Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror

Episode 172 - Winter Horror: Snow Tragedies

• The Lunatics Project • Season 1 • Episode 213

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This week Abby and Alan continue our exploration of snow horror by talking through 5 real life snow tragedies. 

Sources

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SPEAKER_01:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Ranker, and I am sitting here with Alan Kudin.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello.

SPEAKER_01:

Today we are picking up our winter horror series and discussing real-life snow tragedies and survival horror.

SPEAKER_00:

Which I gotta say is kind of unfortunate. Why? So I I stayed up most of last night playing the thing video game in preparation for today's episode.

SPEAKER_01:

That's next week's.

SPEAKER_00:

And and to my horror, I a bit premature. So I'm really prepped to talk about the thing, but we're not talking about the thing.

SPEAKER_01:

You're always really prepped to talk about the thing, though, if we're being honest.

SPEAKER_00:

But I'm really prepped to talk about the thing now.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we're also prepped, of course, to talk about these real life snow tragedies and Snagities. Snadies. This is kind of the closest we get to. We shouldn't laugh about this because these are real life snags incidents. And I we we are very selective with things like this that we cover on the podcast because again, we're not a true crime podcast, but the history of these events really certainly impacted horror, winter horror. So we we cannot cover this topic without talking about these things.

SPEAKER_00:

Is this true crime or just tragedy stuff?

SPEAKER_01:

But it's true. It's not crime, but it's true, you know, and I want to handle that delicately because these are real people that were killed.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I understand where the the sensitivity is needed.

SPEAKER_01:

Great.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I guess for you, Abby, the the question. Yeah. Say there's a team, there's an expedition, right? And they get lost in the wilderness. Ten people set out and only six make it back. Is that true crime? Is that tragedy? Is that a story of overcoming? How would you classify that and where would you put that on the sensitivity level?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it depends what happened. Is it something where it's an unsolved mystery? We don't know what happened to them.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, no mystery. It's just that a lot of bad shit happened to people and they had to overcome circumstances.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, to me, I guess true crime is if if there was murder involved, then that's true crime. If some people died of hypothermia on a mountain, you know what I mean? I think there's different levels depending on what happened to these four people.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. The Donner Party.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

True crime or not?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, slightly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Slightly?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I there was a crime committed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Multiple, probably, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of like, you know, zoning laws. But it's also a story about survival.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think there's a few of these incidents we're going to discuss today that are like lightly true crime adjacent. They're not just survival stories. There's something deeper added to it, like the cannibalism references, right? For sure. Like with Diet Live Pass, certainly that's a a survival story, but because there's so many unexplained elements of that story, and there's something about that story that's so mysterious and strange, and people can't quite grapple with how it all happened. I think that's an example of it's not necessarily true crime, but it's almost like you could do a a podcast episode, like a deep dive into that, and it would be closer to true crime than something else. Because there is this element of like, I think to me, the reason why it reminds me of true crime, it's this like through line, the similar element of wanting to figure out what happened. And that's the thing with true crime. I think people are drawn to a lot. It's like, but can we figure out what happened? Like it's like an investigation into the thing versus the Donner Party. We know what happened, and we're just parroting back what happened. That history is locked and loaded and solid versus Dyatlov Pass is unknown.

SPEAKER_00:

Why would Dyatlov Pass be true crime?

SPEAKER_01:

There's I'm not saying it's true crime.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm saying it's true illegal about time shifting Yetis.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. Well, we will get there when we get there. Last week we discussed mythology and folklore from cultures around the world that helped ancient people understand the cruelty of winter. Today we are deepening our exploration of winter horror with truly horrifying real life incidents that pushed those involved to the brink of their own humanity. Before we get into today's episode, we are going to issue a content warning, which is something we rarely do, but we're going to talk about extreme conditions, real tragedy, cannibalism, hypothermia, and some fairly graphic deaths and injuries. So please keep that in mind as you are listening today. We will also discuss suicide several times in this episode. So let's get into our sources. A history.com article by Becky Little, The Diet Love Pass incident: Why the Hiker Deaths Remain a Mystery, a Museumhack.com article by Alex Johnson, The Real Story of the Donner Party, a History.com article, 10 Things You Should Know About the Donner Party by Evan Andrews. The True Story Behind Society of Snow. A Time article by Megan McCulski. Alive, The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Reid from 1974, Miracle in the Andes from 2006 by Nando Parado. An AE TV article by Adam Janos, What Happened to the Yuba County 5, an Oregon Encyclopedia article on Mount Hood. Winter has a way of stripping human stories down to their essentials. When cold intensifies and the landscape becomes hostile, preparation can fail, communication can break down, and survival depends on decisions made under extreme pressure. This episode examines real-life winter survival and tragedy, focusing on how isolation, severe weather, and cruel conditions reshape human behavior. These are stories where plans unravel, risks compound, and the margin between endurance and disaster narrows until even small choices carry lasting consequences. And really, of all the different stories we could discuss, there's none other that is as horrifying or I feel like as infamous, really, as the Donner Party, which is a real life story about the 19th century pioneers trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they were forced to make really difficult decisions to survive. We did talk about this incident on our cannibalism series from a few years ago as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's a very interesting omission that they did not include any Donner Party references or cannibalism mechanics in the Oregon Trail video game.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean that would be I just did a full playthrough.

SPEAKER_01:

You did. How how long did you stay alive? Did you make it?

SPEAKER_00:

I did make it with only two of my party, but that's enough.

SPEAKER_01:

How many did you start with?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know, like 50.

SPEAKER_01:

What did they die of?

SPEAKER_00:

No, there's it's just a family. I don't know. Um various things.

SPEAKER_01:

But what are the big like typh what were the big diphtheria is the big one? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, diphtheria is the big one, but uh one guy just kept breaking legs. And like, what what are you gonna do? You know? He's got those weak bones. He's so I I'm giving him as much buffalo as I can find. It's crazy. You go out with your gun, you just you shoot so many animals. And it's like, but you can only carry a hundred pounds back. It's like, so why not just as soon as you kill one animal, the little mini-game ends?

SPEAKER_01:

Because that's life, Alan. Why is it gonna let's the hard way?

SPEAKER_00:

Keep shooting animals for fun.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a video game.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so fun.

SPEAKER_01:

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers that set out for California from Missouri in the mid-1800s. Like many wagon trains of the era, the Donner Party was driven primarily by economic opportunity. California was still part of Mexico when they set out, but rumors of fertile land, open trade, and financial independence spread quickly through the Midwest.

SPEAKER_00:

Back then, Nevada still had Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_01:

Most members of the Donner and Reed families who made up this larger group were middle class farmers and tradespeople looking to improve their fortunes. They were not fleeing from religious persecution. Most caravans could travel 15 miles a day, and at that pace, the journey still took between four and six months to complete. All in, it was a 2,500 mile journey. Alan, do you remember when you were playing the Oregon Trail, how many months it took you?

