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Speaker 1: Alexey could not believe what he was hearing. As he

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Speaker 1: sat dumbfounded in the cold and sterile office in front

3
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Speaker 1: of three stone faced party officials. He begged them to reconsider.

4
00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:26,239
Speaker 1: It had been a week since the body of his

5
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Speaker 1: twenty three year old son, Georgie had been discovered, and

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Speaker 1: although Alexey had long since given up hope that his

7
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Speaker 1: son might be found alive, he had not been prepared

8
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Speaker 1: for the grief of finally knowing. Now having made the

9
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Speaker 1: trip to Evedeal, he was at the very least hoping

10
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Speaker 1: to take his son's body back home with him to Spurtlovsk.

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Speaker 1: But the party officials had other ideas. A decision had

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Speaker 1: been made that all of the bodies would be buried

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Speaker 1: together in Evedal in a mass grave. The families were

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Speaker 1: invited to attend, but there would be no public announcement

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Speaker 1: and only a small obelisk to mark the spot. But

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Speaker 1: Swerdlovsk is his home, implored Alexey. That is where he lived,

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Speaker 1: where he made friends. And did we bury him in Evedal?

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Speaker 1: How are we to visit him? But the decision was final,

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Speaker 1: and besides, they said, all the other families had agreed

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Speaker 1: to it. Two by two, the parents of eager Zena, Yuri,

21
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Speaker 1: and Roostick were called in to face the hastily assembled

22
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Speaker 1: committee and given the exact same distressing news, each being

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Speaker 1: informed that the others had consented to it. The parents

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Speaker 1: struggled to process what they were being told. Not only

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Speaker 1: did it seem the authorities were trying to cover the

26
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Speaker 1: whole instant up, but they were asking the parents to

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Speaker 1: become complicit in it too. The Party was in effect

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Speaker 1: asking for nothing less than their co operation in erasing

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Speaker 1: the history of their children's lives. Like most people in

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, the parents were well aware of the

31
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Speaker 1: length the state would go to preserve their methods, but

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Speaker 1: not to them, not this time, and it was of

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Speaker 1: course a lie. Not one of the sets of parents

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Speaker 1: had agreed to their plan. On realizing the deception, the

35
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Speaker 1: parents fought back and eventually the party relented, but only

36
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Speaker 1: on one condition. The students could be buried in spurred Lovsk,

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Speaker 1: but the funerals were to be held together to minimize

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Speaker 1: the attention. With the exception of Georgis, who was a

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Speaker 1: Russian Orthodox, would be granted a separate funeral at an

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Speaker 1: appropriate location. The funeral procession would also be strictly controlled,

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Speaker 1: with the coffins being taken directly from the morgue to

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Speaker 1: the cemetery. The parents had requested that the bodies be

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Speaker 1: taken past the Ural Polytechnic Institute campus, but permission was refused. However,

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Speaker 1: attempts to minimize the publicity of the event would ultimately

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00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:20,919
Speaker 1: prove futile in a rare moment of public defiance over

46
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Speaker 1: state control. On Monday, the ninth of March nineteen fifty nine,

47
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Speaker 1: over a thousand mourners touched by the death of the

48
00:03:28,919 --> 00:03:33,600
Speaker 1: young hikers took to the streets to join the procession. Together,

49
00:03:33,840 --> 00:03:36,360
Speaker 1: they marched with the families as they made their way

50
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Speaker 1: to Mikhailovskoy's Cemetery behind two trucks laden with the bodies

51
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Speaker 1: of Yuri Rustick Zena and eager twelve year old Yuri

52
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Speaker 1: Kon Savage lived with his parents in the east of

53
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Speaker 1: the city center, just opposite the cemetery. He watched in

54
00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:58,480
Speaker 1: silence from his apartment window as the mourners slowly drifted

55
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Speaker 1: into view. Yuri didn't know then just how exactly the

56
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Speaker 1: tragedy of what happened to the Diatlov team would shape

57
00:04:06,440 --> 00:04:10,920
Speaker 1: his life, but on this morning. What preoccupied Yuri was

58
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Speaker 1: not the bodies of the students laid out in their

59
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Speaker 1: open caskets, or the sheer number of people attending their funeral,

60
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Speaker 1: but rather a handful of suspicious looking men dotted about

