I am trying to put closure on an incident that happened a few years ago. I have not found any answe

This is all a VERY good story. I would go so far as to say, it's one of the most interesting things I've ever read. I would love to just read this over and over and picture the visuals. The thing about reality however, is it's almost never an interesting story.

From a completely uninvolved, or I don't know what word I'd want to use. I guess it would have to be uninvolved, perspective, none of this has ever been reported as a reality elsewhere. I would have to make a massive assumption that all of it is real, and the OP has more of a motive than providing a great story.

I don't know where, (Found it: www.cracked.com...) but the Dyatlov pass incident was written off as part hoax and part fabrication. All it was is a bunch of people who were trapped in the wilderness and began hallucinating. No radiation was ever found. The radiation part of that story is what made it interesting for me, and that part seems to be the fabrication. I would distance this event from the D Pass incident.

Looking towards OP's story, this is the first conclusion I have: the soldiers were suffering from hallucination. When you think you're in danger, from ghosts or whatever, that's when you hold onto your weapon. It would have to be a mental lapse of judgement for a soldier to part from his weapon. Not even because it's against the rules, but he himself knows he's better off with it.

Do I believe this is government drug testing, no, I don't believe that myself. The government might have done so in history and I'm sure you can find me some sort of examples of it. But a soldier is an investment, or maybe not. Maybe they were getting paid too much and had to be gotten rid of. I personally think that when the government does test drugs at their soldiers, they would have SOME idea of what the side effects would be. It wouldnt be something as dramatic as everybody walking off into the wilderness because of extreme hallucination. In that case, the participants would be under supervision. If you spend the resources sending a rescue team, you would rather have paid for supervision before it reaches that level. When you're not supervising the soldier reactions, what use of a study is it to you either way? What exactly are you testing if youre not interested in the results...

Could be hallucination from too much white background, from the cold, could be hallucination because they all decided to take acid since they're in the middle of nowhere. The reason you aren't being told what happened is because a body doesn't exist to comfort people involved. Those sort of things cost money. You just do your job and thats it. It would be akin to a grocery store manager explaining to a floor cleaner where the puke came from that they now have to mop up.

Personally, I become genuinely angry when people try to explain things away as aliens. Or UFOs, or anything of the sort. My mind fascination is directly linked to discovering why things happen, not throwing it away to the unknown. I think thats a crummy way to live your life. Be it aliens, or god, or jesus, or buddha, any of those things. You have to have at least some intrigue into the actual story. You don't drive to Mc Donald's and say you dont want a hamburger, so why would you listen to neat stories and attribute them to god or aliens...

Thanks OP for sharing, I sincerely doubt any sort of explanation will appear from this story. Nor would your supervisors be upset that you shared this. The only reason these things are top secret is so the military wipes themselves of responsibility. They don't any vested interest beyond that. If you hadn't shared, we wouldn't have ever heard this neat story.

These 20 'missing' people have families. Wouldn't the military have to provide them with some kind of an explanation for the disappearances? Did you know the names of any of the 20 selected that would enable you to follow up with their family members?

If the military was somehow involved nefariously in this incident, I would imagine that any 'explanation' they provided to the families would not jive with what you know or experienced given your role in all of this.

Now that you've added in some details, it does indeed sound like this group was subjected to an experimental control system.

In this case the control caused severe disorientation regarding reported mileage/distance covered.
It further caused hallucinations, possibly catalyzed by props entered into the field to gel a common theme with all effected.
After that, it's anyone's guess what happened. It could have progressed to the point of complete breakdown in discipline, as well as sanity, triggering the fight/flight response into overdrive resulting in all personnel scattering.

What I find difficult to understand about all this is, from what I gather, this was a military exercise with trained and disciplined military personnel, men, with gear, training, and weapons.
Not children that jump at every little scary shadow in the night.
These were trained, military professional men.
Right?

If such is the case, whatever caused them to break ranks and scatter in all directions would, I think, have to be some pretty effective motivation.

As far as strange women howling, calling, and coming after people in the woods, especially in Yukon territory, the term Wendigo comes to mind from native mythology describing a cannibalistic spirit or some such.
Some speculation regards the Wendigo myth to be attached to bigfoot, but, that's all the the realm of speculation.

