Slopstov's team was flown by helicopter to the area around Mount O'Torten on February 23rd, and by the following day, they had covered the mountain and come up empty. No flags, no markers, and nothing to suggest the hikers had ever set foot there, and the group had fallen short of their destination. In the next day, Slobstove's team spotted ski tracks in the snow and followed them.

And on February 26th, they found the tent. And it sat on the slope, partly caved in, draped in snow. And Slobstov knew it the moment he saw it. Because he had helped put it together three years earlier, stitching two smaller tents into one to give the group more room. But it was empty. And everything the hikers had carried with them was still inside. nine backpacks, nine pairs of shoes, minus one.

For coats, blankets, food, including biscuits, condensed milk, sugar, the stove, an axe, a saw, cameras, notebooks, and the group's planned route. And the evening O'Torten was found inside, that joke newspaper. And outside, a pair of skis stood upright in the snow, and an ice axe rested near the entrance, and Diatlov's jacket had been tossed a short distance away. And inside the pockets, a folding knife on a carabiner and a small pocketbook. And pressed between the pages was a picture of Zena. And snow covered the northern side of the tent, and maybe 15 to 20 centimeters deep at this point.

And the texture and weight of it told searchers it had blown in on the wind, so it hadn't been pushed there by anything sudden or violent. And back in Ivdell, the tent was strung up across the biggest room in the local police headquarters, so it could be studied and pictures could be taken. And at first, everyone came to the same conclusion, that outsiders had ambushed the hikers and torn through the canvas from the outside. But then came the break. An investigator, Vladimir Korotayev, young and new to the case at the time,

recalled how it happened. A woman had been called to the station to help mend his uniform, and she glanced at the tent hanging on the wall. And he said, quote, She took one look at the tent and spoke with confidence that the cuts were made from inside. This changed the course of the investigation entirely." Unquote. Informal confirmation came weeks later. In Jinnrietta Torkina, a senior forensic specialist at the Sferd-Loss crime lab,

spent nearly two weeks examining the tent from April 3 to April 16th, 1959, and her conclusion matched exactly what the seamstress had seen at a glance, which is pretty impressive at the seamstress, but the cuts came from inside the tent. So the hikers weren't attacked. They had done this themselves. So whatever happened on that slope, they were trying to get out for whatever reason. So the day after the tent was discovered, searchers found the first bodies. So at 11 a.m. on February 27th, two members of the search party, Koptalov and Sherriven spotted something dark near a large cedar tree, a kilometer and a half downhill from the tent.

And Slopstov's account recorded it in criminal files would describe this moment, saying, quote, While looking carefully around the area, Mikal or Sherriven, notice something dark close to a cedar tree. There was a flat area next to the cedar, and on this were remains of a fire. About two or three meters from the fire they found Yuri Doroshenko, frozen without his clothes, and with his hand burned. and a little to the side, they found Yuri Krivonashenko in the same state. Unquote. So Dorishenko and Krivonashenko, the two remaining Yuri's,

lay in the snow in their underwear, a few meters from the charred remnants of a small campfire. And Yuri K's right foot was bare, and his left foot had a single brown sock on it, which was torn. And another sock lay near the fire, half burned. And Dorishenko wore woolen sock. layered under a thinner pair, but neither men had anything close to adequate protection from the cold.

And above them, the cedar told its own intriguing story, because the branches had been snapped off as high as five meters up, meaning someone had climbed in the dark and the freezing wind either to look back toward the tent or to break off wood for the fire. And lower branches, about five centimeters thick, had been sawed off with a finished knife. and some of those branches were found next to the dying fire. And Yuri Kay's hands had third degree burns,

the kind you can't sustain if you've already lost consciousness. So he was awake for those burns. And prosecutor Tempelov's record of the scene states, quote, On the backs of his hands, the skin is torn. Between the fingers there is blood. The index finger is also torn. The skin of the left shin is torn and covered in blood. There are no more visible injuries on it.