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Speaker 1: the crowd. Unlike the rest of the crowd, these men,

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Speaker 1: dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to pay little attention to

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Speaker 1: the bodies or the eventual service that took place. Instead,

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Speaker 1: they seemed to be watching the people. Yuri could have

65
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Speaker 1: sworn they were k GB, members of the secret Soviet police,

66
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Speaker 1: sent to keep a close eye on the proceedings. After

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Speaker 1: the bodies were finally laid to rest, with Georgy's being

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Speaker 1: buried the following day, Ordinarily, the families might now finally

69
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Speaker 1: be able to grieve, but there was some thing glaringly absent.

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Speaker 1: Despite the bodies having been discovered ten days previously, there

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Speaker 1: was still no hint of an explanation from the authorities

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Speaker 1: as to just how exactly the students had died. What

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Speaker 1: could possibly have driven nine experienced and strong hikers from

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Speaker 1: the shelter and warmth of their tent to meet their

75
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Speaker 1: deaths amidst the driving snow and Subsei temperatures outside, and

76
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Speaker 1: lest it be forgotten, there were still four people unaccounted for.

77
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Speaker 1: The day after Georgy's funeral, friends and family gathered together

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Speaker 1: at the Kryvanischenko home for Georgy's wake. It was, of course,

79
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Speaker 1: a somber affair, but one also unsurprisingly dominated the mystery

80
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Speaker 1: of his death. Despite the secrecy of the police investigation,

81
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Speaker 1: due to the large number of volunteers involved, rumors had

82
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Speaker 1: inevitably begun to circulate. Time and again. Attention seemed to

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Speaker 1: turn to the mysterious lights and orbs witnessed in the

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00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:24,479
Speaker 1: surrounding area. But Georgi's father, Alexey, had grown weary of

85
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Speaker 1: such talk, deeming it irrelevant since the lights had been

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Speaker 1: seen two weeks after the students were thought to have died,

87
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Speaker 1: and so it was with little patience that he received

88
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Speaker 1: two more students that night, eager to share their story

89
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Speaker 1: of strange lights spotted in the night sky. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to hear it, said Alexey. But no, they said,

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Speaker 1: you don't understand. We saw the lights on February the first,

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Speaker 1: the same night that Datlov's team left their tent. The

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Speaker 1: two students had been part of another team led by

94
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Speaker 1: UPI teacher Annatolly Shumkov. The team had been climbing Kisstop Mountain,

95
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Speaker 1: roughly twenty five miles to the south of where Daklov's

96
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Speaker 1: team had camped on Kolatsiakl when they saw it. With

97
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Speaker 1: the mercury dropping to as low as minus thirty degrees centigrade,

98
00:07:21,320 --> 00:07:24,080
Speaker 1: the team were just about to begin their descent when

99
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Speaker 1: there was a sudden flash of silver in the sky,

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Speaker 1: followed by a white spark that was seen flying upwards

101
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Speaker 1: from the O'tauton Valley. Moments later, an eerie sound of

102
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Speaker 1: thunder rumbled across the mountain. As Shumkov later recounted, this

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00:07:41,280 --> 00:07:44,520
Speaker 1: thing flew silently and slowly from the south to the

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Speaker 1: north over the ridge of the Urals. It was glowing

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Speaker 1: quite brightly the way it illuminated the hovering clouds at

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Speaker 1: the height of two point five to three kilometers, it

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Speaker 1: was very strange. For Alex c and many others, it

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Speaker 1: was hard to resist the increasingly popular theory that the

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00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:08,520
Speaker 1: students had unwittingly strayed into the path of some kind

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Speaker 1: of secret weapons test. In nineteen forty five, unbeknownst to

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Speaker 1: most of the planet, a new world was about to emerge.

