Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Dyatlov Pass Mystery

Transcript

The Dyatlov Pass Mystery · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
0:16
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know Unsolved Mysteries Edition.
0:22
Speaker 1: How do you pronounced this? Diet love? Diet love. Yeah,
0:27
Speaker 1: that's how I've always pronounced it. That's what we're going with, Okay.
0:32
Speaker 1: For some reason, I always just always Oh, that's a
0:36
Speaker 1: good one. I like that, a bit of a Russian
0:38
Speaker 1: diet love playing just say get love anyway. Get Love
0:48
Speaker 1: is the name of a famous pass in the Ural Mountains,
0:53
Speaker 1: and it was named after it turns out a twenty
0:56
Speaker 1: three year old mountaineer expert outdoors person uh named um
1:03
Speaker 1: uh Igor do out love. I always want to call
1:06
Speaker 1: him Uri because there was like five Yuris in his group,
1:10
Speaker 1: but he was the only Igor. Yeah, And I did
1:12
Speaker 1: not know that this pass was named for him. And
1:16
Speaker 1: when I first started researching this, I was like, that's yeah, Uh,
1:24
Speaker 1: shall we tell the story? Yeah, let's people might have
1:27
Speaker 1: you you'd heard of this before, right? Yeah? And I
1:30
Speaker 1: believe we may have touched on this in the top
1:32
Speaker 1: ten once maybe, but or a video that we did.
1:38
Speaker 1: But whatever it was, it was a little tiny, short thing.
1:41
Speaker 1: I mean we mentioned the Gary Matthias disappearance was called
1:45
Speaker 1: the American do at Love event Ye disappearance. Um, this
1:50
Speaker 1: is this is totally different in a lot of ways,
1:53
Speaker 1: in most ways, but you can find kind of find
1:56
Speaker 1: some similarities here there. But yeah, let's tell the story man,
2:00
Speaker 1: all right. So we're talking about a group of students
2:02
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, early February from you're all u
2:08
Speaker 1: r a l State Technical University. Go what go fighting
2:18
Speaker 1: rook the hammers and sickles. That sounds good, the hammers
2:24
Speaker 1: and sickles. Uh. They were all very um well acquainted
2:28
Speaker 1: with camping, back country hiking, and skiing across country skiing.
2:33
Speaker 1: So they weren't a bunch of rookies out there. No, no,
2:36
Speaker 1: and that's really important, Like these people were very well
2:40
Speaker 1: experienced with this kind of stuff. Yeah, they knew what
2:42
Speaker 1: they were doing. And there was a group of how
2:45
Speaker 1: many were there? Seven they're ten total? Oh tin total,
2:49
Speaker 1: nine of whom actually went into the woods. The only
2:53
Speaker 1: person to make it out of this trip alive was
2:56
Speaker 1: the one person who stayed back because he wasn't feeling well,
3:00
Speaker 1: stayed behind the village. That was another yury yury udine. Um. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: I got a little sick and was bummed, And little
3:09
Speaker 1: did he know that would have been almost certainly a
3:11
Speaker 1: life saving moment for him. Yeah, he had a rheumatism
3:14
Speaker 1: and came down with about of rheumatism and actually stayed
3:17
Speaker 1: back in this little tiny village where they they set
3:20
Speaker 1: off from. And to say that they were like in
3:23
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere is an understatement. Like they were
3:27
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, not a lot going on there,
3:30
Speaker 1: and I think like a two two plus week trip,
3:34
Speaker 1: and they were trying to get to mount or to
3:36
Speaker 1: ten right, yeah, or t o They were trying to
3:44
Speaker 1: make it to this mountain, which is a part of
3:46
Speaker 1: the Ural Mountains, um. And to get there they basically
3:50
Speaker 1: cross country skied, they climbed this, They climbed mountains to
3:54
Speaker 1: get to this mountain. They had to camp out and
3:57
Speaker 1: this this like negative thirty degree weather. Um, just crazy nuts,
4:03
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, and they were having the time of
4:05
Speaker 1: their lives. These students were. Yeah there, I mean there.
4:08
Speaker 1: There is footage or footage by way of photographs because
4:13
Speaker 1: they took a lot of pictures and if you go
4:15
Speaker 1: through and look at the um the early parts of
4:18
Speaker 1: this trip, they did look like they were having a
4:19
Speaker 1: lot of fun. They were, they were good pals. They
4:22
Speaker 1: did a very adorable thing on the way they they
4:27
Speaker 1: started making their own little newspaper about the trip, the
4:30
Speaker 1: Evening Ordered ten where they would just it was essentially
4:33
Speaker 1: a little fun diary, like group diary they did, but
4:36
Speaker 1: they put it in the form of a of a
4:38
Speaker 1: daily newspaper of their journey, which is very very cute
4:41
Speaker 1: and sad. Yeah, And one of the one of the
4:44
Speaker 1: ways I saw their group described was that there were
4:47
Speaker 1: there were two girls in this group and the rest
4:49
Speaker 1: of the guys um, but that there wasn't any like
4:52
Speaker 1: real sexual tension or rivalries going on. That there was
4:56
Speaker 1: like kind of crushes here there and like like like
5:00
Speaker 1: humorous flirtation that kind of thing, just keeping everything real light. Yeah,
5:05
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like Uri betrayed me nothing with she
5:11
Speaker 1: wasn't name Urie hooked up with Zena. What's one of
5:15
Speaker 1: them Zena? Yeah, there was Zena and then uh lud
5:19
Speaker 1: uh lud Mia just laughing. You try it. Jerry came
5:26
Speaker 1: and talked, you know, she minored in Russian studies. I
5:29
Speaker 1: had no idea. Did I ever tell you? By the
5:32
Speaker 1: time you Me and I went to visit friends in
5:35
Speaker 1: London and we were on our way to to go
5:39
Speaker 1: to Moscow for these the guys that I met in London, Yes,
5:43
Speaker 1: who now live in l A. Mikeldam, Oh, they're wonderful.
