Dyatlov Pass Forum
Theories Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: GlennM on January 27, 2026, 08:07:06 AM
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https://youtu.be/dMsGHmGxyxo?si=lbAzaE74lT_Fko-I
Ball Lightning
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In the video you reference, the plasma ball is static. There are many, many documented occurrences of this kind of weather phenomenon throughout history in which they are not static, but moving. They terrify people and have been responsible for injuries and deaths. The book that presents the documentation with particular reference to the DPI is called The Dyatlov Pass Mystery: Not a Cold Case by Henning Kuersten.
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Two instances can be found at these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm#:~:text=The%20Great%20Thunderstorm%20of%20Widecombe%2Din%2Dthe%2DMoor,lightning%20during%20a%20severe%20thunderstorm.
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cungItX9VMA
(You can change the audio track to English.)
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Media sources make a point of the accompaniment of thunder. Would thunder and lightning be remembered in camp 42,Vizhay or Mansi?
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Two more examples:
“In August 1979, ball lightning exploded in a tent in which a husband, wife and their four-year-old daughter were lying. A dry wound from a burn formed near the woman's elbow, after that the current passed through her arm and went into the ground through the fingers. A current, which had killed her husband, passed from his left hand into the body, through the heart and then through the right leg. His body was covered in dark lines, as if his nervous system had been burned from the inside. The daughter received a chin burn, but remained alive”.18
In 1977, in the vicinity of the city Mednogorsk, Orenburg Region of Russia, a motorcycle driver and a man sitting behind him were killed by a ball lightning discharge. According to his story, “A button-sized ball sat on the handlebars of a motorcycle. There was a click, and the engine turned off. The right side of the driver’s helmet was torn off, and his right ear was cut off. The electrical charge entered his ear and exited through his left leg, just above the knee. The man sitting behind the driver had his whole body burned. His skin became black as coal, it was impossible to touch it, it stuck to any object like jelly. The motorcycle remained unharmed”.12
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Note this quote from the first article above: "His body was covered in dark lines, as if his nervous system had been burned from the inside."
An interesting feature of being struck by lightning or a plasma ball is the "Lichtenberg figures" that appear on the skin afterward. Here is an example, and following that is a post-mortem shot of Krivonischenko's arms, not to mention his badly charred hands with the skin appearing to slough off.
(https://i.ibb.co/tP2Vp5Zr/lichtenberg-figures.png) (https://ibb.co/PzWqG8TH)
(https://i.ibb.co/j9090yb6/Screenshot-2026-01-28-at-2-46-56-PM.png) (https://ibb.co/kVbVb45H)
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https://youtu.be/dMsGHmGxyxo?si=lbAzaE74lT_Fko-I
Ball Lightning
Well done for posting this. Good question. I would think that would depend on whether or not the lightning struck the tent. It is lightning, and it doesn't last very long.
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In the video you reference, the plasma ball is static. There are many, many documented occurrences of this kind of weather phenomenon throughout history in which they are not static, but moving. They terrify people and have been responsible for injuries and deaths. The book that presents the documentation with particular reference to the DPI is called The Dyatlov Pass Mystery: Not a Cold Case by Henning Kuersten.
Yes thats correct many of these so called balls of lightning have caused injuries to people and even death. It is lightning and it doesn't last very long. In the Dyatlov Pass case we have reports of balls of light in the sky and they last for some time according to witnesses.
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Some of the plasma balls last longer than others. In one of the cases I cited above, the ball lasted for hours! and killed one of the campers whose sleeping bag was on a rubber pad so it wasn't grounded.
Some start out as a huge ball and then break down into several smaller balls. The Mansi apparently have seen these before and call the little balls "lanterns" as they descend into the valleys.
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In the video you reference, the plasma ball is static. There are many, many documented occurrences of this kind of weather phenomenon throughout history in which they are not static, but moving. They terrify people and have been responsible for injuries and deaths. The book that presents the documentation with particular reference to the DPI is called The Dyatlov Pass Mystery: Not a Cold Case by Henning Kuersten.
Yes thats correct many of these so called balls of lightning have caused injuries to people and even death. It is lightning and it doesn't last very long. In the Dyatlov Pass case we have reports of balls of light in the sky and they last for some time according to witnesses.
Which balls of light do you refer to sarapuk . Please state and and quote.
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Some of the plasma balls last longer than others. In one of the cases I cited above, the ball lasted for hours! and killed one of the campers whose sleeping bag was on a rubber pad so it wasn't grounded.
