Mountain of the Dead (12 page)

Although there is absolutely no correlation between the work that Gavreau carried out in France and what happened to the Dyatlov group 2,500 miles (4,000km)
away in the Urals, it is felt that the worst of the internal injuries to Semyon Zolotarev, Luda Dubinina and Rustem Slobodin was possibly caused by a similar weapon being developed by the Soviet military and tested in the northern Urals, either directly or indirectly on members of the Dyatlov group.

The first problem with this theory is the work of Dr Vladimir Gavreau himself: his experiments and theories tend to attract dedicated conspiracy theorists who find in his work what they want to find and ignore anything that may conflict with their theories. A current expert in the field of infrasonics has described Vladimir Gavreau himself as a ‘nut job’ (this view was directly expressed to the author). Whilst this less than flattering description of Gavreau is somewhat subjective, there is no denying that his work tends to attract dedicated conspiracy theorists. Another of Gavreau’s supporters was the author William S. Burroughs, whose writing is described as ‘paranoid fiction’.

The second problem with the theory is that although intense infrasound can cause serious damage to a human body (150dB of any sound above 5Hz is harmful to humans), it would not have caused some of the worst injuries found on Semyon Zolotarev, Luda Dubinina and Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle. Intense infrasound causes internal damage such as soft tissue damage, ruptured blood vessels, nausea and disorientation. It does not cause internal mechanical damage of the kind found on the three Dyatlov group members, which were broken ribs and fractures.

Last but not least, there is no evidence of a Soviet military infrasonic weapon at this time, although work on something of this nature would have been highly classified in 1959 and would probably remain so today. Another problem with the theory is that even if a weapon of this nature had been available at the time, its size would have made it extremely difficult to transport it with any ease. A current unit today in use at a research facility for infrasonics in the USA, which has an output of 120dB at 5Hz, has the same footprint as a 40ft shipping container. Any unit of this nature potentially used by the Soviet military in February 1959 would be likely to have been as large if not larger. The possibility that it would have been taken by either a tracked vehicle or large wheeled carrier of the type used to carry missiles – or even slung underneath a helicopter and taken into the winter blizzard conditions of the northern Urals for testing – is extremely unlikely.

The supposed murder by the Mansi of a female geologist in the area in the 1930s has led some to believe that the Mansi had killed the Dyatlov party as they were enraged by the group’s encroachment on two sacred Mansi sites (Kholat Syakhl and Mount Otorten). Another theory suggests that the Mansi may have killed the members of the group in order to get any alcohol they may have had, although Yury Yudin is adamant they had none with them. The story of the murdered female geologist has not been verified by anyone and, even assuming it were true – that the geologist had encroached on sacred Mansi sites such as Mount Otorten or Kholat Syakhl and it was proved that she was murdered for doing so – there is no evidence to suggest that the Mansi had killed any of the members of the Dyatlov group. In the first place, there is the absence of footprints or any signs of a struggle having taken place. Whilst it is possible that guns may have been used to keep the Dyatlov party subdued whilst the Mansi murdered them, the group could possibly have run down the mountain away from someone threatening them. None of the signs at the tent, or the tracks leading towards the tree line, suggest there was anyone else present. It would have taken more than one individual with a gun to be able to threaten the party and then kill all of them. The help given by the Mansi hunters in searching for the missing party appears to have been willingly given, and while it could be said that they assisted the search party in order to deflect attention away from themselves, it appears to be unlikely. Mansi hunters and their dogs found the bodies of Zina Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin.

There is a final possibility that had Mansi hunters been involved – and had they been able to cover any tracks they had made – the deaths of Luda Dubinina, Semyon Zolotarev and Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle are unexplained. It does not seem possible that the Mansi would have been able to cause these injuries without leaving external marks on the bodies of the victims.

One interesting aside on the involvement of the Mansi is that a family of Mansi who lived close to Mount Otorten said that they had seen someone (possibly members of the Dyatlov group) coming down Mount Otorten at some point after 1 February from a distance of approximately 1–1.5 miles (2–3km). Whether they may have observed another party or were not telling the truth is not known. In any event, their sighting was not taken into account in the official findings.

