Stuff You Should Know - The Dyatlov Pass Mystery

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

The incident at Dyatlov Pass is one of the more enduring wilderness mysteries of all time. Russian hikers found in various states of undress, frozen. What happened to them? Why were there weird internal injuries and no outward signs of distress? We'll delve into all the questions in today's episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know, Unsolved Mysteries Edition. How do you pronounce this? Dyatlov. Dyatlov? Dyatlov? Yeah, that's how I've always pronounced it. That's what we're going with, okay?

Dyatlov. Yeah, for some reason I always just, Dyatlov, I always- Oh, that's a good one. I like that one. A bit of a Russian. Dyatlov. Twang.

You say, Dyatlov. Anyway, Dyatlov is the name of a very famous pass in the Ural Mountains, and it was named after, it turns out, a 23-year-old mountaineer, expert outdoors person named Igor Dyatlov. I always want to call him Yuri,

because there's like five Uries in his group, but he was the only Igor. Yeah, and I did not know that this pass was named for him. And when I first started researching this, I was like, that's cool. That's cool. Shall we tell the story? Yeah, let's.

People might, have you, you'd heard of this before, right? Yeah, and I believe we may have touched on this in a top 10 once. Maybe. Or a video that we did, but whatever it was, it was a little tiny short thing.

I mean, we mentioned the Gary Matthias disappearance was called the American Dyatlov event or disappearance. This is totally different in a lot of ways, in most ways, but you can kind of find some similarities here there. But yeah, let's tell the story, man. All right, so we're talking about a group of students in 1959, early February, from Ural, U-R-A-L State Technical University.

Yeah. Go, what? Go, that's got to be. Fighting Ruskies, the Hammers and Sickles. That sounds good. Okay. The Hammers and Sickles. They were all very well acquainted with camping,

back country hiking and skiing, cross country skiing. So they weren't a bunch of rookies out there. No, no, and that's really important. Like these people were very well experienced with this kind of stuff. Yeah, they knew what they were doing. And there was a group of, how many were there?

Seven? There were 10 total. Oh, 10 total, nine of whom actually went into the woods. The only person to make it out of this trip alive was the one person who stayed back because he wasn't feeling well, stayed behind at the village. That was another Yuri, Yuri Udeen.

YY. Yeah, got a little sick and was bummed in. Little did he know that would have been almost certainly a life-saving moment for him. Yeah, he had rheumatism. He came down with a bout of rheumatism and actually stayed back in this little tiny village where they set off from.

And to say that they were like in the middle of nowhere is an understatement. Like they were in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, not a lot going on there. And I think like a two plus week trip. And they were trying to get to Mount Ordeten, right? Yeah, Or-T-O-T-E-N, Ordeten? Or-T-O-T-E-N.

Sure. Or-T-O-T-E-N. Or-T-O-T-E-N. They were trying to make it to this mountain, which is part of the Euro mountains. And to get there, they basically cross country skied. They climbed mountains to get to this mountain. They had to camp out in this like negative 30 degree weather.

Just crazy nuts, middle of nowhere. And they were having the time of their lives these students were. Yeah, I mean, there is footage by way of photographs because they took a lot of pictures. If you go through and look at the early parts of this trip, they did look like they were having a lot of fun. They were good pals.

They did a very adorable thing on the way they started making their own little newspaper about the trip. The evening Or-T-O-T-E-N. Yeah, where they would just, this is essentially a little fun diary, like group diary they did. But they put it in the form of a daily newspaper

of their journey, which is very, very cute and sad. Yeah. And one of the ways I saw their group described was that there were two girls in this group and the rest were guys, but that there wasn't any like real sexual tension or rivalries going on. But there was like kind of crushes here, there

and like humorous flirtation, that kind of thing. Just keeping everything real light. Yeah, but it wasn't like Uri betrayed me. Right, nothing like that. And he hooked up with, well, she wasn't named Uri. Hooked up with Zina. Was one of them Zina? Yeah.

There was Zina and then Ludmia. Jerry's just laughing. You try it, Jerry, you can't even talk. You know, she minored in Russian studies. Oh, I had no idea. Did I ever tell you at the time, you me and I went to visit friends in London and we were on our way to go to Moscow for the first time.