his body." And Yuri Kay had bitten a piece of his flesh from his own knuckle, and it was still in his mouth when they found him. So whether he did it to fight off sleep or to keep himself from screaming, no one knows. And Topolov's notes on Doroshenko were, quote, his ear, lips, and nose are covered in blood, unquote. And his skin had turned a deep brown or purple, and gray foam seeped from the soft tissue of his right cheek, and something dark and wet ran from his mouth. And the autopsy pointed to

lung failure, fluid flooding the airways, tissue battered by some kind of impact to his chest. So both men officially died of hypothermia. And the medical evidence lined up for the assessment, swelling of the brain membranes, darkened blood, pooling in the heart, frostbite on their fingers and toes, and Vishnevsky spots on the stomach lining, a classic sign of VIII. A classic sign of death by freezing. But the burns and the climbing and the knuckle biting, these were not the actions of men who simply just laid down and froze to death. They fought for their lives. So you may not know this, but this cat runs my house, don't you? Baby, she's bigger than me. And I don't know when it happened, probably from the day I got her, but she has a schedule,

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So go to Smells.com slash CCCM. Thank you so much to Smels for sponsoring this video and support of the channel, and let's get back to it. So three more bodies were found scattered along the slope between the cedar and the tent, and their positions told a story of hikers that had been trying to walk back uphill. Diatlov and Kolmogorovah were discovered on February 27th,

same as the first two bodies. And Slobodin wasn't located until March 5th, buried under a layer of snow. But they were found at staggered distances from the cedar, about 300 meters, 480 meters, and 630 meters. Now, Komulgarovah made it closest to the tent, covering the most ground of the three before the cold would take her. And Diatlov had a fur coat, unbuttoned over a sweater and a long-sleeved shirt.

Now, the shirt had started the trip on Udden's back, but Udn gave it to Doroshenko before turning around. it seemed. And Diatlov had apparently taken it from Dorshenko's body at the cedar, because his socks didn't match, and he had been vomiting blood. And Komal Gorova had a bruise on her wrist, shaped like a baton strike. And Slobodan had a fracture in his skull. The official autopsy ruled it non-fatal, and his cause of death was recorded as hypothermia, same as the other two. But the crack in his skull raised questions that the ruling didn't answer. All three would die of the cold. At least that was the official conclusion. But the blood Diatlov was choking on in the bruise on Kalmogorov's body, and the break in slow bowden's skull

didn't fit a story where the only enemy was the weather. So that was very odd. Now the last four bodies weren't found until the spring, more than three months after the tent was discovered on May 4th. So on May 4th, searchers located the remaining bodies in a ravine 75 meters deeper into the forest beyond the cedar. And they were buried under four meters of snow. And all four had come to rest in a creek submerged in the icy water that ran along the bottom of the ravine. Dubonina, Zolotariev, and Kolovadov, and Fibaud-Bregnol. Now, three of the four wore layers that clearly hadn't been theirs. Clothing had been taken from the bodies of those who died first in an attempt to survive.

Dubinina had on Yuri Kay's trousers burned and torn, and her left foot and lower leg were bound in the shredded remains of a jacket. And Zolotarov was wearing a Dubinina's fur coat and hat. So they had tried to stay alive, but it wasn't enough. And the autopsies performed on May 9th revealed injuries that didn't quite fit in any hypothermia case. Because Dubinina's chest had been crushed, ribs two through five on the right side, fractured along two separate lines. And ribs, two through seven on the left side,

also fractured along two lines, and massive bleeding into the right chamber of the heart, and internal hemorrhaging throughout the chest cavity. And her tongue was gone, and her eyes were gone. And the soft tissue around her brow, her left temple, and her upper lip, had been stripped away, and the cartilage in her nose was flattened and broken. She survived the initial trauma by 10 to 20 minutes, so it's possible she may have been conscious

for all of it. And Zolotarov's right side was devastated, because five of his ribs were snapped and two more fractures were on his left side, and his rib cage had lost the ability to hold its shape, a condition called flail chest, and a gaping wound on the right side of his stomach. skull left the bone visible beneath, and his eyes were also missing. And a camera hung around his neck, obviously not the one that had been left behind in the tent, but a second camera. And the film inside had been soaked through after three months underwater. And he was found gripping a pen in one hand and small notepad in the other. And according to Surter Vladimir, Colonel Orteukov snatched the notepad, looked at it, swore, and said, he's written nothing. And that

notepad never made it into the case file, and it would disappear entirely, extremely suspicious. And Thubaud-Brignaul's skull had been shattered with a deep splintered fracture running across both the top and the base of his head, and fragments of bone had been driven into his brain. And the forensic examiner said the kind of force required to cause this injury could not have come from any normal standing fall. And he compared it to being hit by a car. And Kalevatov, by contrast, had almost nothing wrong with him. There were minor scrapes on his hands and face, and his neck was bent at an angle,

which probably was just a result of the body stiffening after death or settling into the terrain, but there was no significant trauma, and he would die of hypothermia, same as the first five. And he was found sitting close to Zolotariov, positioned, quote, as if the latter was carrying or protecting him, unquote. And the forensic picture was jarring.