Although Stalin had been dead for nearly six years by February 1959, the Soviet Union was still a repressive state. Despite the thaw in the USSR after Khrushchev came to power, the Gulags still existed, even though by early 1959 many prisoners had been released. The height of the thaw was in 1960, although the numbers incarcerated started to grow again after Brezhnev came to power.
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A joke in the Soviet Union was that you could either be inside in one of the camps or outside in the bigger prison (i.e. the USSR).
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The Gulag system began in 1929 and was used to incarcerate both criminal and political prisoners. The system of camps stretched right across the USSR, with many in the most barren and desolate areas. Although the conditions inside the camps were bad enough, to escape from one of them would have required considerable luck and ingenuity as well as a high degree of hardiness just to stay alive as the conditions outside the camps were so inhospitable, especially in midwinter. There were a number of camps on both sides of the northern Urals that would not have been a great distance from Kholat Syakhl, with the camp system at Ivdel being the closest. The prisoners of the Ivdel camps were put to work in mining, road construction and working in the forests on lumber, so there would have been numerous opportunities for escape attempts to be made. The Dyatlov group had also passed through Ivdel on 25 January 1959 on their way north from Serov to Vizhay prior to starting their journey on foot. Another camp system lay 370 miles (594km) to the north of Kholat Syakhl at Vorkuta, which was as desolate and harsh as any in the system. German PoWs had also laboured there in the coal mines in the immediate post-war years. There had been a revolt by prisoners at Vorkuta in July 1953, which resulted in over fifty deaths when the revolt was put down without mercy. An American, Homer Harold Cox, also spent time in Vorkuta after being kidnapped in East Berlin in September 1949; he died of pneumonia a year after he was released in December 1953. There were also further camps on the western side of the northern Urals in the Komi Republic.

Any escaped prisoners certainly would not have harboured any feelings of goodwill towards anyone they ran into, for the fear of being turned in to the authorities. A recaptured prisoner could expect the harshest of punishments, including, quite possibly, execution.

There were two main groups of prisoners in the camps, ordinary criminals and people incarcerated for political crimes. Oddly, the authorities treated escapes and attempted escapes by the political prisoners far more seriously than they did the ordinary criminals. An escape by a political prisoner would involve a search party being formed immediately, possibly involving frontier guards. Additionally, nearby towns and settlements would be warned to be on the lookout for them.
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It may be doubted that escaped criminals would use extreme violence or murder during their escape bids after they had left the vicinity of a camp, but their desperation can perhaps be illustrated by an example. With many of the camps being in remote areas, one of the biggest problems for anyone escaping and making their way to some form of civilisation was the problem of sustenance on the journey. A known practice – one that was common enough to have its own nickname – was
for a potential escapee to identify someone who would make the escape with him (or her) on the basis that the two of them would stand a better chance of succeeding. Once they had escaped and hunger started to become a problem, the person who had initiated the escape would kill his or her companion and eat them. This applied to larger groups of escapees as well, where unfortunate victims would be identified beforehand and set upon when the time was right. The nickname for these victims was ‘Walking Larders’.
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In respect of the Dyatlov group, it is highly improbable that they were killed by escaped prisoners. There are a number of reasons: there were no other footprints in the snow either in the vicinity of the tent or around the bodies of the group or in the vicinity; there were nine members in the Dyatlov group, all of whom were fit and strong and, in the absence of weapons, it would have taken a substantial group of escaped prisoners to either kill or overpower them; although escaped prisoners would try to stay hidden as much as possible, criminals who would be more likely to use extreme violence tended to head for towns and cities where they would have a support network (including false documentation) from other criminals and blend into the surroundings. Political prisoners would do their best to try and get out of the Soviet Union if they could,
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as they were more reviled than other criminals. Any attempt by political prisoners to make contact with people they had formerly known brought these people into as great a danger as the political prisoners themselves, as they would almost certainly meet the same fate from the authorities if they were found to be harbouring or helping them. Finally, there appears to be no reason why the Dyatlov group would have been attacked by escaped prisoners. They were in their tent getting ready to bed down for the night, so would not have observed anyone who may not have wanted their presence reported to the authorities. Neither was anything removed from the tent that may have proved to be of use to someone on the run, such as ski equipment, torches, knives or footwear.