Were these the guys that I met in London? Yes. Who now live in LA, Mike and Adam. Oh, they're wonderful. They live in LA now. Welcome to America, dudes. But we went to visit them in London and found out that because Adam, I think majored in Russian studies

or Russian literature, I think, he's like, you have your visa and we're like, what do you mean? He's like, you have to have a visa to go to Russia. And we're like, I don't think so. No one said anything to us about that. And he's like, no, you definitely do. We call the airline, they're like, yeah,

you don't have a visa? And we're like, how did you not? You mean like a visa card? Right. That's what we thought you meant. And we didn't go to Russia. I think I remember. We ended up going to Mallorca instead last minute.

Oh, well, what a drag. Which, right, we're like, this could have been way worse than it turned out. I think I remember you having plans to go to Russia and I never heard anything. That's why we didn't go. I think I remember at some point in my life being like, that's weird, Josh never talked about Russia.

But you heard me talk about Mallorca. Yeah, it all adds up now. That's, that was all that trip. Interesting. Yeah. So that's my Russia story. That's as close as I've come. That's funny, cause you guys are pretty buttoned up.

I know, we were both like really surprised at ourselves. Out of you guys. Yeah. Thanks for that, Chuck. I appreciate that. About you being buttoned up. Yeah. Yeah.

That sounds like something I would do. Like you need to use it. I don't know. I don't know. That's pretty basic level stuff. I think most people would catch that. All right. So where are they?

They're on the mountain of the dead, which I don't believe we mentioned was the, was the translation that the local indigenous tribe, the Monsi tribe called this mountain. Kalatsyakal. The mountain of the dead. And the Monsi tribe will pop up later in theories. So just we're putting pins in things.

Do you remember in our magic mushroom episode where we talked about like reindeer herder who would feed their reindeer mushrooms and then drink the pea to trip themselves? I think I do remember that. That's the Monsi. Oh. They're like Siberian nomads, I believe.

Wow. Who know how to party. Yeah. And like the magic mushrooms that their shamans eat and probably their regular people eat too. They're very toxic. And one way to get rid of the toxins is to feed them to reindeer and the reindeer,

the reindeer's kidneys filter out the toxins and then you drink the reindeer pea and the psychoactive stuff is still present in their pea. Wow. Yeah. And they think that possibly, I'm saving this for the Christmas episode. Okay.

Okay. So go ahead, I'm sorry. That's the Monsi people. Yeah, that's the Monsi people. So what they end up doing is they decide on the night of February 2nd to camp in a decidedly sort of odd place. It wasn't so weird, but they were only about a mile

from the tree line where they would have had much better cover and it would have been slightly warmer. And it's just, it makes more sense to camp in the forest than out on this open ridge. Right. But nevertheless, for some reason, they decided to camp there. They think possibly because they didn't want to backtrack

because they would have had to backtrack something to get back to the tree line. Yeah, they would have had to go a mile back down the slope which means that they would have had to go cover that mile up again. And that's what Uri, what's the guy who was his last name? Uri Yudin? Yeah.

That's what he later said in an interview that he thought it was either that, that Diatlov didn't want to backtrack because he was Diatlov's leader, remember? Sure. Or he wanted to practice camping on an exposed mountain slope, which from what I've heard about this guy,

it sounds like something he might do. He might be like, hey, gang, I've got a great idea. Yeah, we've never done this. Right, let's try it. And they would have been able to quite easily. They pitched the camp. But in between pitching camp, and this is February 2nd, 1959,

in between pitching camp and making dinner, something happened. They never got to make dinner. And whatever happened to them happened in between that time on February 2nd, 1959. We'll be back right after this. We'll be back right after this. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you, and so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, that was quite a teaser, my friend. Thank you. You can talk regular now. OK. So the search party didn't go out right away, because Dyatlov had said before, hey, we're going to be back around February 12th,

or maybe a bit longer if we are so inspired to stay out there a bit longer. Or, yeah, if it's going slower than we thought. Right, which is not the, I mean, nowadays, people will be a little more buttoned up like you guys and say a little more specific, maybe, when you're hiking in a place like this. But nevertheless.

