0:00 The tent was sliced open from the inside.0:03 That’s the first piece of evidence in the Dyatlov Pass incident that doesn’t fit.0:09 Last week, we wrestled with the Somerton Man, and that single, untraceable poison that left no clues.0:17 This week, we have the opposite problem.0:20 The clues are everywhere, and none of them agree.0:24 The file on the nine hikers who died in the Ural Mountains in February 1959 is not a story of what happened.0:32 It’s a catalogue of things that could not have happened, all at once.0:38 Let’s open the file.0:39 Igor Dyatlov leads a group of eight other experienced hikers, mostly students from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, into the northern mountains.0:50 They are skilled.0:52 They are prepared.0:53 Their last journal entries and photographs show them in good spirits, building a camp on the slopes of a mountain the indigenous Mansi people call Kholat Syakhl, or "Dead Mountain." Then, silence.1:08 When the search party arrives weeks later, they find the tent.1:13 It's abandoned, half-buried in snow, and sliced open from within.1:18 All the group's belongings—their boots, their warm coats, their food—are still inside.1:25 Footprints lead away from the tent, downhill.1:28 Some are from bare feet.1:30 Some from socks.1:32 Nine sets of prints, walking calmly, side-by-side, for nearly a kilometer into the woods.1:38 There, the first two bodies are found.1:41 Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko.1:45 Under a large cedar tree, beside the remains of a small fire.1:49 They are dressed only in their underwear.1:52 Their hands are torn up from trying to climb the tree.1:57 Three more bodies, including Dyatlov’s, are found between the tree and the camp, lying as if they were trying to return.2:06 All five died of hypothermia.2:08 Case closed?2:09 Not even close.2:10 It took two more months for the spring thaw to reveal the other four.2:16 They were in a ravine, seventy-five meters from the cedar tree, buried under four meters of snow.2:23 And this is where the file breaks.2:26 Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignolles had a fractured skull.2:30 Alexander Zolotaryov and Lyudmila Dubinina had chests crushed with a force, the coroner wrote, equivalent to a CAR crash.2:39 Yet, they had no external wounds.2:42 No bruises.2:43 And Dubinina...2:44 was missing her tongue, her eyes, and part of her face.2:48 So what does it all add up to?2:50 The official explanation, recently reaffirmed in 2019, is an avalanche.2:56 A slab avalanche, they say, forced them to cut their way out and flee.3:01 But investigators in 1959 found no signs of an avalanche.3:06 The slope was too gentle.3:08 The tent itself wasn't even fully buried.3:11 And an avalanche does not selectively crush three people’s ribs while leaving no external marks.3:18 It doesn’t explain the calm walk away from the tent.3:22 It’s a neat answer for a messy file.3:25 What about a military weapons test?3:28 There were reports of strange orange spheres in the sky that night.3:33 It could explain the radiation found on some of their clothes.3:38 It could explain the government closing the investigation and sealing the files for decades.3:45 But what weapon causes these injuries?3:48 What weapon makes nine experienced hikers abandon their shelter in sub-zero temperatures without their boots?3:57 Every theory you apply just creates more questions.4:01 Infrasound causing panic?4:03 It doesn't crush a man's chest.4:05 An attack by the local Mansi people?4:08 The injuries don't match, and there were no other footprints.4:12 A fight among the hikers?4:14 The evidence shows them walking calmly, together, away from the tent.4:20 Each clue contradicts the next.4:22 They fled in panic, but walked calmly.4:25 They died from the cold, but some had injuries from a force they couldn't survive.4:32 They were found with traces of radiation, but no source was ever identified.4:37 The file isn't empty.4:39 It’s overflowing.4:40 The problem isn’t a lack of evidence.4:43 The problem is that the evidence itself is impossible.