The most reasonable explanation that would satisfy the weird behavior and reports of the missing people would involve them on the test end of something experimental that drove them crazy.
Their disappearances could then be accounted for by another other retrieval team, unknown to you, and attached to the experimental weapon testing, that super secret nabbed all concerned to make them disappear.

Even that sounds highly improbable.

Whatever the case, if true, it's an interesting and strange case.

What branch of the military where these men? Army? Marines? National Guard? Something else?

Edit: Another question - were these men cleared for and equipped with real world effective live ammunition, or were they issued miles, or blanks as part of the training exercise?
I ask this, because, if they had no real-world offensive or defensive capability, one lone crazy with a deer rifle and real world effective ammunition could take out all 20 like shooting fish in a barrel while playing head games with them.
Additionally, a large enough pack of wolves could drag them off one by one, though, such behavior against a group of 20 men seems highly improbable.

What season was it? Summer? Winter? Spring? Fall? or the month?

I just finished 5 years service with a military force. During my second year of service

Are you indicating this happened around 2008 give or take a year?

reply to post by Druscilla


A cross between the movies Southern Comfort and The Grey.

I imagine the 'military, top secret, oath, national security' play will prevent any real info that would help prove the event.real.

reply to post by crazydude

Originally posted by crazydude
I don't really believe in gov't conspiracies or the supernatural. However, I was advised this site might help me make sense of an incident that happened years ago. So I'm on here trying to test my luck. I just finished 5 years service with a military force. During my second year of service they selected 20 hardcore guys for special combat and recon training in the Yukon. About 10 days later we got word the team was not contacting their support element. I was a member of the recovery team that deployed 2 days later. We found human tracks leading in all different directions away from the basecamp but everything was intact (my friend still claims he found a set of barefoot human tracks). It was as if they all just booked into the Yukon one day and decided to not come back. Nothing was missing. We were unable to acknowledge this mission during my time in the service. Everything went classified. We found personal effects (like winter jackets, boots, ruck-sacks, compasses, and hygenic items you want in the field!). We went through a mission log that scared the # out of me. I asked my superior what happened a few months later and he just replied, "we don't know but we think something scared them." Sometimes, I shiver when I think about it. To this day I don't know what happened to them and I'm not sure I really want to know. Has anyone ever heard strange/unusual stories surrounding the area?

I don't know what military you are in but it's not Marines, Navy, Air Force, Army or Coast Guard. We don't use words like shiver, superior, ruck-sacks, sentry's, basecamp, 20 hardcore guys, special combat, recon training, SOS signals from nearby stationary aircraft, secure channel. Then YOU would not have access to the mission logs unless you we're the commanding officer in charge of the recovery squad...not deployment squad. You ain't deploying to the AOR.

Originally posted by crazydude
Well I couldn't sleep and now I'm mustering up the courage to light up a smoke in the bathroom. I've written out the below and feel much better.
1.) The team reported patrols over 250 km's a day. That's close to 160 miles. Anyone familiar with Yukon territory knows that's not possible in a week, well rested. Could a professional soldier continue to make errors of over 130-140 miles over and over again for days? Could hypothermia, fatigue, severe dehydration, or medical malady cause such disorientation and still allow someone to make it back to base-camp?- they also reported that they were being followed but found no tracks (it is entirely possible fatigue, dehydration, and severe cold/wind can cause these kinds of symptoms. I know a guy that stopped to tie his shoelace in broad daylight under these conditions and was lost but found alive the next morning).

2.) They reported numerous SOS signals from nearby stationary aircraft. There is no doubt in my mind the military has designed aircraft that can appear to hover. But do/why signal ground troops?

3.) They had the team on a secure channel. The team reported fits of laughter at sporadic times over the radio. Could the Northern Lights cause such interference?

4.) A sentry reported someone/something was trying to lure him away from his post and into the treeline throughout the night. It was calling his name. Severe weather, fatigue, and over-active imagination?

5.) A soldier was ranging in his weapon and claimed a women in with a black veil peered out from a tree downrange and smiled at him......he claimed she was demon trying to take him to hell because she/it had red eyes and abnormally long teeth. Any animal match that description besides a shined gator? No tracks were found and the soldier was put on bed rest. I don't have any ideas what happened here but I still sleep with a nightlight.

