In case of a secret weapon test, a fake police investigation by the FEDs from Moscow pretending they are looking for out of towners one or more of whom have had a drunk driving accident or something alike was to be initiated. Not if a rocket droped off course which is almost impossible since there is not much in a rocket and there hasnt been much of a sense to test the rocket with a nuclear head inside rather than alone with sensors and the conditions detected by the sensors fully replicated along a standalone nuclear charge even with on ground investigation. There is, however, an almost 0 probability of a mislead rocket on the way to the very north with partial explosion of the nuclear head without full chain reaction or with a tiny nuclear charge or with not fully working in -30C charge. VERY UNLIKELY BECAUSE THESE WERE TO BE TESTED. However, there may be a possibility for artificially induced radiation into the bomb head of the rocket to see how not very big radiation would affect the rocket flight. Unlikely though because a transcontinental ballistic rocket would have the head secured and not even an electron would go through before explosion and also rockets from this era would not be able to achieve high acceleration just one hell of vibration which may lead to some sense of such a test simulating leaking head from vibration. Again : almost impossible for a head to leak . Either explodes or nothing unless designed to need huge forces for detonation ( a drop on New York from the stratosphere, for example ) and no detonation from tinier forces such as vibration or not so big hit in which cases there may be some plutonium or uranium 357 or whatever garbage they put in there. Again, such a fault from drop without detonation is incredibly unlikely. Detonation will not lead to orange flames. Most likely, this era nuclear weapons were designed very simply : a NON GUIDED rocket with somewhat calculated trajectory, as for example, to hit in 100 km radius of a given city; a REMOTELY NON CONTROLLED nuclear head with mechanical chemical detonator to start the nuclear chain reaction, activated on HUGE impact. In this case, even in case of a nuclear armed rocket flying through Siberia, drop on snow may not lead to radiation in case of a low flight which is desirable to avoid possible US radar in case of a weapon usage upon, say, US, for example, which, no offense, was what the ballistic transcontinental nuclear rockets were designed for primarily. Thus, the scenario of a misguided low flying rocket to fall into thick fresh snow or to slide on such ( for a huge distance though : this is not an airplane ) and not detonate is plausible yet incredibly unlikely, close to impossible.

The rocket R 7 was incredibly well designed for the era. There isnt much to test. Low flight is good to be tested but not near mountains. After all, no one would jeopardize the most secret, the first, unique, one and only one ballistic rocket in the world. In case of an accident, the military would have launched an unseen cover up collecting all clothes, metal pieces hell, even dust and snow and no one was to be allowed 100km off the site and a cover up scenario was to be released, as for example, looking for an aboriginal gang or whatever. Even assuming the military is so smart to pretend nothing happened, then how can they be so stupid not to Geiger counter the area and mainly the clothes? In case of a military involvement, nothing was to be found at all : just mysterious disappearing caused by the force of nature.

Still military and R 7 on the way to Siberia is not to be 100% ruled out but pretty close to 100%.

Of course, there may be some other military speculations as advanced for the period low flying airplanes with cowboy alike self confident pilots who want to show off and get the medals and the next rank up, etcetera.

However, there may be another explanation : what in case the military aint lyin. What in case there was a consequence of natural events, such as an earthquake which was not measured because the nearest measurement station is a few thousand km away and the drunk inhabitants of the village around 100 or more km away didnt recognize? What in case of a miniature concentrated earthquake around this summit. What in case of a chain of events : earthquake, avalanches, earth opening, volcano fire explosions flying all over the place, huge AIR PRESSURE, UNDERGROUND HOT WATER PRESSURE AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY SOME LAVA ALIKE FIRES ON THE SKY ? Smoke on the water, fire in the sky ! Doesnt this explain everything or almost : huge air and water pressure hits the climbers at a given point braking the ribs and skulls of some of them and sending them to run in panic and to try to undress the hot water damped clothes even without knowing of the radiation the air and water hit carried and all of this hell combined with a huge pressure of flying snow like shot from a shot gun, concentrated in a given direction, combined with an UNDERSNOW movement or gentile yet huge undersnow avenge as well as over snow such ( normal avalanche ). Hence the tent which looks half standing torn from the inside ( in case this is possible to be found at all by visual or 1959 technology investigation ) : People HEARD OR SAW SOMETHING OR NOTICED SOMETHING NEITHER SEEN NOR HEARD AND RUN IN PANIC. Then the snow covered up everything and moved everything. Then the wind blew the snow off to show the tent and the steps looking like untouched.