SPEAKER_00:

No. Well, I think I left in the spring, and I got in at like November, I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. On May 12th, 1846, more than 500 wagons left Independence, Missouri, headed west. Most were not part of the Donner Party. The Donna Reed group consisted of 87 people in roughly 20 wagons.

SPEAKER_00:

Donna Reed was there? Do you know who Donna Reed is?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Who is it?

SPEAKER_01:

She was in It's a Wonderful Life.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, uh clearly Donna Reed made it because we love her work. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

The date of departure was the first strange thing about the expedition. Travelers usually departed sometime in April. For some reason, though, these wagons left in mid-May, and leaving in mid-May placed the group on a dangerous timeline. Wagon trains depended on reaching this the Sierra Nevada before heavy snowfall, which could arrive as early as October. Every delay increased the risk of being trapped in the mountains, and the Donner Party would soon make a series of decisions that compounded that risk. They were not, you know, I mean, listen, who knows what decisions we would all make in those situations. Hindsight is 2020, but I told you to fly. They set themselves up for failure here.

SPEAKER_00:

But no, you want to take the wagon.

SPEAKER_01:

The Donner Party spent most of the winter from 1846 to 1847 stuck in the Sierra Nevada Mountains due to snow conditions. When early and unusually heavy snowfall hit in late October, the group was unable to successfully cross. They ended up constructing crude cabins and shelters near what is now Donner Lake using logs, branches, and wagon parts. Food supplies were already dangerously low. As weeks passed, snow piled several feet high. Hunting became nearly impossible, and the group started to experience starvation. So why are we here in the first place? Well, this is partially due to the group taking a shortcut that turned out to be, again, completely disastrous. Lansford Hastings, a lawyer and an adventurer, had been promoting this sort of untested shortcut known now as the Hastings Cutoff. He claimed it would shave weeks off of the journey by cutting south of the established Oregon Trail and crossing the Wasatach Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings himself had never led a wagon train through this route. The train was poorly mapped, brutally difficult, and far more time consuming than advertised. Unfortunately, instead of saving them time, this shortcut added a month to their travels. Gross. Once committed, the Donner Party found themselves forced to clear roads through dense forests, navigate steep mountain passes, and cross nearly 80 miles of desert with little water. Instead of saving time, the cutoff delayed them by more than a month and exhausted both people and livestock. One of the more upsetting elements of this story is that some of the people who traveled with the Donner Party were actually kids. More than half were under the age of 18. Families faced impossible decisions as the children weakened first. Parents rationed food, sometimes giving up their own portions. Several children died from malnutrition and exposure before the group ever resorted to cannibalism, a fact often overshadowed by the more sensational parts of the story.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it's it's just like news today. Everyone latches on to like the worst possible details.

SPEAKER_01:

I guess it's to your point about true crime earlier, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Like it's sensationalism.

SPEAKER_01:

Sensationalism, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah, you know, this the Donner Party, like, it's they weren't a bunch of cannibals.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

They were a bunch of really desperate people.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's talk about cannibalism. Cool. It did not occur immediately, and it was not practiced by everyone. As starvation became unavoidable, some members consumed the bodies of those who had already died from illness or exposure. I mean, I suppose I would have tried to prioritize eating people who died of exposure and not illness.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it depends on what the illness was.

SPEAKER_01:

But at that time, you might not know how certain illnesses were contracted. You know what I mean? Like I I don't think you can eat somebody and get typhoid fever, but well, no, because you you cook it.

SPEAKER_00:

You're not eating them raw.

SPEAKER_01:

It cooks out the bacteria.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, sure. Like the virus. I I'm no cannibalism expert. But my understanding is that the only types of diseases that can be contracted would be like prion diseases.

SPEAKER_01:

What's that?

SPEAKER_00:

I I don't know the actual definition of a prion disease. I just know it it's pri it's primarily in certain types of tissue, such as the brain.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So and it it doesn't cook out.

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, I see.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is one of the reasons why, like, when you are eating like brain as like a delicacy in a restaurant, you're still really rolling the dice.

SPEAKER_01:

But is that true? Like, okay, so say somebody has a prion disease. If you eat the brain, you could get it. But if you eat other parts of the body, is it safe? Is it like l localized?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I think so. Because like, you know, say you're hunting a a buck, right? And you you you shoot him, right? And then you you're cleaning, you're cleaning the carcass, you got your spitting spit roasting the meat. You're not thinking to yourself, man, I really hope this this buck doesn't have dementia.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Or, you know, man, if he didn't really run away too much, what if he has asthma?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Not really his problem anymore, but what what a crazy amount of vengeance that would be.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that would be a weird world to live in if like any animal we ate as humans, you could get the animal diseases. I mean, obviously there's some of that, but but also I don't know that animals have asthma or dementia.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's it's really interesting that you you bring this up.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Because uh clearly you wanted to start talking about the thing. And so in the original novella, they find a frozen alien, effectively. And there's all this discussion about if they defrost it, how scientists have discovered that if they uh slowly thaw something, it can kind of come back to life.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And they're mostly worried about bacteria.

SPEAKER_01:

Like Walt Disney. What? Don't you think he's frozen somewhere? I do.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. More of they're worried that if this thing has been frozen forever or has alien diseases or something, they're gonna they're gonna bring it all back and they're gonna infect themselves.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So the point of this is that one of their scientists says, okay, this thing from outer space is so different from us. Our immune systems are gonna be so different. Meanwhile, a cat is significantly closer to us than this thing, and we cannot share diseases with a cat. So, what makes you think that any diseases from this thing are gonna infect us?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's good. We should definitely get all of our medical and scientific understanding from short stories from the the 50s.

SPEAKER_00:

It was quite a trip.

SPEAKER_01:

We will get there next episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Apparently.

SPEAKER_01:

Back to the Donner Party. As supplies dwindled, survivors tried hunting and eating whatever they could find, including leather and other inedible goods. But again, when starvation became unavoidable, some resorted to cannibalism. In one extreme case, William Foster killed two Native American men who had tried to help the group. An act that remains one of the most disturbing moments in this whole incident.

SPEAKER_00:

What what happened there?

SPEAKER_01:

The group had come upon these two indigenous guides that were helping them, named Lewis and Salvador, that were helping the group, trying to help them, right? And to kind of survive through.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you think his name was really Lewis?

SPEAKER_01:

No, but that's just kind of how they're referred to. Foster had suggested, oh, let's kill and eat these Native Americans. Someone tipped off the indigenous people and they got a bit of a head start. But they were also hungry and starving and weakened. And so Foster ended up finding them the next day and murdering them and then taking them back to the group. And uh some people eat ate their remains, you know, but it's a highly kind of sensitive topic, obviously.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, especially to Lewis. Especially to Lewis. He got peeved.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, he died. Yeah. In a horrifying, terrible way. This is one of those moments. Remember at the beginning where we talked about sensitivities? Yeah. Yeah. This is one of those moments.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, don't don't eat Native Americans.