5:46
Speaker 1: They live in l A. Now, welcome to America, dudes. Um.
5:49
Speaker 1: But we went to visit them in London and found
5:51
Speaker 1: out that Um, because Adam I think majored in Russian
5:57
Speaker 1: studies or Russian literature. I think he's like, you you
6:00
Speaker 1: have your visa and we're like, what do you mean.
6:02
Speaker 1: He's like, you have to have a visa to go
6:04
Speaker 1: to Russia and we're like, I don't think so no
6:06
Speaker 1: one said anything to us about that, and he's like, no,
6:09
Speaker 1: you definitely do. We call the airline. They're like, yeah,
6:11
Speaker 1: you don't have a visa and we're like, how did
6:13
Speaker 1: you not You mean like a visa card, right, that's
6:16
Speaker 1: what we thought you meant, and um, we didn't go
6:19
Speaker 1: to Russia. I think I remember we ended up going
6:22
Speaker 1: to Majorca instead. Last minute, Oh well right, We're like
6:26
Speaker 1: this could have been way worse than it turned out.
6:28
Speaker 1: I think I remember you having plans to go to
6:31
Speaker 1: Russia and I never heard anything. That's why we didn't think.
6:35
Speaker 1: I remember at some point in my life being like,
6:37
Speaker 1: that's weird, Josh never talked about Russia, but you heard
6:39
Speaker 1: me talk about Mayorca. Yeah, it all adds up. Now,
6:43
Speaker 1: that's that was all that trip. Interesting. Yeah, so that's
6:47
Speaker 1: my Russia story. That's as close as I've come. That's
6:50
Speaker 1: funny because you guys are pretty buttoned up. I know,
6:52
Speaker 1: we're really surprised at ourselves, you guys. Yeah, all right,
6:57
Speaker 1: thanks for that, Chuck. I appreciate that about you being
6:59
Speaker 1: buttoned up. Yeah. Yeah, that's sounds like something I would do.
7:05
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's pretty basic level stuff. I think
7:07
Speaker 1: these people would catch that. All right. So where are they?
7:10
Speaker 1: They're on the Mountain of the Dead, which I don't
7:12
Speaker 1: believe we mentioned was the was the translation that the
7:16
Speaker 1: local indigenous tribe, the Monsey tribe, called this mountain collots
7:21
Speaker 1: Yakle the Mountain of the Dead, and the Monsey tribe, um,
7:25
Speaker 1: we'll we'll pop up later in theories. So just we're
7:29
Speaker 1: putting pins and things. Do you remember in our magic
7:32
Speaker 1: mushroom episode where we talked about like um reindeer herder
7:37
Speaker 1: who would feed their reindeer mushrooms and then drink the
7:39
Speaker 1: pea to trip themselves. I think I do remember that
7:43
Speaker 1: that's the man. They're like Siberian um nomad's I believe,
7:50
Speaker 1: and who know how to party. Yeah, and like the
7:54
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms that they're shame their shamans eat and probably
7:57
Speaker 1: their regular people eat too. They're very toxic um and
8:01
Speaker 1: one way to get rid of the toxins is to
8:03
Speaker 1: feed him to reindeer, and the the reindeers filter toxin.
8:07
Speaker 1: You drink the reindeer p and the psychoactive stuff is
8:10
Speaker 1: still present in their pa. Wow. Yeah, and they think
8:13
Speaker 1: that possibly I'm saving this for the Christmas episode. Okay, okay,
8:18
Speaker 1: so go ahead. I'm sorry that that's the monster people. Yeah,
8:20
Speaker 1: that's the monster people. So um. What they end up
8:23
Speaker 1: doing is they decide on the night of February twod
8:27
Speaker 1: to camp and in a decidedly sort of odd place.
8:31
Speaker 1: It wasn't so weird, but they were only about a
8:34
Speaker 1: mile from the tree line, where they would have had
8:37
Speaker 1: much better cover. Um, and it would have been slightly warmer,
8:41
Speaker 1: and it's just it makes more sense to camp in
8:43
Speaker 1: the in the forest than out on this open ridge.
8:46
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, for some reason they decided to camp there.
8:49
Speaker 1: They think possibly because they didn't want to backtrack, because
8:53
Speaker 1: they would have had to backtrack something to get back
8:55
Speaker 1: to the tree line. Yeah, they would have had to
8:56
Speaker 1: go a mile back down the slope, which means that
9:00
Speaker 1: they would have had to go cover that mile up again.