Or have like a satellite phone with you or something. But again, so these kids are in the middle of nowhere, totally cut off from contact. It was, we're going in in January? Yeah. You'll hear from us probably around February 12th or so. Yeah, but because he put a wishy-washy timeline on it, it didn't, it wasn't until the 20th

that anyone had any suspicions that anything was wrong. And then not until the 26th that volunteer searchers finally found this camp. Yeah. So it was much, much later. So they found the camp and right out of the gate, they're like, this is a little weird. Yeah.

The tents seem to have been cut from the inside out. That's a very weird thing. Not only that, their boots are here, their clothes are here, their gear is here, their skis, like everything they would need. It was all just abandoned at this camp. Yeah. It looked like they left in a hurry. And then even stranger, from the official report,

and we'll see that that was like, this has gone on for so long and been open to so much interpretation that there's a lot of taint to this legend. A lot of taint. But the official report said that there were maybe eight or nine tracks, the tracks of eight or nine people around these tents.

So that would account for everybody in the party without the addition of other people being on scene. Yeah. And the way they left, like you said, it was almost as if they went and got in their tents, zipped them up, and found a dozen pit vipers in each one. Because they cut out of the tent and ran away

in their underwear, basically. Not all of them in their underwear, but barefoot and with very little clothing, like as if something inside the tent was about to kill them. OK. That's a big, big thing. That's a weird way to leave your camp. So these guys are missing.

And this search party that found the tent in pretty short order, I'm not exactly sure how long it took. But from what I understand, it was the same search. They found the first two bodies. And they found these first two bodies. It was the two Yuri's, Yuri Krivonniashenko and Yuri Doroshenko. Not the third year that stayed back.

No. Because there were literally three Yuri's, right? Yeah. Three out of 10. Right. That's 30% of them were Yuri's. Were Yuri's. So Yuri Krivonniashenko, I just said it again

because I wanted to do better than the first time, and then Yuri Doroshenko, they were found, both of them wearing their underwear. I think they were both barefoot. At the tree line. At the tree line. They call it the big tree. It was a large cypress tree.

So they were, in their underwear, barefoot, dead a mile down the mountain from the camp. Yeah, which is where they said that they probably should have camped for more cover. So very interestingly, supposedly, both of their hands were burned, I saw. Yeah, I saw that they were just beaten up and that there was human flesh found in the bark of the tree.

I didn't see that at all. Yeah. Okay, so this is. As if they had tried to climb it in desperation. Okay, I did see that, that there were like broken branches that indicated climbing. I didn't see there was flesh in the bark. Flesh in the bark.

Okay, so maybe burned hands means like they were raw from climbing the tree. I don't know. But there was signs of a fire. Yeah, there was like a campfire that they had built, and there were unburnt branches kind of collected by it too, right, but they were both dead. And they were the first to discover the two Uries.

Very weird, but nothing that couldn't be accounted for by hypothermia. Yeah, it was being out there in your underwear to begin with, it was the weird part. Again, in like negative 30 degree weather, negative 30 with howling winds. So, ooh, foreshadowing. Okay.

Three more bodies, including our leader, Mr. Dyatlov, they were found between those two points, between the original camp and that tree, and it looked as if they were headed back toward camp. Yeah. The way they were laid out. Like imagine somebody like kind of dying as they're crawling up a slope back toward camp. Right.

Makes sense to me. So let's say that they all kind of went to this tree, and then they started to head out back to camp. To maybe get their gear because they realized we're in a bad spot. All our gear's up there, and we're down here in our underwear and barefoot. And why are we?

Yeah, again. Who knows? Yeah. So they found Igor Dyatlov, Zanada Kolmogorov. Why am I the only one saying their names? I'll say the last one, Rustam Slobodin. Well, even Jerry could have said that one.

So Rustam had about a two and a half inch gash in his head, and a fractured skull. That was very weird. It is weird, but the doctor said that's not what this person died from. Again, all five of these people died from hypothermia, even though this guy has been smashed in the head somehow. Yeah.