SPEAKER_01:

Don't eat anybody, but especially don't eat Native Americans who are trying to help you survive. Yeah. It's such a sh dick move.

SPEAKER_00:

Talk about bite the hand that feeds you. Exactly. Couple layers on that one, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

Some of the travelers did die from hunger, but many of them were able to survive off of hunting, eating leather, and other goods that they had with them. Some, of course, not all, ate the frozen dead bodies of travel companions. All in all, the Donner party spent five months trapped in the mountains. Rescue attempts began in February of 1847, when word finally reached California settlements. Multiple relief parties were sent, but the deep snow and treacherous terrain slowed progress. Rescuers were often forced to turn back or abandon animals, carrying survivors out on foot. Several rescue parties were needed over the course of months to evacuate those still alive. 81 people departed Missouri, 45 survived. After their rescue, the story swept the nation. Newspapers printed fairly accusatory articles, horrified by what happened in the mountains, and this is where some of that sensationalism comes in. Though, again, of course, there was cannibalism and some horrifying cannibalism and murder at that. It didn't help that most of the survivors had differing memories, or stories at least, about what actually happened, which kind of caused people to be suspicious. When survivors returned to civilization, their stories shocked the nation. Newspapers often framed the tragedy as a moral failure rather than a logistical one, focusing on cannibalism while downplaying poor leadership, false promises, and environmental factors. Conflicting survivor accounts fueled controversy and suspicion. For a time, the Donner Party became a cautionary tale that slowed westward migration and reshaped how Americans viewed frontier expansion. Migration to the West literally like simmered and slowed down for a period after this event. Rightfully so, right? But that is the story of the Donner Party, one of the more horrifying snow-related tragedies that we have, at least here in the United States.

SPEAKER_00:

If you're in that situation, what would you do?

SPEAKER_01:

If if I was in that situation as I am today, I think I would not want to eat a human. If I was a mother, you know, there's other elements where I can say, okay, maybe if someone's else is depending on my survival, but I don't know. I don't know that I could bring myself to do it. What would you do?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I'm no qualms with a a good long pork barbecue. It's survival, after all, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

You know what we should have done? We should uh if we were in that situation, we kill the guy that killed the Native Americans and we eat him.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'd or kill him first before bring Lewis to the cook off. No, it's a cook-off because you know, you have five months to kill, might as well have a little competition.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like who can prepare yeah, today's secret ingredient is fingernails. Yeah, I sure cool. Um that would absolutely kill at least an afternoon and a person.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, but I don't know. I feel like you you you do what you do what you gotta do. There was a movie we talked about during the cannibalism episode. Everybody had to draw straws, and like whoever got the short straw got eaten. I think they were all like on a boat um adrift, and like it was kind of Of a a bit of a merciful death. Well, I mean, you died, which was bad, but it was the merciful death because the guy in charge who still drew straws, if I'm not mistaken, would use one of the few remaining like pistol shots to kill you.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm so glad you asked. There's actually three explanations for this. The first is a movie called Alive, which from 1983, which you definitely watched for the cannibalism episode. That tells the story of the Andes flight disaster, which we are going to talk about today. The other two examples are Lord of the Flies, where they do that as well.

SPEAKER_00:

But they do that in Lord of the Flies?

SPEAKER_01:

They do. But it's also based on this custom of the sea, which was a real historical concept for, you know, starvation at sea, extreme circumstances. That's something that was kind of developed as a concept in, you know, old timey maritime whatever.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, so it's like, ah, pull out the book of forbidden things. And this was just a very it was an established practice.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

No one really talked about it, but it was established.

SPEAKER_01:

So I bet it kind of went in reverse sort of how I just said it. It was like this maritime thing that was then used in Lord of the Flies, and also then for this real incident in the Andes that was the most modern from from, you know, on the timeline.

SPEAKER_00:

Is this the pirate code?

SPEAKER_01:

This is parlay. But leaving the United States in February of 1959, nine people were hiking in the Ural Mountains in Russia when they mysteriously disappeared. One of the most famous real-life incidents of winter horror is often referred to as the Diet Love Pass incident. On January 23rd, ten hikers started their trek through the Ural Mountains. The Urals marked the border between Europe and Asia, splitting European Russia from Siberia. A few days into the excursion, one hiker returned home because of a sciatica flare-up. There was a plan in place for the hikers to send a message to their sports club, checking in about three weeks into the journey. When the club didn't receive any communication by February 20th, so about a month later, they decided to send a search party. Quoting from the History.com article by Becky Little, quote, Over the next couple of weeks, the search party found the first five of the hikers' bodies spread out over the snow. They were in various states of dress and had bizarre injuries, with one appearing to have bitten off parts of his own knuckle. Months later, after some snow melts, investigators discovered the bodies of the remaining four hikers. They had even more inexplicable injuries. One had a fractured skull, another had a twisted neck, two were missing their eyes, and one of the bodies with no eyes was also missing her tongue. The gruesome fate of the nine hikers has generated theories ranging from natural disasters to secret weapons testing to an attack by Yetis. Although some theories are more plausible than others.

SPEAKER_00:

Not just any Yetis, time shifting Yetis.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll get there in a minute. Back to the quote: the DietLove Pass incident, as it's known, remains a contentious and unsolved mystery. End quote. But there's even more like unexplained elements to this than just what I quoted from Becky Little. The hiker's tent was discovered, which was collapsed and snow covered, but the hiker's belongings inside were undisturbed. Clothes, tools, and equipment were laid like very neatly out, as if they had, you know, the that these people had just disappeared into thin air. Food was left sliced and laying on a plate, again, as if it was about to be eaten. There was also a slash through the tent, which a seamstress would later identify as a cut made from the inside.

SPEAKER_00:

A seamstress, you say?

SPEAKER_01:

An expert in uh in fabric cutting. The first two bodies discovered were a few hundred yards away from the tent. Both men were in their underwear, laying next to where the campfire would have been. One of the men had burns on his body and flesh from his own hand in his mouth. Three other bodies, one was Diet Liv himself, who was a person on the trip. Another was a woman, there were two women on the trip, it was one of the women, and there was a third man in that group as well. The three of those bodies were found positioned as if they were trying to return to the tent. Separately, another man was also found positioned in a way that made researchers believe he was trying to return to the tent. The first five bodies found were all believed to have died from hypothermia. This condition can also cause erratic behavior and the removal of one's clothes, a known urge called paradoxical undressing, a result of being so cold they felt hot. The four other bodies weren't found until May, when the snow in the area started to melt. A snow den was uncovered. But only one of these four is believed to have died from hypothermia. The other three have various other causes of death, including, and quoting from the History.com article, quote, a skull fracture so severe that there were pieces of bone in his brain, end quote.

SPEAKER_00:

Pieces of bone in his brain?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

From what?

SPEAKER_01:

From a skull fracture.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh.

