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Russia_s Deadliest Mystery Has Never Been Solved · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: The Northern Urals February nineteen fifty nine. There's literally nothing
0:04
Speaker 1: out here, no roads, no towns, no cell towers, no
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Speaker 1: power lines, and frankly, no sign that anyone has ever
0:12
Speaker 1: been here at all, except for markings carved into trees
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Speaker 1: by people of a culture that have lived nearby for centuries.
0:21
Speaker 1: And above the tree line, the forests disappear, turning into
0:25
Speaker 1: a place known as Dead Mountain. Nine people were heading
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Speaker 1: toward it. They were young, and they were experienced, and
0:33
Speaker 1: they knew exactly how dangerous it was. But something went wrong,
0:37
Speaker 1: not in the way you'd expect, like an accident or
0:40
Speaker 1: a wrong turn in bad weather, something stranger than that,
0:44
Speaker 1: something that, over sixty years later, no one has been
0:47
Speaker 1: able to explain. This is the story of the d'atlov
0:51
Speaker 1: Pass incident. Crime, conspiracy, colts, serial killers, and murder, all
0:56
Speaker 1: things that I love to consume, and I know you
0:58
Speaker 1: do too, you sick twisted beauty, well intellectually mind it
1:01
Speaker 1: for fa Today we are diving into an absolutely insane case,
1:07
Speaker 1: one that many of you may know. But I wanted
1:10
Speaker 1: to just get my teeth into it and really just
1:15
Speaker 1: dig into the details to maybe make some sense of it.
1:19
Speaker 1: And if you don't know this case, all the better.
1:21
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's unbuckle our sapebout's go mack
1:23
Speaker 1: rat to the highway, slam on the recks, and bust
1:24
Speaker 1: of the windshield into this confusing, mysterious case together. All right,
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Speaker 1: supporting the channel. And let's get back to it. The
3:29
Speaker 1: Soviet Union was changing in the late nineteen fifties. Stalin
3:33
Speaker 1: was dead and Nikita Khrushchev took power in nineteen fifty three,
3:37
Speaker 1: and it felt like for the first time in a generation,
3:40
Speaker 1: ordinary people had room to breathe, and the restrictive air
3:43
Speaker 1: of wartime was finally letting up and new freedoms, however small,
3:47
Speaker 1: were opening up across the country, and one of those
3:50
Speaker 1: freedoms was the outdoors walking clubs, skiing clubs, something with
3:55
Speaker 1: Soviets called sports tourism, organized expeditions into the wilder, sanctioned
4:01
Speaker 1: by the state but fueled by an energy that the
4:03
Speaker 1: state couldn't quite control, and young people especially took to it.
4:08
Speaker 1: And for students in a system that governed nearly every
4:11
Speaker 1: aspect of their lives, the mountains offered something that nothing
4:15
Speaker 1: else really seemed to be able to escape. So at
4:18
Speaker 1: the Eural Polytechnical Institute in Sperdlovsk now Eyeke Tiribork, Sorry
4:24
Speaker 1: if I'm pronouncing that wrong, I'm doing my best, and
4:26
Speaker 1: the Skiing and Mountaineering Club was one of the most
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Speaker 1: popular organizations on campus, and UPI had grown into Russia's
4:34
Speaker 1: biggest technical school by the nineteen fifties and was deeply
4:37
Speaker 1: tied to local industry. It produced engineers, physicists, radio specialists
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Speaker 1: and more serious students training for serious careers, but on
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Speaker 1: the weekends and holidays, those same students strapped on skis
4:51
Speaker 1: and disappeared into the Urals. And they did it for
4:54
Speaker 1: the same reason anyone does something dangerous. It makes them
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Speaker 1: feel alive. You know, there's no better feeling than just
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Speaker 1: go and mock five down a double black diamond, you
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Speaker 1: know what I mean. I've been there, not of my
5:07
Speaker 1: own volition, but I just got stuck at the top
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Speaker 1: of a mountain one time, and that was the only
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Speaker 1: way I could get down. That was terrifying but also exhilarating.
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Speaker 1: But anyway, in the summer of nineteen fifty eight, while
5:17
Speaker 1: trekking through the Altai Mountains, a fifth year radio engineering
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Speaker 1: student named Igor Dyatlov told his hiking companions about a
5:25
Speaker 1: plant He wanted to lead an expedition to the northern
5:28
Speaker 1: Urals in winter and become the first to reach the
5:31
Speaker 1: peak of the Otorton Mountain in February, the most brutal
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Speaker 1: month of the year. And everyone knew Otorton, they knew
5:40
Speaker 1: the terrain around it was hostile and very dangerous. But
5:44
Speaker 1: four people immediately showed interest. Nikolai Tibo, Brignil, Roustin, Slowbodin,
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Speaker 1: Yuri Krevenishika and Yuri Juden, and by January nineteen fifty nine,
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Speaker 1: Dyatlov had assembled a group of ten eight men and
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Speaker 1: two women, and the Sperdlav City Route Commission approved the
6:03
Speaker 1: expedition and confirmed the group on January eighth, nineteen fifty nine.
6:07
Speaker 1: Now the route was classified as Category three, which is
6:11
Speaker 1: the highest difficulty rating for such a trip, and it
6:14
Speaker 1: required covering three hundred kilometers of wilderness. Every member of
6:19
Speaker 1: the group already held Grade two certification with ski tour experience,
6:23
Speaker 1: so completing this expedition would earn them that coveted Grade
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Speaker 1: three status, also the highest, and Dyatlav would plan for
6:30
Speaker 1: the trip to take sixteen to eighteen days, but it
6:34
Speaker 1: wouldn't take that long in reality. So let's get to
6:38
Speaker 1: know the crew. Igor D'yatlov was born on January thirteenth,
6:42
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, and he liked to build things just
6:45
Speaker 1: to see if he could, and as a schoolboy, fresh
6:48
Speaker 1: out of seventh grade, he'd joined UPI hiking trips alongside
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Speaker 1: his brother, and he brought a portable radio he'd made
6:54
Speaker 1: himself with him, which in nineteen fifty one was almost
6:57
Speaker 1: unheard of. Guy was pretty smart and his second year
7:00
Speaker 1: at UPI. He designed and put a short wave radio
7:03
Speaker 1: together that the group used on expeditions in the Sayan Mountains,
7:07
Speaker 1: and he also built a small camp stove and carried
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Speaker 1: it on every hike following. Now people described him as
7:14
Speaker 1: very disciplined and calm under pressure, the kind of leader
7:17
Speaker 1: who stayed steady when things went sideways and treated everyone
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Speaker 1: around him with respect. And he was a thoughtful man
7:24
Speaker 1: who never rushed his decisions. And allegedly, on one trek,
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Speaker 1: a group member secretly ate a can of condensed milk
7:30
Speaker 1: from their shared supplies, and when the man confessed, Igor
7:34
Speaker 1: didn't respond emotionally, didn't shame him. He simply went quiet
7:38
Speaker 1: for a moment and then said, quote, when we.
7:40
Speaker 2: Returned to Spurredlosk, you will pay the cost of the
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Speaker 2: condensed milk to the group's cash desk.
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Speaker 1: Unquote. That was Igor Bear measured in control. And he
7:50
Speaker 1: had sixteen hikes under his belt, nine of which he
7:54
Speaker 1: led himself. And he was twenty three years old, pretty young,
7:57
Speaker 1: and he was dating a girl named Zenaida or Xena
8:00
Speaker 1: Colma Garava. Now Xena also studied radio engineering at UPI
8:05
Speaker 1: and was a member of the university's tourist society, and
8:08
Speaker 1: she was popular and very well liked and described as
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Speaker 1: the engine of the university. But she was also tough
8:15
Speaker 1: in ways that surprised people. She'd been on six expeditions,
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Speaker 1: and on one previous hike she was bitten by a viper,
8:23
Speaker 1: and despite the pain, she refused to lighten her pack
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Speaker 1: because she didn't want to cause her companions any hardship.
8:29
Speaker 1: So she's tough as nails. Xena was and she was
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Speaker 1: seeing Igor at the time of this expedition, and her
8:36
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend Uri was also in the group, so whatever
8:40
Speaker 1: tension that might have created, the diaries don't show it,
8:44
Speaker 1: which we'll get into. Then there's Ludmila Dubanina, who was
8:48
Speaker 1: twenty years old, who also went by Luda and Luda
8:52
Speaker 1: was the youngest in the group and a fourth year
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Speaker 1: engineering and economics major at UPI, and she was born
8:58
Speaker 1: on May twelfth, nineteen thirty eight, and she loved singing
9:01
Speaker 1: and photography, and she was very good at taking photos
9:04
Speaker 1: as well, and many of the photos later recovered from
9:07
Speaker 1: the group's cameras were hers, which again we'll get into later.
9:11
Speaker 1: Though twenty years young, she wasn't fragile and during a
9:14
Speaker 1: hike through the Eastern Scian Mountains in nineteen fifty seven,
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Speaker 1: she was accidentally shot in the leg by a hunter
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Speaker 1: traveling with the students. What but not unlike Xena, she
9:27
Speaker 1: just endured the pain for the rest of the trip.
9:29
Speaker 1: I swear, I swear, it's like a woman thing. We
9:32
Speaker 1: just like feel like we have something to prove. Like
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Speaker 1: I admire these women because they're just like dah, They're
9:37
Speaker 1: just tough. It's tough. Ladies are tough. I'm just saying,
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Speaker 1: I'm just props to these ladies. And then she would
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Speaker 1: go on to apologize to the others for the trouble
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Speaker 1: she caused. Just a queen, a queen in and out.
9:51
Speaker 1: And she led a Category two expedition through the Southern
9:55
Speaker 1: Urals in nineteen fifty eight, and a fellow hiker from
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Speaker 1: that trip, Galina Battilo, remembered, quote, Luda.
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Speaker 2: Proved herself to be a wise, firm, thoughtful and fair leader.
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Speaker 2: She was always attentive to us the beginners, and help
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Speaker 2: us in everything unquote.
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Speaker 1: And she was one of the only women in the
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Speaker 1: Dietlov group. But she was the real deal. She was
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Speaker 1: serious and she was tough. And then there was Yuri Doroshenko,
10:20
Speaker 1: who was twenty one years old and also a fourth
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Speaker 1: year radio engineering student at UPI, and he would sit
10:27
Speaker 1: on the board of the UPI sports club, and he
10:29
Speaker 1: was the tallest member of the group and was brought
10:32
Speaker 1: up in a very poor family and the jacket he
10:35
Speaker 1: typically wore was not properly equipped to handle the cold
10:38
Speaker 1: environments he found himself in. And despite his shier nature,
10:42
Speaker 1: he had a reputation for being the upbeat one in
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Speaker 1: any room. Despite his shortcomings, he was just always ready
10:48
Speaker 1: to help. But he was also impulsive and allegedly this
10:52
Speaker 1: made him somewhat famous at school for taking on a
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Speaker 1: bear with a geologist hammer while out on a wilderness trip.
11:01
Speaker 1: Is the most Russian thing I've ever heard in my life.
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Speaker 1: And as mentioned, he'd previously dated Xena, but the breakup
11:08
Speaker 1: appeared to be smooth, and things between him, Zena and
11:11
Speaker 1: Igor stayed civil by all accounts. And then there was
11:15
Speaker 1: Yuri krivan Oshenko. Another Yuri who was twenty three years
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Speaker 1: old born on February seventh, nineteen thirty five. Now his
11:22
Speaker 1: real name was Kiorgi, but his friends called him Yuri,
11:26
Speaker 1: and he'd recently graduated from UPI and he worked as
11:29
Speaker 1: an engineer at the Choliabinks Facility, better known as the
11:33
Speaker 1: Mayek Nuclear Complex, which was a facility that processed plutonium
11:38
Speaker 1: for the Soviet nuclear weapons program, tucked away in the
11:41
Speaker 1: closed city of Choliabinks. But Yuri was an artist at heart,
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Speaker 1: and he played the mandolin and he wrote poetry. And
11:48
Speaker 1: his parents lived in an apartment in central spurred Loosk
11:51
Speaker 1: and it became a place where the hiking group often gathered,
11:54
Speaker 1: and he constantly looked for any chance to entertain, whether
11:58
Speaker 1: through jokes or music or what have you. And in
12:01
Speaker 1: September of nineteen fifty seven, the Mayak plant suffered what
12:04
Speaker 1: became known as the Kushtim disaster, where an underground tank
12:09
Speaker 1: of high level nuclear waste exploded, and it's regarded as
12:13
Speaker 1: one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. And the
12:16
Speaker 1: explosion poisoned a stretch of land larger than some European countries,
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Speaker 1: over twenty three thousand square kilometers, and Yuri worked on
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Speaker 1: the cleanup along with some other thirty eight thousand, five
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Speaker 1: hundred people, including Mayac employees, construction workers, and military and
12:33
Speaker 1: according to his brother, there was quote a fairly large
12:36
Speaker 1: emission of radiation unquote, possibly a slight understatement if we've
12:41
Speaker 1: learned anything from Chernobyl. But by nineteen fifty eight Uri
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Speaker 1: tried to leave Mayak sighting quote complete unwillingness to work
12:49
Speaker 1: in the system unquote. And he was twenty three years
12:52
Speaker 1: old now when he joined the expedition. And then there
12:55
Speaker 1: was Rustom Slowboten, and he was twenty three years old
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Speaker 1: as well. He was also a UPI graduate, but he
13:02
Speaker 1: would go by the nickname Rustic, and his father was
13:05
Speaker 1: a well respected academic, a doctor of agricultural sciences who
13:10
Speaker 1: ran a department at the Ural Research Institute of Agriculture.