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Speaker 1: It began at five twenty nine am on July sixteenth,

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Speaker 1: with the detonation of a bomb in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the Hornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico. The bomb

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Speaker 1: was named Trinity, and its subsequent explosion marked the first

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Speaker 1: successful deployment of the atomic bomb. Later that year, the

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Speaker 1: atomic age would formally announce itself in a mushroom cloud

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Speaker 1: of death and destruction when Little Boy and Fat Man

119
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Speaker 1: were detonated over the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Speaker 1: The bombs would go some way to ushering an end

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Speaker 1: to the largest scale global conflict the human race had

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Speaker 1: ever known, but it would also mark the beginning of

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Speaker 1: a seemingly endless arms race that to this day continues

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Speaker 1: to haunt every militant aspect of major foreign diplomacy. The

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Speaker 1: Stalin's government in the US SR, the destruction of Hiroshima

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Speaker 1: and Nagasaki made it clear just how far they lagged

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Speaker 1: behind the military might and ingenuity of the United States.

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Speaker 1: What followed was an intense and accelerated program of nuclear development,

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Speaker 1: but also an intense culture of military secrecy in competition

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Speaker 1: with the US, fueled by the mutual distrust of each

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Speaker 1: other's ideologies. It was a program that, in its eagerness

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Speaker 1: to establish itself, would result in a number of catastrophic

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Speaker 1: new Clear disasters, such as the Kishtim disaster that Georgi,

134
00:10:04,679 --> 00:10:09,160
Speaker 1: only two years previously, had helped to clean up. Could

135
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Speaker 1: it be that the students had found themselves pitching their

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Speaker 1: tent under a secret weapons testing zone. It was a

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00:10:17,240 --> 00:10:20,360
Speaker 1: theory making increasing sense to those who had little information

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00:10:20,440 --> 00:10:25,240
Speaker 1: to go on. However, for lead investigator lev Ivanov, who

139
00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:28,760
Speaker 1: was in full possession of all available evidence, what puzzled

140
00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:31,880
Speaker 1: him the most was that although the multiple sightings of

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00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:36,000
Speaker 1: strange lights may have been consistent with ballistic weapons, the

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00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:40,840
Speaker 1: injuries to the bodies weren't. It's possible, of course, that

143
00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:44,720
Speaker 1: the sound of such weapons detonating nearby might have caused

144
00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:47,480
Speaker 1: the team to flee the tent in a panic. But

145
00:10:47,679 --> 00:10:52,280
Speaker 1: might the strange lights have been something else entirely, something

146
00:10:52,320 --> 00:10:58,200
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more other worldly. Nikolai Aniumov was a

147
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Speaker 1: local Manci tribesman who had been part of the team

148
00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:05,920
Speaker 1: that first examined the hiker's tent. Like everyone else, he

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00:11:05,960 --> 00:11:09,600
Speaker 1: had been deeply troubled by the student's disappearance, but the

150
00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:14,480
Speaker 1: real fear he harbored would remain unspoken. That was until

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00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:18,439
Speaker 1: the first mention of the orbs in the sky. For

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00:11:18,520 --> 00:11:22,000
Speaker 1: the Mansie. All around the region where the bodies were discovered,

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00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:26,520
Speaker 1: they talk of gateways to another world. Perhaps the students

154
00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:30,240
Speaker 1: had upset the spirits and this was their revenge, he thought.

155
00:11:39,320 --> 00:11:42,440
Speaker 1: It is said that somewhere deep in the Earls lies

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Speaker 1: a sacred daific idol known as Zolotire Barber or the

157
00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:52,400
Speaker 1: Golden Woman. Made entirely from gold. It is thought to

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00:11:52,440 --> 00:11:55,719
Speaker 1: have been hidden somewhere deep in the forest, perhaps in

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00:11:55,760 --> 00:12:00,520
Speaker 1: a cave, surrounded by other worldly treasures. In ancient times,

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Speaker 1: soldiers dressed in scarlet robes would fiercely guard the path

161
00:12:04,760 --> 00:12:07,319
Speaker 1: to the idol, and no one else had the right

162
00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:12,600
Speaker 1: to see her or go anywhere near the cave. The

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00:12:12,640 --> 00:12:16,760
Speaker 1: origins of the idol are shrouded in mystery. Some believe

164
00:12:16,800 --> 00:12:18,920
Speaker 1: it to have been brought to the region by ob

165
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:23,160
Speaker 1: Ugrian warriors as far back as the fifth century. The

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00:12:23,160 --> 00:12:27,600
Speaker 1: Obugrians were ancestors of the Mansie, who, alongside Alaric, the

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00:12:27,720 --> 00:12:31,440
Speaker 1: king of the Visigoths, conquered Rome in four hundred and ten.