So the investigators are like, okay, so far it's weird, but something happened, and then all these people died of hypothermia, okay? Yeah. That didn't hold up when they finally found the other three bodies. Yeah, two months later, four bodies. Yeah, in May, I think after some of the snow melt,

they found four more bodies in a gully downslope from the tree. So there's the tree where the first two bodies were found. Upslope, there were the next three bodies, like they were crawling toward, back toward camp. And then on the other side, downslope of the tree, the last four bodies were found. Yeah, this is where it gets very strange.

Very strange. These bodies, they didn't die from hypothermia. They died of some very weird internal injuries. Some of them had their skulls crushed, two of them had massive chest fractures and broken ribs. One of them was missing her, which one was it? Ludmia Dubnina. She was missing her tongue and part of her mouth and face.

Yeah, she was also missing her eyes, as was one of the other people. And this could have been explained away as maybe an animal ate this stuff, but there was no outside trauma. No, when you looked at these people, it wasn't like you have been clearly hit very hard on the head with a stick or a baseball bat,

or you have had your eyeballs pecked out by a vulture. No outward signs. They didn't find out until later on that all these internal injuries had occurred. Yeah, one of the- That's really strange. Very strange. One of the doctors who examined the bodies

in the official report said that this was like, there was totally out of the capability of any human to inflict these injuries. It was more like the injuries you would see from a car crash. Yeah. And so they would have crushed bones, crushed skulls, but they didn't have any soft tissue damage, right?

Like it wasn't like somebody hit them with an ax, but they had the injuries sustained. They were hit by an ax, but not the outward, like external injuries, like they were crushed by an ax or something. Yeah, although a lot of them were missing soft tissue, which, but no outward signs of that. That's, I just can't figure that one out.

No. So we'll put a pin in that missing soft tissue stuff, okay? Okay. So there was something else that was really peculiar that has never been explained, but at least two of the bodies were found to be, like the clothing they were wearing was radioactive. Yeah, and we should point out too

that some of this clothing they were wearing came off of the other people, I believe some shoes. And one of the women had parts of a wool pants wrapped around her. So they had scavenged some of the clothes from their dead, I guess, or dying compatriots. It's the only thing people can figure out and it contained radiation.

Yeah. But that was the only thing that contained radiation. Right, the fact that they were taking clothes from one another, that makes sense. And you can even say that the people who weren't wearing clothes, you can chalk that up to something called paradoxical undressing.

Yeah, this is odd. Which is found in, I think, something like a quarter of all hypothermia cases that you'll find the person stripped because something in your hypothalamus goes haywire and you feel like your body temperature's actually rising, like you're getting hot when actually it's going down. It's a weird quirk of hypothermia sometimes.

So you can even say like, maybe these people actually shed their clothes purposefully. And then, of course, people who weren't undergoing paradoxical undressing, were taking the clothes and putting it on themselves, totally makes sense. Where did the radiation come from? Why just the clothing?

That is beyond bizarre and it's never been explained to anyone's satisfaction. Yeah, and one more strange-ish thing. Not completely off the charts, but like I said, they found the camera film. That's why we have all these pictures. And the infamous 33rd frame was the last shot on this roll, which showed sort of a series of white lights

or a big white light against black. Could have been nothing, some weird exposure, who knows. But they had the camera set up on like a homemade tripod with a lens cap off, like facing out as if it were, like, hey, let's have this camera ready to take a picture of something that we're seeing out there. Right.

And then, I believe in the weeks previous to this, other hikers had reported seeing like glowing orbs and glowing lights and things like this. Was it the weeks previous or the weeks after? I thought it was previous. I think it was after, or that there was another group that was- This has similar sightings at that time, so who knows.

There was another group that was between 30 and 50 miles away, basically doing the same thing that reported seeing lights around the same time. So who knows, but the fact, and like you said, it's not off the charts, but the fact that I think it was Rustam who had the camera, but didn't have any of his gear or outer wear, but he grabbed his camera, that is pretty bizarre.