The medical examiner under interrogation on May 28, 1959, stated that the rib fractures on Dubinina and Zolotariov had occurred while they were still alive, caused by, quote, the action of a large force, unquote. And he added that the injuries, quote, appearing in such a way without any damage to the soft tissue of the chest, are very similar to the type of trauma that results from the shockwave of a bomb, unquote. And then there was the missing tissue. Dupinina's tongue, eyes, and lips, and Zolotarov's eyes. And the official explanation pointed to simple bodily decomposition. Three months in running water will do terrible things to a body. But the medical examiner judged the soft tissue loss to have happened post-mortem, thanks to the stream.

But pictures of Duminina's body from the morgue when she arrived told a different story. Because the areas around her mouth, nose, and ears showed none of the ragged, widespread damage you'd expect from predators or scavengers. The destruction looked precise, and her stomach held roughly 100 grams of dark brown matter, often misidentified in popular accounts as coagulated blood. And some researchers pointed to this as evidence that her heart was still beating and blood still circulating when her tongue was removed, which is horrifying to think about. But to this day, no one has ever explained with certainty. What happened to these four people at the bottom of that ravine. So the criminal investigation was led by

prosecutor-criminalist Lev Ivanov, who worked for Svurdlovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office, and he opened the inquest as soon as the first five bodies turned up in late February. In the case, drew unusual attention from above from the start. And Ivanov's superior Evgeny Okashev later noted that Klanove, the head of the Svordloff's prosecutor's office, had personally attended to attended the initial autopsies at the morgue in Ivdel and stayed for three days. And in all of Okishev's years in the office, that had never happened before. And he called the situation, quote unquote, highly unusual. And then the second secretary of the regional party committee, A. F. Yeshtokun,

stepped in and took control of the investigation. And prosecutors weren't the only ones running this case because the party was watching. Regardless of the drama, the first, real theory investigators pursued was an attack by the Mansi. A Manzi shelter had been found northeast of the Diatlov campsite, with a trail running roughly 200 feet away. So it looked suspicious. Several young Mancy hunters were arrested in March 1959 and interrogated. An investigator Vladimir Korotov later said that the suspects were, quote, driven out half dressed into the cold, unquote, during questioning. And under pressure, Gregory Kurekhov told

investigators that the Mancy had no sacred sites anywhere near where the hikers died. Quote, our prayer mountain is located in the upper reaches of the Vishe River, unquote. And another interviewee was more direct, saying, quote, the Mancy had no reason to attack Russian tourists, unquote. And the theory quickly collapsed as the investigation continued, and only the hikers' own footprints had been found at the tent. And there were no signs of any sort of fight. And the valuables that were left untouched in the tent, along with cameras, alcohol, and gear were untouched. And the Mancey themselves had joined the search to help them from the beginning.

And when the ravine four were autopsied, the case became something else entirely. And forensic examiner Vaz Rosteni's conclusion was that the injuries that killed Dubonina, Zoltariev, and Thibaud Bregnol could not have been inflicted by a human being. The force was way too extreme, and the skin was untouched. No person or standard attack could produce what was found inside those bodies. And that ruling essentially squashed every theory that was built around violence, including the Manci, a fight within the group, or an ambush by outsiders. And then the investigation found something it wasn't looking for.

And on May 18, 1959, Ivanov ordered radiation testing on the clothing and remains of the ravine four, and the chief radiologist of Svirdlovsk, Lavashov, ran the analysis, and the results were alarming. Because Dubanina's brown sweater registered 9,900 radioactive decays per minute, almost double the Soviet safety threshold for workers who handled nuclear material. And after three hours of washing in a cold water current, the count dropped to 5,200. So that meant the contamination was from radioactive dust on the water. the surface of the fabric. And Kolvatov's pants and sweater waistband showed elevated readings as well. And only beta particles were detected, no alpha or gamma, but these were the bodies that had spent three months submerged in a creek. And Ivanov pointed out that the readings at the time