13:13
Speaker 1: And Rustom was athletic, honest, but he was also a
13:17
Speaker 1: bit quiet and a little shy, but the kind of
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Speaker 1: quiet that came with a good sense of humor underneath.
13:22
Speaker 1: And he also liked playing his mandolin and brought it
13:25
Speaker 1: along on hiking trips, including this one. And then there
13:29
Speaker 1: was Alexander or Sasha Golevitov, who would be twenty four
13:33
Speaker 1: years old at the year of the expedition. Now, alex
13:36
Speaker 1: was a fourth year physics major at UPI, and before
13:39
Speaker 1: that he'd earned a degree from the sferdlofsk Mining and
13:43
Speaker 1: metallurgy college in heavy non ferros medals, in other words,
13:47
Speaker 1: medals that don't have iron in them. Basically, I didn't
13:50
Speaker 1: know what it meant when I first read it either,
13:52
Speaker 1: but people described him as reserved and thoughtful, despite having
13:56
Speaker 1: a very difficult run of poor health as a child,
13:59
Speaker 1: but normally very serious, though photos from the trip show
14:03
Speaker 1: him smiling and loose with this particular group, and his
14:07
Speaker 1: friend Valentina saw him as quote a.
14:09
Speaker 2: True altruist and a caring comrade, a person who does
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Speaker 2: not light up the team and does not often joke,
14:16
Speaker 2: but is always engaged in a generally useful routine, a
14:20
Speaker 2: kind of gray horse on whose unnoticed labors and merits
14:24
Speaker 2: the success of the event rests unquote.
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Speaker 1: So before UPI, he had spent time at a secretive
14:31
Speaker 1: institute in Moscow designated only as Institute three three ninety four.
14:36
Speaker 1: Sounds suspicious, and his pay didn't line up with what
14:40
Speaker 1: a typical graduate would earn, but he did manage to
14:43
Speaker 1: land a spot in a classified ministry department right out
14:46
Speaker 1: of school. Next there was Nikolai thbau Brignol, who was
14:50
Speaker 1: also twenty three years old, and this name stood out
14:54
Speaker 1: not only because it's a bit of a mouthful, but
14:57
Speaker 1: because it's also flinch a risk democratic the family even
15:01
Speaker 1: had their own coat of arms. Nikolai, sometimes called Kolia
15:06
Speaker 1: or Tibo by his friends, was born on July fifth,
15:09
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, in Osinki, a town that housed a
15:13
Speaker 1: branch of the Gulag Siblog, and his father, Vladimir, was
15:17
Speaker 1: serving a ten year prison sentence there at the time
15:20
Speaker 1: of Nikolai's birth, because the Gulag is just a big
15:24
Speaker 1: shit hell prison basically, and his mother and older brother
15:28
Speaker 1: and sister were likely forced to the same place as
15:31
Speaker 1: the family of the enemy of the people now. Vladimir
15:35
Speaker 1: had been a mining engineer educated at Germany's Friedberg Mining
15:39
Speaker 1: Academy and had help shape development plans for the ural's
15:42
Speaker 1: mining industry, but none of that protected him under Stalin
15:46
Speaker 1: and Nikolai graduated from UPI in nineteen fifty eight with
15:50
Speaker 1: a civil engineering degree, and at the time of the
15:53
Speaker 1: expedition he was working in construction in Sperdlovsk and in
15:57
Speaker 1: photos he's the one you notice first, the tall, floppy
16:01
Speaker 1: hat with the crooked grin, and everyone who crossed paths
16:04
Speaker 1: with him spoke of the same traits, energy, humor, and
16:07
Speaker 1: just warmth. And he was beloved by younger members of
16:10
Speaker 1: the sports club, and he'd carry their gear when they
16:13
Speaker 1: struggled and fixed their packs to ease the weight on
16:16
Speaker 1: their backs. And yury Udin said that Nikolai was the
16:20
Speaker 1: one who guided him through his first real trips into
16:23
Speaker 1: the Siberian wilderness, and before leaving for the expedition, Nikolai
16:27
Speaker 1: promised his mother this would be his last hiking trip.
16:31
Speaker 1: Then there was Semyon Zolotariov, who was thirty seven years old,
16:35
Speaker 1: so the oldest of the group, the outsider, if you will.
16:39
Speaker 1: He was the stranger to everyone on the expedition. Now.
16:43
Speaker 1: Semyon was born on February second, nineteen twenty one, in
16:47
Speaker 1: the Kuban region of southern Russia, and he grew up
16:49
Speaker 1: in a Coosack family known for their military strength and horsemanship.
16:54
Speaker 1: And at twenty he was drafted into the Red Army
16:57
Speaker 1: and he fought from Stalingrad to Berlin, earned four military decorations,
17:02
Speaker 1: and did it all without suffering a single wound. Just
17:05
Speaker 1: to note, only three percent of Soviet soldiers who served
17:08
Speaker 1: from beginning to end survived the war, So this guy
17:13
Speaker 1: was built different basically, so once the fighting finally stopped,
17:17
Speaker 1: he struggled to find footing. The Moscow Military Engineering School
17:21
Speaker 1: shut down and the Leningrad Military Engineering School suffered the same,
17:25
Speaker 1: but he eventually landed at the Minsk Institute of Physical
17:29
Speaker 1: Education and graduated in nineteen fifty one, then moved south
17:33
Speaker 1: to teach at the Pedagogical Institute. I just know the
17:37
Speaker 1: Russians that watch this are screaming at me. I am
17:40
Speaker 1: doing my best. I looked at the pronunciations, but it's
17:43
Speaker 1: hard using them and said to this or, I apologize.
17:45
Speaker 1: But he would receive a formal reprimand from the institution
17:48
Speaker 1: within four months of starting, and decided to walk away,
17:52
Speaker 1: and by the mid nineteen fifties he found himself settled
17:55
Speaker 1: at the Koorovska tour in the base of the Spurred
17:58
Speaker 1: Lost region, working as a senior tourism instructor, and in
18:02
Speaker 1: the meantime he studied for his master's certificate in ski
18:06
Speaker 1: instruction and mountain hiking. And he was thirty seven and single,
18:10
Speaker 1: which raised eyebrows in that era, and he also had
18:13
Speaker 1: gold capped teeth and a mustache, and beneath his clothes
18:18
Speaker 1: tattoos inked across his body that he kept covered up,
18:22
Speaker 1: and one of them was a five pointed star, a
18:24
Speaker 1: shape described as beats heart fire, along with the name
18:28
Speaker 1: Gina and his birth year, and also a cryptic untranslatable
18:33
Speaker 1: inscription which was roughly der mazuaya. I have no idea,
18:39
Speaker 1: but this was reportedly a formula common among Soviet soldiers,
18:43
Speaker 1: where the letters stood for the first initials of friends
18:46
Speaker 1: and the word for friendship. Now his real name was Semyon,
18:50
Speaker 1: but for reasons unknown, he asked everyone to just call
18:53
Speaker 1: him Sasha, and he had originally been approved for a
18:57
Speaker 1: different expedition with the Sogrin group, but just three days
19:00
Speaker 1: before departure, he learned Dyatlov's team was leaving on the
19:04
Speaker 1: same date and their route was ten days longer, so
19:08
Speaker 1: he switched, and at the last minute, Dyatlov was told
19:12
Speaker 1: they'd be joined by someone he'd never met, and Liuda
19:15
Speaker 1: wrote in her diary quote at first nobody wanted this
19:19
Speaker 1: Zolo Tariov or he is a stranger, but then we
19:23
Speaker 1: all agreed because you can't refuse unquote. But he would
19:28
Speaker 1: eventually win them over, and Zena would write.
19:31
Speaker 2: Quote with us is senior instructor of the Korov Sport
19:35
Speaker 2: based Alexander Zolo Tariov. He knows a lot of songs.
19:39
Speaker 1: It's just happy somehow that we are learning new songs unquote.
19:43
Speaker 1: And the pictures show him keeping the pace, laughing and
19:46
Speaker 1: fitting in with people half his age. But before he left,
19:50
Speaker 1: he told his students something strange, and he would say, quote, this.
19:54
Speaker 2: Whole world will start talking about this trek unquote.
19:58
Speaker 1: And he didn't explain any further, saying only that quote.
20:02
Speaker 2: They will soon find out about everything unquote.
20:06
Speaker 1: Very very ominous, So hold on to that fact. And
20:11
Speaker 1: now the tenth member was Yuri Udin Now. Uri was
20:14
Speaker 1: twenty one years old and a fourth year student at UPI,
20:18
Speaker 1: studying economics and geology. And he was quiet and generally
20:22
Speaker 1: kept to himself, and he had rheumatism, which was a
20:26
Speaker 1: heart condition he'd been born with, so his body was
20:28
Speaker 1: always working against him. But still he joined the expedition
20:33
Speaker 1: anyway because he was very close with this group of people.
20:36
Speaker 1: And he was the tenth and final member of the
20:38
Speaker 1: d'elov expedition. So ten hikers board at a train in
20:42
Speaker 1: Sperdlofsk at nine oh five pm the night of January
20:46
Speaker 1: twenty third, nineteen fifty nine, and they were sharing a
20:49
Speaker 1: ride with the Blinnov Group, a separate hiking party bound
20:52
Speaker 1: for a different destination. So the mood was just kind
20:55
Speaker 1: of chaos, and Xena's diary paints the scene saying, quote.
20:59
Speaker 2: Where are my filt boots? Can we play mandolin on
21:03
Speaker 2: the train? We forgot the.
21:04
Speaker 1: Salt unquote, And the boys made a pact they quote
21:08
Speaker 1: solemnly score not to smoke the entire trip unquote. So
21:12
Speaker 1: excitement just filled the air. Everybody was just pumped to
21:16
Speaker 1: do these trips in late night. Conversations about love became
21:20
Speaker 1: a running theme on the trip, and most of them,
21:23
Speaker 1: according to the group diary, were quote provoked by z
21:27
Speaker 1: Kolma Goova. But they also created a satirical newspaper together,
21:31
Speaker 1: dated February first, that they titled quote evening o Torten
21:36
Speaker 1: number one unquote. And this was a fairly popular team
21:39
Speaker 1: ritual among Soviet expedition groups. It read like the inside
21:44
Speaker 1: jokes of people who genuinely liked each other's company, and
21:47
Speaker 1: it advertised a quote philosophical seminar on Love and Tourism
21:51
Speaker 1: unquote held daily in the tent with lectures quote presented
21:55
Speaker 1: by doctor Thibolt and candidate of Love Science's Dubnina end
22:01
Speaker 1: quote can one stove and one blanket warm nine tourists unquote,
22:06
Speaker 1: These are a silly bunch. And a science section reported
22:10
Speaker 1: that the snow Man lives in the Northern Urals near
22:14
Speaker 1: o Toorton Mountain unquote, and the Technical news section mocked
22:17
Speaker 1: Kolveto's attempt at building a drag sled, saying quote, good
22:22
Speaker 1: while riding on the train by car and on horseback
22:25
Speaker 1: for cargo transportation on snow is not recommended. That's just
22:31
Speaker 1: so goofy. Yeah.
22:32
Speaker 2: Well.