SPEAKER_01:

Two of the others had crushed chests and empty eye sockets. One of those, the final woman, was missing her tongue. At first, the Russian investigators could not determine the cause and instead issued a statement that the company had died from, quote, a compelling natural force, end quote. Some theories posit that there is a government cover-up happening, specifically because radiation was detected on the clothing of some of the hikers. The speculation centers around the hikers dying as a result from a weapons testing incident, but there's a known possible explanation for the radiation. One of the hikers had lived near a nuclear disaster site, and another had helped with cleanup of that incident. There are many theories, from the KGB to Yetis and aliens, but let's talk about some of the most plausible. The case was reopened by the Russian government in 2019. The lead investigator put forth an avalanche theory. He claimed that despite the fairly flat angle where the tent was positioned, an avalanche slab of snow could still have traveled over the tent and trapped it. The idea is that this would have scared the hikers, who would have feared a larger avalanche was coming. They would have cut their way out of the tent, leaving behind their boots and food on the plates, etc. Everything kind of as it was. He suggested they then would have started a fire and built a snow den for survival.

SPEAKER_00:

Snowden, you say?

SPEAKER_01:

Snowden.

SPEAKER_00:

Whatever happened to him?

SPEAKER_01:

I I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

He just kind of disappeared.

SPEAKER_01:

Faded into the background.

SPEAKER_00:

He blew all those whistles.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then everyone finally came to justice. Oh, wait.

SPEAKER_01:

What the heck? What what whistles did he blow? That the government was watching us very closely, like reading our had access to all this personal information.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, right. The all the the cybersecurity shit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Glad that got resolved.

SPEAKER_01:

So this investigator, right, that came in in 2019, he suggested that the hikers then would have started a fire and built a snow den for survival. He claimed that the snow den could have collapsed and caused the strange injuries to those discovered inside, right? The crushed chest, the skull injury.

SPEAKER_00:

Collapsing snow is famous for removing eyes and tongues.

SPEAKER_01:

Well then animals could have eaten the eyes and the tongues out of the hikers' bodies post-mortem.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, but what kind of animals?

SPEAKER_01:

Anteaters.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah. Anteaters?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just thinking about like a long snout. Could get into the eye sockets. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no. You you nailed it. Great. Anteaters with their little tongue. Yeah. It would just curl around the eyeball and pop it out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Like a m like a rope version of a melon baller.

SPEAKER_01:

This is getting a little graphic. Remember that sensitivity warning.

SPEAKER_00:

You brought it up.

SPEAKER_01:

In 2021, two mathematicians created a model to confirm if this theory was even possible. And they confirmed that it was unlikely, but possible.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a little unlikely. Anteaters are not indigenous to northern Russia.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, what animal do you think it was?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh clearly a time shifting Yeti.

SPEAKER_01:

Another theory centers around the catabatic winds, which are rare but powerful downslope winds that could have caused sudden noise, pressure changes, and disorientation, prompting the group to leave their tent quickly. Yet another theory centers on infrasound, suggesting that when interacting with the mountain may have produced low frequency sound waves capable of causing anxiety, confusion, or panic. Really makes you think about those people who live next to data centers now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, what's that shit with the it's it's the hum that's driving people crazy?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and there's all this investigation that's been done recently where even if they turn the yeah, they get the data center to turn like to block the noise to put up things that like help muffle the noise of it, their houses are still shaking and vibrating.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, sure, because there's it's subharmonic. Yeah. Which is not going to be blocked ever.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

That's interesting. So, like, I mean, this is still something we do in sound design where you just put a rumble in over a scene that's supposed to make your audience uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they did that. That's a big like immersive theater tool as well.

SPEAKER_00:

It just didn't it's just a human condition thing. When we hear a a rumble in consistently that doesn't thump around to the beat, we get quite unsettled.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Other natural explanations include unusual atmospheric phenomena, such as ball lightning, which may have frightened the group or caused injuries. Ball lightning is a rare and poorly understood atmospheric phenomenon, described as a glowing spherical mass of light that appears during thunderstorms and can move erratically before dissipating or exploding. And I have to just say, I've become so infatuated with ball lightning.

SPEAKER_00:

Ever since you unlocked the tier four druid?

SPEAKER_01:

Ever since I did this research, that I'm we might do an episode on it. I'm so into it. It's so weird. And there's all these like old-timey drawings of it. Look it up. Everyone Google ball lightning. More speculative theories involve an unknown human or animal encounters. But despite decades of investigation, no single theory fully explains all aspects of the incident, and key questions remain unresolved. The Dietlov Pass is now named for Igor Dietlov, the leader of the expedition. Dietlov was a 23-year-old engineering student. The others were also students in their 20s, and there was one sports instructor in his 30s. Everyone involved was an experienced hiker. In 2013, a film called Devil's Pass was released. Also released as the Dietlov Pass incident. This is the most direct fictionalization of the incident, combining found footage horror with science fiction elements. It was directed by Rennie Harlan and written by Vikram Wheat. It's a found footage horror movie.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a fantastic documentary. Of all the like Arctic horror movies we watched that weren't like pure science fiction from the get-go. Yeah. I first off, I didn't even know that this was based on a true story until I made you watch, and you're like, oh, I know all about this.

SPEAKER_01:

I was like, yeah, this is this is the uh the exact thing we're talking about. I like it because I I get to your point it starts off very um historically accurate and then it takes some really fun turns as a movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, no, it it gets to the the the root of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. It it puts forth a theory.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. A more of a fictionalized retelling. More more of a ironclad thesis. And for I mean, I don't know. It at this point, you really should just watch the movie. We don't want to give away spoilers because it's one of those movies that where it has as a for me, it has a very memorable ending. It's one of those things where once you know the ending, going back and watching the movie again.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Is is very cool. There's there's elements that are incorporated from the ending throughout. Anytime a movie does that, um it it's I I usually enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. And it's found footage, which I love in horror. It's one of my favorite sub-genres of horror. We did a whole found footage series.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it's not fully found footage, but it's enough that it I don't I to me it's a clever way to do this. It just makes it feel experiential without and if you're gonna tell the story of like this big mountainous, like you just need a big budget, and they they did it the best they could without that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, I I think a found footage is a really good way to do a story like this.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

However, the way they went about it broke my immersion a few times.

SPEAKER_01:

Why?

SPEAKER_00:

It's mixed media, like twisters. Yes, like twisters. Sometimes it works very well, sometimes it doesn't. Um in this case one example of it working really well, I think, is in Blair Witch.

SPEAKER_01:

But that's not mixed media.

SPEAKER_00:

It certainly is. When they jump between the digital camera and the film camera.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, sure, but it's all found footage.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, yeah. Still, like you're but you're mixed media, you're jumping between different cameras, different sort different image gathering things. Sure. So like in Blair Witch, it the the sound is always coming from the digital camera, and that that's used to great effect towards the end. Where in this one, just we had our sound person, you know, who's supposed to be doing all the sound, and then we're doing like these full scenes where like our sound person is falling all over the place trying to go hiking, and you can hear everybody perfectly. For for inexplicable reasons. Kind of broke my immersion there, where it's like, ah, okay, the the found footage mechanic is being it's it's being used as a plot device rather than a narrative tool.