of death would have been far higher, since the remains had been, quote, intensively washed by melting water under the snow, entire rivers flowed there, unquote. But there was a possible explanation for this. Because as we know from before, Kravonashenko had worked at the Mayak nuclear complex and participated in the cleanup of the Kishim disaster. And Kolvatov had also spent time at Chelyabings 40. And Zena came from a village within the contamination zone of that same disaster. And a nuclear physicist named Igor Pavlov later analyzed the Levash of findings and concluded that the lack of alpha or gamma particles was consistent with contamination from Myak, not from atmospheric fallout. And he called it, quote, indirect evidence that the pollution comes from

myack, unquote, and that it was, quote, very likely that the contamination was received before the trip, unquote. His specialists told Ivanov, his radiation results were a soap bubble, or in other words, meaningless. But Kravonoshenko's family wasn't so sure. And his parents, parents had kept a suitcase of his belongings, including mittens and a hat and a sweatshirt. But his siblings were afraid of it, and they thought the contents might be radioactive. And after their mother died, they buried that suitcase. And then there were the bodies themselves. Their skin had changed color. Yuri Kuntsevik, 12 years old in 1959, attended five of the funerals and remembered their skin as having a, quote, deep brown tan, unquote.

And search team member Sergei Sogran described. the color as, quote, yellow not orange, unquote. Discoloration in the brown to orange range is a well-documented feature of death by extreme cold, so it did check out. And relatives also described the hiker's hair as having gone gray, though the autopsy reports never flagged this. And it's certainly possible that three months of exposure to freezing wind and ice can cause that kind of change through natural mummification.

And the clothing found at the scene told a story of its own, because forensic expert Cherkina, who had examined the tent, was also present when the ravine four's clothes were removed during autopsy. And she recalled, quote, When they took off their clothes and hung them on ropes, we immediately noticed that they had some strange light purple hue. Although their natural colors were different. I asked Boris, the medical examiner, don't you think the clothes are processed with something? And he agreed. End quote.

Something had changed the color of their clothes. but nobody could say what. And there were also the lights in the sky. Because a separate group of hikers, camping roughly 50 kilometers south of Diatlov's site, reported seeing, quote unquote, strange orange spheres, drifting across the northern sky on the night the group died.

And over the following weeks, similar glowing objects were spotted by people across the region, including soldiers and meteorological observers. And a mansy witness later told BBC reports, reporter Lucy Ash, quote, we were coming back from the forest and we could see the village ahead of us. This bright burning object appeared. It was wider at the front and narrower in the back and there were sparks flying of it."

Unquote. And search party member Vladislav saw one himself and he described it as a fireball moving across the sky, quote unquote, like a missile. And a local newspaper, the Taziel Worker, even printed a report about the fireballs while the hikers were still on their track and the editor got in trouble for running the story. Specitious. But none of these sightings were included in the initial 1959 investigation. And the witnesses came forward later. And Ivanov was told to make it all go away. And he eventually admitted it as well. In an interview with a journalist Stanaslav Bogomolov, he said plainly, quote, I did it myself. I withdrew the radiation test report. I was told to

remove everything that is irrelevant." Unquote. And on May 28, 1959, the case was closed. And the radiological report had been signed by Levishov just one day earlier. And in the case file, a draft version of the closing resolution survives including a full paragraph about radioactive contamination on the hiker's clothing and a note that, quote, none of them was in contact with radioactive substances at his work or study, unquote. And that draft is dated May 28th. and it bears no signatures, and its pages have been crossed out with a blue pencil. And the final resolution, the public-facing one anyway, erases the radiation entirely.

And the official conclusion is stated that members of the Diatlov group died due to, quote-unquote, a compelling natural force they were unable to overcome. No further explanation. And Okachev later said that he had been planning a return trip to the past to investigate the ravine for deaths more thoroughly when Deputy Prosecutor General Yurikov flew in from Moscow and personally shut the case down. The files were locked away in a classified archive. And the mountain pass and surrounding area were declared off limits to hikers for the next three years. And for 31 years, Lev Ivanov said nothing publicly. Then in November 1990, he published an article titled Mystery of the Fireballs in the regional newspaper, Leninsky Pute.

roughly translated to Lenin's Way. And it was his first statement about the case in over three decades, and he did not hold back, saying, quote, The study of the case now fully convinces, and even then I stuck to the version of the death of the student hikers from exposure to an unknown flying object. Based on the evidence gathered, the role of UFOs in this tragedy was quite obvious, unquote.