Some start out as a huge ball and then break down into several smaller balls. The Mansi apparently have seen these before and call the little balls "lanterns" as they descend into the valleys.
Please cite the scientifically with evidence.
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Two instances can be found at these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm#:~:text=The%20Great%20Thunderstorm%20of%20Widecombe%2Din%2Dthe%2DMoor,lightning%20during%20a%20severe%20thunderstorm.
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cungItX9VMA
(You can change the audio track to English.)
Well done for finding this one. Although ball lightning was dealt with fairly extensively years ago on this Forum its always good to have some new information on the subject or new finds. It doesnt look like ball lightning was the cause of the Dyatlov Group incident. But there are of course the references to balls of light in the sky.
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Media sources make a point of the accompaniment of thunder. Would thunder and lightning be remembered in camp 42,Vizhay or Mansi?
There doesn't appear to be any specific reference to thunder and lightning at the tent site of the Dyatlov Group.
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Media sources make a point of the accompaniment of thunder. Would thunder and lightning be remembered in camp 42,Vizhay or Mansi?
There doesn't appear to be any specific reference to thunder and lightning at the tent site of the Dyatlov Group.
I don't know if thunder and lightning are necessary components. There are some magnetic anomalies in the Urals at that location and in the book by Kuersten, he goes into scientific detail about what "ingredients" are necessary to create plasma balls. He also cites other geographic places where such balls are quite common. One is in western Europe, if I remember right, maybe Germany? I can dig up the book and look it up.
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I found it! Here is where the plasma balls are seen frequently:
The Hessdalen Valley in central Norway is the primary location in Europe where unexplained light phenomena, often described as plasma balls, are seen frequently. These, known as the Hessdalen lights, have been observed since the 1930s, appearing periodically in the 12-kilometer-long valley.
Key Details on the Hessdalen Lights:
Location: Hessdalen Valley, rural central Norway.
Appearance: The lights can be white, yellow, or red, and can appear as bright, glowing orbs or streaks that hover, move rapidly, or remain stationary.
Frequency: They are not seen "all the time" every day, but have appeared frequently enough over decades to be considered a persistent, recurring, and investigated phenomenon.
Scientific Study: Numerous investigations have tried to identify the cause, which has been associated with electromagnetic, geological, or atmospheric conditions.
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Note this quote from the first article above: "His body was covered in dark lines, as if his nervous system had been burned from the inside."
An interesting feature of being struck by lightning or a plasma ball is the "Lichtenberg figures" that appear on the skin afterward. Here is an example, and following that is a post-mortem shot of Krivonischenko's arms, not to mention his badly charred hands with the skin appearing to slough off.
(https://i.ibb.co/tP2Vp5Zr/lichtenberg-figures.png) (https://ibb.co/PzWqG8TH)
(https://i.ibb.co/j9090yb6/Screenshot-2026-01-28-at-2-46-56-PM.png) (https://ibb.co/kVbVb45H)
The report of "His body was covered in dark lines, as if his nervous system had been burned from the inside." Doesn't make clinical sense. "As if" is not a clinical confrontation.
"Lichtenberg figures" is on the skin surface and not the veins , it's the capillaries.
The autopsy states
"The venous(means viens) pattern is clearly visible on the inner surface of the shoulders and forearms of both extremities"
Different translation below
"On the inner arms and forearms of both upper limbs, the venous( veins) pattern is well-defined."
This is what we see in the photo. It's the veins and probably under hemoglobin from thawing, not fractal lightning strikes . They are very different things and probably known in 1959.
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lalala1
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If ball lightning was involved in the tragedy, would we expect tent damage? Would anyone inside hold a metal knife to cut the tent just then? Would a nearby outside bright light be sufficient reason to emergency exit the tent yet walk downslope? Is ball lightning Zolo's last photograph?
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All good questions.
Plasma balls, if you read up on their occurrences in history, can pass through tents, walls, buildings, and so on, and leave no trace, no burns, nothing.
And yes, the balls of light seen on Dyatlov Pass the night of the tragedy could have been plasma balls.
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I can tell you the pictures of Doroshenko and somebody are completely different.
It's like when I go to the doctor, and instead of one illness, he diagnoses another.
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At what height and luminosity would the plasma balls have to be, to be able to be seen ? Who saw these lights on the night of the tragedy and where were they located?