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Speaker 1: Some say that after their victory, the Obugrians forged the

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Speaker 1: sacred idol, then carried it back to their lands to

170
00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:44,720
Speaker 1: be worshiped as a goddess, though some others believe it

171
00:12:44,800 --> 00:12:48,000
Speaker 1: may have originated from as far away as India or

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00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:52,960
Speaker 1: even Sumeria. There is further dispute as to just which

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00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,280
Speaker 1: god exactly was thought to be embodied by the idol,

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00:12:57,120 --> 00:13:01,360
Speaker 1: with some linking it to the Manci goddess Yours Naianki,

175
00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:04,680
Speaker 1: known as the mother of celestial fire and everything living,

176
00:13:06,280 --> 00:13:10,400
Speaker 1: with others believing it instead to be the goddess kaltesh Anki,

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Speaker 1: or Mother Earth. Kaltesh Anki is the wife of Numi Turam,

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Speaker 1: the ultimate supreme being, and is known to be responsible

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Speaker 1: for the length of human lives. Once kaltesh Anki asked

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Speaker 1: Numi Turam to strengthen the earth with an iron belt,

181
00:13:29,520 --> 00:13:32,880
Speaker 1: and he answered the request by creating the Ural Mountains.

182
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Speaker 1: In nineteen o four, the explorer Konstantin Nossiloff wrote of

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Speaker 1: meeting an old man on his travels named Sava. The

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Speaker 1: man claimed to have been blinded after mistakenly coming across

185
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Speaker 1: the golden idol, whom he maintained appeared to him as

186
00:13:50,840 --> 00:13:54,520
Speaker 1: an ordinary naked woman sitting down holding a golden plate

187
00:13:54,679 --> 00:13:59,520
Speaker 1: in her hands. Some say the Golden Woman isn't golden

188
00:13:59,640 --> 00:14:03,160
Speaker 1: at all, but is in fact luminous, as if made

189
00:14:03,200 --> 00:14:09,000
Speaker 1: purely from light. Had the hikers stumbled into this sacred

190
00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:14,319
Speaker 1: land and be mercilessly punished as a result, it might

191
00:14:14,320 --> 00:14:17,640
Speaker 1: account for the strange lights, perhaps, but not why such

192
00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:20,720
Speaker 1: an experienced team would be drawn out from the safety

193
00:14:20,720 --> 00:14:24,160
Speaker 1: of their camp into the freezing wild of the exposed mountain.

194
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:30,960
Speaker 1: But for this Nikolai had another theory. It is said

195
00:14:31,360 --> 00:14:35,000
Speaker 1: that kaltesh Anki, worried about how she might defend herself

196
00:14:35,040 --> 00:14:39,440
Speaker 1: from enemies, asked Numiterurum to find a way to protect her.

197
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Speaker 1: In return, he created the Menkfee, a race of monstrous

198
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Speaker 1: creatures sometimes described as werewolves, but other times just as giants.

199
00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:55,640
Speaker 1: It is said that these menk Fee or menk also

200
00:14:55,720 --> 00:14:59,440
Speaker 1: known as Compoland, continue to guard the Golden Woman to

201
00:14:59,520 --> 00:15:05,520
Speaker 1: this day. Nancy author Olga Koshmanova has spent over thirty

202
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:10,080
Speaker 1: years collecting evidence of the Kompoland. She believes that many

203
00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:13,080
Speaker 1: of the Manci culture's rules were formed due to their

204
00:15:13,120 --> 00:15:17,320
Speaker 1: contact with these terrifying creatures such as it being forbidden

205
00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:20,640
Speaker 1: to break wood when it wasn't needed, or the need

206
00:15:20,680 --> 00:15:23,600
Speaker 1: to be silent when in the forest, and its being

207
00:15:23,720 --> 00:15:27,360
Speaker 1: especially forbidden to sing loud songs or spoil the forest,

208
00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:31,120
Speaker 1: and when in the woods at night, one must always

209
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:37,320
Speaker 1: keep the fire burning. Writing in a book titled A

210
00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:40,800
Speaker 1: Look from Behind, a reference to the strange sensation a

211
00:15:40,800 --> 00:15:44,360
Speaker 1: person feels when they un knowingly step into the territory

212
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:48,800
Speaker 1: of the compoland, Olga writes of that fateful night of

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Speaker 1: February the first, nineteen fifty nine. However, she is not

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Speaker 1: she claims to have come into contact with a compos

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Speaker 1: Koshmanova also writes that once travelers have entered the forbidden territory,

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Speaker 1: they begin to hear things strange, terrifying noises like whistling

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Speaker 1: or the thumping of feet. The sound reverberates so as

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Speaker 1: to cause a visceral reaction that induces terror and nausea.