Yeah, there was an investigator named Lev Ivanov, he was a lead guy, and he was really into this case, obviously, for a while. He brought a Geiger counter along that apparently just kind of spiked when he was ever around camp. Yeah, he was the one who discovered that there was radioactivity at all.

But they officially closed the case like a month later or something, and they said they listed the cause of death as a compelling natural force. But they could not overcome. Yeah, that's a really vague, creepy statement. Yeah, so that was another thing that really raised everyone's suspicions

was that the investigators came in within three weeks of, I think, finding the last bodies, who again, had not died from hypothermia, but had died from really bizarre, massive internal trauma. They closed the case on it, put it under lock and key, filed it away, is classified, and kept anyone from the area for the next three years, just closed off the area for three years.

And it wasn't until the early 90s that these files were opened again. And so the fact that they had been classified, actually in Soviet Russia, was not that bizarre. They just classified everything. But it was strange that when they declassified these things after the Soviet Union dissolved, that there were big chunks of these files

just totally missing. So who knows, maybe they got misplaced over time, but when you add up all this stuff, the official investigation being hurried, and then classified, and then parts missing later on, that is a little weird. It does suggest to a lot of people that the Soviet government either knew something,

found something, or had some sort of role in this that they didn't want everyone to know about. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, we're gonna come back and talk about some of the leading theories, and debunk some of them right after this. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound, like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be there for you, and so will my husband, Michael. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. So tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, did we mention that two groups of people reported flying objects, or just the one?

I only knew about one. Yeah, there were two groups of people, one that were camping nearby about 30 miles away, and then other reports in that month had been reported. Orange balls of fire, and here's one direct quote. Goodness gracious, orange balls of fire. This is from the written testimony. One person said he saw a shining circular body

fly over the village from southwest to northeast. The shining disc was practically the size of a full moon, a blue-white light surrounded by a blue halo. The halo brightly flashed like the flashes, a distant lightning, and when the body disappeared behind the rise in the sky lit up, in that place for a few more minutes. So that's actually, I mean, not out of the realm of possibility

that that person really did see that, because people have put, have suggested that these were missile tests that they were seeing. Yeah, so should we go with that as theory number one? Yeah, the thing is, is though, the guy, the lead investigator, Lev Ivanov, is that his name? Yeah, Lev Ivanov. He said, I suspect that this is in an interview he gave.

I suspect that at the time, and I'm almost sure now, these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group's death. He didn't go into any more detail about that, and he himself has died of old age now, I believe. But there are a lot of people who say these weird sightings in the sky had something to do with it. Either they irradiated the group,

one of the things, there was a 12-year-old boy from their town of Ikanarina Berg, which was known at the time as Svedlovsk, that he reported that some of them were kind of orange tanned, like weirdly tanned, and that their hair was gray. So a lot of people said irradiated. They were irradiated by UFOs or missile tests or something like that.

You can actually kind of explain the weird tanning, and I've seen a picture of one of them at the morgue, as they were mummified. It was probably one of the members of the group who wasn't found until May, and they were partially mummified by the exposure to the snow for weeks or months. Yeah.

That was probably explained that. Yeah, that makes sense. They were on the pathway, apparently, for what's called the R7 intercontinental ballistic missile launches, but it just doesn't hold water with irradiation only being in their clothes. Yeah, that's very weird. That's like the one thing that isn't quite add up.

Yeah, another explanation for them becoming irradiated is that, yes, they were near a nuclear missile testing site, and that they drank melted snow. Yeah. But again, why would just their clothes, why wouldn't they have become irradiated? I don't know, or any of their gear or the tent or anything. What else we got?

Another one, and this is the most people who claim to be sensible, say this is the explanation. Occam's razor? That it was sure, that it was an avalanche. Mm-hmm. That an avalanche came down the slope because they were camping out on a mountain ridge, face of a mountain, and that an avalanche came

and they knew it was coming, so they cut open their tent and fled into the night and then got caught by hypothermia and died. Makes sense. I mean, that would get most people, especially an experienced group of mountaineers, out of their tents pretty quick. By cutting through it?

