Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know Unsolved Mysteries Edition.
Speaker 1: How do you pronounced this? Diet love? Diet love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I've always pronounced it. That's what we're going with, Okay.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I always just always Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. I like that, a bit of a Russian
Speaker 1: diet love playing just say get love anyway. Get Love
Speaker 1: is the name of a famous pass in the Ural Mountains,
Speaker 1: and it was named after it turns out a twenty
Speaker 1: three year old mountaineer expert outdoors person uh named um
Speaker 1: uh Igor do out love. I always want to call
Speaker 1: him Uri because there was like five Yuris in his group,
Speaker 1: but he was the only Igor. Yeah, And I did
Speaker 1: not know that this pass was named for him. And
Speaker 1: when I first started researching this, I was like, that's yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: shall we tell the story? Yeah, let's people might have
Speaker 1: you you'd heard of this before, right? Yeah? And I
Speaker 1: believe we may have touched on this in the top
Speaker 1: ten once maybe, but or a video that we did.
Speaker 1: But whatever it was, it was a little tiny, short thing.
Speaker 1: I mean we mentioned the Gary Matthias disappearance was called
Speaker 1: the American do at Love event Ye disappearance. Um, this
Speaker 1: is this is totally different in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: in most ways, but you can find kind of find
Speaker 1: some similarities here there. But yeah, let's tell the story man,
Speaker 1: all right. So we're talking about a group of students
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, early February from you're all u
Speaker 1: r a l State Technical University. Go what go fighting
Speaker 1: rook the hammers and sickles. That sounds good, the hammers
Speaker 1: and sickles. Uh. They were all very um well acquainted
Speaker 1: with camping, back country hiking, and skiing across country skiing.
Speaker 1: So they weren't a bunch of rookies out there. No, no,
Speaker 1: and that's really important, Like these people were very well
Speaker 1: experienced with this kind of stuff. Yeah, they knew what
Speaker 1: they were doing. And there was a group of how
Speaker 1: many were there? Seven they're ten total? Oh tin total,
Speaker 1: nine of whom actually went into the woods. The only
Speaker 1: person to make it out of this trip alive was
Speaker 1: the one person who stayed back because he wasn't feeling well,
Speaker 1: stayed behind the village. That was another yury yury udine. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a little sick and was bummed, And little
Speaker 1: did he know that would have been almost certainly a
Speaker 1: life saving moment for him. Yeah, he had a rheumatism
Speaker 1: and came down with about of rheumatism and actually stayed
Speaker 1: back in this little tiny village where they they set
Speaker 1: off from. And to say that they were like in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere is an understatement. Like they were
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, not a lot going on there,
Speaker 1: and I think like a two two plus week trip,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to get to mount or to
Speaker 1: ten right, yeah, or t o They were trying to
Speaker 1: make it to this mountain, which is a part of
Speaker 1: the Ural Mountains, um. And to get there they basically
Speaker 1: cross country skied, they climbed this, They climbed mountains to
Speaker 1: get to this mountain. They had to camp out and
Speaker 1: this this like negative thirty degree weather. Um, just crazy nuts,
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, and they were having the time of
Speaker 1: their lives. These students were. Yeah there, I mean there.
Speaker 1: There is footage or footage by way of photographs because
Speaker 1: they took a lot of pictures and if you go
Speaker 1: through and look at the um the early parts of
Speaker 1: this trip, they did look like they were having a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. They were, they were good pals. They
Speaker 1: did a very adorable thing on the way they they
Speaker 1: started making their own little newspaper about the trip, the
Speaker 1: Evening Ordered ten where they would just it was essentially
Speaker 1: a little fun diary, like group diary they did, but
Speaker 1: they put it in the form of a of a
Speaker 1: daily newspaper of their journey, which is very very cute
Speaker 1: and sad. Yeah, And one of the one of the
Speaker 1: ways I saw their group described was that there were
Speaker 1: there were two girls in this group and the rest
Speaker 1: of the guys um, but that there wasn't any like
Speaker 1: real sexual tension or rivalries going on. That there was
Speaker 1: like kind of crushes here there and like like like
Speaker 1: humorous flirtation that kind of thing, just keeping everything real light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like Uri betrayed me nothing with she
Speaker 1: wasn't name Urie hooked up with Zena. What's one of
Speaker 1: them Zena? Yeah, there was Zena and then uh lud
Speaker 1: uh lud Mia just laughing. You try it. Jerry came
Speaker 1: and talked, you know, she minored in Russian studies. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. Did I ever tell you? By the
Speaker 1: time you Me and I went to visit friends in
Speaker 1: London and we were on our way to to go
Speaker 1: to Moscow for these the guys that I met in London, Yes,
Speaker 1: who now live in l A. Mikeldam, Oh, they're wonderful.