22:33
Speaker 1: On January twenty fourth, Yuri, the one with the really
22:36
Speaker 1: long last name that starts with a K that I'm
22:39
Speaker 1: not going to say over and over again. I'm gonna
22:40
Speaker 1: say Uri K, got himself into a bit of trouble
22:44
Speaker 1: during a layover at Sarav's station, and as Lauda's diary
22:47
Speaker 1: tells it, quote our hero decided to walk around the
22:51
Speaker 1: station handing a cap for change after singing a song.
22:55
Speaker 1: Uri had to be rescued unquote, and the police actually
22:58
Speaker 1: detained him briefly. And that same day, a drunk on
23:01
Speaker 1: the evening train accused them of taking his vodka, and
23:04
Speaker 1: the conductor intervened and handed the man off to the police.
23:08
Speaker 1: But the Sarav stop wasn't all trouble, and the group
23:11
Speaker 1: also had quieter moments when they gave a talk to
23:14
Speaker 1: local school children about tourism, and the kids allegedly became
23:18
Speaker 1: so attached to Zena that when the group left quote,
23:21
Speaker 1: the kids yelled and cried, asking Zena to stay with
23:25
Speaker 1: them unquote. So they would leave and pull into Ivdel
23:28
Speaker 1: around midnight January twenty fifth, So, with nowhere to sleep
23:32
Speaker 1: except the station, they set up their tent right there
23:35
Speaker 1: on the station floor and just spent the night. And
23:38
Speaker 1: Vishy would be the end of the line, the last
23:41
Speaker 1: settlement before the wilderness swallowed everything. So they arrived via
23:45
Speaker 1: bus around two pm and said goodbyes to the Blendov group,
23:50
Speaker 1: who continued on a different path, and that evening they
23:52
Speaker 1: would go to a local club and watch a film
23:55
Speaker 1: called Symphony in Gold, and Layuda wrote in her diary
23:59
Speaker 1: afterwards saying, quote, this is.
24:00
Speaker 2: Real happiness, so difficult to describe with words. The music
24:04
Speaker 2: is just fabulous.
24:07
Speaker 1: So the group spent the next day in Viz preparing
24:10
Speaker 1: their equipment. At around ten in the morning they wrote
24:12
Speaker 1: home one last time, and after lunch at one thirty pm,
24:16
Speaker 1: the group caught a ride on a logging truck headed
24:18
Speaker 1: for the forty first District Settlement, and from there they
24:21
Speaker 1: pushed onto a place called the Second Northern Settlement, effectively
24:25
Speaker 1: a ghost town left behind when the loggers moved on
24:28
Speaker 1: and they had crossed the threshold. Civilization was now behind them,
24:33
Speaker 1: and their route tracked north along the Losva River valley
24:36
Speaker 1: and then turned to follow the Espilla River toward the
24:39
Speaker 1: Highland Ridgeline. And this beautiful landscape would change as they progressed.
24:44
Speaker 1: Thick forest along the river valleys gave way to scattered trees,
24:49
Speaker 1: and the trees thinned more and more, and then there
24:53
Speaker 1: was really nothing, just open barren expanses above the timberline.
24:57
Speaker 1: And the indigenous Mancy people had a name for the
25:00
Speaker 1: mountain at the far end of the bridge line, holat
25:03
Speaker 1: Siyak or dead Mountain. I'm gonna go ahead and say
25:07
Speaker 1: dead Mountain because that other one is really hard to say.
25:09
Speaker 1: But along the way the group spotted markings carved into
25:12
Speaker 1: the trees by the Manci, all trail signs left by
25:15
Speaker 1: people who had traveled this land. Long before any of
25:18
Speaker 1: them were even born. So on the morning of January
25:21
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, Yudin would make the hardest decision of his life,
25:25
Speaker 1: and his joint pain would severely flare up, and the
25:28
Speaker 1: rheumatism was becoming unbearable, and his body was just telling
25:31
Speaker 1: him just what his mind didn't want to hear. He
25:34
Speaker 1: couldn't go on, so he handed off what equipment he
25:37
Speaker 1: could to Doroshenko so the group could put it to use.
25:41
Speaker 1: Layouda pressed a small teddy bear into his hands as
25:45
Speaker 1: a goodbye gift, and then he watched them ski away,
25:48
Speaker 1: and he was devastated, but little did he know this
25:51
Speaker 1: would save his life. So now there were nine and
25:54
Speaker 1: they pushed along the Losva skiing in formation, rotating who
25:58
Speaker 1: led every ten minutes or so, and the snow was
26:01
Speaker 1: lighter than the previous year. In January twenty ninth was
26:04
Speaker 1: Yuri Doroshenko's birthday, and Xena marked it in her diary, saying.
26:08
Speaker 2: Quote, today is Yorka's birthday. We go first to Lospa,
26:12
Speaker 2: then we turned to Aspia. Surroundings are beautiful quote.
26:16
Speaker 1: And by January thirtieth the cold had become routine, and
26:20
Speaker 1: one diary entry reads quote, today is.
26:22
Speaker 2: A third cold night on the bank of Aspia River.
26:25
Speaker 2: We're getting used to it. The stove does a great
26:28
Speaker 2: job unquote. And come January thirty first, the weather started
26:32
Speaker 2: to turn ugly with gusting winds and heavy snow, and
26:35
Speaker 2: at this point they couldn't see more than a few
26:37
Speaker 2: meters ahead, and they tried to push up toward the pass,
26:41
Speaker 2: but the mountain wouldn't let them, so they were treated
26:44
Speaker 2: to the Aspia Valley, now running behind schedule, and that
26:48
Speaker 2: night Diatlov wrote the last entry in the group diary saying, quote,
26:52
Speaker 2: can't imagine such a comfort somewhere on the ridge with
26:55
Speaker 2: a piercing wind, hundreds of kilometers away from human settlements.
27:00
Speaker 2: So they got a late start on February first, and
27:03
Speaker 2: they found a wooded valley where they dug out labas,
27:07
Speaker 2: which is the supply cache that you bury into the snow,
27:10
Speaker 2: and stashed roughly fifty five kilometers of surplus food and
27:14
Speaker 2: equipment for the return trip, and Yurik's mandolin went into
27:19
Speaker 2: the pile along with spare boots, and they planned to
27:22
Speaker 2: come back for all of it. And after lunch, Datlov.
27:25
Speaker 1: Led the group up toward Dead Mountain and They covered
27:28
Speaker 1: about two kilometers before conditions kept deteriorating and the sky
27:32
Speaker 1: would close in, preventing them from figuring out where they
27:35
Speaker 1: were or where they were heading. So instead of cutting
27:39
Speaker 1: through the pass as planned, they veered west and ended
27:43
Speaker 1: up heading straight toward the summit. And this is where
27:46
Speaker 1: Dyatlov made a choice. The tree line was only a
27:49
Speaker 1: kilometer and a half behind them, promising forested ground, shelter
27:54
Speaker 1: from the wind, a safer place to sleep, but he
27:59
Speaker 1: chose to stay on the exposed slope. The plan was simple,
28:03
Speaker 1: survive just one cold night, then it'd be a warm
28:07
Speaker 1: overnight the following day at Lake Luntasaptur, about fourteen and
28:13
Speaker 1: a half kilometers ahead. So they set up camp on
28:17
Speaker 1: the northeastern side of Dead Mountain, about three hundred meters
28:20
Speaker 1: below the peak. The ground beneath them angled at roughly
28:24
Speaker 1: thirty degrees, and after that there was silence, because sometime
28:29
Speaker 1: after dark something happened. There was no diary entry that
28:34
Speaker 1: describes it, no photograph that captures it, and no one
28:38
Speaker 1: survived to explain it. And every single thing we know
28:42
Speaker 1: about the night of February first, nineteen fifty nine is
28:45
Speaker 1: pieced together from what was left behind. All right, I
28:49
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30:21
Speaker 1: And let's get back to it. So here's what the
30:23
Speaker 1: evidence tells us. Nine people ate dinner in their tent
30:28
Speaker 1: around six or seven in the evening on the slope
30:31
Speaker 1: of Dead Mountain, and the weather outside was absolutely savage,
30:35
Speaker 1: winds blowing at hurricane force twenty to thirty meters per
30:40
Speaker 1: second and temperatures plunging to minus forty degrees celsius and
30:45
Speaker 1: a full snowstorm raging across the ridge, and the stove
30:49
Speaker 1: was packed away in its case and never actually assembled
30:53
Speaker 1: in the evening. A torton the joke newspaper that they
30:56
Speaker 1: made at the beginning of the trip was near the
30:58
Speaker 1: entrance of the tent, and everything about the day had
31:02
Speaker 1: seemed normal. Then something changed because someone cut the tent
31:07
Speaker 1: open from the inside, but not just one cut. First,
31:12
Speaker 1: small horizontal slits near the roof. These were described later
31:16
Speaker 1: as viewing slits, as though someone was trying to see
31:20
Speaker 1: what was happening outside without leaving the shelter. Then came
31:24
Speaker 1: the larger cuts, one long vertical slash and two horizontal tears,
31:29
Speaker 1: ripped wide enough for a person to climb through, so
31:32
Speaker 1: it looked like first they looked, and then they ran.
31:38
Speaker 1: Nine people left the tent and walked into a blizzard
31:42
Speaker 1: wearing almost nothing because every pair of boots stayed behind, jackets, raincoats, backpacks,
31:49
Speaker 1: and cut food sat on plates which was either a
31:52
Speaker 1: meal half prepared or just completed. All of it was abandoned,
31:57
Speaker 1: and they left with what they were sleeping in, with
32:00
Speaker 1: two exceptions, though Zolitariov and the beau Brignol were later
32:05
Speaker 1: found better dressed than everybody else, with some footwear. So
32:10
Speaker 1: the first theory is that they may have been outside
32:13
Speaker 1: the tent when whatever happened began and were already partially clothed,
32:18
Speaker 1: because eight or nine sets of footprints led downhill, and
32:22
Speaker 1: a search party radiogram would later describe, quote, we managed
32:26
Speaker 1: to identify footprints of eight or nine people starting from
32:29
Speaker 1: the tent and going about one kilometer down the slope,
32:33
Speaker 1: and then they were lost. One person was in boots,
32:37
Speaker 1: the other were only in socks and barefoot unquote. So
32:41
Speaker 1: the footprints were preserved in a way that seems almost impossible,
32:45
Speaker 1: because the compressed snow had hardened into pedestals that held
32:49
Speaker 1: their shape while the wind scored away everything around them.
32:52
Speaker 1: And the group moved in single file, and a tall
32:55
Speaker 1: man walked at the back with his prints partly covering
32:59
Speaker 1: the ones ahead, and a few trails peeled off from
33:02
Speaker 1: the main line but circled back, and the overall impression,
33:06
Speaker 1: according to one analysis, was an organized and uneventful descent
33:12
Speaker 1: that they just essentially walked downhill, which is just wild
33:17
Speaker 1: to think about. Nine people slash open their own shelter
33:21
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, abandon every piece of
33:24
Speaker 1: survival gear they own, and step barefoot into minus forty
33:27
Speaker 1: degree winds and they walk. They don't run, they walk.
