Nothing goes there

[Ziljoe]

there's zero evidence of any blast shock and the autopsies don't evidence it

True. On the contrary, there is a lot of evidence of thick snow on the spot. Thus we come to the theory of a snow cave in the ravine and its collapse.

At the same time we have Ivanov's very direct statement in the newspaper article:
"The true causes of the deaths were hidden from the people, and only a few knew these reasons: the former first secretary of the regional committee A.P. Kirilenko, the second secretary of the regional committee A.F. Eshtokin, the regional prosecutor N. I. Klimov and the author of these lines, who were investigating the case".

Trying to match this statement with the Snow Cave theory we may conclude that Kirilenko, Eshtokin, Klinov, and Ivanov knew about the snow cave in the ravine, while Maslennikov, Tempalov, Askinadzi and all other people did not. Though Kirilenko, Eshtokin, Klinov had never seen the ravine... For me it sounds absurd. As for Ivanov, knowing about the snow cave, he was expected to start studying special literature on snow traumas, but he preferred to hunt fireballs and order radiactivity tests.

However, if we admit rocket collapse nearby and further blast of its fuel evaporation, that was class of events regional leaders would have been informed by federal authorities. The logic is back - those, who were entitled to know federal secrets, knew the truth.

Thank you senior Maldonado.

Sorry for the delay , life outside of the forum has been a bit challenging. I'll try to respond to your rocket proposal in the next post.

The snow cave theory is not so much a theory but more the most plausible cause of the injuries . Whether they made a snow cave , found a snow cave or manipulated a partially formed cornice into a snow cave is anyone's guess. However, the snow built up in that particular part of the ravine to engulf the ravine right across where the Ravine 4 were found . This region or small stretch of the ravine had the deepest snow from up stream and down stream from what I can ascertain from the search photos and later expeditions.

The autopsies speak of the blood in the linings of the lung , foamy blood , the nature of the rib fractures and their direction of breaking . All sorts of different things happen under different loads to the human body. The injuries mentioned in the autopsy In this instance, although not perfect and the lack of my own knowledge won't help , the injures are in line with a crushing and/or compression trauma. This means a sustained compression that also restricts breathing , not from broken ribs stopping you breathing but the chest being compressed for a length of time . We only have two mechanisms, a lump of snow or a fallen tree .

Thanks to Suri , we have a letter from one of the hikers in the 1963 trip to a friend that uses the phrase cave or they found the cave where they tried to survive and were eventually found. This is of particular interest because those hikers found the den location exactly in 1963 , in the summer. They had no case file of photos, they never mentioned rumours of lights in the sky , KGB , prisoner's. Yuri yudin was with them , smiling in the photos , climbing the tree , sitting in an old sledge and messing about in old skis.

My point is , the letter is natural, not contaminated even though there was probably chat between some of the student searchers , there is nothing to indicate that they thought otherwise but found the "cave" with left over logs or branches. There may have been more logs or branches under the snow that the searchers never dug up because they didn't search further after they found the bodies.

I'm going to try and address the ravine details in glennm post.

But here's a picture of what could be going on in the ravine and around the den. Please note the development and form of the cornice.

[Senior Maldonado]

Hello Ziljoe,

I hope that challenges you have faced are managable and I wish you to overcome them asap.

I don't think that we have only two options for the traumatic force - snow and a fallen tree. The World has more colours. SURI keeps talking about an infiltrator to the group, who had planned the DPI long before the hike and executed the plan when the group had reached 1079. This is interesting theory to look at and discuss, but SURI obviously is not ready to share the whole theory at this time. However, it's a road to try.

If we look into the Dr.Vozrozhdenny interrogation report, it becomes clear that the force which he suggested was high-speed. A gust of strong wind, a blast airwave, an automobile - all these move at very high speed, not less than 20 m/sec. He also suggested that the force had kicked the hikes, so they had spent some time flying and had hard landing afterwards. I do not know about a fallen tree, but snow collapse in the ravine could not achieve such a speed.

There were many events 'behind the scene' that indicate that DPI was not just a natural calamity. You might be interested to run a small investigation into Mr. Alexander Kidin abrupt career change which happened on April 10th, 1959 - the same day Central Committee of CPSU received the DPI investigation report from its Sverdlovsk branch office.

[GlennM]

If someone is tasked to do a job and does it, reward, not punishment is the predictable outcome. In the DPI, as a matter of record, there were punishments doled out for mismanagement. Also, because the recovery efforts were delayed on 1079, the opportunity to obfuscate the scene was wasted. There was no decompositional evidence to makemit into the record suggesting the corpses were twice thawed. Looked at another way, there was time to let the snow melt to find the missing hikers because there was nothing to hide.

The R4  bodies are a mystery to me. I can not imagine them looking that way from a blast or a fall, if they were digging out of a collapsed cave they wouldn't appear to be nappjng. It seems to me that their postures reflect fatigue and a desire for sleep, but they should all curl up or paradoxically undress. I could imagine they may have been rolled away from the mat by natural forces while the bodies were pliable. No evidence of a fire in the ravine either.

My one main reservation with a blast theory is that it was selective. My problem with a tree fall theory is that the bodies do not look like they were tended to, compared to the Yuris.My problem with the cave theory is I can not figure (considering the mat) whether they excavated down to the creek from a snow bank to create their mat, or tunnelled  along the creek into a long cave and building the mat at the far end. If the co structed cave collapsed, then Lyude, especially was facing the wrong way unless she was trying to dig ojt her friends.

If Ziljoe repsonds to your post, I will certainly understand skipping over this post.

[SURI]

I noticed a laughing Yudin a long time ago....

If I were addressing the ravine and what came next, I would look directly to these photographs. They are a better clue than the snow itself.

[GlennM]

They do not look like case file photos and they look retouched. Certainly nothing for anyone to laugh about then or now.