9:03
Speaker 1: And that's what Urie. What's the guy who was his
9:07
Speaker 1: last name uri Uton? Yeah, that's what he later said
9:11
Speaker 1: in an interview that he he thought it was either
9:14
Speaker 1: that that um the out love didn't want to backtrack
9:17
Speaker 1: because he d love as a leader, remember um, or
9:20
Speaker 1: he wanted to practice camping on an exposed mountain slope,
9:24
Speaker 1: which from what I've heard about this guy, it sounds
9:26
Speaker 1: like something he might do. He might be like, hey, gang,
9:28
Speaker 1: I've got a great idea. We've never done this right,
9:31
Speaker 1: let's try it. And they would have been able to
9:34
Speaker 1: quite easily. Um. They pitched. They pitched the camp. But
9:37
Speaker 1: in between pitching camp, and this is February second, ninety nine,
9:42
Speaker 1: in between pitching camp and making dinner, something happened. They
9:47
Speaker 1: never got to make dinner and whatever happened to them
9:52
Speaker 1: happened in between that time. On February second. We'll be
9:58
Speaker 1: back right after this. All right, that was quite a teaser,
10:27
Speaker 1: my friend, Thank you. You can talk regular now. So, uh,
10:33
Speaker 1: the search party didn't go out right away because yet
10:36
Speaker 1: Loft had said before, um, hey, we're going to be
10:40
Speaker 1: back around February twelve, or maybe a bit longer if
10:44
Speaker 1: we are so inspired to stay out there a bit longer,
10:47
Speaker 1: which is or yeah, if it's going slower than we thought, right,
10:50
Speaker 1: which is not the I mean, nowadays people will be
10:52
Speaker 1: a little more buttoned up like you guys and say
10:57
Speaker 1: a little more specific maybe when you're hiking in a
11:00
Speaker 1: place like this, but nevertheless, or have like a satellite
11:03
Speaker 1: phone with you or something. But again, so these these
11:06
Speaker 1: kids are in the middle of nowhere, totally cut off
11:09
Speaker 1: from contact. It was we're going in in January. You'll
11:13
Speaker 1: hear from us, probably around February twelve or so. Yeah,
11:16
Speaker 1: But because he put a wishy washy timeline on it, um,
11:20
Speaker 1: it didn't. It wasn't until they that anyone had any
11:24
Speaker 1: suspicions that anything was wrong, and then not until the
11:27
Speaker 1: twenty six that volunteer searchers finally found this camp. Yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: that was much much later. So they found the camp
11:35
Speaker 1: and right out of the gate, they're like, this is
11:37
Speaker 1: a little weird. The tents seem to have been cut
11:43
Speaker 1: from the inside out. That's a very weird thing. Not
11:48
Speaker 1: only that their boots are here, Um, their clothes are here,
11:52
Speaker 1: their gears here, their skis, like everything they would need
11:55
Speaker 1: it was all just abandoned at this camp. Yeah, it
11:59
Speaker 1: looked like a left in a hurry. Um. And then
12:03
Speaker 1: even even stranger from what from the official report, and
12:09
Speaker 1: we'll see that that was like this has gone on
12:12
Speaker 1: for so long and been open to so much interpretation that, um,
12:16
Speaker 1: there's a lot of taint to this legend um that
12:21
Speaker 1: the but the official ports said that there were maybe
12:23
Speaker 1: eight or nine tracks, the tracks of eight or nine
12:26
Speaker 1: people around these tents, So that would account for everybody
12:30
Speaker 1: in the party without the addition of other people being
12:33
Speaker 1: on scenes. Yeah, and the way they left, like you said,
12:36
Speaker 1: like it was almost as if they they went and
12:40
Speaker 1: got in their tents, zipped them up and found um
12:43
Speaker 1: a dozen pit vipers and each one because they cut
12:48
Speaker 1: out of the tent and ran away in their underwear. Basically,
12:52
Speaker 1: not all of them and their underwear, but you know,
12:54
Speaker 1: barefoot and with very little clothing, like as if something
12:58
Speaker 1: inside the tent had you know, was about to kill them. Okay,
13:03
Speaker 1: that's a big, big thing. It's a weird way to
13:05
Speaker 1: leave your camp. So these these guys are missing. Um
13:08
Speaker 1: and they the search party that found the tent in
13:12
Speaker 1: pretty short order. I'm not exactly sure how long it took,
13:15
Speaker 1: but from what I understand, it was the same search
13:18
Speaker 1: they found the first two bodies, and they found these
13:21
Speaker 1: first two bodies. It was the two uries Uri Kravoniashenko
13:28
Speaker 1: and Uri Doroshenko. Um the third year that stayed back, no,
13:33
Speaker 1: because they were literally three euries right, three out of
13:36
Speaker 1: tin right, Um, that's of them were Uri so um,
13:42
Speaker 1: Uri Kravanishenko, I decided again because I wanted to do
13:45
Speaker 1: better than the first time. And then Uri Doroshenko. They
13:48
Speaker 1: were found, both of them wearing their underwear. I think
13:52
Speaker 1: they were both barefoot. Um at the tree line. At
13:56
Speaker 1: the tree line they call it the big tree. It
13:58
Speaker 1: was a large cypress tree. Um. So they were in
14:01
Speaker 1: their underwear, barefoot, dead a mile down the mountain from
14:08
Speaker 1: the camp, which is where they said that they probably
14:11
Speaker 1: should have camped for more cover, so very interestingly, supposedly
14:15
Speaker 1: both of their hands were burned. I saw, yeah, I
14:18
Speaker 1: saw that they were just beaten up, and that there
14:21
Speaker 1: was human flesh found in the bark of the tree.
14:25
Speaker 1: I didn't see that at all, Okay, So as that
14:28
Speaker 1: they had tried to climb it in desperation, Okay. I
14:31
Speaker 1: did see that that they were like broken branches that
14:33
Speaker 1: indicated climbing. I didn't see there was flesh in the bark,
14:36
Speaker 1: flesh in the bark okay. Um, So maybe burned hands
14:40
Speaker 1: means like they were raw from climbing the tree. Um.
14:44
Speaker 1: But there was signs of a fire. Yeah, there was
14:46
Speaker 1: like a campfire that they had built and there were
14:49
Speaker 1: unburnt branches kind of collected by it too, right, But
14:52
Speaker 1: they were both dead and they were the first two discovered.