33:32
Speaker 1: So whatever drove them out of that tent was terrifying
33:36
Speaker 1: enough to make them leave everything behind, but not terrifying
33:40
Speaker 1: enough to make them run. And also, just why cut
33:44
Speaker 1: the tent The entrance was right there, so that in
33:48
Speaker 1: and of itself is just very odd. But one possible
33:52
Speaker 1: explanation was that the cuts were made on the side
33:55
Speaker 1: of the tent opposite where the wind was primarily hitting
33:59
Speaker 1: where the hikers slept, so if something was blocking the entrance,
34:03
Speaker 1: like snow debris or the thread of something outside of it,
34:06
Speaker 1: then cutting through the walls closest to their heads was
34:10
Speaker 1: the fastest way out. But just why not grab your
34:14
Speaker 1: boots and coats or just anything for that matter, because
34:17
Speaker 1: in minus forty degree weather, leaving without insulation is a
34:22
Speaker 1: death sentence essentially, and they all knew that they were
34:25
Speaker 1: all extremely smart individuals, so whatever happened gave them no time,
34:30
Speaker 1: or at least made time irrelevant. And after roughly five
34:34
Speaker 1: hundred meters, the footprints disappeared beneath fresh snow, so nothing
34:38
Speaker 1: more from that point on in terms of footprints, but
34:41
Speaker 1: one flashlight was found part way down the slope four
34:44
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty meters from their tent, switched on, but
34:48
Speaker 1: its battery died, and another flashlight sat on top of
34:52
Speaker 1: the tent itself, resting on a thin layer of snow,
34:55
Speaker 1: completely uncovered, like someone had set it there after the
34:59
Speaker 1: storm had already begun, and a broken piece of ski
35:02
Speaker 1: laid twenty meters from the tent as well, and the
35:05
Speaker 1: next evidence would be found a kilometer and a half
35:08
Speaker 1: away at the tree line. But what happened in that
35:11
Speaker 1: gap between the tent and the forest is completely unknown
35:16
Speaker 1: because there was no signs of struggle at the campsite
35:18
Speaker 1: besides them cutting poles into the tent, just their own
35:23
Speaker 1: prints walking calmly downhill into the dark. So this is
35:28
Speaker 1: the central hole in the story. Whatever happened on that slope,
35:33
Speaker 1: only nine people witnessed it, and none of them survived
35:37
Speaker 1: to say a word. So before leaving for the expedition,
35:40
Speaker 1: Dyatlov had made a simple promise. When the group made
35:44
Speaker 1: it back to Visai, he would wire the Upi Sports
35:47
Speaker 1: Club to confirm their safe return, and that telegram was
35:50
Speaker 1: due by February twelfth at the latest. But February twelfth
35:54
Speaker 1: came and went with no word. Yet nobody panicked just
35:58
Speaker 1: yet because it was unusual for groups like this to
36:02
Speaker 1: show up a few days late, and Dyatlov had even
36:05
Speaker 1: mentioned to Juden before setting out that the trip could
36:08
Speaker 1: easily run along, But by February fifteenth, people started asking questions,
36:14
Speaker 1: and Galina Radsteva from the Upi Routing Commission and Igor Krivanishenko,
36:18
Speaker 1: Yuri's younger brother, pushed the university Trade Union committee to
36:22
Speaker 1: contact Visai directly, and they wanted to know one thing,
36:27
Speaker 1: had the group come back, because they haven't heard anything,
36:30
Speaker 1: and Vesi's response was short, They hadn't returned and no
36:34
Speaker 1: telegram had arrived, and things should have escalated there, but
36:39
Speaker 1: they didn't, and Lev Gordo, the head of the Upi
36:42
Speaker 1: Sports Club, told the parents of Layuda and Sasha that
36:46
Speaker 1: he had received a telegram from D'yatlov about a delay,
36:51
Speaker 1: but that was a lie, and Gordo figured the group
36:54
Speaker 1: would show up on its own and decided to manage
36:57
Speaker 1: the families rather than sound and alarm, which is insane.
37:02
Speaker 1: So on February seventeenth, Rima Kolotova, Sasha's sister, went looking
37:08
Speaker 1: for Guardo, but his office was empty and it was
37:10
Speaker 1: the families who finally forced action, and they complained directly
37:14
Speaker 1: to the local head of the Communist Party, even and
37:17
Speaker 1: bad publicity was the one thing Soviet officials couldn't tolerate,
37:22
Speaker 1: and pressure from above moved faster than concerned from below.
37:26
Speaker 1: So on February twentieth, relatives demanded a rescue operation and
37:31
Speaker 1: the first search parties were mobilized the next day. So
37:34
Speaker 1: the scale of effort was enormous, and Colonel Georghi or
37:38
Speaker 1: Tukov from the Upi Military Department was put in charge,
37:43
Speaker 1: and volunteer teams of students and faculties spread across the region,
37:47
Speaker 1: and groups under Boris Slobstove and Moyes's Axelrod and Olag
37:52
Speaker 1: Grebinik and the Blinov and Sogrin expeditions just back from
37:56
Speaker 1: their own treks and familiar with the landscape, joined without hesitation,
38:01
Speaker 1: and Vladislav Carolyn's team already operating nearby would join the
38:05
Speaker 1: search too, and even guards from the Ivdelak prison system
38:09
Speaker 1: would join, and also seven officers from the MVD, the
38:13
Speaker 1: main law enforcement in Russia, and nancy hunters who had
38:17
Speaker 1: spent their lives navigating this wilderness would join as well,
38:20
Speaker 1: and specialists even dispatched from Moscow aircraft scanning the terrain
38:25
Speaker 1: from above out of ivdel But they were all coming
38:28
Speaker 1: together to find the missing group, but the Blennov group
38:32
Speaker 1: would bring troubling news because they had run into severe
38:36
Speaker 1: snowstorms near Dead Mountain, but officials would choose to take
38:39
Speaker 1: this as grounds for hope, because maybe the Datlav group
38:43
Speaker 1: had simply dug in somewhere, riding out the weather until
38:47
Speaker 1: conditions improved. So Slopestov's team was flown by helicopter to
38:51
Speaker 1: the area around Mount O'torton on February twenty third, and
38:55
Speaker 1: by the following day they had covered the mountain and
38:57
Speaker 1: come up empty, no flags, no markers, and nothing to
39:01
Speaker 1: suggest the hikers had ever set foot there, and the
39:04
Speaker 1: group had fallen short of their destination. And the next
39:07
Speaker 1: day Slobstoff's team spotted ski tracks in the snow and
39:11
Speaker 1: followed them, and on February twenty sixth they found the
39:15
Speaker 1: tent and it sat on the slope, partly carved in
39:19
Speaker 1: draped in snow, and Slobstov knew it the moment he
39:23
Speaker 1: saw it because he had helped put it together three
39:26
Speaker 1: years earlier, stitching two smaller tents into one to give
39:31
Speaker 1: the group more room. But it was empty, and everything
39:34
Speaker 1: the hikers had carried with them was still inside nine backpacks,
39:39
Speaker 1: nine pairs of shoes minus one, fur coats, blankets, food
39:43
Speaker 1: including biscuits, condensed milk, sugar, the stove and axe, a saw, cameras, notebooks,
39:50
Speaker 1: and the groups planned route and the evening o Toorton
39:53
Speaker 1: was found inside that joke newspaper, and outside a pair
39:57
Speaker 1: of skis stood upright in the snow, and an ice
40:00
Speaker 1: axe rested near the entrance, and Dyatlov's jacket had been
40:04
Speaker 1: tossed a short distance away, and inside the pockets a
40:07
Speaker 1: folding knife on a carabiner and a small pocketbook, and
40:11
Speaker 1: pressed between the pages was a picture of Zena. And
40:14
Speaker 1: snow covered the northern side of the tent and maybe
40:18
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty centimeters deep at this point, and the
40:21
Speaker 1: texture and weight of it told searchers it had blown
40:24
Speaker 1: in on the wind, so it hadn't been pushed there
40:27
Speaker 1: by anything sudden or violent. And back in Ivdel, the
40:30
Speaker 1: tent was strung up across the biggest room in the
40:33
Speaker 1: local police headquarters so it could be studied and pictures
40:36
Speaker 1: could be taken, and at first everyone came to the
40:39
Speaker 1: same conclusion that outsiders had ambushed the hikers and torn
40:43
Speaker 1: through the canvas from the outside, but then came the break.
40:47
Speaker 1: An investigator, Vladimir Kora Taiv, young and new to the
40:51
Speaker 1: case at the time, recalled how it happened. A woman
40:55
Speaker 1: had been called to the station to help mend his uniform,
40:58
Speaker 1: and she glanced at the tent on the wall, and
41:00
Speaker 1: he said quote, she took one look at the tent
41:03
Speaker 1: and spoke with confidence that the cuts were made from inside.
41:08
Speaker 1: This changed the course of the investigation entirely. Informal confirmation
41:13
Speaker 1: came weeks later, and Jinrietta Turkeina, a senior forensic specialist
41:18
Speaker 1: at the Sperdlofts Crime Lab, spent nearly two weeks examining
41:21
Speaker 1: the tent from April third to April sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine,
41:25
Speaker 1: and her conclusion matched exactly what the seamstress had seen
41:29
Speaker 1: at a glance, which is pretty impressive of the seamstress.
41:33
Speaker 1: But the cuts came from inside the tent, so the
41:35
Speaker 1: hikers weren't attacked. They had done this themselves. So whatever
41:40
Speaker 1: happened on that slope, they were trying to get out
41:44
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. So the day after the tent was discovered,
41:47
Speaker 1: searchers found the first bodies, so at eleven am on
41:51
Speaker 1: February twenty seventh, two members of the search party, Koptlov
41:55
Speaker 1: and Chrevin, spotted something dark near a large cedar tree
41:59
Speaker 1: a kalumn and a half downhill from the tent, and
42:02
Speaker 1: Slopstov's account recorded it in criminal files would describe this
42:07
Speaker 1: moment saying quote, while.
42:08
Speaker 2: Looking carefully around the area, mikol Or Rivin noticed something
42:14
Speaker 2: dark close to a cedar tree. There was a flat
42:16
Speaker 2: area next to the cedar and on this were remains
42:19
Speaker 2: of a fire. About two or three meters from the fire,
42:23
Speaker 2: they found Yuri Doroshenko frozen without his clothes and with
42:27
Speaker 2: his hand burned, and a little to the side they
42:30
Speaker 2: found yurikravon Ashenko in the same state.
42:34
Speaker 1: Unquote. So Doroshenko and Kravanashenko, the two remaining Yuri's lay
42:40
Speaker 1: in the snow in their underwear a few meters from
42:43
Speaker 1: the charred remnants of a small campfire, and Yuri K's
42:47
Speaker 1: right foot was bare and his left foot had a
42:50
Speaker 1: single brown sock on it which was torn, and another
42:54
Speaker 1: sock lay near the fire, half burned. And Doroshenko wore
42:58
Speaker 1: woolen socks layered on under a thinner pair. But neither
43:02
Speaker 1: men had anything close to adequate protection from the cold,
43:06
Speaker 1: and above them, the cedar told its own intriguing story
43:09
Speaker 1: because the branches had been snapped off as high as
43:12
Speaker 1: five meters up, meaning someone had climbed in the dark
43:17
Speaker 1: and the freezing wind, either to look back toward the
43:20
Speaker 1: tent or to break off wood for the fire. And
43:23
Speaker 1: lower branches about five centimeters thick had been sawed off
43:27
Speaker 1: with a finish knife, and some of those branches were
43:29
Speaker 1: found next to the dying fire. And Uri K's hands
43:32
Speaker 1: had third degree burns, the kinds you can't sustain if
43:36
Speaker 1: you've already lost consciousness, so he was awake for those burns,
43:41
Speaker 1: and Prosecutor Tempalov's record of the scene states, quote, on
43:45
Speaker 1: the backs of his hands, the skin is torn between
43:49
Speaker 1: the fingers, there is blood. The index finger is also torn.
43:52
Speaker 1: The skin of the left shin is torn and covered
43:55
Speaker 1: in blood. There are no more visible injuries on his body. Unquote.
43:59
Speaker 1: And Kay had bitten a piece of his flesh from
44:02
Speaker 1: his own knuckle, and it was still in his mouth
44:05
Speaker 1: when they found him. So whether he did it to
44:07
Speaker 1: fight off sleep or to keep himself from screaming, no
44:11
Speaker 1: one knows. And Ta Paulov's notes on Doroshenko were quote
44:15
Speaker 1: his ear, lips and nose are covered in blood unquote,
44:20
Speaker 1: and his skin had turned a deep brown or purple
44:23
Speaker 1: and gray. Foam seeped from the soft tissue of his
44:26
Speaker 1: right cheek, and something dark and wet ran from his mouth,
44:30
Speaker 1: and the autopsy pointed to lung failure, fluid flooding the airways,
44:35
Speaker 1: tissue battered by some kind of impact to his chest.
44:39
Speaker 1: So both men officially died of hypothermia, and the medical
44:43
Speaker 1: evidence lined up for the assessment swelling of the brain membranes,
44:47
Speaker 1: darkened blood pooling in the heart, frostbite on their fingers
44:51
Speaker 1: and toes, and Vishnevsky spots on the stomach. Lining a
44:55
Speaker 1: classic sign of death by freezing. But the burns and
44:59
Speaker 1: the climbing and the knuckle biting, these were not the
45:03
Speaker 1: actions of men who simply just laid down and froze
45:06
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Speaker 1: of the channel, and let's get back to it. So
47:04
Speaker 1: three more bodies were found scattered along the slope between
47:08
Speaker 1: the cedar and the tent, and their positions told a
47:11
Speaker 1: story of hikers that had been trying to walk back uphill.
