Re: "zombie"
philomath said:
it seems to me that the behaviour of most team members was only partly rational...
it is true that they tried to survive out in the cold, light a fire, build a den, cover themselves with extra pieces of clothes taken from other people... possibly eventually even trying to go back to the tent....
but their behaviour was also not rational...
getting out of the tent without shoes, more clothes...why not to take at least a blanket? separating into subteams....
whatever the causes - whether intoxication, terror (or attraction for something), hypothermia... they were not acting 100% rationally...
So either they were forced to act against their will (which personally I don't believe) or we have to search for potential reasons for unrational acts....
Yes - this is one of the things that's always bugged me about the case.
The canonical versions / scenarios all involve the following progression of events:
- The Dyatlov group ascends the pass and makes camp all very 'rationally'. Their planning and timing as of 1 February may have been the result of poor judgement / foresight, but they seemed to have had their wits about them.
- Sometime (presumably during the night of 1 - 2 February) they temporarily act like idiots and flee the tent for the valley below clad only in their semi-dressed sleeping configurations.
- Once down in the valley, indications are that they acted in a deliberate fashion to deal with their new situation (building a fire; building a den; recycling / sharing clothing; presumably heading back up-slope to the tent).
This standard plot line has them switching from relatively 'sane' to 'insane' and back to 'sane' again. This plot line relies on there being something (X) which rendered them temporarily unable to think clearly. The usual explanation is 'panic in response to X', and the way is left open to insert any candidate(s) for 'X' one wishes.
However ... The footprint evidence (such as it is) doesn't indicate panic. It doesn't even indicate they were running.
IMHO the key to illuminating what probably happened is to forget all the suggestions that mandate their acting insane for a while and instead focus on what set of circumstances could have made flight dressed 'as is' a 'sane' course of action.
My currently preferred angle on this is that the unexpected deterioration in weather conditions (cf. my earlier posts on conditions there and then) might have started the chain of events, and certainly closed them out. I don't think the weather shift explains flight from the tent site dressed 'as is'.
I think the tent failed. One of the most overlooked (or conveniently suppressed ...) factoids is that the tent's original discoverers claimed Dyatlov's jacket was stuffed into a hole in the tent's fabric. There was a hole in the tent, and someone tried to deal with it. Doesn't sound like a sudden wholesale panic and flight to me ...
I'm starting to believe the tent began to fail, most if not all the trekkers exited the tent to survey / repair it, and then it failed again somehow (perhaps collapsing; perhaps buried by a snow slip at just the wrong moment ...) in a way that made it problematical to get back inside to get their boots. This explains how they got outside the tent in their sleep configurations.
NOTE: Yes - this means I'm disputing the claims the party cut their way out of the tent.
The next step was a quick decision to move most of the party down into the valley to await repairs, build a fire, build an emergency shelter, whatever.
I suspect Slobodin and Kolevatov were among the designated evacuees. Slobodin's half-shod footprints were overlaid by others, suggesting he may have been in a lead position.
Perhaps more telling is the apparent fact these were the only two who may have been able to start a fire. Slobodin and Kolevatov were the only two on whom any evidence of matches was found. Kolevatov had a box of matches that were water-soaked (he was found last, in 'the ravine' streambed). Slobodin had a 'match box' containing one sock.
Wild guess ... Slobodin's match box contained a sock because it had been re-purposed after his matches had been used up at the cedar.
NOTE: When I first began winter camping 50 years ago in the Scouts, I was lectured to always keep two things in my pockets at all times - something for starting a fire (like matches) and a dry pair of socks. I'm surprised this advice wasn't being followed by winter trekkers as experienced as the Dyatlov party.
The last person to follow the trail down the slope had a longer stride, and has routinely been presumed to be the tallest group member. That would have been Doroshenko. Doroshenko and Krivonischenko were the two who seemed to have died earliest down at the cedar.
Why was the last one down among the earlier ones to die, and why did his body and clothing seem to indicate the most frantic actions (tears, etc.)?
Here's a wild guess ... Doroshenko and Krivonischenko descended later and expired early because they'd originally stayed at the tent to deal with whatever the failure was. Either they couldn't fix the problem or the deteriorating weather at their exposed position forced them to retreat into the valley. Maybe these two had waited overlong for a flashlight signal that couldn't occur because the evacuees' light failed and was discarded circa 400m down-slope from the tent. Whether or not Doroshenko and Krivonischenko finally saw the glimmer of a fire 1500m down-slope at the cedar, they left to join the others.
I suspect Dyatlov may have stayed at the tent with them, but there's no clear evidence to insinuate this for him as much as for Doroshenko and Krivonischenko.
Once they got down into the valley, they didn't last long. I'm pretty confident it was Doroshenko who'd been up in the cedar tree, and this could have been the panicked action of someone already half-gone from hypothermia.
The earlier evacuees would have realized things had turned really deadly when the tent repair crew didn't signal for their return and instead showed up in the valley already half-gone.
Krivonischenko and Doroshenko die pretty soon after arrival.
No later than this point some or all the 3 found apparently heading back up-slope set out to get to the tent. None of them made it. I say 'no later than this point' because there's no firm basis for believing they headed up-slope together at the same time. For all we know, one or more of them had set out for the tent before the last ones off the mountain (the tent repair crew) arrived at the cedar, and they missed each other in the dark.
At some point a decision was made to build an emergency den. This might have been underway already, and / or it may have been a project started by T-B and Z operating independently from the others at the cedar 70 - 75m away. I still question whether T-B and Z were engaged with the others throughout the night's events.
In any case, T-B, Z, Dubinina, and Kolevatov were the only ones left alive in the valley after 3 left uphill and 2 died. They'd managed to get Dubinina into articles of Krivoschenko's clothing, cut off some fabric from one or both bodies, and moved back to the den site. One or more of them blundered off the bank into 'the ravine' during or after getting branches and fabric pieces laid in the den. By some permutation of events they all ended up falling in and dying there.
There are multiple variations on this scenario. My main conjecture is that most of the party deliberately descended into the valley as a temporary response to a tent failure, and then a monster degradation of weather conditions disrupted their plan and doomed them.
(EDIT: Corrected spelling on references to Krivonischenko.)