14:55
Speaker 1: The two juris very weird, but nothing that couldn't be
14:59
Speaker 1: a kound of or by hypothermia. Yeah, it was being
15:03
Speaker 1: out there in your underwear to begin with. It was
15:04
Speaker 1: the weird part again and like negative thirty degree weather,
15:08
Speaker 1: negative thirty with howling wins, so foreshadowing. Okay, Three more bodies,
15:16
Speaker 1: including our leader Mr dietlov Uh, They were found between
15:21
Speaker 1: those two points between the original camp and that tree,
15:26
Speaker 1: and it looked as if they were headed back toward camp. Yeah,
15:30
Speaker 1: the way they were laid out, like imagine somebody like
15:32
Speaker 1: kind of dying as they're crawling up a slope back
15:36
Speaker 1: toward camp, right makes sense to me. So let's say
15:39
Speaker 1: that they all kind of went to this tree and
15:43
Speaker 1: then they started to head out back to camp to
15:47
Speaker 1: maybe get their gear because they realized, we're in a
15:49
Speaker 1: bad spot. We're all our gears up there and we're
15:53
Speaker 1: down here in our underwear and barefoot, and why are we?
15:56
Speaker 1: Yeah again, who knows? So they found um Igor, diatlov Um, Zaneda,
16:07
Speaker 1: Colma Gorva. Why am I the only one saying their
16:11
Speaker 1: I'll say the last one rustam sloban In. Well, even
16:14
Speaker 1: Jerry could have said that one. So Rustum had a
16:19
Speaker 1: about a two and a half inch gash in his
16:21
Speaker 1: head and a fractured skull that was very weird. It
16:25
Speaker 1: is weird, but the doctor said that's not what this
16:28
Speaker 1: person died from. Again, all five of these people died
16:32
Speaker 1: from hypothermia. Even though this guy has been smashed in
16:35
Speaker 1: the head somehow. So Um, the investigators are like, okay,
16:41
Speaker 1: so far, it's weird, but something happened and then all
16:45
Speaker 1: these people died of hypothermia. Okay, yeah, that didn't hold
16:50
Speaker 1: up when they finally found the other three bodies two
16:53
Speaker 1: months later, four bodies. Yeah, in May, I think after
16:56
Speaker 1: some of the snow melt they found they found four
16:59
Speaker 1: more these in a gully down um, down slope from
17:05
Speaker 1: the tree. So there's the tree where the first two
17:07
Speaker 1: bodies were found. Up slope there were the next three bodies,
17:10
Speaker 1: like they were crawling towards back toward camp. And then
17:13
Speaker 1: on the other side, down slope of the tree, the
17:16
Speaker 1: last four bodies were found. Yeah. These This is where
17:19
Speaker 1: it gets very strange, very strange. These bodies they were
17:24
Speaker 1: they didn't die from hypothermia. They died of some very
17:27
Speaker 1: weird uh internal injuries. Some of them, um, had their
17:33
Speaker 1: skulls crushed. Two of them had a massive chest fractures
17:36
Speaker 1: and broken ribs. UM. One of them was missing her
17:41
Speaker 1: uh which one was Ludma do Nina. She was missing
17:47
Speaker 1: her tongue and part of her mouth and face. Yeah,
17:52
Speaker 1: they were. She was also missing her eyes, as was
17:55
Speaker 1: one of the other people. UM. And you know this
17:59
Speaker 1: could have been a played away. Is maybe an animal
18:01
Speaker 1: ate this stuff, but there was no outside trauma. No,
18:05
Speaker 1: when you looked at these people, it wasn't like you
18:09
Speaker 1: have been clearly hit very hard on the head was
18:12
Speaker 1: a stick or a baseball bat, or you have had
18:15
Speaker 1: your eyeballs pecked out by a vulture. Uh, no outward signs.
18:20
Speaker 1: They didn't find out until later on that all these
18:22
Speaker 1: internal injuries had occurred. Yeah, one of the really strange.
18:26
Speaker 1: It was very strange. One of the doctors who examined
18:28
Speaker 1: the bodies in the official reports said that this was like, um,
18:33
Speaker 1: there was totally out of the capability of any human
18:36
Speaker 1: to inflict these injuries. It was more like the injuries
18:39
Speaker 1: you would see from a car crash, and so they
18:42
Speaker 1: would have like crushed bones, crushed skulls, but they they
18:46
Speaker 1: would not. They didn't have any like soft tissue damage, right,
18:50
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like somebody like kid him with an axe.
18:55
Speaker 1: But you know, they had the injuries sustained like they
18:57
Speaker 1: were hit by an x, but not the outward out
19:00
Speaker 1: external injuries like they were crushed by an axe or something. Yeah,
19:03
Speaker 1: although a lot of them were missing soft tissue, which
19:07
Speaker 1: but no outward signs of that. That's I just can't
19:10
Speaker 1: figure that one out. So we'll we'll, we'll, we'll put
19:14
Speaker 1: a pin in that missing soft tissue stuff. Okay, Okay,
19:18
Speaker 1: So there was something else that was really peculiar that
19:22
Speaker 1: has never been explained. But at least two of the
19:24
Speaker 1: bodies were found um to be like the clothing they
19:29
Speaker 1: were wearing was radioactive. Yeah, And we should point out
19:33
Speaker 1: to that some of this clothing they were wearing came
19:35
Speaker 1: off of the other people. I believe, some shoes and
19:38
Speaker 1: one of the women had parts of a wolf pants
19:42
Speaker 1: wrapped around her, so they had scavenged some of the
19:46
Speaker 1: clothes from there dead I guess, or dyeing compatriots, uh
19:51
Speaker 1: is the only thing people can figure out. And it
19:52
Speaker 1: contained radiation. Yeah, but that was the only thing that
19:56
Speaker 1: contained radiation the right. The fact they were like taking
20:00
Speaker 1: clothes from one another, that makes sense. And you can
20:03
Speaker 1: even say that the people who weren't wearing clothes, you
20:06
Speaker 1: can chalk that up to um something called paradoxical undressing,
20:12
Speaker 1: which is like found and I think something like a
20:14
Speaker 1: quarter of all hypothermia cases that you'll find the person
20:18
Speaker 1: like like stripped because something in your hypothalamus goes hey
20:23
Speaker 1: wire and you feel like your body temperature is actually
20:26
Speaker 1: rising like you're getting hot when actually it's going down.