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There is a suggestion that two hikers, including Zolo may have been outside the tent on personal business. If the lightning event occurred, and he had a camera on, would he attempt a quick snapshot? I am curious. At night, a longer exposure would be required. The smeared nature of the light might suggest he tried to take a hand held picture of it after quickly changing the exposure settings. I think it would become a throw away picture because without a ground reference or something for scale, there is little real meaning to an impulsive picture. After taking a snapshot, would his next words be something like, " Its coming closer, get out of the tent!"
Hard to believe all those people would pay a terrible price over a random transient phenomona...but then again a slab avalanche is another.
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Kuersten says that it wasn't only Zolotaryev who was taking photos of the phenomenon in the sky. I'll quote here for you:
QUOTE
When Zolotaryov was discovered in the ravine, 3 months after the tragedy and under 4-5 meters of snow, he had a weathered Zorki-1 camera around his neck, and inside this camera the searchers discovered a surprisingly intact film roll. The film consisted of 36 frames: 17 frames were from before the h ike and are considered irrelevant, 10 were hidden by Ivanov, and returned to the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation by his daughter in 2009, and 9 remain missing. Of course this immediately raises a few questions: why did Zolotaryov salvage a camera from the tent and not his backpack or an ice ax? Why did he keep it in reach up to his death? Why did the investigation remove these frames from the case files? And why, in spite of the thin evidence available today, is the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation not making the 10 resurfaced frames available to the public?
Valentin Yakimenko, a fellow student of the Dyatlovs, managed to get a hold of these frames and did a lengthy image analysis during a 2015 Dyatlov conference ....
Under the microscope, the frames show small bright dots with fine lines that resemble trails of signal flares, and one of the brighter objects seems to grow to double size of the moon before descending to the ground. Yakimentko assumes that Zolotaryov took these 10 (+ nine missing) frames between the time of the camp evacuation and his death in the ravine, that 4 other cameras also captured the bright object in the sky, and that these chronologically match Zolotaryov's frames 5, 7, and 10. From this, he concludes that Zolotaryov was the first to photograph the approaching object, and then called out his comrades with their own cameras. It would also prove that the object was a lasting phenomenon and not some sudden flash, because the overall time frame was much too long for a rocket or missile.
Yakimenko adds that not only 9 of Zolotaryov's frames are missing, but also an estimated 24 frames from Slobodan's and 12 frames from Thibeaux's camera. He concludes that the three of them photographed the majority of the incident at the camp site, that this event was the true cause of the evacuation and that all frames are withheld at the same location for that reason.
END QUOTE
I will stop quoting the book here because if I quote any more, I'll probably have to pay royalties wink1
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PS: More on Valentin Yakimenko's study of the non-public negatives and photos here:
https://www.dyatlov-pass-incident.com/valentin-yakimenkos-study-groups-negatives/
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I don't think there's any evidence Kuersten is an expert in anything or that these photos are from a camera around Zolotaryev's neck..the only evidence we have is from the assumption about the camera around Zolotarye v's neck is from a photo. No one that was there mentions anything about a camera or camera leather case. There is mention of a note pad and pen and that's it, as far as I understand. The note pad and pen are mentioned from a later interview.
Valentin does not display the full negatives from the alleged camera, so where are the full negatives and why are they only zoomed in photos of a tiny part of the frame that are most likely scratches. We don't even know if it's the nega
tive of black on white or white on black.
Frame 34 or the three heads photo are not from Zolos camera but yet Valentin presents it as such.
At the scale of objects in the photos that are taken and the exposure time to let the light hit the film, my understanding is that they would be ZigZags of light. Basically , the hand would not be able to keep the camera still.
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Number 8 the "chicken" is interesting because it catches a two tone colored border with what looks like lettering or numbering on the blue rod. Certainly nothing in the photo bears any relationship to the tent. I would speculate that this photo was an attempt to film something on the other side of a glass window taken from within a building or a moving vehicle. Of course, it was a failure and the "chicken" is just an artifact of no real significance. What seems important is whether this is the only color photo in the entire DPI archive? Suspicious, yes? Could a linguist hazard a guess as to the meaning of the obscured lettering?
I do not recall anybody suggesting these granular and streaked magnified images coming from the middle or the ends of a roll of film.