Speaker 1: They live in l A. Now, welcome to America, dudes. Um.
Speaker 1: But we went to visit them in London and found
Speaker 1: out that Um, because Adam I think majored in Russian
Speaker 1: studies or Russian literature. I think he's like, you you
Speaker 1: have your visa and we're like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: He's like, you have to have a visa to go
Speaker 1: to Russia and we're like, I don't think so no
Speaker 1: one said anything to us about that, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: you definitely do. We call the airline. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have a visa and we're like, how did
Speaker 1: you not You mean like a visa card, right, that's
Speaker 1: what we thought you meant, and um, we didn't go
Speaker 1: to Russia. I think I remember we ended up going
Speaker 1: to Majorca instead. Last minute, Oh well right, We're like
Speaker 1: this could have been way worse than it turned out.
Speaker 1: I think I remember you having plans to go to
Speaker 1: Russia and I never heard anything. That's why we didn't think.
Speaker 1: I remember at some point in my life being like,
Speaker 1: that's weird, Josh never talked about Russia, but you heard
Speaker 1: me talk about Mayorca. Yeah, it all adds up. Now,
Speaker 1: that's that was all that trip. Interesting. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: my Russia story. That's as close as I've come. That's
Speaker 1: funny because you guys are pretty buttoned up. I know,
Speaker 1: we're really surprised at ourselves, you guys. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: thanks for that, Chuck. I appreciate that about you being
Speaker 1: buttoned up. Yeah. Yeah, that's sounds like something I would do.
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's pretty basic level stuff. I think
Speaker 1: these people would catch that. All right. So where are they?
Speaker 1: They're on the Mountain of the Dead, which I don't
Speaker 1: believe we mentioned was the was the translation that the
Speaker 1: local indigenous tribe, the Monsey tribe, called this mountain collots
Speaker 1: Yakle the Mountain of the Dead, and the Monsey tribe, um,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll pop up later in theories. So just we're
Speaker 1: putting pins and things. Do you remember in our magic
Speaker 1: mushroom episode where we talked about like um reindeer herder
Speaker 1: who would feed their reindeer mushrooms and then drink the
Speaker 1: pea to trip themselves. I think I do remember that
Speaker 1: that's the man. They're like Siberian um nomad's I believe,
Speaker 1: and who know how to party. Yeah, and like the
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms that they're shame their shamans eat and probably
Speaker 1: their regular people eat too. They're very toxic um and
Speaker 1: one way to get rid of the toxins is to
Speaker 1: feed him to reindeer, and the the reindeers filter toxin.
Speaker 1: You drink the reindeer p and the psychoactive stuff is
Speaker 1: still present in their pa. Wow. Yeah, and they think
Speaker 1: that possibly I'm saving this for the Christmas episode. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so go ahead. I'm sorry that that's the monster people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the monster people. So um. What they end up
Speaker 1: doing is they decide on the night of February twod
Speaker 1: to camp and in a decidedly sort of odd place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so weird, but they were only about a
Speaker 1: mile from the tree line, where they would have had
Speaker 1: much better cover. Um, and it would have been slightly warmer,
Speaker 1: and it's just it makes more sense to camp in
Speaker 1: the in the forest than out on this open ridge.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, for some reason they decided to camp there.
Speaker 1: They think possibly because they didn't want to backtrack, because
Speaker 1: they would have had to backtrack something to get back
Speaker 1: to the tree line. Yeah, they would have had to
Speaker 1: go a mile back down the slope, which means that
Speaker 1: they would have had to go cover that mile up again.