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Speaker 1: Had the team been scared from the tent perhaps by

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Speaker 1: such a sound, could it have been a compolan that

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Speaker 1: smashed rustic skull and battered Zena to the ground. It

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Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't be the first time a compolan had been

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Speaker 1: held responsible for murder. Koshmanova cites at least two incidences

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Speaker 1: where the forest Giant had been held accountable, once in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty six in the village of Shamia, a child

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Speaker 1: had been ripped to shreds with his head put on

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Speaker 1: a stake, and another time where a woman had been

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Speaker 1: found with her jaw ripped completely off. But with the

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Speaker 1: whereabouts of four of the students still unknown, and without

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Speaker 1: all the bodies to examine, it would be impossible to

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Speaker 1: formulate a comprehensive theory of just what had taken place.

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the search teams, the weather was about to

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Speaker 1: take a severe turn for the worst. Many of the searches,

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Speaker 1: saddened by the discovery of the first five bodies, had

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Speaker 1: become exhausted and demoralized. Maslennikov, who had been leading the

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Speaker 1: search team on the ground, requested that the search be suspended,

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Speaker 1: but the commission refused to call it off, deciding instead

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Speaker 1: that a new team was needed. Maslennikov would at first

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Speaker 1: be replaced by Abraham Kickhoin and then later by Colonel

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Speaker 1: Georgy Ortiakov. The search for the missing bodies would continue

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Speaker 1: to little avail, but something remarkable was about to come

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Speaker 1: to light, some thing that had been hidden in plain sight.

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Speaker 1: Are you always taking care of your family? Do you

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Speaker 1: often take care of others and not yourself. Now it's

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Speaker 1: time to take care of yourself, to make time for you.

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00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,399
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Speaker 1: you feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you

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00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:49,480
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Speaker 1: For free. Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers.

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Speaker 1: Download the app or visitteldoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained

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00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:13,520
Speaker 1: podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash

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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast. It was temple of the original investigator who

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Speaker 1: noticed it first something about the rips at the back

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Speaker 1: of the team's tent that hadn't seemed consistent with wear

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Speaker 1: and tear or weather damage, but it wasn't until weeks

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Speaker 1: later that his concerns would be taken into consideration thanks

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Speaker 1: to the eagle eye of a seamstress. After Boris Slobsoff

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Speaker 1: had discovered the tent, it had been gathered up and taken,

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Speaker 1: along with the items at the camp, to the Evedell

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Speaker 1: Department of Internal Affairs for further examination. Vladimir Koyativ, a

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Speaker 1: young investigator on the case, was having his uniform mended

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Speaker 1: when the seamstress took one look at the tent and

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Speaker 1: concluded also that the ribs were not rips at all,

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Speaker 1: but rather cuts made deliberately by something very sharp. It

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Speaker 1: was clear to her that someone or something had cut

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Speaker 1: open the tent on the night that the students died.

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Speaker 1: The tent was immediately taken to Sperdlovsk Forensic Lab for

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Speaker 1: closer inspection by senior forensic expert Henrietta Cherkena. If the

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Speaker 1: cuts had indeed been made, it would add fuel to

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Speaker 1: the burgeoning theory that the team had most likely been

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Speaker 1: attacked by someone or something in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: and chased from the tent, left to die in the snow.

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Speaker 1: It didn't take cherkena very long to reach her conclusion.

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Speaker 1: The cuts had indeed been made by a sharp object,

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Speaker 1: but they hadn't been made from outside the tent. They

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Speaker 1: had come from the inside. The revelation did little to

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Speaker 1: help uncover the mystery of what led the team to

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Speaker 1: their deaths, but what was clear was that whatever had

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Speaker 1: caused such a panic that an experienced team would rip

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Speaker 1: open their own tent just to be able to escape

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Speaker 1: into minus twenty degree temperatures must have been utterly terrifying.