Also the reaction of the climbers : 4 tried to go get help. The most injured ones who were able to walk pretty well, though. 2 remained on guard near a tree which they climbed to navigate and communicate between the first four and the other 3, the strongest ones, who divided themselves in equal distances between the vintage point tree and where they remembered their camp to be. And to remember this is easy. You dont need to see the camp. You need to remember the relative position of the camp towards a given object which cannot have been moved, say, the summit. This is in case of lack of undersnow movement OR MOVEMENT TOWARDS THE VINTAGE POINT. In case of the last, the distances the three spread may have been oriented towards the peak and not the last spot of the camp.

How can be so smart ? They WERE very clever AND some or all of them had a training where the first they were taught was exactly this : they divide into equal parts, doing the two jobs : looking for help and digging to find their clothes, food, ski, fire lighting equipment ( probably tubes with diesel or gasoline AND / OR lots of vodka ). There was a forest. There were trees. What more do they need then some kind of way to  set up a fire. ONCE DIVIDED INTO TWO GROUPS, no one knows p job or the camp finding job and how much they can salvage from the camp. Hence they left a watch assembled of two guys who can climb a vantage tree and look and shout out loud the progress of the two groups and be prepared to shout very loud in case of a positive result by either of the groups.

Thus one of the groups concentrated in digging, the other in walking until they probably attempted to hide from the freeze in a land lowering or they may have fallen there. The last would be unlikely considering their experience and considering they knew they better walk in a distance unless they had to warm with each other or to carry each other. One thing is for sure : ribs and sculls cannot be broken by falling into a dump without external browses. Huge concentrated jet of air, water or snow or any other soft material or liquid can.

Anyways, here is a possible scenario : the climbers eat a lot and drunk a lot of vodka. They got hot but not so hot nor drunk to start undressing to sleep in -30C like in a 7 star hotel in Florida. They slept with their clothes and, most likely, their shoes on. Some of them may have reverted to taking their shoes off but NOT ALL. There was a snow fall, not wet, though. In the morning, the sun warmed up the snow creating an avalanche danger. The avalanche may have been first or second to a geyser with hot water and radiation coming from underground. The geyser erupted in a volcano like way sending hot water all over the place as well as hot air with unseen strength as well as making such noise so the Russian climbers may have thought the Americans are coming to bombard Russia and mainly Siberia with nuclear weapons which was a possible thought in the 50s Russia mainly after and during the Korean war which was thought to be the beginning of the nuclear Third World War with a possible scenario for the US to attack the Soviet Union to prevent expansion to Korea and the taking of the whole China and the easy army and navy less Japan thus being a few yards from Seattle for example, which wasnt an important city during the era because neither Microsoft nor Boeing were there and certainly not Amazon dot com. Still this kind of thinking is possible for the US during the period and Russia was probably afraid from the first strike coming from the US.