20:29
Speaker 1: It's a weird quirk of hypothermia sometimes, so you can
20:32
Speaker 1: even say, like maybe these people actually shed their clothes purposefully,
20:37
Speaker 1: And then of course people who weren't undergoing paradoxical and dressing,
20:42
Speaker 1: we're taking the clothes and putting it on themselves. Totally
20:45
Speaker 1: makes sense. Where did the radiation come from? Why just
20:49
Speaker 1: the clothing? That is beyond bizarre and it's never been
20:52
Speaker 1: explained to any anyone's satisfaction. Yeah. And one more strange
20:58
Speaker 1: ish thing, um, not completely off the charts, but like
21:01
Speaker 1: I said, they found the camera film. That's why we
21:06
Speaker 1: have all these pictures. Uh. And the infamous thirty third
21:09
Speaker 1: frame was the last shot on this roll, which showed uh,
21:14
Speaker 1: sort of a series of white lights or a big
21:16
Speaker 1: white light against black. Could have been nothing with some
21:20
Speaker 1: weird exposure, who knows. But they had the camera set
21:24
Speaker 1: up on like a homemade tripod with the lens cap off,
21:28
Speaker 1: like facing out, as if it were like, hey, let's
21:31
Speaker 1: have this camera ready to take a picture of something
21:33
Speaker 1: that we're seeing out there. Uh. And then uh, I
21:37
Speaker 1: believe in the weeks previous to this other hikers had
21:40
Speaker 1: reported seeing um like glowing orbs and glowing lights and
21:45
Speaker 1: things like this. It was the week's previous or the
21:48
Speaker 1: weeks after. I thought it was previous. I think it
21:51
Speaker 1: was after or that there was another group that, well,
21:54
Speaker 1: this has similar sightings at that time, So who know,
21:57
Speaker 1: there was another group that was between thirty and fifty
22:00
Speaker 1: miles away basically doing the same thing UM, that reported
22:04
Speaker 1: seeing lights around the same time. So who knows. But
22:08
Speaker 1: the fact and like you said, it's not off the charts,
22:11
Speaker 1: but the fact that UM, I think it was Rustum
22:14
Speaker 1: who had the camera but didn't have any of his
22:17
Speaker 1: gear or outer outerwear, but he grabbed his camera. That
22:21
Speaker 1: is pretty bizarre. Yeah. There was an investigative named lev Ivanov.
22:26
Speaker 1: He was a lead guy, and um, he was really
22:30
Speaker 1: into this case obviously for a while. He brought a
22:32
Speaker 1: Geiger counter along that apparently just kind of spiked when
22:35
Speaker 1: he was ever around. He was the one who discovered
22:38
Speaker 1: that there was radio activity at all. Um. But they
22:42
Speaker 1: officially closed the case like a month later or something,
22:47
Speaker 1: and they said it they listed the causes of death
22:49
Speaker 1: as a compelling natural force that they could not overcome. Yeah,
22:54
Speaker 1: that's a really vague, creepy statement. Yeah, so that was
22:58
Speaker 1: that was Another thing that really raised everyone's suspicions was
23:02
Speaker 1: the investigators came in within three weeks of i think,
23:07
Speaker 1: finding the last bodies who again had not died from hypothermia,
23:11
Speaker 1: but had died from really bizarre, massive internal trauma. They
23:16
Speaker 1: closed the case on it, put it under lock and
23:19
Speaker 1: key um filed it away as classified and kept anyone
23:23
Speaker 1: from the area for the next three years, just closed
23:26
Speaker 1: off the area for three years. And it wasn't until
23:28
Speaker 1: like the early nineties that these files were opened again.
23:32
Speaker 1: And so the fact that that they had been you know,
23:35
Speaker 1: classified actually in Soviet Russia was not that bizarre. They
23:41
Speaker 1: just classified everything, But it was strange that when they
23:45
Speaker 1: declassified these things after the Soviet Union is all that
23:49
Speaker 1: they were like big chunks of these files just totally missing.
23:53
Speaker 1: So who knows, maybe they got misplaced over time. But
23:56
Speaker 1: when you add up all this stuff, the official investigation
23:59
Speaker 1: being hurry eat and then classified and then parts missing
24:02
Speaker 1: later on um that that is a little weird. It
24:05
Speaker 1: does suggest to a lot of people that the Soviet
24:08
Speaker 1: government either knew something, found something, or had some sort
24:11
Speaker 1: of role in this that they didn't want everyone to
24:14
Speaker 1: know about. Do we take another break, Yeah, all right,
24:16
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about some of the
24:18
Speaker 1: leading theories and debunk some of them right after this,
24:48
Speaker 1: All right, did we mention that two groups of people
24:51
Speaker 1: reported flying objects were just the one I only knew
24:55
Speaker 1: about one? Yeah, there were two groups of people. Uh,
24:59
Speaker 1: one that we're camping nearby, about thirty miles away, and
25:02
Speaker 1: then um other reports in that month had been reported
25:07
Speaker 1: orange balls of fire. And here's one direct quote, goodness gracious,
25:12
Speaker 1: this is in from the written testimony. One person said
25:16
Speaker 1: he saw a shining circular body fly over the village
25:19
Speaker 1: from southwest to northeast. Shining disk was practically the size
25:22
Speaker 1: of a full moon, a blue white light surrounded by
25:25
Speaker 1: blue halo halo brightly flash like the flashes distant lightning.
