In February 1959, nine mountaineers died in a high area of ​​the Urals known as the Dead Mountain.

A tragedy like many others.

Another group that found misery in the advance of an avalanche, in a violent storm, in the emptiness of a ravine, or in the broken ice in the middle of a glacier.

Only this time none of those causes explained what happened.

And that the event offered so many, so many strange details that it became the favorite of lovers of what about

natural in the Soviet Union.

They are the facts of the Diatlov pass, a case that recounts the book 'Dead Mountain.

The dead mountain 'from the American documentary maker

Donnie eichar

, now published in Spanish by Desnivel.How could it be that three of the bodies had violent injuries if they were alone in the middle of nowhere, on the Siberian border?

Why to the body of one of the two girls in the group,

Liudmila Dubinina 'Liuda'

, was your tongue missing?

What was the point of the clothes of several deceased being in tatters? What was the flash of light that discovered the last photograph that appeared in the camera of the leader of the group,

Igor Diátlov

? How is it possible that various garments showed high levels of radiation?

And above all: What motivated nine mountaineers, young university students with experience in trekking, to tear the walls of their tent and go out in the middle of the night, at 20 degrees below zero and half dressed to meet their death? For years all those unknowns and the Government censorship suffered by the funerals of the deceased in Yekaterinburg - then Sverdlovsk - multiplied the theories, from the most scientific to some absurd.

In his book, Donnie Eichar takes them apart one by one until he is left with no possible explanation ... and finds his own.

Indigenous, military, extraterrestrial ...

For example, the police investigation contemplated a possible attack by the Mansi, an indigenous people of the Urals, but the nearest town was almost a hundred kilometers away and, furthermore, there was no precedent for a similar act by the locals.

For example, it was assessed that they had been victims of a group of armed men - either Soviet soldiers discovered in full maneuvers or prisoners fleeing from a gulag - but the evidence showed that the tent had only been torn from the inside and that a There were only nine sets of footsteps around him.

And for example, it was contemplated that they had witnessed the launch of a Soviet experimental rocket and had been attacked by it, but the declassified documentation with the fall of the USSR revealed that in that period the tests were carried out on the island of Hayes, further 2,000 kilometers from the events.

Many other theories, such as the one that indicated that they were attacked by aliens, that they consumed alcohol in bad condition or hallucinogenic mushrooms or that they were surprised by the Russian Yeti could also be discarded. And then what?

The bruises and contusions of three corpses could have been produced by their fall from a ravine.

'Liuda' was missing her tongue because she died face down next to a river and the microorganisms ate her.

The clothing of several bodies was torn because they tried to make tourniquets with it.

The flash of light in Diatlov's last photograph could simply be an accident, a snapshot taken inadvertently.

And even the radiation of some garments had an explanation, since the values ​​were only slightly positive and could be due to tests carried out on the islands of Novaya Zemlya, almost 1,400 kilometers away.

But even if the book's author, Donnie Eichar, answered many questions over many years, he was missing the most important one: Why did nine experienced mountaineers rush out of their shelter, in the dead of night, and in deadly cold?

Von Kármán's whirlwind theory

The answer, the last answer, is discovered by the American documentary maker thanks to several scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA): the mountain itself killed them.

Although the winds of the tragic day were not excessively dangerous - about 60 km / h - the shape of the Dead Mountain generated a phenomenon called the Von Kármán whirlwind that sent a blast of infrasound against the store of Diatlov and company.

According to the scientists, the roundness of the summit and the absence of vegetation caused the wind to descend towards the plain in the form of a mini-tornado and emit an inaudible, but "terrifying, with physiological effects" hum.

"The impact of the infrasound could make the mountaineers panic, feel asphyxiated or dizzy, become disoriented and look for a way out of the store," say the experts consulted by Eichar, who closed the case with them.

For the documentary maker, the murderer was a sound wave as silent as it was dizzy, although the mystery will never really end: last year, 60 years after the events and six after the publication in English of the book 'Dead Mountain.

The Dead Mountain ', the Russian prosecution reopened the case, dusted the investigation files and concluded that the mountaineers were simply killed by an avalanche.

A resolution that upset the relatives of the deceased and the many followers of the case because, among other things, no avalanche leaves a tent standing with a cut from the inside out as the only scratch.

Eichar's explanation today is supposed to be more plausible, although he also has detractors.

In reality, no one can certify what happened in February 1959 in that high area of ​​the Urals with such a black name.

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