Speaker 1: And that's what Urie. What's the guy who was his
Speaker 1: last name uri Uton? Yeah, that's what he later said
Speaker 1: in an interview that he he thought it was either
Speaker 1: that that um the out love didn't want to backtrack
Speaker 1: because he d love as a leader, remember um, or
Speaker 1: he wanted to practice camping on an exposed mountain slope,
Speaker 1: which from what I've heard about this guy, it sounds
Speaker 1: like something he might do. He might be like, hey, gang,
Speaker 1: I've got a great idea. We've never done this right,
Speaker 1: let's try it. And they would have been able to
Speaker 1: quite easily. Um. They pitched. They pitched the camp. But
Speaker 1: in between pitching camp, and this is February second, ninety nine,
Speaker 1: in between pitching camp and making dinner, something happened. They
Speaker 1: never got to make dinner and whatever happened to them
Speaker 1: happened in between that time. On February second. We'll be
Speaker 1: back right after this. All right, that was quite a teaser,
Speaker 1: my friend, Thank you. You can talk regular now. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the search party didn't go out right away because yet
Speaker 1: Loft had said before, um, hey, we're going to be
Speaker 1: back around February twelve, or maybe a bit longer if
Speaker 1: we are so inspired to stay out there a bit longer,
Speaker 1: which is or yeah, if it's going slower than we thought, right,
Speaker 1: which is not the I mean, nowadays people will be
Speaker 1: a little more buttoned up like you guys and say
Speaker 1: a little more specific maybe when you're hiking in a
Speaker 1: place like this, but nevertheless, or have like a satellite
Speaker 1: phone with you or something. But again, so these these
Speaker 1: kids are in the middle of nowhere, totally cut off
Speaker 1: from contact. It was we're going in in January. You'll
Speaker 1: hear from us, probably around February twelve or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But because he put a wishy washy timeline on it, um,
Speaker 1: it didn't. It wasn't until they that anyone had any
Speaker 1: suspicions that anything was wrong, and then not until the
Speaker 1: twenty six that volunteer searchers finally found this camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was much much later. So they found the camp
Speaker 1: and right out of the gate, they're like, this is
Speaker 1: a little weird. The tents seem to have been cut
Speaker 1: from the inside out. That's a very weird thing. Not
Speaker 1: only that their boots are here, Um, their clothes are here,
Speaker 1: their gears here, their skis, like everything they would need
Speaker 1: it was all just abandoned at this camp. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looked like a left in a hurry. Um. And then
Speaker 1: even even stranger from what from the official report, and
Speaker 1: we'll see that that was like this has gone on
Speaker 1: for so long and been open to so much interpretation that, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of taint to this legend um that
Speaker 1: the but the official ports said that there were maybe
Speaker 1: eight or nine tracks, the tracks of eight or nine
Speaker 1: people around these tents, So that would account for everybody
Speaker 1: in the party without the addition of other people being
Speaker 1: on scenes. Yeah, and the way they left, like you said,
Speaker 1: like it was almost as if they they went and
Speaker 1: got in their tents, zipped them up and found um
Speaker 1: a dozen pit vipers and each one because they cut
Speaker 1: out of the tent and ran away in their underwear. Basically,
Speaker 1: not all of them and their underwear, but you know,
Speaker 1: barefoot and with very little clothing, like as if something
Speaker 1: inside the tent had you know, was about to kill them. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a big, big thing. It's a weird way to
Speaker 1: leave your camp. So these these guys are missing. Um
Speaker 1: and they the search party that found the tent in
Speaker 1: pretty short order. I'm not exactly sure how long it took,
Speaker 1: but from what I understand, it was the same search
Speaker 1: they found the first two bodies, and they found these
Speaker 1: first two bodies. It was the two uries Uri Kravoniashenko
Speaker 1: and Uri Doroshenko. Um the third year that stayed back, no,
Speaker 1: because they were literally three euries right, three out of
Speaker 1: tin right, Um, that's of them were Uri so um,
Speaker 1: Uri Kravanishenko, I decided again because I wanted to do
Speaker 1: better than the first time. And then Uri Doroshenko. They
Speaker 1: were found, both of them wearing their underwear. I think
Speaker 1: they were both barefoot. Um at the tree line. At
Speaker 1: the tree line they call it the big tree. It
Speaker 1: was a large cypress tree. Um. So they were in
Speaker 1: their underwear, barefoot, dead a mile down the mountain from
Speaker 1: the camp, which is where they said that they probably
Speaker 1: should have camped for more cover, so very interestingly, supposedly
Speaker 1: both of their hands were burned. I saw, yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw that they were just beaten up, and that there
Speaker 1: was human flesh found in the bark of the tree.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that at all, Okay, So as that
Speaker 1: they had tried to climb it in desperation, Okay. I
Speaker 1: did see that that they were like broken branches that
Speaker 1: indicated climbing. I didn't see there was flesh in the bark,
Speaker 1: flesh in the bark okay. Um, So maybe burned hands
Speaker 1: means like they were raw from climbing the tree. Um.
Speaker 1: But there was signs of a fire. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: like a campfire that they had built and there were
Speaker 1: unburnt branches kind of collected by it too, right, But
Speaker 1: they were both dead and they were the first two discovered.