47:15
Speaker 1: Dyatlav and Kolmogorova were discovered on February twenty seventh, same
47:20
Speaker 1: as the first two bodies, and slow Bodin wasn't located
47:24
Speaker 1: until March fifth, buried under a layer of snow, but
47:27
Speaker 1: they were found at staker distances from the cedar, about
47:31
Speaker 1: three hundred meters four hundred and eighty meters and six
47:34
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty meters now, Kolmogorova made it closest to
47:38
Speaker 1: the tent, covering the most ground of the three before
47:41
Speaker 1: the cold would take her, and Dyatlov had a fur
47:44
Speaker 1: coat unbuttoned over a sweater and a long sleeved shirt.
47:48
Speaker 1: Now the shirt had started the trip on Juden's back,
47:51
Speaker 1: but Juden gave it to Doroshenko before turning around, it seemed,
47:56
Speaker 1: and Dyatlov had apparently taken it from Doroshenko's body the
48:00
Speaker 1: cedar because his socks didn't match and he had been
48:03
Speaker 1: vomiting blood and coolmo Goova had a bruise on her
48:07
Speaker 1: wrist shaped like a baton strike, and slow Boden had
48:11
Speaker 1: a fracture in his skull. The official autopsy ruled it
48:14
Speaker 1: non fatal and his cause of death was recorded as hypothermia,
48:18
Speaker 1: same as the other two, but the crack in his
48:21
Speaker 1: skull raised questions that the ruling didn't answer. All three
48:25
Speaker 1: would die of the cold, at least that was the
48:27
Speaker 1: official conclusion, but the blood Diatlov was choking on in
48:31
Speaker 1: the bruise on kolmo Goova's body and the break in
48:36
Speaker 1: slow Boden's skull didn't fit a story where the only
48:39
Speaker 1: enemy was the weather, so that was very odd. Now.
48:43
Speaker 1: The last four bodies weren't found until the spring, more
48:47
Speaker 1: than three months after the tent was discovered on May fourth,
48:51
Speaker 1: So on May fourth, searchers located the remaining bodies in
48:54
Speaker 1: a ravine seventy five meters deeper into the forest beyond
48:58
Speaker 1: the cedar. They were buried under four meters of snow,
49:02
Speaker 1: and all four had come to rest in a creek
49:05
Speaker 1: submerged in the icy water that ran along the bottom
49:09
Speaker 1: of the ravine. Dubanina, Zolotariov and Kolovadov and the beau Brignol.
49:15
Speaker 1: Now three of the four wore layers that clearly hadn't
49:19
Speaker 1: been theirs. Clothing had been taken from the bodies of
49:23
Speaker 1: those who died first in an attempt to survive. That
49:26
Speaker 1: Dubanina had on Yuri K's trousers, burned and torn, and
49:31
Speaker 1: her left foot and lower leg were bound in the
49:33
Speaker 1: shredded remains of a jacket, and Zolatariov was wearing a
49:37
Speaker 1: Dubinina's fur coat and hat, so they had tried to
49:41
Speaker 1: stay alive but it wasn't enough, and the autopsies performed
49:44
Speaker 1: on May ninth revealed injuries that didn't quite fit in
49:48
Speaker 1: any hypothermia case, because Dubanina's chest had been crushed, ribs
49:53
Speaker 1: two through five on the right side fractured along two
49:56
Speaker 1: separate lines, and ribs two through seven on the left
50:00
Speaker 1: side also fractured along two lines, and massive bleeding into
50:04
Speaker 1: the right chamber of the heart and eternal hemorrhaging throughout
50:07
Speaker 1: the chest cavity and her tongue was gone, and her
50:13
Speaker 1: eyes were gone, and the soft tissue around her brow,
50:17
Speaker 1: her left temple, and her upper lip had been stripped away,
50:21
Speaker 1: and the cartilage in her nose was flattened and broken.
50:25
Speaker 1: She survived the initial trauma by ten to twenty minutes,
50:29
Speaker 1: so it's possible she may have been conscious for all
50:32
Speaker 1: of it. And Zolitariov's right side was devastated because five
50:37
Speaker 1: of his ribs were snapped and two more fractures were
50:40
Speaker 1: on his left side, and as ribcage had lost the
50:43
Speaker 1: ability to hold its shape, a condition called flailed chest
50:47
Speaker 1: and a gaping wound on the right side of his
50:50
Speaker 1: skull left the bone visible beneath, and his eyes were
50:53
Speaker 1: also missing, and a camera hung around his neck, obviously
50:57
Speaker 1: not the one that had been left behind in the tent,
51:00
Speaker 1: but a second camera and the film inside had been
51:03
Speaker 1: soaked through after three months underwater, and he was found
51:07
Speaker 1: gripping a pen in one hand and small notepad in
51:10
Speaker 1: the other, and according to sercher Vladimir Colonel Ortukov snatched
51:14
Speaker 1: the notepad, looked at it, swore and said he's written nothing,
51:19
Speaker 1: and that notepad never made it into the case file
51:22
Speaker 1: and it would disappear entirely extremely suspicious. And the beau
51:27
Speaker 1: Brignol's skull had been shattered, with a deep, splintered fracture
51:31
Speaker 1: running across both the top and the base of his head,
51:34
Speaker 1: and fragments of bone had been driven into his brain,
51:38
Speaker 1: and the forensic examiner said the kind of force required
51:41
Speaker 1: to cause this injury could not have come from any
51:44
Speaker 1: normal standing fall, and he compared it to being hit
51:47
Speaker 1: by a car. And Kolevitov, by contrast, had almost nothing
51:51
Speaker 1: wrong with him. There were minor scrapes on his hands
51:55
Speaker 1: and face, and his neck was bent at an angle,
51:58
Speaker 1: which probably was just a result of the body stiffening
52:01
Speaker 1: after death or settling into the terrain, but there was
52:04
Speaker 1: no significant trauma, and he would die of hypothermia, same
52:08
Speaker 1: as the first five. And he was found sitting close
52:10
Speaker 1: to Zolatariov positioned quote as if the latter was carrying
52:15
Speaker 1: or protecting him unquote, and the forensic picture was jarring.
52:19
Speaker 1: The medical examiner, under interrogation on May twenty eighth, nineteen
52:22
Speaker 1: fifty nine, stated that the rib fractures on Dubinina and
52:26
Speaker 1: Zolatariov had occurred while they were still alive, caused by
52:30
Speaker 1: quote the action of a large force unquote, and he
52:34
Speaker 1: added that the injuries quote.
52:35
Speaker 2: Appearing in such a way without any damage to the
52:38
Speaker 2: soft tissue of the chest, are very similar to the
52:41
Speaker 2: type of trauma that results from the shockwave of a
52:44
Speaker 2: bomb unquote.
52:46
Speaker 1: And then there was the missing tissue Dubnina's tongue, eyes
52:50
Speaker 1: and lips, and Zolatariov's eyes, and the official explanation pointed
52:56
Speaker 1: to simple bodily decomposition. Three months in running water will
53:00
Speaker 1: do terrible things to a body, but the medical examiner
53:03
Speaker 1: judged the soft tissue loss to have happened post mortem
53:08
Speaker 1: thanks to the stream. But pictures of Duvinina's body from
53:11
Speaker 1: the morgue when she arrived told a different story because
53:14
Speaker 1: the areas around her mouth, nose, and ears showed none
53:17
Speaker 1: of the ragged, widespread damage you'd expect from predators or scavengers,
53:22
Speaker 1: and the destruction looked precise, and her stomach held roughly
53:26
Speaker 1: one hundred grams of dark brown matter often misidentified in
53:30
Speaker 1: popular accounts as coagulated blood, and some researchers pointed to
53:34
Speaker 1: this as evidence that her heart was still beating and
53:37
Speaker 1: blood still circulating when her tongue was removed, which is
53:42
Speaker 1: horrifying to think about, but to this day, no one
53:45
Speaker 1: has ever explained with certainty what happened to these four
53:49
Speaker 1: people at the bottom of that ravine. So the criminal
53:52
Speaker 1: investigation was led by prosecutor criminalist Lev Ivanov, who worked
53:57
Speaker 1: for Sferdloff's regional prosecutors office, and he opened the inquest
54:02
Speaker 1: as soon as the first five bodies turned up in
54:04
Speaker 1: late February, and the case drew unusual attention from above
54:08
Speaker 1: from the start, and Ivanov, superior of Jenny Okashev, later
54:12
Speaker 1: noted that Klenov, the head of the Sferdloffs Prosecutor's office,
54:17
Speaker 1: had personally attended the initial autopsies at the morgue in
54:21
Speaker 1: if Deel and stayed for three days and in all
54:24
Speaker 1: of Okashev's years in the office, that had never happened before,
54:29
Speaker 1: and he called the situation quote unquote, highly unusual. And
54:33
Speaker 1: then the second secretary of the Regional Party Committee, A
54:36
Speaker 1: f Yeshtikhun, stepped in and took control of the investigation,
54:41
Speaker 1: and prosecutors weren't the only ones running this case because
54:44
Speaker 1: the party was watching regardless of the drama. The first
54:48
Speaker 1: real theory investigators pursued was an attack by the Mancy.
54:52
Speaker 1: A Mancy shelter had been found northeast of the Dyatlov
54:55
Speaker 1: camp site, with a trail running roughly two hundred feet away,
54:58
Speaker 1: so it looked suspicious. Several young Mancy hunters were arrested
55:03
Speaker 1: in March nineteen fifty nine and interrogated. An investigator, Vladimir Kortev,
55:08
Speaker 1: later said that the suspects were quote driven out, half
55:11
Speaker 1: dressed into the cold unquote. During questioning and under pressure,
55:16
Speaker 1: Grigory Kirikov told investigators that the Manci had no sacred
55:20
Speaker 1: sites anywhere near where the hikers died. Quote.
55:24
Speaker 2: Our Prayer Mountain is located in the upper reaches of
55:26
Speaker 2: the Vizhey River, unquote.
55:29
Speaker 1: And another interviewee was more direct, saying.
55:31
Speaker 2: Quote, the Mansi had no reason to attack Russian tourists.
55:36
Speaker 1: And the theory quickly collapsed as the investigation continued and
55:39
Speaker 1: only the hiker's on footprints had been found at the
55:42
Speaker 1: tent and there were no signs of any sort of fight,
55:45
Speaker 1: and the valuables that were left untouched in the tent,
55:48
Speaker 1: along with cameras, alcohol, and gear were untouched, and the
55:53
Speaker 1: Matsi themselves had joined the search to help them from
55:56
Speaker 1: the beginning, and when the Ravine four were autopsied, the
55:59
Speaker 1: case became some else entirely, and forensic examiner of oz
56:02
Speaker 1: Razdni's conclusion was that the injuries that killed Dubanina, Ziltariyev
56:08
Speaker 1: and thebau Brignol could not have been inflicted by a
56:11
Speaker 1: human being. The force was way too extreme and the
56:15
Speaker 1: skin was untouched. No person or standard attack could produce
56:19
Speaker 1: what was found inside those bodies, and that ruling essentially
56:23
Speaker 1: squashed every theory that was built around violence, including the mancy,
56:27
Speaker 1: a fight within the group, or an ambush by outsiders.
56:32
Speaker 1: And then the investigation found something it wasn't looking for,
56:36
Speaker 1: and on May eighteenth, nineteen fifty nine, Ivanov ordered radiation
56:40
Speaker 1: testing on the clothing and remains of the Ravine four
56:43
Speaker 1: and the chief radiologist of Sperdlovsk Lavashev ran the analysis,
56:48
Speaker 1: and the results were alarming because Dubenina's brown sweater registered
56:53
Speaker 1: nine nine hundred radioactive decays per minute, almost double the
56:58
Speaker 1: Soviet safety threshold for workers who handled nuclear material, and
57:03
Speaker 1: after three hours of washing in a cold water current,
57:06
Speaker 1: the count dropped to five thousand, two hundred, so that
57:10
Speaker 1: meant the contamination was from radioactive dust on the surface
57:13
Speaker 1: of the fabric, and Kolvatov's pants and sweater waistband showed
57:17
Speaker 1: elevated readings as well, and only beta particles were detected,
57:21
Speaker 1: no alpha or gamma. But these were the bodies that
57:24
Speaker 1: had spent three months submerged in a creek, and Ivanov
57:28
Speaker 1: pointed out that the readings at the time of death
57:30
Speaker 1: would have been far higher since the remains had been
57:33
Speaker 1: quote intensively washed by melting water under the snow entire
57:38
Speaker 1: rivers flowed there. But there was a possible explanation for
57:42
Speaker 1: this because, as we know from before, Krivonishenko had worked
57:46
Speaker 1: at the Mayac Nuclear complex and participated in the cleanup
57:50
Speaker 1: of the Kishtim disaster, and Kolvatov had also spent time
57:55
Speaker 1: at Chelia. Binks forty and Zena came from a village
57:58
Speaker 1: within the contaminations zone of that same disaster, and a
58:02
Speaker 1: nuclear physicist named Igor Pavlov later analyzed the Levoche of
58:07
Speaker 1: findings and concluded that the lack of alpha or gamma
58:10
Speaker 1: particles was consistent with contamination from Mayak, not from atmospheric fallout,
58:16
Speaker 1: and he called it quote indirect evidence that the pollution
58:19
Speaker 1: comes from Mayak unquote, and that it was quote very
58:24
Speaker 1: likely that the contamination was received before the trip unquote,
58:28
Speaker 1: and specialists told Ivanov his radiation results were a soap
58:32
Speaker 1: bubble or in other words, meaningless. But Kravonishenko's family wasn't
58:37
Speaker 1: so sure, and his parents had kept a suitcase of
58:39
Speaker 1: his belongings, including mittens and a hat and a sweatshirt,
58:44
Speaker 1: but his siblings were afraid of it and they thought
58:46
Speaker 1: the contents might be radioactive, and after their mother died,
58:50
Speaker 1: they buried that suitcase. And then there were the bodies themselves.