Anyways, there was a possible and normal to happen sequence of events such as earth quake, snow movement, volcano, avalanche, hot radiation water and air geysers. These hurt them in their tents or on the run or in the two cases but did not melt the snow fully and did not cover their steps. Made the snow soft and humid while they were walking and then, when the temperature lowered again to freeze their steps. Further snow falls and winds and storms may have covered these steps but were then blown away for the steps to be shown again. They have regrouped into three ( or two and a half ) groups as they have been thought and or as they have decided. Again, they WERE very smart. When hit by the hot water and or air, their clothes were hot and wet. Some of them may have decided to undress in or around the camp due to the heat and were unable to carry their clothes. The decision to undress may have come because they were soaking wet. PROBABLY, one has better chances to be naked in -30C then to be covered with ice. Some clothes were on them and they spread the clothes in accordance with their jobs : the group which went to search for help was better dressed and took clothes from the others because they were to walk 50Km. The diggers were not very well dressed, hoping they will get to the snow covered camp and get clothes from there. The watchers were dressed just enough to be able to climb on the tree without cutting and bleeding out. Obviously, in case the diggers found diesel, gasoline or even vodka and they were able to set up fire quickly, the job of the watchers was to be redundant but there was no way of knowing how soon and whether at all fire can be started. Also, the other way around, there may have been a chance for the help seekers to have found either people from the village or other crazy tourists or the native aboriginals and get help. In this case, the watchers were to inform the diggers to stop freezing in the snow  and to come hug in the trees while the natives or nonnatives were coming. They knew they can be non functional within 15 minutes to 30 minutes and every minute counted. THEY DID THE BEST POSSIBLE UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

26 days thereafter, the geysers were covered with metal and dust and soil from the frozen lava and melting snow and surrounding, the water cannons were frozen and covered by moving soil and melting snow and mainly by 4 to 8 meters of snow and ice and may be more. Even grass and bushes grew in May. The Russian military did not investigate more because they ruled an American attack out and found out a strong evidence of avalanche and knew of huge storms and winds there also considered the climbers to be stupid civilians and drunk student. May have thought of a possible pushing fight for clothes or skirmish along with the avalanche. Anyways, as far as the Americans werent attacking, no one in the military cared neither did the police and the KGB with the police and the military becoming involved only after the people made a huge noise and started their own search and rescue otherwise they ( the police and the military ) were to look stupid and criminally careless in case simple civilian villagers did the job better than the whole Soviet Army with the local police involved too.

I think those lines sound logical. I, personally, would believe this : 90% chance of a natural events; 5% chance of a military events ( R 7 or airplanes flying low ), 5% chance of other human activity. The pictures from their own cameras show only snow and a hole being dug. Not where relative to the summit nor another non moving object. Like they WANTED to hide their location OR concentrating on how a camp hole is made which is possible because of the huge interest this would generate when showing the picture to their friends. OR, they may have been GOLD diggers and or searchers for. Gold is in abundance in Siberia as well as diamonds. May be, they, being all educated, EVALUATED the surroundings as well as studied what the natives were saying. They also may have thought the lack of game there is due to some kind of natural events. Gas and oil are also in abundance in Siberia. May be some of the natives have shown them gold gotten from these areas or diamonds which are usually formed by volcano activities under or below ground. May be they were laying charges to prepare to blow the mountain off in the early morning when flames will not be seen nor much of a mushroom snow and dust. They were also having a fire to keep them warm and were probably working in shifts. Unless involved with the government, though, they would not have been able to acquire explosives other than gasoline EXCEPT : The Soviet Union was covered with mines, gun powder, shells, explosives, engineering platoon explosive of Soviet and German origin after the World War II. Not likely the good citizens returned everything they found on the ground in bunkers holes, hell, even in their houses in Stalingrad. Maybe, a lot of people managed to hide something. One of the guys ( I think Zolotorev ) was much older than the rest even old enough to have participated actively in the World War II with the others being 10 years old, old enough to play with mines the same way as the modern kids play with computer games or toys.

BTW : HOW COME THERE WAS A MUCH OLDER PERSON AMONGST STUDENTS OR RECENT GRADUATES? EVEN UNLIKELY FOR A PROFESSOR TO BECOME INVOLVED IN A STUDENT SKIING EXPEDITION ALTHOUGH I HAVE HEARD OF SUCH CASES AND MAY BE POSSIBLE. An interesting way to look at the story is : who was Zolotorev and why there with the rest? Another way to look at : Why was Dyatlov in charge and not Zolotorev ? Special climbing training and experience ? I am sure the answers are known, mainly through Yudin who was alive until a few months ago. Another interesting question is : Was Yudin really sick ? Wasnt there another reason to leave the expedition, for example to keep some information on gold or diamond availability in case of an accident ( which happened BTW but I dont know what, how much and to whom Yudin said ) .