Cutting through it, maybe. The thing is, is it doesn't explain why some of them, but not all of them, had massive trauma. Mm-hmm. And again, it certainly doesn't explain the radiation at all. Or the missing tongue. Yes, that was another one. Which was never found, by the way.

No, so the missing tongue I've seen, I saw that it was removed while the girl was alive. Yeah. I'm sorry, her name was Ludmia. Mm-hmm. So, I saw that, but then I also saw that she had been found near a creek, and that it's possible that it had just basically melted away from the water, the action of the water.

Mm-hmm. Here's the problem. This was 1959, the official report was kept under seals for decades, and conjecture was added. You don't know at this point who to believe. There are so many sites out there dedicated to it. Yeah, and there's a 12-year-old reporting from the funeral, like that's the only documentation we have of what they look like.

His name actually is Yuri Kuntsevich. Another Yuri. Another Yuri, and he was that 12-year-old child. He became kind of obsessed with it, and he set up the Dyatlov Museum and the Dyatlov Foundation. And basically, he just keeps the whole thing alive, and is trying to get the government to reopen the case. That kid, yeah.

Wow. So, he really stuck to it. He's really taken advantage. Yeah. What else you got for theories? Well, you know, that tribe, the Monsi tribesmen, there is a theory that they attacked them, but nothing about that holds water.

They didn't have any footsteps in the snow. There were footprints. There were peaceful people by all accounts. Had never done anything like that. There was no reason to do anything like that. So, just go ahead and discount that one. Yeah, doesn't make any sense. Animals attack kind of the same thing.

Same, yeah, they didn't find any tracks. The other thing that, the other reason the avalanche theory doesn't necessarily hold up is there wasn't necessarily any evidence of an avalanche having covered up the thing. Well, in a tent, yeah, it would have swept that tent away in all the gear probably, right? Sure.

Or covered it up. Yeah. Well, it's high winds. There's one theory that maybe one of the members, maybe one of the Uries went out to pee pee, and a wind swept him away and everyone else like ran out to look for him. But this article you found where they're kind of debunking some of this stuff said that it didn't make much sense

that all these experienced people would have behaved this way and just ran out it in their underwear. It would have been a little more of an organized, sensible effort if that had happened. Yeah, you really can't overstate that. The level of experience and the combined, like the group that they formed was like greater than the sum of its parts.

So yeah, it wouldn't have been amateur like that. The one that, and this is the kind of the new fringy, semi-scientific explanation that I find just fascinating, is the infrasound one. Yeah, I mean, we talked about infrasound in one of our episodes. I don't remember which one. Can't remember which one, but this is, it's a phenomenon where wind, and in this area,

they said that this definitely could have happened, where wind collides with the mountain and the trees and everything and produces this low-frequency range sound that has been known to inspire panic and dread, confusion, fear, all the things that would kind of add up in this case. Right, so there's like this really weird, it's very tough to figure out whether that's actually real. Like if you look at the science, the scientific literature behind it,

there's some, but more often than not, it's just somebody claiming on their website that this is real. The literature is not necessarily there, but that's not to say that it's just totally made up. It's like the studies of this stuff hasn't caught up to the, some of the claims on the internet. Yeah. But supposedly there is, from the wind vortices,

they could have produced it on this mountain, right? These little weird tornadoes that would have spun up could have produced these sounds that is below human hearing, the level of human hearing, like a full octave below, but can supposedly produce these weird behaviors that make people freak out. That would explain everything. It would.

Except the tongue and I guess the injuries. Sure. So frustrating. I know. I've seen other ones too, like there was a guy, and we need to mention him a little more. His name was Semyon Zolotarov, Zolotaryov. Man, this has been tough.

His name was Semyon Zolotaryov. He was 38. He wasn't a member of the group. He was an add-on toward the end who was out there with another group that he couldn't get coordinated. So he ended up saying, like, hey, can I come with you guys? And at first, apparently the group was not all that happy about him being there, but from what I understand,

he really kind of earned his place in there. For a while, people were like, who was this guy? This is a mystery dude. Maybe the KGB was involved. Maybe he was KGB. He was definitely ex-military, but they, and they actually exhumed him to find out if the person who was buried in his grave as him was him.