58:54
Speaker 1: Their skin had changed color. Yuri Kunsovik, twelve years old
58:58
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, attended five of the funerals and
59:01
Speaker 1: remembered their skin as having a quote deep brown tan quote,
59:05
Speaker 1: and search team member Sergey Sogren described the color as
59:09
Speaker 1: quote yellow, not orange unquote. Discolouration in the brown to
59:14
Speaker 1: orange range is a well documented feature of death by
59:17
Speaker 1: extreme cold, so it did check out, and relatives also
59:21
Speaker 1: described the hiker's hair as having gone gray, though the
59:24
Speaker 1: autopsy reports never flagged this, and it's certainly possible that
59:28
Speaker 1: three months of exposure to freezing wind and ice can
59:31
Speaker 1: cause that kind of change through natural mummification. And the
59:35
Speaker 1: clothing found of the scene told a story of its
59:37
Speaker 1: own because forensic expert Jerkina, who had examined the tent,
59:41
Speaker 1: was also present when the Ravine four's clothes were removed
59:45
Speaker 1: during autopsy, and she recalled, quote.
59:47
Speaker 2: When they took off their clothes and hung them on ropes,
59:50
Speaker 2: we immediately noticed that they had some strange light purple hue,
59:54
Speaker 2: although their natural colors were different.
59:57
Speaker 1: I asked Boris, the medical examiner.
1:00:00
Speaker 2: Don't you think the clothes are processed with something? And
1:00:03
Speaker 2: he agreed, quote.
1:00:05
Speaker 1: Something had changed the color of their clothing, but nobody
1:00:09
Speaker 1: could say what. And there were also the lights in
1:00:12
Speaker 1: the sky because a separate group of hikers camping roughly
1:00:15
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers south of Diatlovs site reported seeing quote unquote
1:00:20
Speaker 1: strange orange spheres drifting across the northern sky on the
1:00:25
Speaker 1: night the group died, and over the following weeks, similar
1:00:28
Speaker 1: glowing objects were spotted by people across the region, including
1:00:32
Speaker 1: soldiers and meteorological observers, and amancy witness later told BBC
1:00:37
Speaker 1: reporter Lucy ash quote.
1:00:39
Speaker 2: We were coming back from the forest and we could
1:00:41
Speaker 2: see the village ahead of us. This bright, burning object appeared.
1:00:45
Speaker 2: It was wider at the front and nearer in the back,
1:00:49
Speaker 2: and there were sparks flying of it, and search party
1:00:52
Speaker 2: member Vladislav saw one himself, and he described it as
1:00:56
Speaker 2: a fireball moving across the sky quote unquote, like a missile.
1:01:00
Speaker 2: And a local newspaper, the Tasual Worker, even printed a
1:01:03
Speaker 2: report about the fireballs while the hikers were still on
1:01:06
Speaker 2: their track, and the editor got in trouble for running
1:01:09
Speaker 2: the story suspicious. But none of these sightings were included
1:01:14
Speaker 2: in the initial nineteen fifty nine investigation, and the witnesses
1:01:17
Speaker 2: came forward later and Ivanov was told to make it
1:01:20
Speaker 2: all go away, and he eventually admitted it as well.
1:01:24
Speaker 2: In an interview with a journalist Stanislav Bogomolov, he said plainly,
1:01:29
Speaker 2: quote I did it myself. I withdrew the radiation test report.
1:01:33
Speaker 2: I was told to remove everything that is irrelevant unquote.
1:01:37
Speaker 1: And on May twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine, the case
1:01:40
Speaker 1: was closed and the radiological report had been signed by
1:01:44
Speaker 1: Leveshov just one day earlier, and in the case file,
1:01:47
Speaker 1: a draft version of the closing resolution survives, including a
1:01:51
Speaker 1: full paragraph about radioactive contamination on the hiker's clothing and
1:01:55
Speaker 1: a note that quote none of them was in contact
1:01:58
Speaker 1: with radioactive substance is at his work or study unquote,
1:02:02
Speaker 1: and that draft is dated May twenty eighth, and it
1:02:05
Speaker 1: bears no signatures and its pages have been crossed out
1:02:09
Speaker 1: with a blue pencil. In the final resolution, the public
1:02:13
Speaker 1: facing one, anyway, erases the radiation entirely, and the official
1:02:18
Speaker 1: conclusion is stated that members of the Daalov group died
1:02:22
Speaker 1: due to quote unquote a compelling natural force they were
1:02:26
Speaker 1: unable to overcome. No further explanation, and Okashev later said
1:02:31
Speaker 1: that he had been planning a return trip to the
1:02:33
Speaker 1: past to investigate the ravine four deaths more thoroughly when
1:02:36
Speaker 1: Deputy Prosecutor General Yurikov flew in from Moscow and personally
1:02:41
Speaker 1: shut the case down. The files were locked away in
1:02:44
Speaker 1: a classified archive, and the mountain pass and surrounding area
1:02:48
Speaker 1: were declared off limits to hikers for the next three
1:02:51
Speaker 1: years and for thirty one years. Lev Ivanov said nothing publicly.
1:02:57
Speaker 1: Then in November nineteen ninety he published an article titled
1:03:01
Speaker 1: Mystery of the Fireballs in the regional newspaper Leninsky Put
1:03:05
Speaker 1: roughly translated to Lenin's Way, and it was his first
1:03:08
Speaker 1: statement about the case in over three decades, and he
1:03:12
Speaker 1: did not hold.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: Back, saying, quote, the study of the case now fully
1:03:16
Speaker 2: convinces and even then I stuck to the version of
1:03:19
Speaker 2: the death of the student hikers from exposure to an
1:03:22
Speaker 2: unknown flying object. Based on the evidence gathered, the role
1:03:26
Speaker 2: of UFOs in this tragedy was quite obvious unquote aliens.
1:03:31
Speaker 1: It's aliens, potentially. And he further confirmed the suppression of
1:03:36
Speaker 1: his findings, saying quote, when I reported to af Yeshtaukin
1:03:41
Speaker 1: about my findings fireballs radioactivity, he gave a completely categorical
1:03:46
Speaker 1: order to classify everything, to seal everything up to hand
1:03:50
Speaker 1: it over to the special Unit and to forget about it, unquote.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: And he closed with a line that has some fairly
1:03:57
Speaker 1: interesting implications, saying, quote, all.
1:04:00
Speaker 2: That remained was the sky and its contents energy unknown
1:04:03
Speaker 2: to us, which turned out to be higher than human forces.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: So Ivanov's UFO conviction should of course be taken with
1:04:12
Speaker 1: the big old grain assault. And by nineteen ninety he
1:04:16
Speaker 1: was an old man who hadn't touched the case in decades.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: But I feel like he was just waiting until he
1:04:22
Speaker 1: was close to death to say the truth. Personally, that's
1:04:25
Speaker 1: what I would do, but what do I know? And
1:04:26
Speaker 1: his writing is largely speculative, but the hard claims underneath
1:04:31
Speaker 1: hold up, like that he was pressured to abandon entire
1:04:35
Speaker 1: lines of inquiry, that he pulled the radiation report on orders,
1:04:39
Speaker 1: and that the investigation was killed from Moscow. And the
1:04:42
Speaker 1: question was never whether the Soviet government suppressed evidence, The
1:04:46
Speaker 1: question was what they were suppressing and why, which brings
1:04:51
Speaker 1: us to all of the theories, and the first and
1:04:54
Speaker 1: most widely believed is the avalanche theory. So in February
1:04:58
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Rush authorities reopened the case, but with a
1:05:02
Speaker 1: narrow scope and only three natural causes were on the table,
1:05:06
Speaker 1: an avalanche, a slab avalanche, or a hurricane, and the
1:05:10
Speaker 1: possibility of a crime was ruled out before the investigation began.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: And on July eleventh, twenty twenty, Audrey Kurikov, Deputy head
1:05:18
Speaker 1: of the Euro's Federal District and Directorate of the Prosecutor
1:05:22
Speaker 1: General's Office, that was a mouthful had to say that
1:05:24
Speaker 1: a few times, announced the avalanche conclusion, saying, quote, it
1:05:28
Speaker 1: was a heroic struggle, there was no canic but in
1:05:32
Speaker 1: those circumstances they had no chance of escape unquote. And
1:05:36
Speaker 1: Kirikov's reconstruction goes like this. A slab of snow broke
1:05:40
Speaker 1: loose above the tent, and the hikers heard it coming.
1:05:43
Speaker 1: They cut the canvas and fled downhill. Well they walked,
1:05:48
Speaker 1: so I don't know about this, but whatever, and wind
1:05:52
Speaker 1: and building snow collapsed what was left of the tent
1:05:54
Speaker 1: behind them, and they made it to the cedar and
1:05:57
Speaker 1: started a fire. And four of them eventually moved deeper
1:06:00
Speaker 1: into the forest, into the ravine, where they dug a
1:06:03
Speaker 1: platform of branches, and while digging, they set off a
1:06:06
Speaker 1: second collapse, and this one buried themselves under roughly three
1:06:10
Speaker 1: meters of snow, and that weight crushed their chests and skulls,
1:06:15
Speaker 1: and everyone else froze to death. And in twenty twenty one,
1:06:18
Speaker 1: researchers Johann Gomm and Alexander Pusren published a peer reviewed
1:06:22
Speaker 1: study that added some scientific weight to the theory, and
1:06:26
Speaker 1: their model used nineteen fifty nine weather data, general motors,
1:06:29
Speaker 1: crash test cadaver data, and notably snow simulation code developed
1:06:34
Speaker 1: for Disney's Frozen Way to Pull through Elsa. You know,
1:06:38
Speaker 1: but they showed that a small but lethal slab avalanche
1:06:41
Speaker 1: was plausible even on a low angle slope triggered hours
1:06:45
Speaker 1: later by the hiker's own cut into the hillside, combined
1:06:48
Speaker 1: with windblown snow stacking up above them. And Pusren was
1:06:52
Speaker 1: very careful to say, quote, we do not claim that
1:06:56
Speaker 1: now we have a final explanation of what happened, but
1:07:00
Speaker 1: we added plausibility to the avalanche theory unquote. So the
1:07:04
Speaker 1: avalanche theory at least makes the hikers' actions rational.
1:07:08
Speaker 2: Right.
1:07:08
Speaker 1: It does make it rational because experienced hikers who hear
1:07:12
Speaker 1: a slab breaking above them would absolutely cut their way
1:07:15
Speaker 1: out and run. It explains the tent the panic, the
1:07:19
Speaker 1: chest injuries. But there are problems with this theory because
1:07:22
Speaker 1: when searchers found the tent, there was no debris field
1:07:25
Speaker 1: and no pattern of the kind of displaced snow you'd
1:07:28
Speaker 1: expect after an avalanche, and the skis that stood upright
1:07:33
Speaker 1: near the tent were undisturbed. It's not hard to knock
1:07:36
Speaker 1: over skis in the snow. Just going to say that
1:07:39
Speaker 1: they would not have stayed upright like that in the
1:07:42
Speaker 1: event of an avalanche. And the slope angle at the
1:07:44
Speaker 1: campsite measured twenty eight degrees, which is steeper than the
1:07:48
Speaker 1: area's average of twenty three, but still lower than typical
1:07:52
Speaker 1: slab avalanche terrain, and Jim mckelwyan, a professor of geohazards
1:07:57
Speaker 1: at Durham University, noted that slab avalanches generally require steeper
1:08:02
Speaker 1: ground and Dyatlov and Solitariov were both experienced enough to
1:08:07
Speaker 1: recognize the avalanche prone terrain, so it seems unlikely that
1:08:10
Speaker 1: they would settle there knowing that that was an issue.