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Speaker 1: It was further evidence that the students were forced from

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Speaker 1: their tent, whether by a perceived fear or by something

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Speaker 1: with agency. And then a further discovery comes to light

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Speaker 1: when investigators examined the team's belongings. There came across the

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Speaker 1: three expedition cameras of Eager, Rustick, and Gyurgi. When the

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Speaker 1: photos were developed, there seemed nothing untoward at first. The photos,

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Speaker 1: eighty eight in all, taken over the nine day period,

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Speaker 1: reveal a touching account of the team's journey, culminating in

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Speaker 1: some final shots that are believed to show the team

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Speaker 1: setting up camp on their final fateful day. And then

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Speaker 1: there was the final exposure on Georgy's camera. As the

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Speaker 1: photographic paper swished around in the developing tray, a strange

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Speaker 1: image was beginning to emerge. The whole frame seemed to

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Speaker 1: be in darkness, as if taken at night, but in

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Speaker 1: the top left hand corner, a trail of light seems

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Speaker 1: to be descending from the sky. The discovery of the

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Speaker 1: photograph has Ivanof turning once again to the reports of

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Speaker 1: mysterious lights. But then suddenly everything changed. One morning in

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Speaker 1: mid March, Ivanof announced to his team that he would

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Speaker 1: be leaving for Moscow, without giving any further information. Ivanof

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Speaker 1: packed up his things and left. When he returned a

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Speaker 1: few days later, it was as if he had been

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Speaker 1: replaced by a completely different person. Gone was any talk

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Speaker 1: of the orbs or strange lights in the sky. In April,

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Speaker 1: Valdislav Karelin was called back in for questioning, at which

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Speaker 1: point he was advised by Ivanov to hold his tongue

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Speaker 1: on any theories relating to the mysterious lights. It has

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Speaker 1: been over two months since the last body was discovered.

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Speaker 1: When on May the third Nancy tribesman Stepan Kurikov, is

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Speaker 1: searching an area not far from where Yuri and Gyorgy's

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Speaker 1: bodies were found, when he once again spots something irregular.

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Speaker 1: Some branches of a tree seemed to have been removed

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Speaker 1: with a knife. Newly appointed search leader, Colonel Georgy Ortiakov,

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Speaker 1: orders a team of men to search the area immediately.

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Speaker 1: As they probe with their avalanche poles, one of the

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Speaker 1: team hits something. When he removes the pole, there is

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Speaker 1: a piece of clothing attached to it. It must have

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Speaker 1: come from at least six feet below the surface. Urgently,

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Speaker 1: the men begin to dig, one after the other. The

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Speaker 1: shovels come down on to the snow above what is

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Speaker 1: later revealed to be a creek bed. Eventually they will

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Speaker 1: carve out a block of over eight feet in depth,

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Speaker 1: covering an area of a hundred square feet, But by

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Speaker 1: the end of the first day, the team find only

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Speaker 1: more clothing, including bizarrely, one solitary trouser leg. The following day,

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Speaker 1: May the fourth, the search team have made it down

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Speaker 1: to the slushy ice and water of the creek when

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Speaker 1: they discover more shredded clothing, including another trouser leg and

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Speaker 1: half a brown woolen sweater, and then they find something

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Speaker 1: at a harder It is another body lying face down

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Speaker 1: in the water. A short time later and three other

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Speaker 1: bodies have been discovered. Two of them are found huddled

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Speaker 1: together in an embrace, no doubt a last desperate attempt

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Speaker 1: of survival. The decomposition of the bodies is so much

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Speaker 1: that only leuda can be identified at this stage. With

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Speaker 1: the bodies wrapped in tarpaulin to preserve any further decay,

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Speaker 1: lev Ivanov is on the scene the following morning. It

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Speaker 1: is clear from the state of the corpses that time

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Speaker 1: is fast running out for any hope of a meaningful autopsy,

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Speaker 1: but Ivanov is stunned when the chopper arrives to take

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Speaker 1: them away, only for the pilot to refuse the use

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Speaker 1: of his helicopter. It would seem that, despite the Investigative

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Speaker 1: Commission's best efforts to quash some of the more fanciful

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Speaker 1: rumors surrounding the case, an idea, once born, is not

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Speaker 1: so easy to destroy, and what pilot Captain Gaitsenko is

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Speaker 1: most concerned about is radioactive contamination. The pilot eventually agrees

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Speaker 1: to take the bodies, but only when Ivanoff has them

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Speaker 1: placed in four zinc lined coffins that take days to arrive.