Aliens? It's aliens. Potentially. And he further confirmed. the suppression of his findings, saying, quote, when I reported to A.F. Yashdalkin about my findings, fireballs radioactivity, he gave a completely categorical order to classify everything, to seal everything up, to hand it over to the special unit, and to forget about it, unquote. And he closed with a line that has some fairly interesting implications, saying, quote,

all that remained was the sky and its contents, energy unknown to us, which turned out to be higher than human forces." So Ivanov's UFO conviction should, of course, be taken with the big old grain of salt. And by 1990, he was an old man who hadn't touched the case in decades, but I feel like he was just waiting until he was close to death to say the truth. Personally, that's what I would do. But what do I know? And his writing is largely speculative, but the hard claims underneath hold up.

Like that, he was pressured to abandon. entire lines of inquiry that he pulled the radiation report on orders and that the investigation was killed from Moscow. And the question was never whether the Soviet government suppressed evidence. The question was what they were suppressing and why. Which brings us to all of the theories. And the first and most widely believed is the avalanche theory. So in February 2019, Russian authorities reopened the case but with a narrow scope. And only three now natural causes were on the table. An avalanche, a slab avalanche, or a hurricane.

The possibility of a crime was ruled out before the investigation began. And on July 11th, 2020, Audrey Kurikov, deputy head of the Ural's Federal District, Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office, that was a mouthful, had to say that a few times, announced the avalanche conclusion, saying quote, It was a heroic struggle. There was no panic, but in those circumstances,

They had no chance of escape." And Kierikov's reconstruction goes like this. A slab of snow broke loose above the tent. And the hikers heard it coming, they cut the canvas and fled downhill. Well, they walked. So I don't know about this, but whatever. And wind and building snow collapsed

what was left of the tent behind them, and they made it to the cedar and started a fire. And four of them eventually moved deeper into the forest, into the ravine, where they dug a platform. form of branches. And while digging, they set off a second collapse, and this one buried themselves under roughly three meters of snow. And that weight crushed their chests and skulls, and everyone else froze to death. And in 2021, researchers Johan Gomm and Alexander Pusrin published a peer-reviewed

study that added some scientific weight to the theory. And their model used 1959 weather data, General Motors crash test cadaver data, and notably snow simulation code developed for Disney's Frozen. Way to pull through Elsa, you know. But they showed that a small but lethal slab avalanche was plausible even on a low angle slope, triggered hours later by the hiker's own cut into the hillside combined with windblown, snow stacking up above them. And Puzrin was very careful to say, quote, We do not claim that now we have a final explanation of what happened.

but we added plausibility to the avalanche theory." So the avalanche theory at least makes the hikers actions rational, right? It does make it rational. Because experienced hikers who hear a slab breaking above them would absolutely cut their way out and run. It explains the tent, the panic, the chest injuries, but there are problems with this theory. Because when searchers found the tent, there was no debris field and no pattern of the kind of displaced snowy. you'd expect after an avalanche. And the skis that stood upright near the tent were undisturbed.

It's not hard to knock over skis in the snow. Just gonna say that. They would not have stayed upright like that in the event of an avalanche. And the slope angle at the campsite measured 28 degrees, which is steeper than the area's average of 23, but still lower than typical slab avalanche terrain. And Jim McElwin, a professor of geohazards

at Durham University, noted that slab avalanches generally require steeper ground. Diatlov and Zolotariev were both experienced enough to recognize the avalanche prone terrain. So it seems unlikely that they would settle there knowing that that was an issue. It was cold and it was a crazy storm, but it's just like, would they put themselves in danger like that? I don't know. And the footprints. The footprints leading away from the tent showed people walking in an orderly fashion in a line.

not running for their lives as one likely would trying to escape an avalanche. And the theory also has nothing to say about the radiation, and the missing soft tissue, or the lights in the sky. And defenders of the theory argue those are separate, unrelated phenomena. But ultimately, the families rejected the theory altogether, and honestly, so do I. And their lawyer, Yev Jenny, Chernau Sov, said flatly, quote, The relatives will not accept this conclusion, only a technobi.

The geogenic theory is possible. In effect, this investigation has not produced anything." Unquote. And the next theory is catabatic winds, which are essentially cold, heavy winds rolling downhill at extreme speed. Now, in the Urals, they can appear suddenly and turn violent without warning. In the 2019 review, confirmed winds that night reached hurricane force, 20 to 30 meters per second, with temperatures at minus 40. In the original 1959, investigators never factored this in. having arrived at the scene three weeks later when the weather had calmed down.

