Free Mountain of the Dead by Keith McCloskey

three of the group subjected to such massive internal injuries? It can be understood that a loud explosion and flames may have caused them to exit the tent in the manner they did, but the rush to get so far away is incomprehensible, particularly as nothing was found near enough to the tent to make them do this.
Infrasound weapon
    The hypothesis of the worst of the injuries being caused by the testing of some type of sound weapon or infrasonic weapon is based more on an attempt to explain how the injuries may have been caused rather than any evidence at Kholat Syakhl or the immediate area that might lead to a conclusion that such a weapon (assuming it existed) was actually used.
    The adherents of this theory point to the work of Dr Vladimir Gavreau, who was originally born in Russia but was actually a French scientist. Other than his work on an infrasonic whistle, the link with the Dyatlov group deaths is tenuous to say the least and appears to be based on the fact that he was born in Russia and had a connection with infrasonics. The emphasis on Gavreau appears to be that if he was working on infrasonics with a potential military application then so must the Soviets, although there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back this up. 8 From 1948 into the 1960s Gavreau was living and working in France, based in Marseille. He worked on robotics with potential military applications and presented various papers, including one on 16 November 1959 with Albert Calaora on acoustics. During this period in the late 1950s (and into the 1960s), Dr Gavreau also conducted a number of experiments in sound waves. It should be stressed that these experiments were primarily in the acoustic range as opposed to purely infrasonic, as is sometimes implied. During his research, Gavreau discovered that the nausea being experienced by himself and other workers within the building where they carried out their research was due to a large ventilator fan being driven by a low-speed motor that had not been fixed properly to its mountings. The resulting vibrations were giving off a very low frequency sound, which had been affecting them.
    Although there is absolutely no correlation between the work that Gavreau carried out in France and what happened to the Dyatlov group 2,500 miles (4,000km)away in the Urals, it is felt that the worst of the internal injuries to Semyon Zolotarev, Luda Dubinina and Rustem Slobodin was possibly caused by a similar weapon being developed by the Soviet military and tested in the northern Urals, either directly or indirectly on members of the Dyatlov group.
    The first problem with this theory is the work of Dr Vladimir Gavreau himself: his experiments and theories tend to attract dedicated conspiracy theorists who find in his work what they want to find and ignore anything that may conflict with their theories. A current expert in the field of infrasonics has described Vladimir Gavreau himself as a ‘nut job’ (this view was directly expressed to the author). Whilst this less than flattering description of Gavreau is somewhat subjective, there is no denying that his work tends to attract dedicated conspiracy theorists. Another of Gavreau’s supporters was the author William S. Burroughs, whose writing is described as ‘paranoid fiction’.
    The second problem with the theory is that although intense infrasound can cause serious damage to a human body (150dB of any sound above 5Hz is harmful to humans), it would not have caused some of the worst injuries found on Semyon Zolotarev, Luda Dubinina and Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle. Intense infrasound causes internal damage such as soft tissue damage, ruptured blood vessels, nausea and disorientation. It does not cause internal mechanical damage of the kind found on the three Dyatlov group members, which were broken ribs and fractures.
    Last but not least, there is no evidence of a Soviet military infrasonic weapon at this time, although work on something of this nature would have