25:30
Speaker 1: And when the body disappeared behind the rise and the
25:32
Speaker 1: sky lit up in that place for a few more minutes.
25:35
Speaker 1: So that that's actually, I mean, not out of the
25:38
Speaker 1: realm of possibility that that person really did see that,
25:41
Speaker 1: because people have put um have suggested that these were
25:45
Speaker 1: missile tests that were they were seeing. Yeah, So should
25:48
Speaker 1: we go with that as theory Number one? Yeah, the
25:51
Speaker 1: thing is as though. UM. The guy, the lead investigator,
25:55
Speaker 1: lev levin Off, is that his name, yeah, Levi ivan Off.
26:00
Speaker 1: He said, I suspect that this is in a UM
26:03
Speaker 1: interview he gave UM. I suspected at the time, and
26:08
Speaker 1: I am almost sure now these bright flying spheres had
26:11
Speaker 1: a direct connection to the group's death. He didn't go
26:14
Speaker 1: into any more detail about that, and he he himself
26:16
Speaker 1: has died of old age. Now I believe UM. But
26:20
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who say these weird
26:23
Speaker 1: sightings in the sky had something to do with it.
26:25
Speaker 1: Either they irradiated the group. UM. One of the things
26:30
Speaker 1: there was a twelve year old boy from their town
26:32
Speaker 1: of kanarina Berg, which was known at the time as
26:35
Speaker 1: um uh sveed lost UM that that he reported that
26:40
Speaker 1: some of them were kind of orange tanned, like weirdly tanned, UM,
26:45
Speaker 1: and that their hair was gray. So a lot of
26:47
Speaker 1: people said irradiated. They were I radiated by UFOs or
26:51
Speaker 1: missile tests or something like that. UM, you can actually
26:55
Speaker 1: kind of explain the weird tanning. And I've seen a
26:59
Speaker 1: picture of one of him at the morgue UM as
27:02
Speaker 1: they were mummified. It was probably one of the members
27:04
Speaker 1: of the group who wasn't found until May, and they
27:06
Speaker 1: were partially mummified by the by the exposure to the
27:10
Speaker 1: snow for you know, weeks or months. That was probably
27:14
Speaker 1: explained that. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, they were on
27:19
Speaker 1: the pathway apparently for what's called our seven intercontinental ballistic
27:24
Speaker 1: missile launches. But um, it just didn't hold water with
27:29
Speaker 1: the radiation only being in their clothes. Yeah, that's very weird.
27:32
Speaker 1: That's like the one thing that doesn't quite add up. Yeah.
27:34
Speaker 1: Another explanation for them becoming irradiated is that, yes, they
27:37
Speaker 1: were near a nuclear missing missile testing site and that
27:42
Speaker 1: they drank um melted snow. But again, why would just
27:46
Speaker 1: their clothes, why wouldn't they become irradiated? I don't know,
27:49
Speaker 1: or anither gear or the tent or anything what else.
27:53
Speaker 1: We got another one, and this is the most people
27:56
Speaker 1: who claim to be sensible say, this is the explanation
28:00
Speaker 1: that it was sure that it was an avalanche, That
28:04
Speaker 1: an avalanche came down the slope because they were, you know,
28:08
Speaker 1: camping out on a mountain ridge face of a mountain,
28:11
Speaker 1: um and that an avalanche came and they knew it
28:14
Speaker 1: was coming, so they cut open their tent and fled
28:16
Speaker 1: into the night and then got caught by hypothermia and died.
28:21
Speaker 1: Makes sense. I mean that would get most people, especially
28:24
Speaker 1: an experienced group of mountaineers, out of their tents pretty
28:27
Speaker 1: quick by cutting through it. Cutting through it. Maybe the
28:31
Speaker 1: thing is is it doesn't explain why some of them
28:36
Speaker 1: but not all of them, had massive trauma. And again
28:40
Speaker 1: it certainly doesn't explain the radiation at all or the
28:42
Speaker 1: missing tongue. Yes, that was another one which was never found,
28:46
Speaker 1: by the way. No, so the missing tongue I've seen.
28:51
Speaker 1: I saw that it was removed while the girl was alive.
28:57
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Her name was lud mia um so when
29:02
Speaker 1: I saw that. But then I also saw that she
29:06
Speaker 1: had been found near a creek, and that it's possible
29:10
Speaker 1: that it had just like like basically melted away from
29:14
Speaker 1: the water the action of the water. Here's the problem,
29:19
Speaker 1: this is the official report was kept under seals for decades,
29:24
Speaker 1: and conjecture was added. You don't know at this point,
29:28
Speaker 1: who who to believe. There's so many sites out there
29:31
Speaker 1: dedicated and there's a twelve year old reporting from the
29:33
Speaker 1: funeral like that's that's the only like documentation we have
29:38
Speaker 1: of what they looked like. His name actually is um
29:42
Speaker 1: Uri Kuntsevich, another another Yuri, and he was he was
29:47
Speaker 1: that that twelve year old child. He became kind of
29:49
Speaker 1: obsessed with it, and he set up the diet lave
29:51
Speaker 1: Um Museum in the Diet Law Foundation and basically just
29:57
Speaker 1: keeps the whole thing alive and is trying to get
29:59
Speaker 1: the government to kids in the case that kid. Yeah,
30:01
Speaker 1: well so you really really stuck to it. He's really
30:04
Speaker 1: taken advantage. What else you got for theories? Well, you
30:07
Speaker 1: know that tribe, the Monsy tribesmen, there is a theory
30:10
Speaker 1: that they attacked them, um, but nothing about that holds water.