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Number 8 the "chicken" is interesting because it catches a two tone colored border with what looks like lettering or numbering on the blue rod. Certainly nothing in the photo bears any relationship to the tent. I would speculate that this photo was an attempt to film something on the other side of a glass window taken from within a building or a moving vehicle. Of course, it was a failure and the "chicken" is just an artifact of no real significance. What seems important is whether this is the only color photo in the entire DPI archive? Suspicious, yes? Could a linguist hazard a guess as to the meaning of the obscured lettering?
I do not recall anybody suggesting these granular and streaked magnified images coming from the middle or the ends of a roll of film.
I think the problem we have is that this expert was taking photos of photos on a monitor screen. What we see with the blue border and writing is the software or whatever is being used on that monitor . The orange at the top is the ambient colour of the room that seems to be coming from his light bulb which is also reflected on some of these photos from the monitor. Again the small squares are the film sprockets.
This means the photos in the dyatlov archive , that are displayed in black and white are also inaccurate because of the reflection glow.
Until the full frames and source of these photos are shared , I don't think they should be taken seriously.
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Number 8 the "chicken" is interesting because it catches a two tone colored border with what looks like lettering or numbering on the blue rod. Certainly nothing in the photo bears any relationship to the tent. I would speculate that this photo was an attempt to film something on the other side of a glass window taken from within a building or a moving vehicle. Of course, it was a failure and the "chicken" is just an artifact of no real significance. What seems important is whether this is the only color photo in the entire DPI archive? Suspicious, yes? Could a linguist hazard a guess as to the meaning of the obscured lettering?
I do not recall anybody suggesting these granular and streaked magnified images coming from the middle or the ends of a roll of film.
In this strange, years-old mystery which has been examined by so many experts and lay-people for over 60 years, I think all theories should be properly considered, even Yeti.
I am intrigued by Henning Kuersten's book, but this will be the last time I quote it, as I'm not trying to push it on anyone. If your (or anyone else's) interest is piqued, they can buy it themselves and read his theory.
QUOTE
..... I became convinced that the Dyatlov group perished in the wake of a rare but massive electromagnetic plasma event, commonly known as Earth Lights, Aerial Plasmoids, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), and most often mistaken for Ball Lightning. Due to the variability of the phenomenon and the dispute about the correct denomination, I will introduce the term Aerial Plasma Phenomenon (APP) and present a more detailed classification in the "Believe in Science" chapter.
.... I will also demonstrate to you that SX and K34 are not technical shots, but pretty good night-time photographs of this same spectacular phenomenon, which has seen repeating occurrences in the Ural mountains up until today. The following image is a histogram-equalized collage of our three "Famous Last Frames," to which I will later add more from this second hotspot in the Ural mountains. We will also learn of other similar spectacular incidents, adn slowly but surely paint a precise picture of what happened on that extraordinary but tragic night on the Dyatlov pass.
In the end, a lot can be interpreted into blurry, scratched, and weathered images. But Z7 is in my opinion the most intriguing evidence, something a criminal investigation might call a smoking gun.
(https://i.ibb.co/8L1Zn0jj/20260130-132324.jpg) (https://ibb.co/67jCcm44)
END QUOTE
(Photo from book, above, shows three images from three different cameras, taken by the DPI that night.)
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https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2013/EPSC2013-42.pdf
Pretty interesting scientific/geological paper on meteors and "UFO"s in the area (in particular, Figure 3).
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-map-shows-frequency-of-small-asteroid-impacts-provides-clues-on-larger-asteroid-population/
This is a NASA paper reflecting the number of bolide events around the globe.
I was amazed to see that maybe the largest concentration of such events across the world occurs right where the DPI was. Image below.
(https://i.ibb.co/3mwd6Tc7/bolides.png) (https://ibb.co/tpSKjHD4)
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I am a bit uncertain how to read the data from the maps , but as I understand it , the large orange circle in Russia is the Chelyabinsk meteor from 2013. The orange colour represents daylight hours. The size represents the energy created and not the number of fire balls in the region.
The previous map seems to show the observations but I'm not sure if it's observations by people on the ground or electronic devices. It would make sense that the bigger the fireball the more people see/hear it?
I don't know if these two maps are the same thing as the EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 8, EPSC2013-42, 2013
European Planetary Science Congress 2013 diagrams don't say a time period .
