(no subject)

[skygiants]

So you know how I said in my last post that Heyers are great books to read on planes?

Things that are not great books to read on planes, as it turns out, are Astonishing True Stories Of Normal Expeditions That Went Horribly Wrong, because then you spend the entire ride going "OH MY GOD EVERYTHING CAN GO SO HORRIBLY WRONG SO QUICKLY, WAS THAT TURBULENCE? WAS IT?"

Dead Mountain: The True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident is a very fascinating account of a famously weird Russian tragedy: nine experienced student hikers in 1950s Russia decide to go on a group hiking trip a frozen mountain to get their Grade 3 hiking certification. Several months later their bodies are all found scattered in different locations around the mountain, having apparently all fled their tent, heading in different directions, at night, in -30 degree weather, half-dressed and without putting on their shoes.

Avalanche? Secret weapons testing? A BEAR? ALIENS? Soviet authorities kind of squinted at the problem and then threw up their hands and were like "uhhh....OVERWHELMING MYSTERIOUS FORCE," so obviously there are a bazillion conspiracy theories.

For whatever reason there were like four books published about this incident in English over the past year, sixty years after it actually happened; this particular one was recced by vivien and features the actual story of Dyatlov Pass interwoven with the story of Hollywood film producer Donnie Eichar randomly being like "I will go to Russia and conclusively solve the mystery of Dyatlov Pass!"

Spoiler: he does not conclusively solve the mystery of Dyatlov Pass. He does come up with a new theory, which is an interesting theory, and which he is inclined to put his weight behind, so, I mean, if he's happy. Anyway, it's an interesting read and a compelling true-disaster book! If you are looking for true-disaster stuff, I would recommend. Just maybe not on a plane, NOTORIOUS SITE OF TRUE DISASTERS.

Comments

[telophase]

Last time I was on a plane, one of the books on my Kindle was Mary Roach's Packing for Mars which, as I discovered 35,000 feet in the air, was full of all the disasters that happened or that might happen in spaceflight.

I saved the rest of the book until I got home from vacation.

[rachelmanija]

Even worse, it also has vivid, graphic descriptions of motion sickness.

[skygiants]

....OH NO

[telophase]

I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me that a book on the human side of the development of spaceflight would of course involve the stuff that went totally wrong, as well as considering what might go wrong so they could engineer solutions for it, but I expect I was just thinking "Mary Roach! She's funny! Perfect for the plane!"

Other than that, I always make sur to have Jane Austen on whatever electronic reading device I have with me, just so I can open it up and blow my own mind with the thought that when she was writing it, twoo hundred years ago, she could have no conception that a random woman would be reading her words on some sort of weird book-device two hundred years later in a giant metal tube hurtling across the ocean, 35,000 feet up, arriving in her native land (or somewhere else) in a matter of hours, instead of weeks or months.

And then I stop reading it after a few pages because plane flight is fairly stressful for me and I don't have the mental ability to spare from keeping the plane in the air through sheer force of will to interpret her prose easily. So I switch to something that does not require any brainpower whatsoever, like courtroom thrillers, which I only ever read on planes.

[skygiants]

I'm very rarely nervous on planes, so I don't usually tend to worry too much about what I'm reading, but the combination of SUPER TURBULENT FLIGHT plus SUPER CREEPY INCIDENT in this case turned out to be a slightly nervewracking one!

Jane Austen On Demand is a FANTASTIC policy though. I used to do tons of Stephen King on planes, because I had to fly back and forth between California and NY a lot when I was in school, and that's just about exactly the right amount of time to read one of King's bricks. But then that backfired too the time I decided to read The Stand on a flight home when I had a bad cold ...

[rachelmanija]

So, what IS the theory? I'm familiar with the incident, which is FUCKING CREEPY.

That being said, avalanches can do tremendous damage + people do often get delirious and rip off their clothes when dying of hypothermia + animals nosh on the soft bits + RUMORS RUN RAMPANT probably explains everything.

[skygiants]

He thinks that wind around the mountain created a naturally occurring massive infrasound vortex while everyone was getting undressed, they all had a physiological panic reaction to it and ran away before they realized what they were doing. Apparently science agrees that the mountain would have generated infrasound, at least!

[rachelmanija]

Hmm. Experiments in infrasound have shown that it makes a minority of people vaguely nervous and creeped out - not sure it would make ALL of them MADLY BOLT.

After they freaked out, why did they strip, switch clothes, and then get squashed and exposed to radiation?

[skygiants]

There's a fairly convoluted explanation that -- okay, let me see if I've got the proposed order of events straight:

1. most of the team MADLY BOLT off half-dressed and die in ones and twos
2. three of them stay pretty much together, then fall off a cliff, hence the squashing; one dies right away, one is seriously wounded, the third is OK enough to stagger off in search of help
3. the staggering team member finds the dead bodies of one or two of the other team members, strips off some of their clothes to bring back to Wounded Team Member and heads back in that direction, then ... dies en route? Dies after dumping some extra clothes on Wounded Team Member? I don't remember exactly how the end of this story goes, but that's the explanation for the stripping and clothing swap.

As far as the radiation goes, Eichar's scientists that he consulted think the radiation thing was pretty negligible; I do not know enough about radiation to judge this accurate or not.

[lovepeaceohana]

Wow that sounds creepy and horrifying (and yet I've wishlisted it anyway, go figure?!). Also, he's basically posited that a brown note (well, I guess a black one) killed everyone? I thought that only happened in anime.

If you're into a less-creepy side of the genre though, I'd definitely recommend The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, which is a hugely long title for a really fantastic book that's got the same sense of piecing-together-of-history plus epic adventure and just a little bit of awful (spoiler, there is at least one explicit death recorded, plus lots of historical ones as in "these people were here hundreds of years ago so they're obviously dead now) but mostly it's just really really epic.

[skygiants]

A DEATH NOTE, in fact. *rimshot*

Thanks for the rec, that sounds fascinating! I have only fairly recently discovered the guilty pleasure of True Disaster Pop Nonfiction, and definitely appreciate recs.

[lovepeaceohana]

Ooo, I'll throw in another rec, then, for Eddie Would Go, which I haven't actually read but it's been recced to me for ages because it's about this legendary Hawaiian surfer who died heroically trying to rescue a cruise ship full of people or something amazing like that. It's probably closer to a memoir than True Disaster Pop Nonfiction but it seems like it's kind of in that general region?

[buymeaclue]

Oh, I have had the Emerald Mile on my list since Outside talked it up - glad to see the rec!

[lovepeaceohana]

Hee, I'm always happy to rec it! It's a really fantastic read and I loved the way the author drew together all the different pieces of the narrative - and there are lots! - to build up just how amazing a feat this actually was. (I think the record has been bested since, but eh. It didn't get an awesome book and this one did, so.)