On the night of 1 to 2 February 1959, one of the most mysterious events of the 20th century took place in the Northern Urals, which has been covered in darkness for 61 years. A group of tourists set up a tent on the slope of Mount Holatchakhl and got ready for bed. An unknown event then forced them to leave the shelter and go down the slope. All nine people died, their bodies with burns and other injuries without outer clothing and shoes were found gradually, over several months. The group consisted of skiers from the tourist club of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, what exactly happened to them, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation and hundreds of researchers around the world are trying to establish. At the moment, according to official data, there are 75 versions of what happened, we give three main ones.
1. Weather conditions
An avalanche, a hurricane or a "snow slab" - the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation is checking these three versions, assuming that the death of tourists is non-criminal. The supervisor continues to establish the circumstances, although the rest of the departments have already expired due process. According to the official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office Alexander Kurennoy, in March the experts will be sent to the pass. They will set up the tent at the same angle as that of the Dyatlov group, and will try to reconstruct the whole picture of events sixty years ago. All other options, which have been discussed for several decades, are not being considered by the prosecutor's office, and there are more and more of them every year.
There is a possibility that the "snow board" really came down due to the sharp change in temperature, and the tourists left the tent without dressing, because they were afraid of re-descending. In this case, those who received more serious injuries were dragged to the slope in order to light a fire there. After three men decided to return to the shelter to pick up their things, but on the way they died from the cold. The rest of the injured were placed in a lowland - therefore, their bodies were carried to the stream during the thawing. Two more people, who were still at the fire, received such severe frostbite that they did not notice that they were being burned while sitting by the fire.
2. Experiment of special services and work for the KGB
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Some still believe that the students were "liquidated": the guys allegedly became accidental witnesses to the test of a secret weapon, which was carried out nearby. Social activists also claim that the tourists themselves could work for the KGB and during the trip they performed the task of supporting a technogenic experiment. The researchers believe they were photographing the trial, which most likely did not go as planned, which is why the group died. They began to talk about this due to the fact that they had a lot of photographic equipment with them, but only a few cameras have survived film. Also at the place of their deaths allegedly found fragments of missiles.
This version is confirmed by the testimony of a group of search engines, as well as the Mansi peoples, who were also blamed for the death of the group. Both of them said that luminous objects periodically appeared in the sky, however, they were also called an alien ship. There is also a version that the explosion could have caused the avalanche. Guesses are confirmed by the statement of the radio operator Vladimir Lyubimov, then he worked on the territory next to the pass.
“All of us, radio operators, were ordered to listen to the broadcast and report any suspicious negotiations. And in January or February, it's hard to say, I trace the broadcast on different waves and hear some very strange negotiations in an unintelligible Aesopian language. It is only clear that something terrible has happened. Of course, I reported to my superiors. And in a day I get the command: stop wiretapping on this wave! - said the radio operator in an interview.
The conspiracy theory is revealed by the writer Alexei Rakitin in his essay "Death Walking on the Trail". The tourists Zolotarev and Krivonischenko were allegedly mixed up in the story; they supposedly supplied fake radioactive elements to foreign agents under the cover of the KGB. The plan failed for various reasons, the agents decided to get rid of the whole group and therefore attacked the tent and put everyone in the cold without clothes. The traces of "beatings" are explained by their resistance. Some of the survivors allegedly met agents along the way, tortured them, and then threw their bodies into a ravine.
3. Visit of aliens
There were also a lot of adherents of the version about the visit of alien beings. Over the years, various evidences have been presented that a huge alien ship has landed at the site of the tourists' parking: it is allegedly visible in the photograph from the film of one of the victims.
This image is called a snapshot of an alien ship from tourists' film.
Moreover, the assumption was confirmed by members of the search team, they claimed to have seen a UFO near the scene. “For 20 minutes we watched the movement of the ball (or disk) until it disappeared behind the mountainside. We saw him southeast of the tent. He moved northward. This phenomenon excited everyone. We were sure that the death of the Dyatlovites was somehow connected with him,”said Valentin Yakimenko, a participant in the search. Immediately after this, the events were compared with other "fireballs" that were observed approximately in the same area on February 17, 1959, they were told about in the Tagilskiy Rabochy newspaper.
In addition, the Ural researchers claimed that they found the wreckage of the ship at the scene of the tragedy - using the Google Earth service.
None of the versions still became the main one, and it was not possible to confirm any of the guesses. The initiated criminal case was closed in the same year.