Speaker 1: The two juris very weird, but nothing that couldn't be
Speaker 1: a kound of or by hypothermia. Yeah, it was being
Speaker 1: out there in your underwear to begin with. It was
Speaker 1: the weird part again and like negative thirty degree weather,
Speaker 1: negative thirty with howling wins, so foreshadowing. Okay, Three more bodies,
Speaker 1: including our leader Mr dietlov Uh, They were found between
Speaker 1: those two points between the original camp and that tree,
Speaker 1: and it looked as if they were headed back toward camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way they were laid out, like imagine somebody like
Speaker 1: kind of dying as they're crawling up a slope back
Speaker 1: toward camp, right makes sense to me. So let's say
Speaker 1: that they all kind of went to this tree and
Speaker 1: then they started to head out back to camp to
Speaker 1: maybe get their gear because they realized, we're in a
Speaker 1: bad spot. We're all our gears up there and we're
Speaker 1: down here in our underwear and barefoot, and why are we?
Speaker 1: Yeah again, who knows? So they found um Igor, diatlov Um, Zaneda,
Speaker 1: Colma Gorva. Why am I the only one saying their
Speaker 1: I'll say the last one rustam sloban In. Well, even
Speaker 1: Jerry could have said that one. So Rustum had a
Speaker 1: about a two and a half inch gash in his
Speaker 1: head and a fractured skull that was very weird. It
Speaker 1: is weird, but the doctor said that's not what this
Speaker 1: person died from. Again, all five of these people died
Speaker 1: from hypothermia. Even though this guy has been smashed in
Speaker 1: the head somehow. So Um, the investigators are like, okay,
Speaker 1: so far, it's weird, but something happened and then all
Speaker 1: these people died of hypothermia. Okay, yeah, that didn't hold
Speaker 1: up when they finally found the other three bodies two
Speaker 1: months later, four bodies. Yeah, in May, I think after
Speaker 1: some of the snow melt they found they found four
Speaker 1: more these in a gully down um, down slope from
Speaker 1: the tree. So there's the tree where the first two
Speaker 1: bodies were found. Up slope there were the next three bodies,
Speaker 1: like they were crawling towards back toward camp. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side, down slope of the tree, the
Speaker 1: last four bodies were found. Yeah. These This is where
Speaker 1: it gets very strange, very strange. These bodies they were
Speaker 1: they didn't die from hypothermia. They died of some very
Speaker 1: weird uh internal injuries. Some of them, um, had their
Speaker 1: skulls crushed. Two of them had a massive chest fractures
Speaker 1: and broken ribs. UM. One of them was missing her
Speaker 1: uh which one was Ludma do Nina. She was missing
Speaker 1: her tongue and part of her mouth and face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. She was also missing her eyes, as was
Speaker 1: one of the other people. UM. And you know this
Speaker 1: could have been a played away. Is maybe an animal
Speaker 1: ate this stuff, but there was no outside trauma. No,
Speaker 1: when you looked at these people, it wasn't like you
Speaker 1: have been clearly hit very hard on the head was
Speaker 1: a stick or a baseball bat, or you have had
Speaker 1: your eyeballs pecked out by a vulture. Uh, no outward signs.
Speaker 1: They didn't find out until later on that all these
Speaker 1: internal injuries had occurred. Yeah, one of the really strange.
Speaker 1: It was very strange. One of the doctors who examined
Speaker 1: the bodies in the official reports said that this was like, um,
Speaker 1: there was totally out of the capability of any human
Speaker 1: to inflict these injuries. It was more like the injuries
Speaker 1: you would see from a car crash, and so they
Speaker 1: would have like crushed bones, crushed skulls, but they they
Speaker 1: would not. They didn't have any like soft tissue damage, right,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like somebody like kid him with an axe.
Speaker 1: But you know, they had the injuries sustained like they
Speaker 1: were hit by an x, but not the outward out
Speaker 1: external injuries like they were crushed by an axe or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although a lot of them were missing soft tissue, which
Speaker 1: but no outward signs of that. That's I just can't
Speaker 1: figure that one out. So we'll we'll, we'll, we'll put
Speaker 1: a pin in that missing soft tissue stuff. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So there was something else that was really peculiar that
Speaker 1: has never been explained. But at least two of the
Speaker 1: bodies were found um to be like the clothing they
Speaker 1: were wearing was radioactive. Yeah, And we should point out
Speaker 1: to that some of this clothing they were wearing came
Speaker 1: off of the other people. I believe, some shoes and
Speaker 1: one of the women had parts of a wolf pants
Speaker 1: wrapped around her, so they had scavenged some of the
Speaker 1: clothes from there dead I guess, or dyeing compatriots, uh
Speaker 1: is the only thing people can figure out. And it
Speaker 1: contained radiation. Yeah, but that was the only thing that
Speaker 1: contained radiation the right. The fact they were like taking
Speaker 1: clothes from one another, that makes sense. And you can
Speaker 1: even say that the people who weren't wearing clothes, you
Speaker 1: can chalk that up to um something called paradoxical undressing,
Speaker 1: which is like found and I think something like a
Speaker 1: quarter of all hypothermia cases that you'll find the person
Speaker 1: like like stripped because something in your hypothalamus goes hey
Speaker 1: wire and you feel like your body temperature is actually
Speaker 1: rising like you're getting hot when actually it's going down.