And they did a, they did like a skull. They took a picture of his skull and superimposed it under a known picture of him. Supposedly it was a perfect match. But then they took the extra step of comparing the DNA of the corpse in the grave with the DNA of a known relative. Yeah. And it does not match. Oh, okay. I saw that.

I didn't know that's who that, I didn't know he was a non. He wasn't an original member of the group. Yeah, he wasn't in the club. So that, so some people are like, there's KGB was in on this or he had something weird to do with it. It was a little weird for sure. And he was one of the ones who suffered internal broken, or broken ribs, obviously internal.

And he also became the editor-in-chief of their daily paper. Right. It's very strange. He's like, if it bleeds, it leads, print it. You got anything else? Oh man, we could do this for hours, but no. And if you have, if you're obsessed with the Dyatlov incident, we want to know what we got right and what we got wrong. Anything you want to specify, we're happy to hear.

Yeah. And I think we just officially became the 300th podcast to cover this topic. Yeah, for sure. Hopefully we did it some justice. If you want to know more about the Dyatlov past incident, you can type those words and do, well, the internet, and it'll give you all sorts of crazy stuff. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

All right. So this one is a bit long, but this is a Josh request. Oh, this one's good. It's a mystery. It is a mystery. And this is from Corey in Joy-Z City. Hey guys, at the open of your recent episode on Tsunamis, you both expressed disbelief that the topic had never been covered. In fact, you guys both said you could have sworn you'd already covered it, and you each went back multiple times to check.

Even after checking three times, you both admitted to being quote paranoid, and quote, that it had somehow been done before. And just like you guys, I was surprised to find out it had never been covered and began to wonder why I had fuzzy memories. So I did a little digging, relistening to old episodes on similar topics. It turns out the three of us are not the only ones convinced of this existing episode, the existence of this episode.

Apparently the 2014 episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck also believed in the existence. In the Rogue Waves episode, right? Correct. Yes. In the September 2014 show about Rogue Waves at about 28 minutes in, Chuck says, and I'll do this as Chuck. Okay. One of the last things we should cover, Josh, is the difference between Rogue Waves and Tsunamis,

but we've already done an episode on Tsunamis. And Josh? That was a great shock. I appreciate that. I've been worrying on it. And at this point, Josh chimes in to confirm the existence. Do you want to confirm it as Josh? My name is Josh, and I'm confirming the existence of that episode.

I think is what I said roughly. I think so. And you guys go on to cover the topic quickly, seemingly in agreement that an in-depth explanation isn't necessary since it already existed. Man. This opens the door to many questions, guys. Did any listeners write in after Rogue Waves to ask where the Tsunami episode was? Cory, I don't remember.

I don't either. Surely with so many listeners who take pride in having listened to every episode of the show, someone should have noticed. I agree. Why were you guys so convinced of the existence of the Tsunami episode in 2014? I don't know, Cory. Wouldn't Jerry notice? No.

That's a no. Is it possible that the lost episode on Tsunamis was the tipping point for a sequence of events leading to a doomsday scenario, and humans from the future were forced to travel back in time in order to try and expunge it from the historical record? It's possible, Cory. That's where my money is. Yeah. But why?

What did we say in there that was so ghastly that it could have brought about the end of humanity? Don't know. There's no way to find out, either, because it's been expunged by the future people. So, again, Cory from Jersey City, one of my favorite places. Thanks, Cory. Our buddy John lives there. Oh, no, he lives in Hoboken. Or is it Jersey City?

Who? Shout out to John Bindell, either way. Oh, John. Hey, John. He looks at Manhattan out of his window. I know that. That could be anywhere. Oh, that's true.

Yeah, you might be thinking of Brooklyn. No. Thanks a lot, Cory. That was a fantastic email. So much so, I just kept pressuring Chuck to read it, and he did. And I think it worked out well, as we can all agree, right? Yes. Thank you for reading it, Chuck.

Certainly. If you want to get in touch with this, you can go to stuffyshanot.com and find us on all of our social media is there, and then you can also send us an email to stuffpodcastathousestuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. We're going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. About my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye.

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