SPEAKER_01:

In 2020, a Russian mini-series inspired by the incident was released. It's a dramatized series that blends investigation, historical speculation, and psychological tension while staying closer to real-world theories than most of the fictional versions. Frozen from 2010 is not a direct adaptation, but it's clearly influenced by the idea of people being trapped in a frozen environment, making fatal decisions under stress. This is a hard movie to watch. Alan also made me watch this one. It tells the story of three young adults who are trapped on a ski lift overnight and over a weekend in a blizzard.

SPEAKER_00:

So I saw Frozen before it was like an international phenomena.

SPEAKER_01:

Is you're not talking it what? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Like it it's for the longest time, it was like the most popular movie in America.

SPEAKER_01:

Alan, we're talking about Frozen from 2010, the ski lift movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the same thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Not the animated Disney movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the I'll uh make a snowman.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm so surprised you've even note that.

SPEAKER_00:

Um this movie, yeah, it's a for it's a hard watch.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a hard watch.

SPEAKER_00:

And there it's I I think about this movie so often. Why? Because it it's so relatable.

SPEAKER_01:

Why is it relatable? Because you you mean if you're in that incident, it's like in a you're an impossible.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, couldn't you just picture yourself stuck there? You but have you been uh sorry, you don't ski. Have you ever been skiing?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't ski because I'm afraid of getting on and off the chair lift because you're you're afraid of not of getting stuck, Elsa, but of logistically trying to get on and off a ski lift scares me.

SPEAKER_00:

It's sh it's insane.

SPEAKER_01:

But okay. No, I've never skied.

SPEAKER_00:

I really thought it was based on a true story, but I guess it's not. There's an eye horror article written for the 14th anniversary of the movie. Okay. Um, but this m article was back in 2023. 2024. 2023. Okay. Apparently the director and whoever else was scouting the mountain where they they want they knew they wanted to film it there. Sure. And they wanted to just like scout, right? So they got on the chairlift and they're going up. They got to this spot where the director said, Okay, oh, this is it. This is 100% the spot where we should film because I can just see it. This is where they this is where they die. And then as soon as he said that, the chairlift stopped. You know, inexplicably, which happens 100% for uh while you're just riding chairlifts. But also, that's all one of the most terrifying things when you're on a chairlift and it just stops. You can't get out. You're completely trapped. Here's here's the strange part. As he was filming the movie, he found out from one of the lift operators that was like the exact spot where someone presumably had taken their own life with a firearm while they were on the chairlift. And the they had actually like saved the chair. Uh, and like they show them the chair that had like the bullet hole in it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's very upsetting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. What what a bunch of whirlwind circumstances being like, this place has really bad vibes. We have to film the movie right here, and they make a bunch movie about a bunch of people dying on a chairlift, and then that was the exact spot that somebody died on a chairlift happenstance.

SPEAKER_01:

There's something to be said, not to be very woo-woo, but about like the energy of something like that. And additionally, like the movie itself is so like it evokes this very primitive, primal, baseline survival fear in you. Like it's it's a really tough shake to be in that situation. And I don't know that I would have the bravery to to try some of the escape attempts that the people the characters in the movie end up trying. It just feels impossible. What would you do if you were stuck in a chairlift? And and we should say, like, the chairlift, the way it's positioned, they're like, I don't know, like 80 feet over the ground, like they're very high up.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, jumping from a chairlift, like people have done it many, many times. There's just so many circumstances that go into it. You know, what what's the snow? Because you're jumping onto snow. Like, think about people that do ski jumps, right? It's about how you land, is about the slope. Can you just continue on your mentor momentum? If you're just gonna fall, like people have fallen out of airplanes and landed in snow and been alive.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's very possible.

SPEAKER_01:

Liam Neeson did that in the grave. What? Liam Neeson did that in the grave.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, technically he did. Yeah, I don't think anyone's done this voluntarily, but it's it's very possible. In this in Frozen, like the there's a storm going, and even though there's like snow and whatnot, the wind had blown all the powder off. So he just like lands on ice and just like completely fucks up his legs. Yeah. And then he wolves. A lot of layers in this movie. Yeah. And it's really surprising that they then just three years later made it again as the animated version. Yeah. I prefer the original. Um, the remake takes a lot of liberties, it it diverts too much from the source material. Sure. But they're both they're both fun.

SPEAKER_01:

They're both fun in different ways. The Corridor from 2010 is a lesser-known psychological horror film that tells a survival story of friends. It's often cited as adjacent to the Diet Love Pass incident in tone and themes rather than plot. And finally, Black Mountainside from 2014 plays with themes of isolation, paranoia, and a group unraveling under unexplained forces, which has the same, you know, is clearly inspired, I guess, also from the Diet Love Pass incident.

SPEAKER_00:

I I actually know nothing about this movie. I did not watch it because it was on my list, but I instead stayed up all night playing the thing video game, preparing for this episode.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, because the thing is something that you're so unfamiliar with. You really needed that extra bit of research from the video game to round out your understanding of the storyline.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so fun. It's probably one of the best. It you know, it might be the best movie tie-in video game ever made.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. I want to just say, I want to give you kudos because you made a dream of mine that I thought was lost forever come true, which is that you hooked up a an emulator so that I could play the X-Files video game from 1998, which was, I'm learning, a very important moment in my childhood, which I I pretty much have this this video game memorized, even though I played it when I was eight years old. And it was so nostalgic and fun for me to do that. So that's that's my favorite video game based on a piece of media.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna make one amendment. At the time, it was the best movie tie in game. Okay. But this was like 2003 when it came out, so it's been a while. The best to date is also a horror game, and I'm gonna say it's alien isolation. So it's very much in the alien world, takes place after the first movie and before the second one. It's just it's the same situation as the Thing game, which is basically a a a sequel to the movie.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Aliens, uh, you know, more of a you thing, but sounds great.

SPEAKER_00:

Why don't you like Alien? I just don't like it.

SPEAKER_01:

I know, I know. It's wild. I should.