Apparently they make noises. Electrophonic Sounds from Bolides
http://inamidst.com/notes/electrophonic
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At this juncture on the topic of ball lightning affecting the hikers, we have a photo which is offered as evidence of skin damage from lightning. I am inclined to think that post mortem lividity and that the victim was found face down which explains the vascular outlining. I think ball lightning and/ or bolides are common enough globally to discount anyone walking a mile in snow to avoid them. The analysis of artifacts in " found photos" are described as photos of photos grabbed from a computer screen. Personally, I would expect to see raster lines of pixellation. If the photos were instead just,saved as JPG files, then thay is an option. It may explain how color made it into what was all black and white photos. So far as I can tell, ball lightning is an extraordinary explanation for something that can be more mundanely explained.
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Are these rasterlines? And there's a magnifying graphic with a plus sign.
(https://i.ibb.co/jvX0FQG6/Screenshot-20260131-213508-Chrome-2.png) (https://ibb.co/nsJdSYfg)
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They look like raster (scan lines) . Since the raster runs horizontally,,this image suggests a 90 degree rotation with the artifact turned robably for the sake of the viewer's imagination. Good detective work!
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If ball lightning was involved in the tragedy, would we expect tent damage? Would anyone inside hold a metal knife to cut the tent just then? Would a nearby outside bright light be sufficient reason to emergency exit the tent yet walk downslope? Is ball lightning Zolo's last photograph?
Apparently ball lightning can penetrate objects like a tent without necessarily damaging the object. But these ball lightning events don't last long, usually seconds or minutes. If something last a long time then its probably not ball lightning.
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All good questions.
Plasma balls, if you read up on their occurrences in history, can pass through tents, walls, buildings, and so on, and leave no trace, no burns, nothing.
And yes, the balls of light seen on Dyatlov Pass the night of the tragedy could have been plasma balls.
Plasma balls or ball lightning as they are also called can penetrate objects without leaving a trace, apparently. I think in this Dyatlov case we have to consider the possibility that multiple events took place, that is maybe several or 4 or 5 things happened, including ball lightning. Along with atrocious weather conditions and maybe even a meteor shooting across the sky or rocket. But these do not necessarily mean they were involved in this Dyatlov case, just observed.
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Kuersten says that it wasn't only Zolotaryev who was taking photos of the phenomenon in the sky. I'll quote here for you:
QUOTE
When Zolotaryov was discovered in the ravine, 3 months after the tragedy and under 4-5 meters of snow, he had a weathered Zorki-1 camera around his neck, and inside this camera the searchers discovered a surprisingly intact film roll. The film consisted of 36 frames: 17 frames were from before the h ike and are considered irrelevant, 10 were hidden by Ivanov, and returned to the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation by his daughter in 2009, and 9 remain missing. Of course this immediately raises a few questions: why did Zolotaryov salvage a camera from the tent and not his backpack or an ice ax? Why did he keep it in reach up to his death? Why did the investigation remove these frames from the case files? And why, in spite of the thin evidence available today, is the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation not making the 10 resurfaced frames available to the public?
Valentin Yakimenko, a fellow student of the Dyatlovs, managed to get a hold of these frames and did a lengthy image analysis during a 2015 Dyatlov conference ....
Under the microscope, the frames show small bright dots with fine lines that resemble trails of signal flares, and one of the brighter objects seems to grow to double size of the moon before descending to the ground. Yakimentko assumes that Zolotaryov took these 10 (+ nine missing) frames between the time of the camp evacuation and his death in the ravine, that 4 other cameras also captured the bright object in the sky, and that these chronologically match Zolotaryov's frames 5, 7, and 10. From this, he concludes that Zolotaryov was the first to photograph the approaching object, and then called out his comrades with their own cameras. It would also prove that the object was a lasting phenomenon and not some sudden flash, because the overall time frame was much too long for a rocket or missile.
Yakimenko adds that not only 9 of Zolotaryov's frames are missing, but also an estimated 24 frames from Slobodan's and 12 frames from Thibeaux's camera. He concludes that the three of them photographed the majority of the incident at the camp site, that this event was the true cause of the evacuation and that all frames are withheld at the same location for that reason.
END QUOTE
I will stop quoting the book here because if I quote any more, I'll probably have to pay royalties wink1
Very good. It must be some years ago now that the subject of missing photos got a lot of discussions going. It does appear that many photos or and negatives are missing and may have been deliberately kept from public view, for some reason. Maybe that reason was too sensational to reveal. Perhaps there was and still is a cover up going on.
