"The first bodies — frostbitten and frozen stiff — were discovered lying in the snow on flat land near a river, a mile from the tent, next to the remains of a long burnt-out fire.

Around 350 yards away lay the corpse of Igor Dyatlov, the 23-year-old engineering student from Ural Polyetchnic who had put the expedition together and was its leader. (His name would later be given to the area where the tragedy took place.)

Nearby, a search dog sniffed out the remains of Zina Kolmogorova, 22, under four inches of snow, and then that of Rustem Slobodin. The bodies were in a line 200 yards apart, as if they had been trying to crawl behind each other back up to the shelter of the tent, but never made it.

Another two months went by before the rest of the group were found, under 15ft of snow in a den they had desperately hollowed out for themselves before succumbing to the cold.

Some of this group had broken bones and terrible internal injuries but, strangely, no external wounds, not even scratches on the skin.

Stranger still, odd bits of their clothing contained higher than normal levels of radiation."



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-1959.html

It was a mystery, but I thought the prevailing consensus was that it was an avalanche.

An avalanche would explain people awakening in a panic and hurriedly exiting their tent. It could also explain the bodies that had massive internal injuries but little external wounds from the soft snow.

Occam's razor and all that...

(08-29-2014 02:56 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  It was a mystery, but I thought the prevailing consensus was that it was an avalanche.

An avalanche would explain people awakening in a panic and hurriedly exiting their tent. It could also explain the bodies that had massive internal injuries but little external wounds from the soft snow.

What about the two with missing eyes and the one with a missing tongue? I suppose they could have been climbing away from it, but then if it was an avalanche, how do you explain the footsteps that were still on top of the snow from the tent to the forest line?

I believe that an avalanche can have such force as to rip eyes out of sockets and to cause people to bite off their tongues. Or at least, that an avalanche causing these type of injuries would would not be impossible. For the more paranormal aspect of things, I believe that anything written in the USSR in the 50's should be taken with a bucket of salt, as many parts of the account seemingly contradicts itself: like a heavy snow at -30 or seeing lights in the sky in the blizzard.

I'm sticking with blizzard conditions at altitude, bitter cold, crazy dangerous terrain, an avalanche and the propensity of humans to lose their ****.

Radioactive clothing is mysterious too... Supposedly there were reports of lots of sightings in the sky but like you said, blizzard... Also, being in the south, I'm not very familiar with snow. How does -30 impact heavy snow?

(08-29-2014 03:29 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  How does -30 impact heavy snow?

Temperatures that low normally mean that there is little or no moisture in the air, so there is little opportunity for snow. Not impossible, but unlikely.

A -20 degree day in Minneapolis is normally bright blue skies, blinding sun and dry as a bone.

Gotcha. Also, doing research, they say that the trees weren't messed with so if it was an avalanche, it would have been a minimal one.