SPEAKER_00:

It's because it's because you don't actually pay attention to movies.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, unless I'm in the theater. Yeah. On October 13th, 1972, members of the Old Christian Club amateur rugby team departed from Montevideo, Uruguay, bound for Santiago, Chile, in a chartered Air Force plane. There were 40 passengers and five crew members on board. The flight needed to pass over the Andes Mountains. At the time, flights crossing the Andes relied on a navigation method known as dead reckoning, which estimates position based on speed, time, and last known location rather than real-time visual confirmation. Due to heavy cloud cover and the lack of radar tracking in the region, air traffic controllers could not independently verify Flight 571's position. Believing they had already cleared the Andes, the pilots requested and were granted permission to descend, even though the aircraft was still directly over the mountains. When the pilot realized what was happening, he tried to steer the plane straight up to gain as much elevation as possible. Survivors described it as the plane shooting vertically into the sky, which sadly didn't work. The plane hit the Andes two or three times. After striking the mountain, again, several times, the tail section of the aircraft tore away, killing several passengers instantly. Moments later, one wing detached, and a propeller sliced through the fuselage. What remained of the plane slid down a glacier before coming to rest, leaving the survivors with only a partial fuselage for shelter. Of the 45 people on board, 33 survived the initial crash, which is pretty high. In the days and weeks that followed, several more died from injuries, infection, and exposure, reducing the number of survivors to 27 before the avalanche struck. Two of the rugby players were first-year medical students and worked to try and treat some of the wounds. Despite their best efforts, additional passengers passed away from their injuries. The passengers ended up being stranded for 72 days over two months in the snowy mountains. It was very difficult for them to try and travel and get help due to the extreme weather and snow. Back at the crash site, they used the fuselage as shelter, but it was extremely small, only about 8 by 10 feet, and the back was totally exposed. Survivors used plane seats in other parts of the plane to build a wall. On October 29th, more than two weeks after the crash, an avalanche struck the fuselage while most survivors were sleeping inside. Eight people were killed instantly, buried under tons and tons of snow. The survivors were trapped inside the wreckage for three days afterward, unable to dig out and forced to ration oxygen and body heat. There was no vegetation or animals in the area where the plane crashed, so the food supplies that the passengers had on them, and from the plane, ran out very fast. The passengers talked democratically about the need to eat the flesh from the deceased passengers in order to survive. One of the medical students took it upon themselves to cut the meat off. Quoting from survivor Roberto Canessa, quote, Our common goal was to survive, but what we lacked was food. We had long since run out of the meager pickings we'd found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. After just a few days, we were feeling the sensation of our own bodies consuming themselves just to remain alive. We would become too weak to recover from starvation. We knew the answer, but it was too terrible to contemplate. The bodies of our friends and teammates preserved outside in the snow and ice contained vital, life-giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it? For a long time we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance. Without his consent, I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends, that I would be stealing their souls. We wondered whether we were going mad, even to contemplate such a thing. Had we turned into brute savages, or was this the only sane thing to do? Truly, we were pushing the limits of our fear. End quote. Quoting from survivor Nando Parado's 2006 memoir, quote, at high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical. We were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so ferocious that we searched anyway. Again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam. Again and again I came to the same conclusion. Unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing. There was nothing here but aluminum, plastic, ice, and rock. End quote. Prado protected the bodies of his mother and sister from being eaten. While several survivors initially refused to participate, most eventually consumed small amounts of human meat in order to survive. One survivor is widely reported to have never eaten human flesh, and later died from complications related to starvation and illness, weighing just over 50 pounds at the time of his death. All of the survivors were Roman Catholic, and many framed the act through religious belief. Some explicitly compared it to the Eucharist, viewing the consumption of flesh as a form of sacrifice made with consent, not desecration. Survivors later emphasized that this framing helped them reconcile survival with faith rather than abandon it. Eventually, Roberto Canessa, Nando Parado, and two others attempted to cross the mountain on foot, believing that civilization lay to the west. They had no map, no proper cold weather gear, and no certainty that anyone was alive beyond the mountains.

SPEAKER_00:

Was there ever a movie of this? There must have been.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, alive.

SPEAKER_00:

Alive. And we watched it?

SPEAKER_01:

We watched it for the cannibalism episode.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't remember it at all. Was it good?

SPEAKER_01:

It was the thing where they drew the straws. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't remember.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. I mean it's very it's like a historical fiction. You know, it's pretty like accurate to what happened.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, until the time shifting Yetis show up with snacks. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

After ten days of walking in extreme altitude in snow, Canessa and Parado encountered Chilean muleteers, or those who drive mules, across a river. Unable to cross, they tied a note to a stone and threw it to the other side, explaining the crash and pleading for help.

SPEAKER_00:

Good thing they somebody spoke Spanish or the guy who spoke English.

SPEAKER_01:

They were all South American. Well, they were from Uruguay.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, good thing everybody spoke the same language.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. After the rescue, Chilean authorities initially considered legal action due to the cannibalism. However, after survivor testimony and public support from the Catholic Church, no charges were filed. The consensus was that the actions taken were acts of necessity, not criminal intent.

SPEAKER_00:

That's crazy. Can you imagine trying to convict people?

SPEAKER_01:

I know.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, sorry, I get it if they started the cannibalism before the plane crashes.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, like the guy from the Donner Party should have been convicted. That's murder. But these people, like no one was murdered.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. If someone is trying to escape and he's like, no, your dinner. Like, yeah, that's that's a crime. Yeah. But they had bodies galore to eat.

SPEAKER_01:

They did. What happened in the Andes is often framed as unthinkable. Yet it is one of several winter tragedies where survival demanded choices that still unsettle us decades later. Alive from 1993 is probably the most well-known dramatization of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. It's survival-focused, and its imagery, moral dilemmas, and settings strongly influenced later survival horror. Society of the Snow from 2023 is a more recent, grounded retelling, told from the survivor's perspective. While not a horror movie, its realism and atmosphere have been widely compared to horror due to its intensity. Like, certainly, right? It's a thriller, it's all of these things. Sure. The situation itself is horror. While those two films directly take from this incident, there are many more that transformed the events into a new story or took pieces of it. Yellowjackets, for instance. Yellow Jackets is a TV show that tells the story of a group of teenagers, I think they're also like a team of sports players, who survive in the wilderness after their plane crashes. This was inspired both by this incident and the Donner Party. Ravenus from 1999 is often cited as the clearest horror descendant of this incident. While set in the 1840s and framed as a cannibalism Western, its themes of survival cannibalism, moral rationalization, and isolation, mere public reactions to the Andes survivors. The Edge from 1997 is a survival thriller rather than horror, but it's frequently kind of listed in the same, you know, category as these other films we're talking about. Stranded men in a hostile wilderness debate leadership, morality, and survival tactics under extreme conditions, which is also similar in some ways to The Gray from 2011, which was heavily inspired by the Andes survival narratives. Men stranded after a crash in frozen wilderness, facing starvation, injury, and the slow erosion of hope.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but in the Andes, they if they're in a desolate wasteland. In the gray, there are wolves. And if you don't want to be eaten by the wolves, you gotta eat them first. I mean Heck yeah. It's my it's probably one of my favorite wolf movies.

SPEAKER_01:

It's very sad.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a very sad movie. I love when I I just love Liam Neeson, Liam Neeson as an actor.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00:

And he's just like one of those actors that you can put him in any role and he's gonna do great. You know, we've clearly seen him in these like horror tragedy type movies. Yeah. He's the unstoppable action hero and taken.