And the theory holds that the wind made the tent uninhabitable forcing an emergency evacuation. And it could explain why they left, but not why they cut their way out instead of using the entrance. And wind, no matter how extreme, doesn't produce the kind of targeted crushing fractures found in the ravine four without leaving any sort of mark on the skin. That one, I just throw that one over my shoulder. I don't really buy that one either. And then there's infrasound. So in 2013, American filmmaker Donnie Eicher

published Dead Mountain, in which he proposed another theory. Wind, flowing over the dome-shaped summit of the mountain, he argued, could generate a phenomenon called a Carmen Vortex Street. Or alternating spiral fortices that produce something called infrasound. And these are vibrations lower than he, human hearing, but are still capable of affecting the body. And a 2003 UK study found that roughly one in five people exposed to infrasound reported anxiety, fear, or difficulty breathing.

An icers scenario was this. The infrasound combined with the roar of nearby vertices and the claustrophobic darkness of the tent caused overwhelming panic in the group, enough to make nine experienced hikers slash their way out and flee barefoot in the tent. into a blizzard. And once down slope and beyond the infrasound's reach, they would have regained their composure, but by then it was too late

because they couldn't find the tent in the storm. But there is problems with this theory, of course. Because infrasound doesn't explain the injuries, right? Eicher attributes the ravine force fractures to stumbling off the edge of the ravine in the dark, and the science itself is somewhat shaky. And as Snopes noted, quote, Acoustic scientists are far from sure that infrasound exposure causes even the mildest symptoms attributed to it, much less extreme panic."

Unquote. No person has ever been documented as having been killed by infrasound, and no study has shown it can induce the kind of simultaneous panic required for nine people to abandon shelter into lethal conditions. And then we get into the more plausible ones, in my opinion, and that is the government, because the Diatlov campsite sat between the Bikonor Cosmodrome and the Chiorna Laguba, a Soviet nuclear testing ground. The northern Urals were easily within range of military facilities. And the 2019 investigation confirmed that rocket launches did in fact take place from the Kapustin-Yar training range during the expedition period. But the launch site was quote unquote not visible from the pass. and the glowing orange spheres seen by multiple witnesses have been attributed by some researchers

to debris from R7 intercontinental missile tests. And more specific versions of this theory looks to parachute mines, which are designed to detonate in midair before hitting the ground, and they can produce massive internal trauma with minimal surface damage, matching the ravines for autopsy findings almost exactly. And records indicate the Soviet military was testing parachute mines in the same mountain range during this period. And the timing does line up with the fireball sightings. But the flaw in this theory, because we're going to talk about the flaws in all these theories, is that no declassified documents have ever confirmed military activity at the specific location

on that specific night. The sightings were dismissed as an illusion by the 2019 reinvestigation. So do with that what you will. That one right now, top of my list. Okay? Well, we're getting into more, but that's top. And then there's the Mancy attack theory, which was one of the favorites for investigators initially, but we kind of already debunked that. Because they claim they attacked the hikers because they were on their sacred land, but the Mancy denied this and there was literally zero evidence that a fight had occurred.

And not to mention, the Forensic Examiner's analysis says that no human being could have caused those injuries, especially in those elements. And then there's one of my other, I don't want to say favorite theories. Well, I guess, yeah, favorite theories, you know, and this one makes sense scientifically if you know anything about hypothermia, and that is paradoxical undressing. Because between 20% and 50% of people who die from hypothermia experience something known as paradoxical undressing. Because as the body shuts down from extreme cold, the brain misfires, giving the victim a false sense of burning heat. You get really hot, so you want to take your clothes off. which means they strip off their clothing convinced they're actually burning alive.

I can't even imagine experiencing that. But this explains why Doroshenko and Krivonashenko were found nearly naked at the cedar. But the picture is obviously more complicated than that. Because the evidence shows surviving members of the group deliberately removing clothing from those who had already died, even cutting it off in some cases and then putting it on themselves. And Dubonina wore Krivonashenko's pants, and Zolotario wore Dubinina's coat. So these instances point to a calculated attempt

to stay alive and not so much a state of confusion. But paradoxical undressing may account for part of the group's missing clothes, which is what I actually think for this theory. But it doesn't necessarily explain why the group fled the tent in the first place, obviously. And it has nothing to do at all with the crushed chests and shattered. shattered skulls. But I do think that's like a small percentage of it. I'm just giving, you can give your own thoughts in the comments. I'm extremely curious to know your guys's thoughts, but mine right

