Theories Discussion > KGB / Radiation / Military involvement

Radiation from potash?

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RMK:
First of all, great work in this thread, Ryan!  thumb1

Let me make sure I understand the gist of your hypothesis.  You propose that the beta radiation detected in the Ravine 4's clothing was merely due to naturally occurring K-40, and that the reason said clothing was emitting a substantial amount of beta radiation is that it had been exposed to a LARGE amount of some potassium compound (specifically, KOH).  Correct?

Ryan:
Thanks. That’s exactly what I’m proposing.

A pure beta emitter, energetic enough to be detected by Geiger counters, could explain the results. But most of these are man-made isotopes like Sr-90. This crosses a certain line; these isotopes are so unobtainable that it would likely require a really big military conspiracy.

K-40 opens up an additional natural option to explain the results. While K-40 is a beta and gamma emitter, given the low gamma to beta ratio of K-40 and Geiger tubes have approx. 3% sensitivity to gammas vs. near 100% for energetic betas, this still works. At the levels of beta found on the Ravine 4’s clothing, the gamma would be below the level of detection.

amashilu:
Quote from Ryan:
A caustic chemical like KOH won’t dissolve the bodies like the people staging this mistakenly believe, but it may have physical effects too. I’m also wondering if this might explain Dubinina’s missing eyes and tongue. I am very well aware that animal predation could also cause this. But a caustic chemical could dissolve some exposed soft flesh, and additionally could account for the more advanced decomposition Ivanov noted in these four bodies.

This is an intriguing line of thought, Ryan. I was rereading your posts and as I got to the ones where you postulate that the Rav4 were tossed into the ravine and had KOH dumped on them to speed up decomposition, I also wondered if the KOH could be responsible for the missing eyes and tongue, as they are such soft tissue and would dissolve quickly. It is a horrible idea, but it does makes sense. To do this, somebody would have to be really desperate to cover something up.

Senior Maldonado:

--- Quote from: amashilu on October 14, 2025, 04:29:13 PM ---Quote from Ryan:
A caustic chemical like KOH won’t dissolve the bodies like the people staging this mistakenly believe, but it may have physical effects too. I’m also wondering if this might explain Dubinina’s missing eyes and tongue. I am very well aware that animal predation could also cause this. But a caustic chemical could dissolve some exposed soft flesh, and additionally could account for the more advanced decomposition Ivanov noted in these four bodies.

This is an intriguing line of thought, Ryan. I was rereading your posts and as I got to the ones where you postulate that the Rav4 were tossed into the ravine and had KOH dumped on them to speed up decomposition, I also wondered if the KOH could be responsible for the missing eyes and tongue, as they are such soft tissue and would dissolve quickly. It is a horrible idea, but it does makes sense. To do this, somebody would have to be really desperate to cover something up.

--- End quote ---

I fully agree that Ryan has done excellent work investigating radiation aspect of DP mystery. Indeed, his idea about using KOH to get rid of the bodies sounds horrible. Fortunately, the reality should not be that bad. The idea to get the corpses back to the spot and dissolve them in the vicinity of search party camp is not a good one. Corpses could be securely dismissed somewhere else, e.g in crematorium. It's very risky to return the bodies into search area and hope that KOH will do its job quickly and completely.

Original Ryan's idea that manmade isotope like Sr-90 might be the culprit sounds more promising.

sarapuk:
Its a very good article by Ryan. Well done. This radiation issue has had a few of us scratching our heads over the years. Always good to have new and interesting input. Lots of investigators try to fit things
together in much the same way that lots of mathematicians try to fit complicated equations together to arrive at their own particular theory. Its always best to keep to the facts in these matters. And unfortunately we just dont have a lot of facts that can shed light on what actually happened. We know that when the searchers arrived a geiger counter was used in the search. This in itself is unusual. In fact it should ring alarm bells loud and clear. Why was a geiger counter being used to search for missing hikers. Now the particular model being used would have picked up Beta radiation as well as other radiation. So before we get into types of radiation we need to know more about the reasons for having the detector there in the first place.

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