SPEAKER_01:

He's great in love, actually.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, where he where he has just like such a tender moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Tender.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry, he's just like such a tender stepdad, blossoming relationship, right? Yeah. And then you see him as a straight-up comedic uh in a straight-up comedy in the new naked gun, you know? Yeah, like what talk about range. Uh and so when you watch him in something like The Gray, it it's a solid movie. There's very few bits of that. They're like, this seems hokey. Right. It seems like a good character study of a bunch of different people in desperate situations. It's sad, but it's not depressing.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, it is like a I mean, I think it really is this erosion of hope. Like you watch, I mean, until I don't know, it has an ending that combats that a little bit, but you watch these people, these men, over and over again, character by character, sort of struggle with in their head is trying to survive worth it. And I think that's something that a that not a lot of these survival stories contemplate visually, you know, like in film, you know, it it's generally like, okay, how do we survive instinctually? How do we survive? It's tough choices, but this one it feels different to me because it's what happens when I don't have it in me to try to survive anymore.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is such an interesting question that that movie asks.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right in the the beginning of the movie, we see Liam Neeson on the verge of committing suicide for very understandable reasons. And so then now he finds himself in this situation where all he has to do is nothing, and he'll do get exactly what he wants in a very peaceful way. But uh that he can't because all these people aren't there with him.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they need his help to live, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And you know, it becomes kind of a beautiful thing, you know, towards the ending. Yeah. Uh which I don't want to talk about because it's such a good movie and you should all watch it.

SPEAKER_01:

It is good, it is good. The Yuba County 5 refers to five men from Yuba City, California. Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Hewitt, and Gary Matias, who disappeared after attending a college basketball game in Chico on February 24th, 1978. That night they began the drive home, but somehow ended up deep in the Plumis National Forest, a mountainous region of the Sierra Nevadas, covered in heavy winter snow and ice in late February. Their car was later found abandoned in a snowbank on a remote forest service road, far off course from their intended route, despite having plenty of fuel and no obvious mechanical problems, suggesting that the harsh winter conditions played a role in their decision or disorientation. The Sierra Nevada at this time was experiencing a winter storm with deep snow and frigid temperatures, conditions that made travel treacherous and daylight tracks hard to follow. When the men's car was found, it was stuck in light snow on a mountain road 70 miles off course, indicating that they had somehow driven into a dangerous snow covered area that they had no business being in just getting home from this basketball game, which is already sort of unnerving and bizarre. The snow in poor conditions also delayed search efforts, forcing police to suspend ground operations until the melt, and left few visible clues of the men's movements at the time. Months later, after the snow began melting in early June, search parties made grim discoveries. A group of motorcyclists found the body of Ted Weir in a Forest Service trailer about 19 miles from the abandoned car, wrapped in blankets and showing signs of starvation and hypothermia. Investigators concluded that he had likely survived four many weeks in the trailer, yet never used the ample food supplies, heating fuel, heavy winter clothing, and kindling that could have kept him alive far longer.

SPEAKER_00:

What the heck? Why?

SPEAKER_01:

A mystery.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, he was following the rules. There was a sign saying don't touch, signed time shifting yet.

SPEAKER_01:

Further search efforts uncovered the remains of Medruga, Sterling, and Hewitt along the snowy forest road, each having succumbed to exposure and hypothermia on the trek between the trailer and the car. Their deaths highlighted just how lethal the winter conditions were, plodding through deep snow with inadequate clothing and no shelter or survival gear made even short distances deadly. One body, Gary Matias, was never found. The combination of heavy snow, freezing temperatures, and rugged terrain not only complicated rescue efforts but likely influenced the group's decisions, including abandoning a serviceable vehicle and attempting to walk through unforgiving winter wilderness. For decades afterward, the case has remained part mystery and part cautionary tale about how quickly winter weather can turn routine travel into a fatal ordeal. While there are no direct adaptations of this true life tragedy into horror, we can see through lines in many famous horror movies. For one, the Blair Witch Project from 1999. Though this classic isn't set in snow, it is often cited by researchers and critics as thematically similar. The group's irrational navigation choices, abandonment of safety, and slow psychological unraveling mirror the baffling behavior seen in the Yuba County 5. Yellow Brick Road from 2010 is one of the closest tonal matches. A group ventures into a remote wilderness following a mystery tied to people inexplicably walking into danger. The influence is direct, but the core question, why didn't they turn back, echoes the Yuba case almost exactly. I mean, that's the thing about this case, I think that's pretty unnerving, is that their car worked. Why were they trying to get to this trailer? I don't know. Like you're you're driving home from a basketball game and and you get into the civ somehow and onto a mountain road in Sierra Nevada. Like it just feels they like they would have lived there. They would have known where they were, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

I feel like a lot of these are just you're mi we're missing a very crucial piece of a puzzle.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that would make it all feel fall into place.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it just like for you shift your perspective a little bit, and it's like, oh, of course that's why they're doing that, because of A, B, C, and D.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um You're right. I don't know. You can speculate all you want, but it's like the um it's like the taxidermy lion. The the guy was just sent a pelt, nothing else, never seen a lion in his life, and it's like, you know, taxidermy is lion. Right. And then uh it looks so frickin' weird. Yeah, you know, of course, it just doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what else looks weird?

SPEAKER_00:

What?

SPEAKER_01:

Bears walking on their back legs.

SPEAKER_00:

Incredibly, yeah. It's a great example, Abby. Here's a here's an interesting example. So say someone is just given an anteater's skull. Good callback from earlier, if I do say so myself.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00:

They've never seen an anteater, no idea what it is. And they're told to diagnose what animal is this?

SPEAKER_01:

Looks like a giant bird. Oh, interesting. Yeah, sure, fair. Like a beak bird.

SPEAKER_00:

How are they going to think of like, you know what? Actually, it's a really long nose with the little lit wiggly tongue that kind of like slips around the eyeballs and pops them out like a like a melon baller. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Like a melon baller. Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, it's the same thing as um our whole theory on Mothman. We just don't have the ability to understand that because as John Keel says, try to explain physics to a cockroach. We just there's pieces we're missing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they're le they're driving from a basketball game because Mothman said, Hey, come over. I'm cooking.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm cooking.

SPEAKER_00:

You do what Mothman says.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I've always said that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, why would you not? Otherwise, you die in a bridge collapse. Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

In May 1986, a school climbing group from Oregon Episcopal School set out on Mount Hood in Oregon as part of a required wilderness education program, but were caught in a sudden spring snowstorm that rapidly worsened and overwhelmed them with deep snow, whiteout conditions, and freezing temperatures. As they descended from the climb, the deteriorating weather forced them off course, and with visibility near zero, the remaining members dug a snow cave at around 8,200 feet on the south side of the mountain to shelter from the storm. But it was too small to protect everybody adequately. Snowfall built up around and over the entrance, impeding airflow and access. Rescue efforts were hampered by several conditions. Heavy snow, wind, and blizzard-like weather delayed search teams. And when the cave was finally located after several days, nine climbers, seven students and two adults, had died from hypothermia and exposure. While two survivors were found alive, among the snow and frigid night temperatures, one later lost both legs due to cold injury. The tragedy remains one of the deadliest climbing incidents in North America and illustrates how rapidly snow in winter-like conditions can turn a seemingly routine mountain outing deadly. I mean, there's certainly so many hikes I've done, you know, in in the spring or whatever, in the Rockies or places that are the Tetons that are serious, and you don't, you know, you think you're prepared, but like I I would not be prepared for a giant snow squall out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_00:

No, not unless uh, you know, your father was there.