now is government and a little bit of hypothermia. And next is espionage. Because there is the question of Semyon Zolitarievov, a 37 year old man in a group of 20 somethings, a war veteran who escaped war without a scratch. During a time when 97% of soldiers who served that long didn't even survive. A man who used a name that wasn't his, carried hidden tattoos no one in the group knew about, and switched expeditions three days before departure for reasons he never explained. And he had also spent time in Lermonotov, a city that was closed to outsiders because of its connections to uranium mining. And at a communist party meeting, he was confronted about his brother's wartime collaborations with the Germans. And despite this, he was never expelled from the party or removed

from his role. So it seems like that kind of immunity doesn't come about without someone powerful standing behind you. So an espionage theory started to form, proposing that Zolotariov and possibly also Krivonashenko, given his work at Mayak, were actually placed in the hiking group as part of an intelligence operation in the Urales. And the radioactive clothing in this version could point to a handoff of nuclear materials, but details that don't quite fit anywhere else start to make a bit of sense here. Like the second camera around Zoltario's neck, he fled with it instead of his gear, and the notepad that the colonel found and seized from him and said like, oh, there's nothing written in here, nothing to see here. It just lights it on fire. He didn't light it on fire,

but it disappeared. And the gaps in his biographical info and the false name, and after the funerals, seven of the nine were laid to rest together in Mikhailov. which was a section of a cemetery reserved for the university. But Zolotarov and Krivonashenko managed to end up buried somewhere else apart from the group, Ivan Osko's cemetery. And in 2018, journalist Natalia Varsogova arranged the exhumation of the body in Zolotario's grave. And just getting the permit took a year, and it was only made harder by the fact that no burial record for anyone named Semyon Zolotarov existed in the city of Sviriov existed in the city of Svirio.

Verdlovsk. And a skull-matching analysis by expert Sergei Nicotin scored 13 out of 24 possible comparison points, one more than what was needed for a positive identification. So the face appeared to match, but the DNA told a different story. And the first round of testing found no genetic connection between the exhumed remains of Zolotarov's niece, Tatiana Skolberta. So if the results held, it meant the body in the grave wasn't him. And then, a second test that was run by the more widely recognized geneticist Pavel Ivanov came back positive. So though the DNA ultimately did match, the two results directly contradicted each other, and no one has been able to explain why.

Some researchers have floated the possibility that the remains belong not to Semyon, but to his brother, Nikolai, who worked for the Germans during the war and disappeared without a train. And then there are his cryptic last words before they set out saying, quote unquote, this whole world will start talking about this track. That one, I don't even know what to make of that one, honestly. It could just all be mixed up. I think military with him and hypothermia. I think it's all mixed right now.

And then he would also say ominously, quote unquote, they will soon find out about everything. So whether that was prophecy, a bravado, or something, entirely no one knows and I don't think we ever will know but certainly an odd thing to say if he didn't actually know something and that brings us to my favorite the fringe theories the yeti theory traces back to a single joke from the evening o'torton where they had included a line about a snowman living near o'torten and the case file doesn't even contain the original document only a typed transcript but despite this the joke has been cited by multiple documentaries as

evidence of an actual encounter. I wanna believe Yeti's are real, but I don't believe this one, unfortunately, I don't believe this one. But that brings us to the UFO theory, which draws on the orange sphere sightings and Ivanov's 1990 endorsement, remember? Ivanov said when he was really old and dying

that this was UFOs, this was the theory. But more grounded analysis attribute those lights to R7 missile launches from Bacchonor, given that the campsite sat directly on the flight corridor to a Soviet nuclear testing ground, as we spoke about before. But one investigator proposed the hikers were actually killed after being mistaken for escaped prisoners

from nearby Goulog camps. However, no prison breakouts were recorded during this period. And another theory that our investigator put forward proposed that the hikers were actually killed after being mistaken for escaped prisoners from the nearby Gulog camps. However, no prison breakouts were recorded during this period. So I don't really buy that one either.

