Dyatlov Pass Incident - 45 years on and no closer to solving the World's greatest mystery !!

Cracked.com wrote:#6. The Dyatlov Pass Incident
On February 2nd, 1959, during the cold winter on Kholat Syakhl ("Mountain of the Dead") in Russia, nine intrepid ski hikers decided to do what they do best, which is ski hike, whatever the hell that is. On February 26th, the first of their very dead bodies turned up. Man, who would have thought such a tragedy could strike on "The Mountain of the Dead?"

But it was the discovery of the campgrounds that added the icing to the creepy-as-Frak cake. The ski hikers' tent was shredded. The skiers were scattered around the grounds wearing either very sparse clothing or just their underwear. Three of them were found with crushed ribs and fractured skulls, but no visible defense marks or other signs of a struggle.

Oh yeah, and one of the bodies was missing a tongue.

In case you weren't already on the phone with Mulder and Scully, trace levels of radiation were supposedly found on their bodies. The official statement on what happened was about as vague and ass-covering as possible, saying it was caused by an "unknown compelling force." In laymen's terms this means, "Frak if we know."

The story has become an internet sensation over the years, with many people blaming aliens, and then ghosts, and then the yeti, or possibly all of them working in tandem.


"So we're agreed then: We tear up their tents, take a lady's tongue, and never tell a soul."

The Obvious Answer:

So there's six things that freak people out about this one:

1. The no-tongued woman

2. A mysterious orange tan on the dead bodies

3. The ripped tents

4. The hikers' lack of clothing

5. The crushing damage done to three of the hikers

6. The traces of radioactivity

The big fact that gets lost in the re-telling of this story is that the bodies weren't found until weeks later. It's not like somebody turned their back, then five minutes later all their friends were dead and half naked.



That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate. Laying out in the sun surrounded by white snow for days also accounts for the weird tan.

The trauma and the destroyed tent points to an avalanche. Their state of undress can be explained by paradoxical undressing, a known behavior of hypothermia victims when their brains start to freeze and malfunction. In other words, it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a group of injured avalanche victims wandering around in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.



What about the radioactivity? Or stranger details that turn up in some accounts, like orange lights in the sky? Well, there's the fact that none of that stuff turns up in the original documents from the incident, and appears to have been added later by people who just can't resist making things spookier than they are.

It's those later accounts that have stuck in the public memory, because so many of the original reports were destroyed (this was the Cold War-era Soviet Union, which treated casserole recipes as state secrets).

So none of the details on their own prove anything other than a tragic hiking accident. The conspiracy-loving public widely reject this, too busy lighting their torches and getting their pitchforks to go hunt down an, "unknown compelling force."



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries-with-really-obvious-solutions.html#ixzz3OEV2MAXz

Derbymanc wrote:

Cracked.com wrote:#6. The Dyatlov Pass Incident
On February 2nd, 1959, during the cold winter on Kholat Syakhl ("Mountain of the Dead") in Russia, nine intrepid ski hikers decided to do what they do best, which is ski hike, whatever the hell that is. On February 26th, the first of their very dead bodies turned up. Man, who would have thought such a tragedy could strike on "The Mountain of the Dead?"

But it was the discovery of the campgrounds that added the icing to the creepy-as-Frak cake. The ski hikers' tent was shredded. The skiers were scattered around the grounds wearing either very sparse clothing or just their underwear. Three of them were found with crushed ribs and fractured skulls, but no visible defense marks or other signs of a struggle.

Oh yeah, and one of the bodies was missing a tongue.

In case you weren't already on the phone with Mulder and Scully, trace levels of radiation were supposedly found on their bodies. The official statement on what happened was about as vague and ass-covering as possible, saying it was caused by an "unknown compelling force." In laymen's terms this means, "Frak if we know."

The story has become an internet sensation over the years, with many people blaming aliens, and then ghosts, and then the yeti, or possibly all of them working in tandem.


"So we're agreed then: We tear up their tents, take a lady's tongue, and never tell a soul."

The Obvious Answer:

So there's six things that freak people out about this one:

1. The no-tongued woman

2. A mysterious orange tan on the dead bodies

3. The ripped tents

4. The hikers' lack of clothing

5. The crushing damage done to three of the hikers

6. The traces of radioactivity

The big fact that gets lost in the re-telling of this story is that the bodies weren't found until weeks later. It's not like somebody turned their back, then five minutes later all their friends were dead and half naked.



That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate. Laying out in the sun surrounded by white snow for days also accounts for the weird tan.

The trauma and the destroyed tent points to an avalanche. Their state of undress can be explained by paradoxical undressing, a known behavior of hypothermia victims when their brains start to freeze and malfunction. In other words, it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a group of injured avalanche victims wandering around in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.



What about the radioactivity? Or stranger details that turn up in some accounts, like orange lights in the sky? Well, there's the fact that none of that stuff turns up in the original documents from the incident, and appears to have been added later by people who just can't resist making things spookier than they are.

It's those later accounts that have stuck in the public memory, because so many of the original reports were destroyed (this was the Cold War-era Soviet Union, which treated casserole recipes as state secrets).

So none of the details on their own prove anything other than a tragic hiking accident. The conspiracy-loving public widely reject this, too busy lighting their torches and getting their pitchforks to go hunt down an, "unknown compelling force."



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries-with-really-obvious-solutions.html#ixzz3OEV2MAXz

Just for you Trussy, taken from one of cracked.com series of unsolved mysteries that have obvious solutions or have actually been solved.

Derbymanc wrote:It'll be bears and an avalance. I haven't read that piece in a while but the thought that the tents were covered never crossed my mind

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:
Russian trekkers leave a tent in the middle of the night in freezing conditions pretty much naked to their obvious doom

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Their clothes were back in the tent.......

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Their clothes were back in the tent.......

Well unless they were playing strip poker with the Yeti, they still had to take them off.

Tino has solved it everybody !!!!!!! .

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Their clothes were back in the tent.......

Well unless they were playing strip poker with the Yeti, they still had to take them off.

Tino has solved it everybody !!!!!!!     .

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Their clothes were back in the tent.......

Well unless they were playing strip poker with the Yeti, they still had to take them off.

Tino has solved it everybody !!!!!!!     .

You've made a complete Hugh Jackman of quoting that, Beefcake.

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:
Russian trekkers leave a tent in the middle of the night in freezing conditions pretty much naked to their obvious doom

If it's freezing conditions, then they wouldn't have been sleeping or sitting in a tent stark boll*ck naked.  They would have been fully clothed and in a bag.

It's hypothermia. It happens quite often that people in freezing conditions take their pants off as the brain begins to trick them.

Either that, or they got spooked by something, ripped their way out of their tent, but then paused to strip down to their thongs before running away.

I'm gonna hedge my bets on the former.