SPEAKER_01:

Then then we'd be fine. And I probably wouldn't be there unless he was there.

SPEAKER_00:

So he'd probably be like, hey, yeah, we're just gonna go for this uh quick uh hike, 45 minutes tops. Tops. Bring your hat, it's gonna be cold.

SPEAKER_01:

True detective season four stars Jody Foster and Callie Reese. It's a fantastic example of winter horror, one of my favorite examples from recent years. Really? Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

I thought that was a weak season.

SPEAKER_01:

What other seasons have you watched?

SPEAKER_00:

None. Yeah. And but the internet says it's not good.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

I think you say season one is the best bit of television you've ever seen. Correct. And you were bored by this season.

SPEAKER_01:

Listen, I think it it had some pacing issues, but I also think most things I make have pacing issues. So I'm trying not to be judgmental.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sorry, this this y you are not given millions of dollars to go Go still waiting. Willy nilly. Um and honestly, if not for Jodie Foster, it would be completely forgettable.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think that's true at all. I think the lore of the show of the season is really interesting. I think it sets up a mystery very similar to the dialogue past, right? It's like these people were naked, they walked off, this happened. How why? It's like this question that is is seen in a lot of these incidents. How could they have possibly ended up in this situation? What is the piece we're missing, to your point?

SPEAKER_00:

The the piece that's missing is always the same.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not always the same.

SPEAKER_00:

It is always the same. What what is it the only thing that explains every bit of behavior in that show and many others, time shifting getties.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know. Listen, I'd stand by season one being fantastic, one of the best like character arcs I've seen. I I didn't mind season four. I thought that it totally was super interesting, the world was interesting, the characters had depth to them. There was interpersonal relationships that I was interested in. I I vote it's good.

SPEAKER_00:

Is there what is the difference between true detective and true blood?

SPEAKER_01:

They're totally different shows. True blood is about vampires, true detective is about detectives.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. I I recommend True Blood as well. Alright, Alan, that's what I've got on survival winter horror for you.

SPEAKER_00:

That's unfair because you forgot one of the uh a huge incident that I'm really surprised you didn't bring up. Is this about the Yetis? No, not directly. What is it? It's the the the terror.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, sure. Do you know the boat?

SPEAKER_00:

The boat.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Boats.

SPEAKER_01:

The boats. Tell us about the terror.

SPEAKER_00:

The HMS Terror is one boat, but its sister boat, the HMS Erebus, was also there. Just uh two boats trying to find the Northwest Passage in 18 something, and then they get stuck in the ice. And it's just there's 129 men between the two boats.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you know that number off the top of your head?

SPEAKER_00:

How do you know all your bullshit?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm reading.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm reading. Wow, how'd I get that number?

SPEAKER_01:

All right, keep going. Tell us more about the terror.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah, just being stuck in the ice was not unheard of. It's actually kind of expected. And back then, like before you had like icebreaker ships, you just got stuck and you had to wait out the thaw.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But sometimes it got really tense because you weren't sure if you were in the right place that it would actually thaw. And then you have to spend multiple seasons there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, and you have to chip out at just the right time and all this stuff. And then you also have the captains that are just like, We've come this far, we have to keep going. And they just make you keep chipping the ice. And it's just like Frankenstein. The but the whole thing got really exacerbated for two reasons. One, when the ice started to crush, uh to crush one of the ships, and so they couldn't just like wait it out on the ship.

SPEAKER_01:

Why would that happen?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, because ice is really strong and it starts shifting, and suddenly it just starts destroying the ship. That's like being stuck in the ice is like a major concern for wooden ships, of course. For any ship, really. Yeah. Being stuck in the ice is of major concern. Like, I think of like how much force a glacier has. And it's basically that. Unstoppable. Hitting, you know, it if it's shifting at the wrong angle and you're not moving with it, you're just fucked.

SPEAKER_01:

And wood is a very soft material.

SPEAKER_00:

But things got really exacerbated. Because I mean, I don't I I never watched the show because sorry, we tried to watch the show, but it was too hard to understand what they were saying. But in the book, if memory serves, because I I know they all, because this is all based off true story. Yeah. They all started, or a lot of them started to go crazy because of uh lead poisoning. Because the guy that provisioned the the there's one guy whose job was provisioning the ships, and he went with this cannery that was cheaper. Yeah. And boy, do they pay for it because there was lead that leaked into all their food. So they were eating the food, but by the time they realized what was happening, they all got they were already like crazy with lead poisoning.

SPEAKER_01:

It's horrifying.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and like I don't know exactly what lead poisoning does, but I know it can make you go crazy. And it's fatal, of course. But they discontinued, they got rid of the contaminated food, but then at that point there was all this like paranoia. But anyways, you know, that a lot of shit happened. Uh, but at least in the Dan Simmons book and in the show, there's a lot of supernatural elements that can be interpreted multiple ways. There's the there's the uh polar bear that you never actually see in the book. Like in lost. Sorta, sorta like in lost. Actually, yeah, very much like in lost, but it's like a crazy supernatural polar bear that is just described as like the demon, but who like sweeps in, sweeps out like this crazy force of nature, sometimes not doing anything to anybody, just like being like a malevolent thing. Right. How much is this them actually dealing with a creature versus how much is this just crazy paranoia versus insanity from lead poisoning and other things? Um, they also had scurvy, right? Which just makes you I don't know. I don't know what scurvy does, but it's I know it's bad for you.

SPEAKER_01:

It's bad, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, the it was a crazy story, and then all 129 died.

SPEAKER_01:

Oof.

SPEAKER_00:

Or well, were lost. So uh they yeah, nobody gets out. Sorry for the spoilers. But that that I'm just I'm sorry. That's in the that's a true story where all all hands were lost. Sorry, all souls were lost because it's a ship. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

Winter is a predator. It strips away warmth, comfort, and certainty, leaving only isolation, desperation, and the slow gnaw of fear. In these true snow tragedies, the cold is as deadly as any predator, turning mountains, forests, and frozen landscapes into traps that test the limits of human endurance and human sanity, I would say. From pioneers stranded by blizzards to hikers lost in remote ranges, the same thread runs through each story. Survival comes at a price, and sometimes that price is unthinkable. These are true winter horrors, where the silence of the snow is more terrifying than any scream, and the cold is never just cold. But what's more unimaginable than being trapped with only your own thoughts for company next time on Lunatics Radio Hour. Bye. Bye.

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Abby Brenker

Co-host
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Alan Kudan

Co-host