So far, it's military UFOs for me, or espionage and a little bit hypothermia. But others have suggested just a fight within the group stemming from romantic jealousy, perhaps spiraling into violence. And Donnie Eckar called this highly implausible, though. In the diary show, no meaningful friction, and the group seemed very tightly knit, and no human could have delivered those injuries found in the ravines, so that one is just kaput. So in 2020, the case was closed and an avalanche was cited as the cause. And the family said no. And they have been saying know for 60 years. And Kolvatov's mother was never properly told her son had died. And after his funeral,

she lost the use of her legs, because the shock had taken them from her. Dupinina's father went to the morgue and fainted when he pulled back the sheet covering his daughter's body. And in 1999, Yuri Kuntsevik, the 12-year-old boy who had attended five of the funerals and had never forgotten the color of their skin established the Diatlov Foundation in Yekenturtenberg. And its mission is to keep the investigation live and to maintain the Diatlav Museum and to make sure nobody stopped asking questions. As the families and the foundation spent decades pressuring authorities to reopen the case. And when the 2019 Reinvestigation finally produced its answer, the foundation's lawyer rejected it immediately. But the families had always believed the cause was technological, whether that was military,

chemical or nuclear was uncertain. But I really do believe it. Ooh, especially in today's time, man, like our government, absolutely disgusting. So I'm gonna safely assume the Russian government, equally if not more. I'm, I have just no doubts, I don't know, but let me know what you guys think down below.

But a Swiss researcher involved in the 2021 study clearly understood the resistance, saying, quote, For relatives, the avalanche theory is hard to stomach because it suggests that these seasoned hikers were somehow to blame for their own deaths." But still, six decades later, the families still do not accept any official explanation. And then there was Yuri Udn, the one who turned back. And he carried the weight of that decision for the rest of his life, and he would never get married or have children. And he held on to the small teddy bear, Dubonina, had pressed into his hand. when he left. And he spent years at the magnesium plant near Perm, then moved into city government

until he retired. But he at least kept hiking. And his theories about what killed his friends changed over the years, but they always aimed toward something man-made. And he believed they had stumbled into military tests, chemicals, radiation, or explosives, just something of that nature. Just like the families, he never once accepted a natural cause explanation. And in his final years, Eudin withdrew from the world. And he mentioned to friends that he was working on a novel about what happened to the past, but no one ever found a manuscript, just stacks of newspaper clippings about the case and scattered notes which appeared to be fragments of a man still trying to solve the thing that had defined his entire life. And Eudin died on April 27, 2013 at the age of 75. His heart would

finally give out and his ashes would be laid to rest. Beside the remains of his seven friends, he lost on that tragic night. And the mountain pass was renamed in the group's honor, and a monument stands at the cemetery. And a memorial plaque was unveiled in Solicomsk in 2016 for Uden. And the university touring club now bears Igor Diatlov's name, and many pictures survived. With dozens of pictures pulled from the group's cameras,

the searchers recovered four of them, along with loose rolls of film. And they showcase faces in the snow, smiling, shots of gear being sorted and trail markings on trees and the landscape closing in as the weather worsened. In the last unidentifiable frames on Krivonashenko's film shows figures barely visible through the wind and snow on the afternoon of February 1st. And these are the final images of the nine alive. And then there is frame number 34. And this is the last exposure on Krivonashenko's role.

And it's completely blurred, nothing but darkness and a brink. bright eight-sided glow near the center, and faint smears of lights scattered around it. And it has fueled decades of speculation into some of the fringe theories. But camera experts offer a dull explanation, saying, the bright shape matches the eight-bladed aperture inside the undisturbed 22 lens that was fitted to his camera. That particular lens has a barrel that collapses for storage. And if it isn't pulled all the way out before firing, the result is just blurry. with diaphragm-shaped blobs of light, which is exactly what the frame shows.

And tests run in 2012 produced identical results. And the camera shutter was found half-wound up, which suggests the exposure happened unintentionally, most likely while someone was advancing the film. And the investigators who processed the camera through the image out, thinking it was too degraded to mean anything. And it's almost certainly nothing, but almost certainly is not definitely. And that gap between what can be explained and what can be proven is where this entire case lives anyway.

By 2009, the group's diaries had passed into Russia's public domain, and the original negatives from Kravanishenko's camera that were held for decades in Ivanov's personal collection, eventually were handed over to the Diatlov Foundation by Ivanov's daughter in 1997. But new researchers keep coming, and over the years, the case has been sealed, unsealed, reopened, shut down, declassified, and reclassified. And pieces of the file remain unaccounted for to this day. Around 75 theories in total have been examined, and every theory explains some of the evidence, but no theory explains all of it. So what happened on the night of February 1st to 2nd, 1959 on the slope of Dead Mountain remains formally and functionally unsolved.

But please let me know what you guys think down below. A lot of you guys suggested this, So I'm sure a lot of you guys have opinions, so please let me know below. Also, let me know what other cases you want me to deep dive into. I always read the comments, and until then, I will see your beautiful face. Okay, stay safe out there. Bye-bye.