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Speaker 1: It isn't until May the eighth that the bodies are

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Speaker 1: finally lifted from the mountain and flown to Eve del

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Speaker 1: Morg for the autopsy. When the bodies had finally thawed out,

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Speaker 1: pathologist Boris Vozroscheny was once again summoned to perform the

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Speaker 1: somber task of first identifying each victim and then the

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Speaker 1: cause of their death. Despite the many rumors surrounding the case,

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Speaker 1: even taking into account the suspicious fracture of Rustick's skull,

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Speaker 1: Vozroschdyny was very much of the opinion that the students,

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Speaker 1: for whatever reason, had succumbed through simple hypothermia. But what

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Speaker 1: he uncovers next will change everything. Vozroschdyny harves over the

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Speaker 1: first body, one of the two found in an embrace.

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Speaker 1: He will later be identified as twenty four year old

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Speaker 1: Alexander Kolovatov. He notes the now familiar lack of adequate footwear,

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Speaker 1: but otherwise the amount of clothing appears normal. There is

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Speaker 1: a bandage on the ankle, presumably from an injury received

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Speaker 1: prior to the trip. There is a small open wound

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Speaker 1: behind the ear, which Vosroshdyny deems insignificant, being most likely

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Speaker 1: merely a result of exposure to the elements. He returns

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Speaker 1: by now the usual verdict death by hypothermia. Expecting more

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Speaker 1: of the same, he turns its attention to the second body.

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Speaker 1: It is clear from the tattoos alone that this is

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Speaker 1: the body of thirty seven year old Sasha Solitarioff. At first,

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Speaker 1: vos Rosdyny finds much of the same. Again, there are

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Speaker 1: no shoes, and the general decay and superficial injuries are

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Speaker 1: consistent with a struggle for survival. But when vos Rosdyni

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Speaker 1: moves his attention to the chest region, he finds something

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Speaker 1: completely unexpected. Five of Sasha's ribs on his right side

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Speaker 1: have been fractured, causing severe internal bleeding. It would take

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Speaker 1: some four to fracture five ribs, and clearly, from the

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Speaker 1: nature of the bleeding, it had occurred when Sasha was

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Speaker 1: still alive. The pathologist concludes that it was clearly caused

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Speaker 1: by some kind of large force. Turning his attention now

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Speaker 1: to twenty three year old Collier Thibou Brignoles, vos Rode

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Speaker 1: is shocked to find injuries similar to those sustained by Sasha,

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Speaker 1: only this time it is to his head. Vashrochdeni concludes

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Speaker 1: that Collier had died after sustaining a catastrophic fracture to

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Speaker 1: the right side of his skull, followed by bleeding again

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Speaker 1: the result of a large force, and the worst was

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Speaker 1: yet to come. Lyuda's body had been found on her knees,

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Speaker 1: leant against a small drop in the ravine, with her

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Speaker 1: face pressed to the rocks and her clothes soaked through

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Speaker 1: with water from the stream. Wrapped around her left foot

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Speaker 1: was the other half of the brown sweater, a last

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00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: ditch effort to stave off frostbite. Now lying in the

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00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 1: morgue Vasrosdeny can clearly see the tell tale signs of

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Speaker 1: a severe trauma to her chest that had resulted in

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00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: nine fractured ribs and massive hemorrhaging in the right ventricle

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00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: her heart. And when he examined inside the mouth, voss

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00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: Roshdeny drew back in alarm. Her tongue was completely missing.

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Speaker 1: And then there are a number of curious findings from

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Speaker 1: the site of where the bodies are discovered. They seemed

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Speaker 1: to have been located in a makeshift den, complete with

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00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 1: a blanket of branches laid out on the floor to

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Speaker 1: provide some protection from the cold. Had they, in fact,

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Speaker 1: drawing on Sasha's military survival skills, managed to stabilize the

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Speaker 1: situation before succumbing to injuries sustained sometime later, And what

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Speaker 1: were they to make of the camera found around Sasha's neck?