As with a number of the other theories, there is more than one sub-theory involved regarding the group meeting their deaths at the hands of special forces troops (see also Chapter 7, Political theory). This main theory rests on the premise that the group were all killed by special forces troops for the reason that they could not be allowed to live after seeing them (the troops themselves in the case of Americans) or had witnessed secret tests (in the case of Soviet troops).

The injuries received by some of the Dyatlov group did point to a fight of some kind and this fight may have involved special forces troops. The hand injuries sustained by Igor Dyatlov
and Rustem Slobodin suggest a fight of some kind. Also, the grey foamy discharge that was found on the cheek of Yury Doroshenko led some doctors to believe that something or someone had been pressing on his chest cavity.

The use of US special forces in this region in the 1950s may not be quite as fanciful as it first seems. When concerns arose over the ‘Bomber Gap’ (see Chapter 2) in 1954–55, there was deep concern in the USA over the size and capabilities of the Soviet Union’s strategic bomber forces. Although high-altitude balloons with a photographic reconnaissance capability were briefly used by the US Air Force (under the codename Project Genetrix) in early 1956, they were nowhere near satisfactory. The first U-2 spy flights over the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union started later in 1956. However, there was a desperate and insatiable requirement for more accurate intelligence. The paranoia and extremely tight security in the Soviet Union made the insertion of external civilian spies extremely difficult and the proposal was examined of sending in US special forces to gather intelligence on the airfields where the Soviet bombers were based. In the event, the idea was not proceeded with, as it was viewed as impractical and eventually the ‘Bomber Gap’ was proved by 1956–57
to be a completely false notion, with the evidence for this provided by the U-2 overflights of the USSR. The U-2 overflights, however, could not cover everything of interest.

There were no Soviet long-range bomber bases on either side of the Urals where the Dyatlov incident took place. However, by 1959 the USSR had constructed a number of Arctic airbases, with the majority close to the Soviet Arctic coastline. These were known as ‘Bounce Aerodromes’ as they were intended to allow Soviet bombers attacking the USA to land and top up with fuel before making their journey over the Polar icecap. The nearest ‘Bounce Aerodrome’ would have been at Vorkuta 370 miles (594km)
north of where the Dyatlov group were located; the area around Kholat Syakhl is unlikely to be a place where any American or Western forces would place themselves to keep an eye on what was happening at Vorkuta. However, one place that would have been of great interest to such forces was the facility at Nizhnyaya Tura for the production and storage of nuclear weapons. This facility would have been passed on the way north by the Dyatlov group and was within a reasonable distance for a group of special forces to make their way to from Kholat Syakhl. In 1958–59 the CIA was only just finding out what was going on there, as they knew that there was a facility in the area consuming a large amount of power, in addition to the gas diffusion plant further south at Verkh Neyvinsk, near Serov, which was enriching plutonium U-235.

Without any further evidence, however, the balance of probability is that US or Western forces are unlikely to have been involved in the Dyatlov group deaths.

The suggestion for the involvement of Soviet special forces is that the Dyatlov group had stumbled across and witnessed the testing of secret weapons and needed to be eliminated to ensure their silence. This is an extremely remote possibility. Despite the presence of possible military testing areas, (including the Chistop massif) in the vicinity of where the group was located, the testing appears to have been of a conventional nature. Additionally, numerous groups made trips into these mountains, along with the Mansi who traversed the area herding reindeer and hunting. It would seem an odd choice for a place to test weapons in conditions of the utmost secrecy. Also, the hypothermia deaths and the massive internal injuries received by Luda Dubinina, Semyon Zolotarev and Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle do not appear to be the type of injuries they would have received from these troops. Also, if the requirement had been to eliminate the group completely, then it would be expected that their bodies would have been better concealed rather than just left to be covered by snow.