Stranger than fiction

[debgeisler]

The Moscow Times offers a fascinating story about a 1959 case of 9 skiers who died under weird and mysterious circumstances...and whose deaths were classified as "secret" by the Soviet Union.

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats.

Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of "a compelling unknown force" -- and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret.

The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries in the Urals. Records related to the incident were unsealed in the early 1990s, but friends of those who died are still searching for answers.

I found the story via Neat-O-Rama's pointer to a Wikipedia entry about the case. While six of the skiers died of hypothermia (not surprising, since they were in their pajamas and underwear), three died of injuries sustained with no external wounds, and their clothing had high levels of radiation.

I'm going to go off and play the Twilight Zone theme song, now.

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

The theory that seems most plausible is that they were fleeing an avalanche, and that the ones with significant physical injuries were actually caught in one.

The one odd detail is the "high levels of radiation", but that leaves the question of how reliable that particular datum is.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

The weirdest part of it all (and the part that tends toward discrediting the "natural causes" story...into which category an avalanche would um, fall) is that the Soviet government classified this as "secret" -- which is remained for more than 30 years.

Given that the original teams of rescuers were seasoned winter types, I'd expect them to have noticed if it were an avalanche, too.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It could just be that the incident was embarrassing (for whatever reason) to somebody who had the power to stamp it Secret, or perhaps the location happened to be uncomfortably close to some installation that might have been noticed if there were a prominent news story set in the vicinity.

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

While this was pretty early, this was during the soviet union's era of 'everything nuclear'. They created all sorts of very high level radioactive sources for stuff. Little nuclear power plants for remote weather stations. Agricultural product sterilization units, and a host of others. The nasty part was that they liked to use (cesium, I think) a substance that was very radioactive, high energy, and it is a powder that closely resembles talcum powder. One of these was found abandoned in a remote area one winter, and a couple of loggers set up camp next to it, since it was nice and warm, having melted all the snow nearby. One of them survived just long enough to stagger into the village the next morning and direct the authorities the location.
Back in 1959, everything nuclear in the USSR was tippy top secret, and just like every other government, anything embarrassing to the powers that be tended to get classified. One can speculate a lot, but who really knows?