30:14
Speaker 1: They didn't have any footsteps in the snow. There were
30:17
Speaker 1: our footprints. There were peaceful people by all accounts, had
30:22
Speaker 1: never done anything like that. There was no reason to
30:24
Speaker 1: do anything like that. So just go ahead and discount
30:27
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Animals attack
30:31
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. Same. Yeah. The other thing
30:35
Speaker 1: that that the other reason the avalanche theory doesn't necessarily
30:38
Speaker 1: hold up is there wasn't necessarily any evidence of an
30:40
Speaker 1: avalanche having covered up the thing well in the tent. Yeah,
30:43
Speaker 1: it would have swept that tent away and all the
30:46
Speaker 1: gear probably right or covered it up. Yeah, what else
30:51
Speaker 1: high winds. There's one theory that maybe one of the members,
30:55
Speaker 1: maybe one of the euries, went out to pp and
30:59
Speaker 1: a win swept him away, and everyone else like ran
31:02
Speaker 1: out to look for him. But um, this article you
31:05
Speaker 1: found where they're kind of debunking some of the stuff said,
31:08
Speaker 1: you know that it doesn't make much sense that all
31:10
Speaker 1: these experienced people would have behaved this way and just
31:14
Speaker 1: ran out in their underwear. You know, it would have
31:16
Speaker 1: been a little more of a organized, sensible effort if
31:20
Speaker 1: that had happened. Yeah, you really can't. Can't um overstate
31:23
Speaker 1: that the level of experience and the combined um like
31:29
Speaker 1: the group that they formed was like greater than the
31:32
Speaker 1: sum of its parts. So yeah, they wouldn't have it
31:35
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been amateur like that. The one that and
31:38
Speaker 1: this is the kind of the new fringe e semi
31:43
Speaker 1: scientific explanation and I find just fascinating is the infrasound one. Yeah,
31:49
Speaker 1: I mean we talked about infrasound and one of our episodes,
31:53
Speaker 1: I don't remember which one. I can't remember which one,
31:55
Speaker 1: but um, this is uh, it's a phenomenon where, when,
32:00
Speaker 1: and in this area. They said that this definitely could
32:02
Speaker 1: have happened where wind collides with the mountain and the
32:05
Speaker 1: trees and everything and produces this low frequency range sound
32:11
Speaker 1: that has been known to inspire panic and dread, confusion, beer,
32:18
Speaker 1: all the things that would kind of add up in
32:20
Speaker 1: this case. Right, So there's like this really weird. Um,
32:24
Speaker 1: it's very tough to figure out whether that's actually real.
32:30
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the science, the scientific literature
32:32
Speaker 1: behind it, there's some but more often than not, it's
32:36
Speaker 1: just some somebody claiming on their website that this is real.
32:39
Speaker 1: This the literature is not necessarily there, but that's not
32:42
Speaker 1: to say that it's just totally made up. It's like,
32:45
Speaker 1: the the studies of this stuff hasn't caught up to
32:49
Speaker 1: the some of the claims on the internet. But supposedly
32:53
Speaker 1: there is from wind vortices. They could have produced it
32:57
Speaker 1: on this on this mountain, right, these little your tornadoes
33:00
Speaker 1: that would have spun up could have um produced these
33:04
Speaker 1: sounds that is below human hearing, the level of human
33:08
Speaker 1: hearing like a full octave below, but can supposedly produce
33:12
Speaker 1: these weird behaviors that make people freak out. That would
33:15
Speaker 1: explain everything. It would accept the tongue right, and I
33:19
Speaker 1: guess the injuries sure so illustrating. I've seen other ones
33:24
Speaker 1: to like, Um, there was a guy and we we
33:27
Speaker 1: need to mention him a little more. Um. His name
33:30
Speaker 1: was Simon Zelodov Zlotaryov. Man. This has been tough. His
33:38
Speaker 1: name was Simon Zelotaryov. He was thirty eight. He wasn't
33:43
Speaker 1: a member of the group. He was as he was
33:46
Speaker 1: a add on towards the end who was out there
33:48
Speaker 1: with another group that he couldn't get coordinated. So he
33:51
Speaker 1: ended up saying like, hey, can I come with you guys?
33:55
Speaker 1: And at first apparently the group was not all that
33:57
Speaker 1: happy about him being there, but from what I understand,
34:01
Speaker 1: he really kind of earned his place in there. Um.
34:04
Speaker 1: For a while, people were like, who was this guy?
34:07
Speaker 1: This is a mystery dude. Maybe the KGB was involved,
34:10
Speaker 1: Maybe he was KGB. He was definitely ex military. Um.
34:15
Speaker 1: But they and they actually exhumed him to find out
34:18
Speaker 1: if the person who was buried in his grave as
34:20
Speaker 1: him was him, and they did a they did, like
34:24
Speaker 1: a skull. They took a picture of his skull and
34:27
Speaker 1: superimposed it under a known picture of him. Supposedly it
34:30
Speaker 1: was a perfect match, but then they took the extra
34:32
Speaker 1: step of um comparing the DNA of the corpse in
34:36
Speaker 1: the grave with the DNA of a known relative, and
34:41
Speaker 1: it does not match. Okay, I saw that. I didn't
34:44
Speaker 1: know that's who that. I didn't know. He was a
34:45
Speaker 1: non Uh. He wasn't an original member of the good.