1:08:13
Speaker 1: It was cold and it was a crazy storm, but
1:08:15
Speaker 1: it's just like, would they put themselves in danger like that?
1:08:18
Speaker 1: I don't know. And the footprints, the footprints leading away
1:08:23
Speaker 1: from the tent, showed people walking in an orderly fashion
1:08:27
Speaker 1: in a line, not running for their lives as one
1:08:30
Speaker 1: likely would trying to escape an avalanche. And the theory
1:08:33
Speaker 1: also has nothing to say about the radiation and the
1:08:36
Speaker 1: missing soft tissue or the lights in the sky, and
1:08:40
Speaker 1: defenders of the theory argue those are separate, unrelated phenomena.
1:08:44
Speaker 1: But ultimately the families rejected the theory altogether, and honestly
1:08:48
Speaker 1: so do I and their lawyer. You have, Jenny Chernausov
1:08:52
Speaker 1: said flatly, quote, the relatives will not accept this conclusion.
1:08:57
Speaker 1: Only a technogenetic.
1:08:58
Speaker 2: Theory is possible.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: In effect, this investigation has not produced anything, unquote. And
1:09:04
Speaker 1: the next series is katabatic winds, which are essentially cold,
1:09:08
Speaker 1: heavy winds rolling downhill at extreme speed. Now in the urals,
1:09:13
Speaker 1: they can appear suddenly and turn violent without warning. In
1:09:16
Speaker 1: the twenty nineteen review confirmed winds that night reached hurricane
1:09:20
Speaker 1: force twenty to thirty meters per second with temperatures at
1:09:23
Speaker 1: minus forty, and the original nineteen fifty nine investigators never
1:09:27
Speaker 1: factored this in, having arrived at the scene three weeks
1:09:30
Speaker 1: later when the weather had calmed down, and the theory
1:09:33
Speaker 1: holds that the wind made the tent uninhabitable, forcing an
1:09:37
Speaker 1: emergency evacuation, and it could explain why they left, but
1:09:41
Speaker 1: not why they cut their way out instead of using
1:09:44
Speaker 1: the entrance. And wind, no matter how extreme, doesn't produce
1:09:48
Speaker 1: the kind of targeted crushing fractures found in the ravine
1:09:53
Speaker 1: four without leaving any sort of mark on the skin.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: That one, I just throw that one over my shoulder.
1:09:58
Speaker 1: I don't really buy that one. And then there's infrasound.
1:10:02
Speaker 1: So in twenty thirteen, American filmmaker Donnie Aiker published Dead Mountain,
1:10:07
Speaker 1: in which he proposed another theory. Wind flowing over the
1:10:11
Speaker 1: dome shaped summit of the mountain, he argued, could generate
1:10:15
Speaker 1: a phenomenon called a Carmen vortex street or alternating spiral
1:10:20
Speaker 1: fortices that produce something called infrasound. And these are vibrations
1:10:25
Speaker 1: lower than human hearing, but are so capable of affecting
1:10:28
Speaker 1: the body. In a two thousand and three UK study
1:10:31
Speaker 1: found that roughly one in five people exposed to infrasound
1:10:34
Speaker 1: reported anxiety, fear, or difficulty breathing. An Iiker's scenario was this,
1:10:40
Speaker 1: the infrasound combined with the roar of nearby vertices, and
1:10:44
Speaker 1: the claustrophobic darkness of the tent caused overwhelming panic in
1:10:49
Speaker 1: the group, enough to make nine experienced hikers slash their
1:10:53
Speaker 1: way out and flee barefoot into a blizzard. And once
1:10:57
Speaker 1: down slope and beyond the infrasound's reach, they would have
1:11:01
Speaker 1: regained their composure, but by then it was too late
1:11:05
Speaker 1: because they couldn't find the tent in the storm. But
1:11:07
Speaker 1: there is problems with this theory, of course, because infrasound
1:11:11
Speaker 1: doesn't explain the injuries right. Iik attributes the ravine force
1:11:15
Speaker 1: fractures to stumbling off the edge of the ravine in
1:11:18
Speaker 1: the dark, and the science itself is somewhat shaky, and
1:11:22
Speaker 1: as Snopes noted.
1:11:23
Speaker 2: Quote, acoustic scientists are far from sure that infrasound exposure
1:11:28
Speaker 2: causes even the mildest symptoms attributed to it, much less
1:11:31
Speaker 2: extreme panic unquote.
1:11:34
Speaker 1: So no person has ever been documented as having been
1:11:37
Speaker 1: killed by infrasound, and no study has shown it can
1:11:40
Speaker 1: induce the kind of simultaneous panic required for nine people
1:11:45
Speaker 1: to abandon shelter into lethal conditions. And then we get
1:11:49
Speaker 1: into the more plausible ones, in my opinion, and that
1:11:51
Speaker 1: is the government. Because the Dayatlav campsite sat between the
1:11:55
Speaker 1: Baikenor Cosmodrome and the Tchiornanaguba, a Soviet nuclear testing ground,
1:12:02
Speaker 1: the northern urals were easily within range of military facilities,
1:12:06
Speaker 1: and the twenty nineteen investigation confirmed that rocket launches did
1:12:10
Speaker 1: in fact take place from the Capustin Yar training range
1:12:14
Speaker 1: during the expedition period, but the launch site was quote
1:12:18
Speaker 1: unquote not visible from the pass, and the glowing orange
1:12:21
Speaker 1: spheres seen by multiple witnesses have been attributed by some
1:12:25
Speaker 1: researchers to debris from our seven intercontinental missile tests, and
1:12:30
Speaker 1: more specific versions of this theory looks to parachute mines,
1:12:34
Speaker 1: which are designed to detonate in mid air before hitting
1:12:37
Speaker 1: the ground, and they can produce massive internal trauma with
1:12:42
Speaker 1: minimal surface damage, matching the ravines for autopsy findings almost exactly,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: and records indicate the Soviet military was testing parachute mines
1:12:52
Speaker 1: in the same mountain range during this period, and the
1:12:55
Speaker 1: timing does line up with the fireball sightings. But the
1:12:58
Speaker 1: flaw in this theory, because we're going to talk about
1:13:00
Speaker 1: the flaws and all these theories, is that no declassified
1:13:04
Speaker 1: documents have ever confirmed military activity at the specific location
1:13:08
Speaker 1: on that specific night, and the sightings were dismissed as
1:13:13
Speaker 1: an illusion by the twenty nineteen reinvestigation. So do with
1:13:18
Speaker 1: that which you will, That one right now top of
1:13:20
Speaker 1: my list. Okay, well we're getting into more, but that's top.
1:13:24
Speaker 1: And then there's the Manci attack theory, which was one
1:13:26
Speaker 1: of the favorites for investigators initially, but we kind of
1:13:29
Speaker 1: already debunked that because they claim they attacked the hikers
1:13:33
Speaker 1: because they were on their sacred land, but the Manci
1:13:36
Speaker 1: denied this, and there was literally zero evidence that a
1:13:39
Speaker 1: fight had occurred, and not to mention, the forensic examiner's
1:13:42
Speaker 1: analysis says that no human being could have caused those injuries,
1:13:47
Speaker 1: especially in those elements. And then there's one of my
1:13:50
Speaker 1: other I don't want to say favorite theories. Well I
1:13:51
Speaker 1: guess yeah, favorite theories, you know. And this one makes
1:13:54
Speaker 1: sense scientifically if you know anything about hypothermia, and that
1:13:57
Speaker 1: is paradoxical undressing, because between twenty percent and fifty percent
1:14:01
Speaker 1: of people who die from hypothermia experienced something known as
1:14:05
Speaker 1: paradoxical undressing because as the body shuts down from extreme cold,
1:14:09
Speaker 1: the brain misfires, giving the victim a false sense of
1:14:13
Speaker 1: burning heat. You get really hot, so you want to
1:14:15
Speaker 1: take your clothes off, which means they strip off their
1:14:18
Speaker 1: clothing convinced they're actually burning alive. I can't even imagine
1:14:23
Speaker 1: experiencing that. But this explains why Doroshenko and Kravanishenko were
1:14:28
Speaker 1: found nearly naked at the Cedar. But the picture is
1:14:32
Speaker 1: obviously more complicated than that, because the evidence shows surviving
1:14:35
Speaker 1: members of the group deliberately removing clothing from those who
1:14:39
Speaker 1: had already died, even cutting it off in some cases
1:14:42
Speaker 1: and then putting it on themselves. And Dubanina wore Kravonishenko's
1:14:47
Speaker 1: pants and Zolitario wore Dubanina's coat, So these instances point
1:14:51
Speaker 1: to a calculated attempt to stay alive and not so
1:14:55
Speaker 1: much a state of confusion. But paradoxical undressing may account
1:14:59
Speaker 1: for part of the group's missing clothes, which is what
1:15:02
Speaker 1: I actually think for this theory, But it doesn't necessarily
1:15:06
Speaker 1: explain why the group fled the tent in the first place, obviously,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do at all with the
1:15:12
Speaker 1: crushed chests and shattered skulls. But I do think that's
1:15:16
Speaker 1: like a small percentage of it. I'm just giving. You
1:15:18
Speaker 1: can give your own thoughts in the comments. I'm extremely
1:15:21
Speaker 1: curious to know your guys thoughts. But mine right now
1:15:24
Speaker 1: is government and a little bit of hypothermia, and next
1:15:27
Speaker 1: is espionage. Because there is the question of Semyon Zolitariov,
1:15:32
Speaker 1: a thirty seven year old man in a group of
1:15:35
Speaker 1: twenty somethings, a war veteran who escaped war without a
1:15:38
Speaker 1: scratch during a time when ninety seven percent of soldiers
1:15:41
Speaker 1: who served that long didn't even survive, A man who
1:15:45
Speaker 1: used a name that wasn't his, carried hidden tattoos no
1:15:48
Speaker 1: one in the group knew about, and switched expeditions three
1:15:51
Speaker 1: days before departure for reasons he never explained. And he
1:15:55
Speaker 1: had also spent time in Lermanotov, a city that was
1:15:58
Speaker 1: closed to outsiders because of its connections to uranium mining,
1:16:02
Speaker 1: and at a Communist party meeting he was confronted about
1:16:04
Speaker 1: his brother's wartime collaborations with the Germans, and despite this,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: he was never expelled from the party or removed from
1:16:11
Speaker 1: his role. So it seems like that kind of immunity
1:16:15
Speaker 1: doesn't come about without someone powerful standing behind you. So
1:16:19
Speaker 1: an espionage theory started to form proposing that Zolatariov and
1:16:24
Speaker 1: possibly also Kravanshenko given his work at Mayak, were actually
1:16:30
Speaker 1: placed in the hiking group as part of an intelligence
1:16:32
Speaker 1: operation in the Urals, and the radioactive clothing in this
1:16:36
Speaker 1: version could point to a handoff of nuclear materials. But
1:16:40
Speaker 1: details that don't quite fit anywhere else start to make
1:16:43
Speaker 1: a bit of sense here, like the second camera around
1:16:46
Speaker 1: Solatario's neck he fled with it instead of his gear,
1:16:50
Speaker 1: and the notepad that the colonel found and seized from
1:16:53
Speaker 1: him and said like, oh, there's nothing written in here,
1:16:56
Speaker 1: nothing to say here. This just lights it on fire.