6.) The last entry only had two lines, "she keeps screaming at us. we're afraid she's coming tonight." I've never shared that with anyone. I don't know if it was out of fear or respect for the guys missing.

Maybe drugs, weather, fatigue, and dehydration mixed together caused these reactions?

We planned on a 3 day recovery operation but brought food for 6 in case of weather. We were extracted by early afternoon the next day.

Nothing but a story bro. None of this would have been said over an encrypted channel that you called secure. Plus not to mention all branches have certain AFSCs or MOS that go out and do this crap. Not 20 hardcore guys. You never listed your AFSC or MO or rank. You some how had access to encrypted radio chatter. You for some reason had access to mission logs as a nobody. Then on top of that you made a fake account named quailman03, who for some god awful reason signed up the same day to ATS as you but referred you to this website(sarcasm). Imagine that

It's funny to see how gullible some of you are.

Originally posted by johngrissom
It's funny to see how gullible some of you are.

It goes both ways.
Some of us like playing the game because it's entertaining. It's part of the fun to see how far this kind of stuff goes.

It's funny to see how emotionally involved and serious some people get over words on a screen.

The wild stories here never require any proof. I usually figure 99% of them are made up for the purpose of posting here for whatever thrill the poster gets.

I'm genuinely really interested in made up (in my estimation) stories like this because the OP could easily have just stuck to the standard alien/ I've got proof of ufos/ I'm an insider troll fare and probably got a more dramatic response, but instead they've come up with this belter.
What seed in someones mind grew into this story, that's what I want to know. And hey it beats the hell out of schnitzel.

reply to post by johngrissom


Kind of disappointing getting you disrespecting everybody in general instead of more from the OP.

They say you should go with your first instinct and when I read the opening post right away Bigfoot came to my mind. (or whatever name is used in that particular area)

If one came into camp and was huge I am sure I would run.

I didn't read entire thread sorry.

Question:
Are you certain that the team of 20 actually existed?
Is it not possible that it was you and your group that was being tested...and that all of the evidence your team found was planted and staged as part of YOUR training mission?
Just a theory.
Great story so far.

Big foot drops in for a visit and they run.

May I suggest removing 'hardcore' from the 20 hardcore guys. Maybe just go with 20 dudes...

Maybe it was a Yeti, that they were running away from and scattered. Why they would drop their weapons is beyond me? Unless their weapons were empty.

They could have been turned into Manchurian candidates.

I'm wondering if there isn't an easier explanation for all this. You hadn't mentioned some specifics about timelines and such but this all sure sounds a lot like a whole group case of bad judgement by suffering sleep deprivation. Maybe something added where I suppose the military comes to cope with minor sleep dep. all the time? Bad food or something else? Just enough to take what guys learn to live with (and it's bad enough) and push the bodies that little bit further. Heck, by 4-5 days of no sleep, I could definitely see them wandering in different directions to check out whatever they might have been honestly seeing or hearing little flashes of by that point.

..and as the title of a show here puts it, the woods have a 1000 ways to die. It'd be silly to say that with a normal military team, right? Perhaps not so if they were mentally compromised. Sounds like quite a situation....

reply to post by crazydude


Closure and answers to the riddle are two different things. Ponder it this way, your experience was NOT of the missing people, but of the search for the missing people. Your experience was the same as the bat boys in the world series, he's not actually playing the game, he has a different part. Your experience is about what happened to you during the process, so reflect on that and leave what happened to them to be about them.

While your lack of military terminology is interesting, the story is rather fascinating. I have a few questions.
1. What was the state of the electronic equipment?
2. Was there any exaggerated aging of any organic material (for example did rations found seem to have expired before their date, tree growth different from surrounding areas, etc.)?
3. Did you take any reading on magnetic fields in the area?
4. I don't mean to be rude. I know you said no bodies were found and I know you do not wish to disrespect the dead. That being said I know bodies were found. Please let us know what state they were in.

Thank you

reply to post by 138abstract


I don't think that you will get an answer.

Bernard Schnitzel rings a bell.

I thought htis from the get go, but that is why I said I will save my comments for later.

It has classic BS wriiten all over it. Even with his friend joining in on his thread.