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Number 8 the "chicken" is interesting because it catches a two tone colored border with what looks like lettering or numbering on the blue rod. Certainly nothing in the photo bears any relationship to the tent. I would speculate that this photo was an attempt to film something on the other side of a glass window taken from within a building or a moving vehicle. Of course, it was a failure and the "chicken" is just an artifact of no real significance. What seems important is whether this is the only color photo in the entire DPI archive? Suspicious, yes? Could a linguist hazard a guess as to the meaning of the obscured lettering?
I do not recall anybody suggesting these granular and streaked magnified images coming from the middle or the ends of a roll of film.
In this strange, years-old mystery which has been examined by so many experts and lay-people for over 60 years, I think all theories should be properly considered, even Yeti.
I am intrigued by Henning Kuersten's book, but this will be the last time I quote it, as I'm not trying to push it on anyone. If your (or anyone else's) interest is piqued, they can buy it themselves and read his theory.
QUOTE
..... I became convinced that the Dyatlov group perished in the wake of a rare but massive electromagnetic plasma event, commonly known as Earth Lights, Aerial Plasmoids, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), and most often mistaken for Ball Lightning. Due to the variability of the phenomenon and the dispute about the correct denomination, I will introduce the term Aerial Plasma Phenomenon (APP) and present a more detailed classification in the "Believe in Science" chapter.
.... I will also demonstrate to you that SX and K34 are not technical shots, but pretty good night-time photographs of this same spectacular phenomenon, which has seen repeating occurrences in the Ural mountains up until today. The following image is a histogram-equalized collage of our three "Famous Last Frames," to which I will later add more from this second hotspot in the Ural mountains. We will also learn of other similar spectacular incidents, adn slowly but surely paint a precise picture of what happened on that extraordinary but tragic night on the Dyatlov pass.
In the end, a lot can be interpreted into blurry, scratched, and weathered images. But Z7 is in my opinion the most intriguing evidence, something a criminal investigation might call a smoking gun.
(https://i.ibb.co/8L1Zn0jj/20260130-132324.jpg) (https://ibb.co/67jCcm44)
END QUOTE
(Photo from book, above, shows three images from three different cameras, taken by the DPI that night.)
You are correct that all theories should be properly considered. Going over old ground is ok if it helps in some way and doesn't just clutter up and confuse things. Take this Dyatlov Forum, there have been so many posts over the years that it's difficult to keep track. Our hope is that more evidence will emerge from behind closed doors. I think that there is evidence that is deliberately being concealed. And maybe even what really happened.
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We all know what happened, not why.
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We all know what happened, not why.
May I disagree? We don't know exactly what happened. In fact there's dissent in what happened, if you stray from "hikers went to the Urals and died". It starts with the question if other people were involved and ends with were the tent was placed by the hikers.
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There are facts and imaginings, the latter spawns tourism, media and forum topics. If imaginings are eliminated and only the facts remain, they are the " how", not the "why".
The best we can do is employ a legal model to see what fits. This is means, motive, opportunity. This is circumstantial, eyewitness and physical evidence.
By what means did events transpire?
What was their decision making processes?
What opportunities were present?
What circumstances contributed to their demise?
Who saw anything?
What material objects explain the outcome?
In a court of law, a verdict can be achieved on incomplete evidence. In the court of opinion in the forum, the same is true. Although attorney's are distrustful of eyewitness testimony, it is the closest path to answering the "why." Question. We do not have it...yet.
For the most part, addressing the tragedy is akin to a game. The reward is not so much winning as it is how well one plays the game. Some feel they win because they are analytically minded, others intuitive. We use their 1959 misfortune to better understand ourselves.
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There are facts and imaginings, the latter spawns tourism, media and forum topics. If imaginings are eliminated and only the facts remain, they are the " how", not the "why".
The best we can do is employ a legal model to see what fits. This is means, motive, opportunity. This is circumstantial, eyewitness and physical evidence.
By what means did events transpire?
What was their decision making processes?
What opportunities were present?
What circumstances contributed to their demise?
Who saw anything?
What material objects explain the outcome?
But you say ; We all know what happened, not why. But we don't know what happened. There is not even a philosophical argument to be had.
In a court of law, a verdict can be achieved on incomplete evidence. In the court of opinion in the forum, the same is true. Although attorney's are distrustful of eyewitness testimony, it is the closest path to answering the "why." Question. We do not have it...yet.
For the most part, addressing the tragedy is akin to a game. The reward is not so much winning as it is how well one plays the game. Some feel they win because they are analytically minded, others intuitive. We use their 1959 misfortune to better understand ourselves.