1:16:58
Speaker 1: He didn't light it on fire, but it disappeared, and
1:17:00
Speaker 1: the gaps in his biographical info and the false name,
1:17:03
Speaker 1: and after the funerals, seven of the nine were laid
1:17:06
Speaker 1: to rest together in Mikhailovsky, which was a section of
1:17:10
Speaker 1: a cemetery reserved for the university, but Zolatariov and Krivonishenko
1:17:15
Speaker 1: managed to end up buried somewhere else apart from the
1:17:18
Speaker 1: group ivan Osco Cemetery, and in twenty eighteen, journalists Natalia
1:17:23
Speaker 1: Varsugova arranged the exhumation of the body in Zolatario's grave
1:17:28
Speaker 1: and just getting the permit took a year, and it
1:17:31
Speaker 1: was only made harder by the fact that no burial
1:17:34
Speaker 1: record for anyone named Semyon Zolatariov existed in the city
1:17:38
Speaker 1: of Sverdlovsk, and a skull matching analysis by expert Sergei
1:17:42
Speaker 1: Nikotin scored thirteen out of twenty four possible comparison points,
1:17:47
Speaker 1: one more than what was needed for a positive identification,
1:17:51
Speaker 1: So the face appeared to match, but the DNA told
1:17:55
Speaker 1: a different story, and the first round of testing found
1:17:58
Speaker 1: no genetic connection between the igzoom remains of Zolatariov's niece
1:18:02
Speaker 1: Tatyana Skulbeta, so if the results held, it meant the
1:18:06
Speaker 1: body in the grave wasn't him. And then a second
1:18:10
Speaker 1: test that was run by the more widely recognized geneticist
1:18:13
Speaker 1: Pavel Ivanov, came back positive. So though the DNA ultimately
1:18:17
Speaker 1: did match, the two results directly contradicted each other, and
1:18:21
Speaker 1: no one has been able to explain why. Some researchers
1:18:24
Speaker 1: have floated the possibility that the remains belong not to
1:18:27
Speaker 1: Semyon but to his brother Nikolai, who worked for the
1:18:31
Speaker 1: Germans during the war and disappeared without a trace. And
1:18:36
Speaker 1: then there are his cryptic last words before they set out, saying,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: quote unquote, this whole world will start talking about this
1:18:43
Speaker 1: track that one. I don't even know what to make
1:18:45
Speaker 1: of that one. Honestly, it could just all be mixed up.
1:18:47
Speaker 1: I think military with him and hypothermia. I think it's
1:18:53
Speaker 1: all mixed right now. And then he would also say ominously,
1:18:56
Speaker 1: quote unquote, they will soon find out about everything. So
1:19:00
Speaker 1: whether that was prophecy, a bravado, or something else, entirely
1:19:06
Speaker 1: no one knows, and I don't think we ever will know.
1:19:09
Speaker 1: But certainly an odd thing to say if he didn't
1:19:12
Speaker 1: actually know something. And that brings us to my favorite
1:19:16
Speaker 1: the fringe theories. So a YETI theory traces back to
1:19:19
Speaker 1: a single joke from the evening O Toorton, where they
1:19:24
Speaker 1: had included a line about a snowman living near O Toorton,
1:19:27
Speaker 1: And the case file doesn't even contain the original document,
1:19:29
Speaker 1: only a typed transcript. But despite this, the joke has
1:19:33
Speaker 1: been cited by multiple documentaries as evidence of an actual encounter.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: I want to believe yet He's a real but I
1:19:39
Speaker 1: don't believe this one, or unfortunately, I don't believe this one.
1:19:41
Speaker 1: But that brings us to the UFO theory, which draws
1:19:43
Speaker 1: on the Orange sphere sightings and Ivanov's nineteen ninety endorsement.
1:19:47
Speaker 1: Remember Ivanov said when he was really old and dying
1:19:51
Speaker 1: that this was UFO's This was the theory. But more
1:19:54
Speaker 1: grounded analysis attribute those lights to our seven missile launches
1:19:58
Speaker 1: from backanor that the campsite sat directly on the flight
1:20:02
Speaker 1: corridor to a Soviet nuclear testing ground, as we spoke
1:20:05
Speaker 1: about before. But one investigator proposed the hikers were actually
1:20:08
Speaker 1: killed after being mistaken for escaped prisoners from nearby Gulag camps. However,
1:20:14
Speaker 1: no prison breakouts were recorded during this period, and another
1:20:17
Speaker 1: theory that investigator put forward proposed that the hikers were
1:20:20
Speaker 1: actually killed after being mistaken for escaped prisoners from the
1:20:24
Speaker 1: nearby Gulag camps. However, no prison breakouts were recorded during
1:20:28
Speaker 1: this period, so I don't really buy that one either.
1:20:31
Speaker 1: So far, it's military UFOs for me or espionage and
1:20:34
Speaker 1: a little bit of hypothermia. But others have suggested just
1:20:37
Speaker 1: a fight within the group stemming from romantic jealousy, perhaps
1:20:41
Speaker 1: spiraling into violence, and Donnie Ekar called this highly implausible,
1:20:46
Speaker 1: though the diary show no meaningful friction, and the group
1:20:49
Speaker 1: seemed very tightly knit, and no human could have delivered
1:20:53
Speaker 1: those injuries found at the ravines, so that one is
1:20:55
Speaker 1: just a put so. In twenty twenty, the case was
1:20:58
Speaker 1: closed and an avalanche was cited as the cause, and
1:21:02
Speaker 1: the family said no, and they had been saying no
1:21:05
Speaker 1: for sixty years, and Kolvatov's mother was never properly told
1:21:09
Speaker 1: her son had died, and after his funeral she lost
1:21:13
Speaker 1: the use of her legs because the shock had taken
1:21:16
Speaker 1: them from her. And du Benina's father went to the
1:21:19
Speaker 1: morgue and fainted when he pulled back the sheet covering
1:21:22
Speaker 1: his daughter's body. And in nineteen ninety nine Yuri Kunsevik,
1:21:25
Speaker 1: the twelve year old boy who had attended five of
1:21:28
Speaker 1: the funerals and had never forgotten the color of their skin,
1:21:31
Speaker 1: established the Dyatlav Foundation in Yekn Turremberg, and its mission
1:21:35
Speaker 1: is to keep the investigation live and to maintain the
1:21:39
Speaker 1: Dyatlav Museum and to make sure nobody stopped asking questions
1:21:44
Speaker 1: is The families and the foundation spent decades pressuring authorities
1:21:47
Speaker 1: to reopen the case, and when the twenty nineteen reinvestigation
1:21:51
Speaker 1: finally produced its answer. The foundation's lawyer rejected it immediately,
1:21:55
Speaker 1: but the families had always believed the cause was technological.
1:21:58
Speaker 1: Whether that was military, chemical, or nuclear was uncertain. That
1:22:03
Speaker 1: I really do believe it, oh, especially in today's time.
1:22:07
Speaker 1: Man like our government absolutely disgusting. So I must safely
1:22:15
Speaker 1: assume the Russian government equally if not more. I'm I
1:22:20
Speaker 1: have just no doubts. I don't know, but let me
1:22:22
Speaker 1: know what you guys think down below. But a Swiss
1:22:24
Speaker 1: researcher involved in the twenty twenty one study clearly understood
1:22:28
Speaker 1: the resistance, saying quote for relatives, the avalanche theory is
1:22:32
Speaker 1: hard to stomach because it suggests that these seasoned hikers
1:22:35
Speaker 1: were somehow to blame for their own deaths unquote. But
1:22:40
Speaker 1: still six decades later, the families still do not accept
1:22:43
Speaker 1: any official explanation. And then there was Uri Uden, the
1:22:47
Speaker 1: one who turned back, and he carried the weight of
1:22:51
Speaker 1: that decision for the rest of his life, and he
1:22:53
Speaker 1: would never get married or have children, and he held
1:22:56
Speaker 1: onto the small teddy bearer Dubnina had pressed into his
1:23:00
Speaker 1: hands when he left, and he spent years at the
1:23:02
Speaker 1: magnesium plant near Perm, then moved into city government until
1:23:06
Speaker 1: he retired, but he at least kept hiking, and his
1:23:10
Speaker 1: theories about what killed his friends changed over the years,
1:23:14
Speaker 1: but they always aimed toward something man made, and he
1:23:17
Speaker 1: believed they had stumbled into military test chemicals, radiation, or explosives,
1:23:23
Speaker 1: just something of that nature, just like the families. He
1:23:25
Speaker 1: never once accepted a natural cause explanation, and in his
1:23:29
Speaker 1: final years, Juden withdrew from the world, and he mentioned
1:23:33
Speaker 1: to friends that he was working on a novel about
1:23:35
Speaker 1: what happened to the past, but no one ever found
1:23:37
Speaker 1: a manuscript, just stacks of newspaper clippings about the case
1:23:41
Speaker 1: and scattered notes which appeared to be fragments of a
1:23:44
Speaker 1: man still trying to solve the thing that had defined
1:23:47
Speaker 1: his entire life. And Uden died on April twenty seventh,
1:23:50
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, at the age of seventy five. His heart
1:23:53
Speaker 1: would finally give out and his ashes would be laid
1:23:56
Speaker 1: to rest beside the remains of his seven friends he
1:24:00
Speaker 1: lost on that tragic night, and the mountain pass was
1:24:03
Speaker 1: renamed in the group's honor, and a monument stands at
1:24:06
Speaker 1: the cemetery, and a memorial plaque was unveiled in Solyikomsk
1:24:11
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen for Juden and the University Touring Club
1:24:14
Speaker 1: now bears Igor Diatlov's name, and many pictures survived. With
1:24:19
Speaker 1: dozens of pictures pulled from the group's cameras. The searchers
1:24:23
Speaker 1: recovered four of them, along with loose rolls of film,
1:24:26
Speaker 1: and they showcase faces in the snow, smiling, shots of
1:24:30
Speaker 1: gear being sorted, and trail markings on trees, and the
1:24:34
Speaker 1: landscape closing in as the weather worsened. In the last
1:24:37
Speaker 1: unidentifiable frames on Kravonishenko's film shows figures barely visible through
1:24:43
Speaker 1: the wind and snow on the afternoon of February first,
1:24:47
Speaker 1: and these are the final images of the nine alive.
1:24:51
Speaker 1: And then there is frame number thirty four, and this
1:24:54
Speaker 1: is the last exposure on Kravonisheko's role, and it's completely blurred,
1:24:58
Speaker 1: nothing but darkness in a bright eight sided glow near
1:25:02
Speaker 1: the center and faint smears of lights scattered around it.
1:25:05
Speaker 1: And it has fueled decades of speculation into some of
1:25:08
Speaker 1: the fringe theories. The camera experts offer a dull explanation,
1:25:12
Speaker 1: saying the bright shape matches the eight bladed aperture inside
1:25:16
Speaker 1: the undisturbed twenty two lens that was fitted to his camera.
1:25:20
Speaker 1: That particular lens has a barrel that collapses for storage,
1:25:24
Speaker 1: and if it isn't pulled all the way out before firing,
1:25:27
Speaker 1: the result is just blurry with diaphragm shaped blobs of light,
1:25:31
Speaker 1: which is exactly what the frame shows, and tests run
1:25:34
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve produced identical results, and the camera shutter
1:25:38
Speaker 1: was found half wound up, which suggests the exposure happened unintentionally,
1:25:43
Speaker 1: most likely while someone was advancing the film, and the
1:25:46
Speaker 1: investigators who processed the camera threw the image out thinking
1:25:49
Speaker 1: it was too degraded to mean anything. And it's almost
1:25:52
Speaker 1: certainly nothing, but almost certainly is not definitely, And that
1:25:58
Speaker 1: gap between what can be explained and what can be
1:26:02
Speaker 1: proven is where this entire case lives. Anyway. By two
1:26:06
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, the group's diaries had passed into Russia's
1:26:08
Speaker 1: public domain, and the original negatives from Kravenishenko's camera that
1:26:13
Speaker 1: were held for decades in Ivanov's personal collection eventually were
1:26:16
Speaker 1: handed over to the Diatlaw Foundation by Ivanov's daughter in
1:26:20
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. But new researchers keep coming, and over
1:26:23
Speaker 1: the years the case has been sealed unsealed reopened, shut down, declassified,
1:26:29
Speaker 1: and reclassified, and pieces of the file remain unaccounted for
1:26:33
Speaker 1: to this day. Around seventy five theories in total have
1:26:36
Speaker 1: been examined, and every theory explains some of the evidence,
1:26:40
Speaker 1: but no theory explains all of it. So what happened
1:26:43
Speaker 1: on the night of February first to second, nineteen fifty
1:26:46
Speaker 1: nine on the slope of Dead Mountain remains formally and
1:26:51
Speaker 1: functionally unsolved. But please let me know what you guys
1:26:55
Speaker 1: think down below. A lot of you guys suggested this,
1:26:58
Speaker 1: so I'm sure a lot of you guys have a pinion,
1:27:00
Speaker 1: So please let me know below. Also let me know
1:27:02
Speaker 1: what other cases you want me to dive into. I
1:27:05
Speaker 1: always read the comments and until then I will see
1:27:07
Speaker 1: your beautiful face. Okay, stay safe out there.
1:27:10
Speaker 2: Bye bye,