Speaker 1: It's a weird quirk of hypothermia sometimes, so you can
Speaker 1: even say, like maybe these people actually shed their clothes purposefully,
Speaker 1: And then of course people who weren't undergoing paradoxical and dressing,
Speaker 1: we're taking the clothes and putting it on themselves. Totally
Speaker 1: makes sense. Where did the radiation come from? Why just
Speaker 1: the clothing? That is beyond bizarre and it's never been
Speaker 1: explained to any anyone's satisfaction. Yeah. And one more strange
Speaker 1: ish thing, um, not completely off the charts, but like
Speaker 1: I said, they found the camera film. That's why we
Speaker 1: have all these pictures. Uh. And the infamous thirty third
Speaker 1: frame was the last shot on this roll, which showed uh,
Speaker 1: sort of a series of white lights or a big
Speaker 1: white light against black. Could have been nothing with some
Speaker 1: weird exposure, who knows. But they had the camera set
Speaker 1: up on like a homemade tripod with the lens cap off,
Speaker 1: like facing out, as if it were like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: have this camera ready to take a picture of something
Speaker 1: that we're seeing out there. Uh. And then uh, I
Speaker 1: believe in the weeks previous to this other hikers had
Speaker 1: reported seeing um like glowing orbs and glowing lights and
Speaker 1: things like this. It was the week's previous or the
Speaker 1: weeks after. I thought it was previous. I think it
Speaker 1: was after or that there was another group that, well,
Speaker 1: this has similar sightings at that time, So who know,
Speaker 1: there was another group that was between thirty and fifty
Speaker 1: miles away basically doing the same thing UM, that reported
Speaker 1: seeing lights around the same time. So who knows. But
Speaker 1: the fact and like you said, it's not off the charts,
Speaker 1: but the fact that UM, I think it was Rustum
Speaker 1: who had the camera but didn't have any of his
Speaker 1: gear or outer outerwear, but he grabbed his camera. That
Speaker 1: is pretty bizarre. Yeah. There was an investigative named lev Ivanov.
Speaker 1: He was a lead guy, and um, he was really
Speaker 1: into this case obviously for a while. He brought a
Speaker 1: Geiger counter along that apparently just kind of spiked when
Speaker 1: he was ever around. He was the one who discovered
Speaker 1: that there was radio activity at all. Um. But they
Speaker 1: officially closed the case like a month later or something,
Speaker 1: and they said it they listed the causes of death
Speaker 1: as a compelling natural force that they could not overcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really vague, creepy statement. Yeah, so that was
Speaker 1: that was Another thing that really raised everyone's suspicions was
Speaker 1: the investigators came in within three weeks of i think,
Speaker 1: finding the last bodies who again had not died from hypothermia,
Speaker 1: but had died from really bizarre, massive internal trauma. They
Speaker 1: closed the case on it, put it under lock and
Speaker 1: key um filed it away as classified and kept anyone
Speaker 1: from the area for the next three years, just closed
Speaker 1: off the area for three years. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: like the early nineties that these files were opened again.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that that they had been you know,
Speaker 1: classified actually in Soviet Russia was not that bizarre. They
Speaker 1: just classified everything, But it was strange that when they
Speaker 1: declassified these things after the Soviet Union is all that
Speaker 1: they were like big chunks of these files just totally missing.
Speaker 1: So who knows, maybe they got misplaced over time. But
Speaker 1: when you add up all this stuff, the official investigation
Speaker 1: being hurry eat and then classified and then parts missing
Speaker 1: later on um that that is a little weird. It
Speaker 1: does suggest to a lot of people that the Soviet
Speaker 1: government either knew something, found something, or had some sort
Speaker 1: of role in this that they didn't want everyone to
Speaker 1: know about. Do we take another break, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about some of the
Speaker 1: leading theories and debunk some of them right after this,
Speaker 1: All right, did we mention that two groups of people
Speaker 1: reported flying objects were just the one I only knew
Speaker 1: about one? Yeah, there were two groups of people. Uh,
Speaker 1: one that we're camping nearby, about thirty miles away, and
Speaker 1: then um other reports in that month had been reported
Speaker 1: orange balls of fire. And here's one direct quote, goodness gracious,
Speaker 1: this is in from the written testimony. One person said
Speaker 1: he saw a shining circular body fly over the village
Speaker 1: from southwest to northeast. Shining disk was practically the size
Speaker 1: of a full moon, a blue white light surrounded by
Speaker 1: blue halo halo brightly flash like the flashes distant lightning.