34:49
Speaker 1: He wasn't in the in the club. So that so
34:52
Speaker 1: some people are like, there's KGB was in on this
34:54
Speaker 1: or he had something weird to do with it. It
34:56
Speaker 1: was a little weird for sure. And he was one
34:59
Speaker 1: of the ones who suffered um internal broken or broken ribs,
35:03
Speaker 1: obviously internal. And he also became the editor in chief
35:07
Speaker 1: of their daily paper. It's very strange. He's like, if
35:11
Speaker 1: it bleeds, it leads, print it. Uh, you got anything else?
35:17
Speaker 1: Oh man, we could do this for hours, but now
35:19
Speaker 1: and if you have, if you're obsessed with the diet
35:21
Speaker 1: love incident, Um, we want to know what we got
35:25
Speaker 1: right and what we got wrong. Anything you want to specify,
35:28
Speaker 1: We're happy to hear. Yeah, And I think um we
35:31
Speaker 1: just officially became the three podcast to cover this topic.
35:37
Speaker 1: Hopefully we did it some justice. If you want to
35:40
Speaker 1: know more about the diet love past incident. You can
35:43
Speaker 1: type those words into while the Internet and it will
35:46
Speaker 1: give you all sorts of crazy stuff. And say, I
35:48
Speaker 1: said that it's time for listener mail. Alright, So this
35:54
Speaker 1: one is a bit long, but this is a Josh request. Oh,
35:57
Speaker 1: this one's good. It's a mystery. It is a mystery.
36:00
Speaker 1: And this is from Corey and Enjoysy City. Hey, guys,
36:03
Speaker 1: at the open of your recent episode on Tsunamis, you
36:06
Speaker 1: both expressed disbelief that the topic had never been covered.
36:09
Speaker 1: In fact, you guys both said you could have sworn
36:11
Speaker 1: you'd already covered it, and you each went back multiple
36:13
Speaker 1: times to check. Even after checking three times, you both
36:16
Speaker 1: admitted to being quote paranoid end quote that it had
36:19
Speaker 1: somehow been done before. And just like you guys, I
36:22
Speaker 1: was surprised to find out it had never been covered
36:24
Speaker 1: and began to wonder why I had fuzzy memories. So
36:28
Speaker 1: I did a little digging re listening to old episodes
36:30
Speaker 1: on similar topics. That turns out the three of us
36:32
Speaker 1: are not the only ones convinced of this existent episode.
36:36
Speaker 1: The existence of this episode Apparently the two thousand fourteen
36:39
Speaker 1: episode of stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck also
36:44
Speaker 1: believed in the existence in the Rogue Waves episode, right correct. Uh, Yes,
36:49
Speaker 1: and the September show about Rogue Waves. At about twenty
36:53
Speaker 1: minutes in, Chuck says, and I'll do this as Chuck.
36:58
Speaker 1: One of the last things we should cover, USh is
37:00
Speaker 1: the difference between rogue Waves and tsunamis. But we've already
37:03
Speaker 1: done an episode on tsunamis. And Josh, that was a
37:06
Speaker 1: great appreciate that I've been worring on it. H And
37:09
Speaker 1: at this point Josh chimes in to confirm the existence.
37:13
Speaker 1: You want to confirm it, as Josh. Uh, my name
37:16
Speaker 1: is Josh, and I'm confirming the existence of that episode.
37:19
Speaker 1: I think it's what I said roughly, I think so.
37:21
Speaker 1: And you guys go on to cover the topic quickly,
37:22
Speaker 1: seemingly in agreement that an in depth explanation isn't necessary
37:27
Speaker 1: since it already existed. Man, this opens the door to
37:30
Speaker 1: many questions. Guys, did any listeners right in after Rogue
37:33
Speaker 1: Waves to ask where the tsunami episode was Corey, I
37:36
Speaker 1: don't remember. Surely. With so many listeners who take pride
37:40
Speaker 1: in having listened to every episode of the show, someone
37:42
Speaker 1: should have noticed. I agree. Why were you guys so
37:45
Speaker 1: convinced of the existence of the tsunami episode and Son fourteen?
37:50
Speaker 1: I don't know, Corey, wouldn't Jerry notice? Well that's a no. Uh.
37:57
Speaker 1: Is it possible that the lost episode on Tsunamis was
38:00
Speaker 1: the tipping point for a sequence of events leading to
38:02
Speaker 1: a doomsday scenario and humans from the future were forced
38:06
Speaker 1: to travel back in time in order to try and
38:08
Speaker 1: expunge it from the historical record. It's possible, Corey. That's
38:11
Speaker 1: where my money is. Yeah, but why what did we
38:15
Speaker 1: say in there that was so ghastly that it could
38:18
Speaker 1: have brought about the end of humanity? I don't know.
38:21
Speaker 1: There's no way to find out either because it's been
38:23
Speaker 1: expunged by the future people. So again, Corey from Jersey City,
38:28
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places. Thanks Corey. Our our buddy
38:31
Speaker 1: John lives there. Oh no, he lives in Hollboken. Where's
38:35
Speaker 1: the Jersey City? Who shout out to John Bendell? Either way? Oh? John,
38:40
Speaker 1: Hey John? He looks at Manhattan out of his window.
38:42
Speaker 1: I know that that could be anywhere. That's true. Um, yeah,
38:48
Speaker 1: you might be thinking of Brooklyn. No, thanks a lot, Corey.
38:53
Speaker 1: That was a fantastic email, so much so I just
38:56
Speaker 1: kept pressuring Chuck to read it, and he did, and
38:59
Speaker 1: I think worked out well as we can all agree, right, Yes,
39:03
Speaker 1: thank you for reading it, Chuck, certainly. Um, if you
39:07
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, you can go
39:09
Speaker 1: to stuff you Should Know dot com and find us
39:11
Speaker 1: on all of our social media's there, and then you
39:13
Speaker 1: can also send us an email to Stuff podcast at
39:16
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
39:25
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works? Doff