Yudin and the people around Yudin may be the key to solving the problem.

This I would leave for others because I dont want to be concerned with these things and a simple movie, anyways.

One thing I can say for sure : NO, THERE ISNT ANY YETI, NOR SNOW MAN NOT RUSSIAN ENGINEERED MUTANTS NOR RADIOACTIVELY MUTATED HUMANS NOR APES NOR OTHER GENETIC EXPERIMENT, HELL NOT EVEN MENGELE EXPERIMENTS AND CERTAINLY NO TRAVEL IN HISTORY AND FUTURE MACHINES AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, NO TELEPORTATION MACHINES, UFOs  NOR GATES TO DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS IN RUSSIA AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION. One may argue those all existed and may be right . After a lot of vodka, however !

The pictures carved in stone by the natives may be true. They usually depict Gods with lightings, usually as an explanation to lightings and Northern Lights. The lack of animals in the area may also be explained with the increased earth radiation, undetectable tremors, earth holes and geysers partly active because of the freeze, open well of gas and oil, oil sands and -40C with huge winds , low density of forestry, lack of food, high elevation, etcetera. Sounds may be explained with wolf howls with a lot of echo going through kilometers of mountains and stones, different temperature air, trees with a lot of winds whistling through natural objects.  -40C is so freezing, even the volcanos freeze. Oil and gas too.

Military secret compounds, undetected by the locals and the natives and mad scientists in this remote area are unlikely. Volcano alike activities may be possible, along with burning gas and oil. The only unexplained are the scattered metal pieces seen by a 10 year old kid unless these were pieces of equipment either used by the military and search and rescuers or aluminum jackets of the radiation team or equipment brought by others, for example, the climbers themselves or . Shattered empty flasks of vodka and tin cans. A military craft may have crashed there during search and rescue and the military did not want to admit this. Not very politically correct to admit a crash of a Soviet military craft in such a simple for the military case in 1959 which may have been used by the US in an anti Soviet propaganda. Anyways : get some metal gasoline tubes and propane tanks, go to a remote location, blow them up and see what colour of flames you see. Are they orange in the Northern Lights sky ?  Or just send some people and dogs to investigate the spot in different parts of the year. Make sure they are properly equipped and carry a lot of vodka . In non metal containers. Place a lot of simple instruments which send data to the near places or to satellites as well as cameras. See what happens. Probably nothing. Blow some avalanches too.

Another possibility is to combine all of the natural events described here or some thereof with a tiny meteorite which may not have been detected in 1959 or may have been covered by snow, ice, soil and or traveled far from the place after hitting. Meteorites can be as tiny as a soccer or tennis or ping pong. They travel with a fantastic speeds and burn part of them in the atmosphere due to huge air resistance resulting in huge temperatures. While flying, they burn and look like orange spheres in the sky. They also burst into pieces so there may be a few orange spheres. When they hit, they hit hard. Even a ping pong can cause radiation, explosion, earthquake, earth movement, snow movement, avalanche, noise, boom, etcetera. This may as well be a possible trigger of the events.

Another vague explanation may be testing of anti missile weapons ( rockets ). The Soviet Union knew The US would build nuclear ballistic transcontinental rockets as well and had to be prepared. So, a fast tiny agile easier to maneuver anti ballistic rockets may have been tested in a scenario where an R 7 would fly in the worst case scenario ( low around mountains ) and the anti ballistic rockets would be fire up to destroy the ballistic, kind of ground air or air air anti rocket rockets. In this case, however, no one would leave a nuclear charge in the R 7 to be shot down. Unless the anti ballistic rockets were nuclear charged as well to produce a tinier yet very powerful nuclear blast from a light source just enough to destroy the ballistic. In other words, nuclear v nuclear. However, rockets without nuclear charge would have light enough design and would be powerful enough to destroy a non protected rocket which also has to be kind of light. Unless the Soviet Union military were afraid US would build heavily fortified titanium alloy ballistics, undestryable with a lot of self protection, kind of B 42 Fortress type of a ballistic nuclear rocket. US aint so advanced, though, last when Ive checked.