Speaker 1: And when the body disappeared behind the rise and the
Speaker 1: sky lit up in that place for a few more minutes.
Speaker 1: So that that's actually, I mean, not out of the
Speaker 1: realm of possibility that that person really did see that,
Speaker 1: because people have put um have suggested that these were
Speaker 1: missile tests that were they were seeing. Yeah, So should
Speaker 1: we go with that as theory Number one? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: thing is as though. UM. The guy, the lead investigator,
Speaker 1: lev levin Off, is that his name, yeah, Levi ivan Off.
Speaker 1: He said, I suspect that this is in a UM
Speaker 1: interview he gave UM. I suspected at the time, and
Speaker 1: I am almost sure now these bright flying spheres had
Speaker 1: a direct connection to the group's death. He didn't go
Speaker 1: into any more detail about that, and he he himself
Speaker 1: has died of old age. Now I believe UM. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who say these weird
Speaker 1: sightings in the sky had something to do with it.
Speaker 1: Either they irradiated the group. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: there was a twelve year old boy from their town
Speaker 1: of kanarina Berg, which was known at the time as
Speaker 1: um uh sveed lost UM that that he reported that
Speaker 1: some of them were kind of orange tanned, like weirdly tanned, UM,
Speaker 1: and that their hair was gray. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people said irradiated. They were I radiated by UFOs or
Speaker 1: missile tests or something like that. UM, you can actually
Speaker 1: kind of explain the weird tanning. And I've seen a
Speaker 1: picture of one of him at the morgue UM as
Speaker 1: they were mummified. It was probably one of the members
Speaker 1: of the group who wasn't found until May, and they
Speaker 1: were partially mummified by the by the exposure to the
Speaker 1: snow for you know, weeks or months. That was probably
Speaker 1: explained that. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, they were on
Speaker 1: the pathway apparently for what's called our seven intercontinental ballistic
Speaker 1: missile launches. But um, it just didn't hold water with
Speaker 1: the radiation only being in their clothes. Yeah, that's very weird.
Speaker 1: That's like the one thing that doesn't quite add up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another explanation for them becoming irradiated is that, yes, they
Speaker 1: were near a nuclear missing missile testing site and that
Speaker 1: they drank um melted snow. But again, why would just
Speaker 1: their clothes, why wouldn't they become irradiated? I don't know,
Speaker 1: or anither gear or the tent or anything what else.
Speaker 1: We got another one, and this is the most people
Speaker 1: who claim to be sensible say, this is the explanation
Speaker 1: that it was sure that it was an avalanche, That
Speaker 1: an avalanche came down the slope because they were, you know,
Speaker 1: camping out on a mountain ridge face of a mountain,
Speaker 1: um and that an avalanche came and they knew it
Speaker 1: was coming, so they cut open their tent and fled
Speaker 1: into the night and then got caught by hypothermia and died.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. I mean that would get most people, especially
Speaker 1: an experienced group of mountaineers, out of their tents pretty
Speaker 1: quick by cutting through it. Cutting through it. Maybe the
Speaker 1: thing is is it doesn't explain why some of them
Speaker 1: but not all of them, had massive trauma. And again
Speaker 1: it certainly doesn't explain the radiation at all or the
Speaker 1: missing tongue. Yes, that was another one which was never found,
Speaker 1: by the way. No, so the missing tongue I've seen.