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Speaker 1: For a start, according to Uryyudin, the students only had

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Speaker 1: three cameras between them, all of which had already been recovered.

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Speaker 1: But perhaps more pertinently, what could possibly have provoked Sasha,

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Speaker 1: in the panic of leaving the tent to remember to

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Speaker 1: take his camera, Or had he, in fact, as some believe,

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Speaker 1: already been standing outside the tent trying to capture something

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Speaker 1: before the chaos. Whatever it was, we will never know,

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Speaker 1: since the film was too damaged to be processed. Two

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Speaker 1: weeks later, the families of Liuda, Sasha, Alexander, and Collier

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Speaker 1: gathered together on May twenty second at the Sperdlovsk Military

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Speaker 1: Hospital to watch their children being finally laid to rest.

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00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: There would be no repeat of the public procession given

427
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: to the other students, and only the family were granted

428
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: permission to attend for lead investigator left even off the

429
00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: recent autopsies had only succeeded in generating yet more questions

430
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: when he and all the families of the deceased needed answers.

431
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: Despite pressure from above to bring the case to a

432
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 1: swift and uncontroversial resolution, the revelation of Leuda, Kollia and

433
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: Sasha's injuries could not be ignored. To that end. With

434
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: his superiors breathing down his neck, he would try one

435
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: last thing. Just prior to the funerals. Ivanov had organs

436
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: and items of clothing sent off to be examined for

437
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 1: any sign of radiation, but it would be too late

438
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: before he could receive the results. Ivanov was ordered to

439
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: shut the case down immediately, and so it was on

440
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:47,600
Speaker 1: Thursday May the twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine, that the

441
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: case of the mysterious death in the Ural Mountains of

442
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: nine hikers, led by student Igordiatlov, was brought to an

443
00:32:55,120 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: abrupt and inconclusive end. For Ivanov, it was a bitter

444
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 1: and frustrating conclusion to a case that would haunt him

445
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: and everyone else involved in it for the rest of

446
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: their lives. For the families, of the victims. It was

447
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: a cruel and brutal end, which was, of course no

448
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 1: kind of end at all. To this day, families of

449
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: the victims continue to seek the truth about what exactly

450
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: had taken place. Eurykan Savage, who as a twelve year

451
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: old boy had watched the funeral procession from his parents'

452
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: apartment window, will later go on to establish the Diatlov Foundation,

453
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: dedicating his life to helping the families unravel the mystery

454
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: and to hopefully one day uncover the truth. The day

455
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: after the case is closed and exhausted, even Off arrives

456
00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: at his office to find the results of the toxicology

457
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: test waiting for him on his desk. The report concludes

458
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: that not only as some form of radioactive substance contaminated

459
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: the clothes, but the level of contamination far exceeds anything

460
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: they could ever have thought possible. The report will remain

461
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:24,720
Speaker 1: classified for the next thirty years, along with a raft

462
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: of other materials collected by Ivanov, including one report he

463
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:34,919
Speaker 1: had been expressly urged to suppress. It was compiled after

464
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: Ivanov's final trip to colat Seakle Mountain. The investigator had

465
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: just finished inspecting the site where The last four bodies

466
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: were discovered when he found himself staring at a line

467
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 1: of pine trees on the edge of the forest. Something

468
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 1: about them seemed off, and then he saw it, a

469
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 1: series of burn marks with no concentric form and no center,

470
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: such as one might expect from a ballistic explosion. For

471
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: a moment, he wonders if they could have been made

472
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: as a result of the fire hastily built by Georgie

473
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: and Yurie. But then he realizes whatever had made the

474
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 1: burnmarks had not come from the ground, It had come

475
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: from the sky. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and

476
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:37,879
Speaker 1: would like to show your appreciation, you can now help

477
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Speaker 1: support us by going to Unexplained podcast dot com forward

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Speaker 1: slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small,

479
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 1: are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by

480
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show

481
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Speaker 1: on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with

482
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

483
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Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

484
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Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can reach us online at

485
00:36:07,880 --> 00:37:04,399
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now,

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Speaker 1: to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak

489
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490
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491
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492
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