Another interesting explanation may a mixture of the two ( three for this explanation ) types of burning : chemical burning requiring oxidation thus requiring oxygen ( oxygen requiring chemical burning ) , this is the normal burning ; oxygen non requiring chemical burning ( mixing up chemicals ( alike acids ) which generate extreme heat and nuclear burning. Because Siberia has a lot of gas and oil, an interesting combination may be oil basin touching the hot burning insides of the earth at no oxygen or at some oxygen or at the beginning no oxygen then suddenly some, the same with gas or mixture thereof, etcetera. All kind of chemical speculations.

One thing is true : Siberia is full of oil and is on top of a huge ocean of oil. The same applies for gas. In some places oil and gas can be reached easily because the ocean is near the top of the earth and God knows how deep. In other places, away from the top and still God knows how deep. Earth may have inner volcanos as well. A volcano or micro volcano can get into the oil ocean or gas ocean at no or limited oxygen medium. God knows what happens then. God knows what happens when the same occurs with a tiny lake of oil or gas.

Another consequence of what Ive said prior : During World War 2, The Soviet was in a deep **** at the beginning of the war with the German army reaching Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad. I would panic as hell or start to learn German. I dont know which is worst. So, I way to protect the country may be to scatter caches of weapons all over the place, mainly in places where the Germans would find them. In panic, I would just literally throw with parachutes  weapons, explosives, bombs, artillery, whatever. Go find them between 1945 and 1959. There was so much to be done to rebuild the country. Who gives a flying fart for a bunch of explosives. Send a few soldiers there, whatever may they collect. Something may always be missed. Now is 2013 and the Polish anti mine platoons still dig mines and unexploded German bombs. May be the Germans did the same, dropping bombs there believing there was a cache. May be there bombs didnt explode and were not found by the Soviets. Can you scan with metal detectors inch by inch Siberia, a land bigger than the US in 1945 to 1959 ?

From what Ive seen, looks like Hitler and the German government werent only a pseudo democrats talking garbage in squares and parliaments like all politicians are but were very pragmatic. No one believed in Arian supremacy and Slavic slaves. Every one believed in case Germany was to take The Soviet Union, GERMANY WAS GOING TO TAKE THEIR OIL, GAS, TITANIUM, METALS, GOLD, SILVER, DIAMONDS, PRECIOUS STONES, BOMB FACTORIES, AMMUNITIONS, ETCETERA. A NORMAL THING IS FOR THE Soviet Union to search for these and the Germans to try to bombard wherever possible to prevent them from finding these. Dynamite was a popular way of searching for these. Not all dynamite charges explode. Nor all bombs, not when they drop in the snow.

Of course, there is a way of a simple military explanation as well. The Soviet Army did have secret locations but not the ones Hollywood thinks. These would be locations developing T34 prototypes, Katiusha prototypes, more powerful artillery, Kalashnikov prototypes, all kind of thing which now and then may have looked simple but rather important considering the situation. Nothing wrong to have had something in the village or caves around. NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE ACCOUNTED FOR DURING TESTING DURING THE WAR. No one cares to pick up an unexploded shell when thousands die every second in the Western Russian front. No one would do environmental testing nor would care of safety when people were expendable. No one would even care whether a shell exploded or not. In case more than, say, 67% explode, good enough, send them into production. Quality was not so important as quantity. This principle applies in some cases even now.

A suggestion which may explain most of the reaction by the climbers is to propose they have been so drunk so they reacted illogically, for example, they have slept without clothes due to the normal reasons : alcohol, which makes them wormer and sex which also does the same as well as is preferable not wear clothes during. However, I do not think this case is possible nor likely. This is because they have been : 1. trained climbers, specializing in Siberia; 2. TRAINED DRINKERS. They knew better than anyone else alcohol warms up and people can go to bad worm BUT in case they were to go to sleep, the warming effect of alcohol would soon decrease and they could freeze. Also, usually, people who would have sex in these conditions would do so with clothes uncovering only certain areas.