Speaker 1: I saw that it was removed while the girl was alive.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Her name was lud mia um so when
Speaker 1: I saw that. But then I also saw that she
Speaker 1: had been found near a creek, and that it's possible
Speaker 1: that it had just like like basically melted away from
Speaker 1: the water the action of the water. Here's the problem,
Speaker 1: this is the official report was kept under seals for decades,
Speaker 1: and conjecture was added. You don't know at this point,
Speaker 1: who who to believe. There's so many sites out there
Speaker 1: dedicated and there's a twelve year old reporting from the
Speaker 1: funeral like that's that's the only like documentation we have
Speaker 1: of what they looked like. His name actually is um
Speaker 1: Uri Kuntsevich, another another Yuri, and he was he was
Speaker 1: that that twelve year old child. He became kind of
Speaker 1: obsessed with it, and he set up the diet lave
Speaker 1: Um Museum in the Diet Law Foundation and basically just
Speaker 1: keeps the whole thing alive and is trying to get
Speaker 1: the government to kids in the case that kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well so you really really stuck to it. He's really
Speaker 1: taken advantage. What else you got for theories? Well, you
Speaker 1: know that tribe, the Monsy tribesmen, there is a theory
Speaker 1: that they attacked them, um, but nothing about that holds water.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any footsteps in the snow. There were
Speaker 1: our footprints. There were peaceful people by all accounts, had
Speaker 1: never done anything like that. There was no reason to
Speaker 1: do anything like that. So just go ahead and discount
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Animals attack
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. Same. Yeah. The other thing
Speaker 1: that that the other reason the avalanche theory doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: hold up is there wasn't necessarily any evidence of an
Speaker 1: avalanche having covered up the thing well in the tent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have swept that tent away and all the
Speaker 1: gear probably right or covered it up. Yeah, what else
Speaker 1: high winds. There's one theory that maybe one of the members,
Speaker 1: maybe one of the euries, went out to pp and
Speaker 1: a win swept him away, and everyone else like ran
Speaker 1: out to look for him. But um, this article you
Speaker 1: found where they're kind of debunking some of the stuff said,
Speaker 1: you know that it doesn't make much sense that all
Speaker 1: these experienced people would have behaved this way and just
Speaker 1: ran out in their underwear. You know, it would have
Speaker 1: been a little more of a organized, sensible effort if
Speaker 1: that had happened. Yeah, you really can't. Can't um overstate
Speaker 1: that the level of experience and the combined um like
Speaker 1: the group that they formed was like greater than the
Speaker 1: sum of its parts. So yeah, they wouldn't have it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been amateur like that. The one that and
Speaker 1: this is the kind of the new fringe e semi
Speaker 1: scientific explanation and I find just fascinating is the infrasound one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we talked about infrasound and one of our episodes,
Speaker 1: I don't remember which one. I can't remember which one,
Speaker 1: but um, this is uh, it's a phenomenon where, when,
Speaker 1: and in this area. They said that this definitely could
Speaker 1: have happened where wind collides with the mountain and the
Speaker 1: trees and everything and produces this low frequency range sound
Speaker 1: that has been known to inspire panic and dread, confusion, beer,
Speaker 1: all the things that would kind of add up in
Speaker 1: this case. Right, So there's like this really weird. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very tough to figure out whether that's actually real.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the science, the scientific literature
Speaker 1: behind it, there's some but more often than not, it's
Speaker 1: just some somebody claiming on their website that this is real.
Speaker 1: This the literature is not necessarily there, but that's not
Speaker 1: to say that it's just totally made up. It's like,
Speaker 1: the the studies of this stuff hasn't caught up to
Speaker 1: the some of the claims on the internet. But supposedly
Speaker 1: there is from wind vortices. They could have produced it
Speaker 1: on this on this mountain, right, these little your tornadoes
Speaker 1: that would have spun up could have um produced these
Speaker 1: sounds that is below human hearing, the level of human
Speaker 1: hearing like a full octave below, but can supposedly produce
Speaker 1: these weird behaviors that make people freak out. That would
Speaker 1: explain everything. It would accept the tongue right, and I
Speaker 1: guess the injuries sure so illustrating. I've seen other ones
Speaker 1: to like, Um, there was a guy and we we
Speaker 1: need to mention him a little more. Um. His name
Speaker 1: was Simon Zelodov Zlotaryov. Man. This has been tough. His
Speaker 1: name was Simon Zelotaryov. He was thirty eight. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a member of the group. He was as he was
Speaker 1: a add on towards the end who was out there
Speaker 1: with another group that he couldn't get coordinated. So he
Speaker 1: ended up saying like, hey, can I come with you guys?
Speaker 1: And at first apparently the group was not all that
Speaker 1: happy about him being there, but from what I understand,
Speaker 1: he really kind of earned his place in there. Um.
Speaker 1: For a while, people were like, who was this guy?
Speaker 1: This is a mystery dude. Maybe the KGB was involved,
Speaker 1: Maybe he was KGB. He was definitely ex military. Um.
Speaker 1: But they and they actually exhumed him to find out
Speaker 1: if the person who was buried in his grave as
Speaker 1: him was him, and they did a they did, like
Speaker 1: a skull. They took a picture of his skull and
Speaker 1: superimposed it under a known picture of him. Supposedly it
Speaker 1: was a perfect match, but then they took the extra
Speaker 1: step of um comparing the DNA of the corpse in
Speaker 1: the grave with the DNA of a known relative, and
Speaker 1: it does not match. Okay, I saw that. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that's who that. I didn't know. He was a
Speaker 1: non Uh. He wasn't an original member of the good.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in the in the club. So that so
Speaker 1: some people are like, there's KGB was in on this
Speaker 1: or he had something weird to do with it. It
Speaker 1: was a little weird for sure. And he was one
Speaker 1: of the ones who suffered um internal broken or broken ribs,
Speaker 1: obviously internal. And he also became the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of their daily paper. It's very strange. He's like, if
Speaker 1: it bleeds, it leads, print it. Uh, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: Oh man, we could do this for hours, but now
Speaker 1: and if you have, if you're obsessed with the diet
Speaker 1: love incident, Um, we want to know what we got
Speaker 1: right and what we got wrong. Anything you want to specify,
Speaker 1: We're happy to hear. Yeah, And I think um we
Speaker 1: just officially became the three podcast to cover this topic.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we did it some justice. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about the diet love past incident. You can
Speaker 1: type those words into while the Internet and it will
Speaker 1: give you all sorts of crazy stuff. And say, I
Speaker 1: said that it's time for listener mail. Alright, So this
Speaker 1: one is a bit long, but this is a Josh request. Oh,
Speaker 1: this one's good. It's a mystery. It is a mystery.
Speaker 1: And this is from Corey and Enjoysy City. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: at the open of your recent episode on Tsunamis, you
Speaker 1: both expressed disbelief that the topic had never been covered.
Speaker 1: In fact, you guys both said you could have sworn
Speaker 1: you'd already covered it, and you each went back multiple
Speaker 1: times to check. Even after checking three times, you both
Speaker 1: admitted to being quote paranoid end quote that it had
Speaker 1: somehow been done before. And just like you guys, I
Speaker 1: was surprised to find out it had never been covered
Speaker 1: and began to wonder why I had fuzzy memories. So
Speaker 1: I did a little digging re listening to old episodes
Speaker 1: on similar topics. That turns out the three of us
Speaker 1: are not the only ones convinced of this existent episode.
Speaker 1: The existence of this episode Apparently the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: episode of stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck also
Speaker 1: believed in the existence in the Rogue Waves episode, right correct. Uh, Yes,
Speaker 1: and the September show about Rogue Waves. At about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes in, Chuck says, and I'll do this as Chuck.
Speaker 1: One of the last things we should cover, USh is
Speaker 1: the difference between rogue Waves and tsunamis. But we've already
Speaker 1: done an episode on tsunamis. And Josh, that was a
Speaker 1: great appreciate that I've been worring on it. H And
Speaker 1: at this point Josh chimes in to confirm the existence.
Speaker 1: You want to confirm it, as Josh. Uh, my name
Speaker 1: is Josh, and I'm confirming the existence of that episode.
Speaker 1: I think it's what I said roughly, I think so.
Speaker 1: And you guys go on to cover the topic quickly,
Speaker 1: seemingly in agreement that an in depth explanation isn't necessary
Speaker 1: since it already existed. Man, this opens the door to
Speaker 1: many questions. Guys, did any listeners right in after Rogue
Speaker 1: Waves to ask where the tsunami episode was Corey, I
Speaker 1: don't remember. Surely. With so many listeners who take pride
Speaker 1: in having listened to every episode of the show, someone
Speaker 1: should have noticed. I agree. Why were you guys so
Speaker 1: convinced of the existence of the tsunami episode and Son fourteen?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Corey, wouldn't Jerry notice? Well that's a no. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that the lost episode on Tsunamis was
Speaker 1: the tipping point for a sequence of events leading to
Speaker 1: a doomsday scenario and humans from the future were forced
Speaker 1: to travel back in time in order to try and
Speaker 1: expunge it from the historical record. It's possible, Corey. That's
Speaker 1: where my money is. Yeah, but why what did we
Speaker 1: say in there that was so ghastly that it could
Speaker 1: have brought about the end of humanity? I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's no way to find out either because it's been
Speaker 1: expunged by the future people. So again, Corey from Jersey City,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places. Thanks Corey. Our our buddy
Speaker 1: John lives there. Oh no, he lives in Hollboken. Where's
Speaker 1: the Jersey City? Who shout out to John Bendell? Either way? Oh? John,
Speaker 1: Hey John? He looks at Manhattan out of his window.
Speaker 1: I know that that could be anywhere. That's true. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be thinking of Brooklyn. No, thanks a lot, Corey.
Speaker 1: That was a fantastic email, so much so I just
Speaker 1: kept pressuring Chuck to read it, and he did, and
Speaker 1: I think worked out well as we can all agree, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you for reading it, Chuck, certainly. Um, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, you can go
Speaker 1: to stuff you Should Know dot com and find us
Speaker 1: on all of our social media's there, and then you
Speaker 1: can also send us an email to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works? Doff