A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

you're screwed

/final destination

Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

Been to Austria. It's not the least bit cursed. And the chicks are smoking.

Austria has floods and bush fires?

/Nice try punmitter.

Crikey!

zealot_45: Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

As a survivor of a similar arrangement (not this gruesome, though), I can tell you with certainty that the guilt would pass in a manner of hours. After that, you're pretty farking thrilled to be alive. When the guilt sneaks up on you in the dark of night, you just knock it back with whiskey! You may even graduate to narcotics!
Of course, years later when life appears to have lost any sense of purpose or meaning, you may wish you had joined them. Again, this is where whiskey is employed as one of life's most versatile medications.

There ya go!

/That'll $1.50, please.

Stay Cool Babylon: As a survivor of a similar arrangement (not this gruesome, though), I can tell you with certainty that the guilt would pass in a manner of hours. After that, you're pretty farking thrilled to be alive. When the guilt sneaks up on you in the dark of night, you just knock it back with whiskey! You may even graduate to narcotics!
Of course, years later when life appears to have lost any sense of purpose or meaning, you may wish you had joined them. Again, this is where whiskey is employed as one of life's most versatile medications.

There ya go!

/That'll $1.50, please.

$1.50?

I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

robomonkster: I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

Were you out with the swine flu the week they taught inflation?

All those poor, dead koalas.

Neeek: Been to Austria. It's not the least bit cursed. And the chicks are smoking.

It's the most beautiful country I've ever visited:

Throw another shrimp on the barbie.

I seem to remember a rather famous Austrian man... really, he was the reason for causing a world war, and the deaths of millions of men, women, and children across Europe.

Who WAS this dark-haired, Austrian man?



You guessed it: Frank Stallone

Stay Cool Babylon: robomonkster: I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

Were you out with the swine flu the week they taught inflation?

SARS actually, I'm old school.

I hope there were no kangaroos injured.

zealot_45: Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

Have you heard this story? Link (new window) Creepy.

zealot_45: Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

At least you'd feel.

I hope your chicks turn to emus and kick your dunny door down

/not in the slightest bit obscure - after all, this is Fark and nothing is obscure on Fark

zealot_45: I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

I missed an airport connection once. The plane crashed.

zealot_45: Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

It is pretty obvious to me that this was elaborate murder plot pulled of to perfection

srhp29: It is pretty obvious to me that this was elaborate murder plot pulled of to perfection

About 7 years ago I was skiing alone at a fairly well-known ski resort. It was bad weather, and almost a complete whiteout. I skied down to the base, but it was rough going, and hard to see anything. I had a friend who worked there who was freaking out, because he thought I was probably dead. But, I wasn't. We drank a lot that evening, because one person was dead. It was a horrible feeling.

Am I the only one on Fark that feels like the Austria/Australia meme is played out? Seriously....

/not as bad as Sarah Connor though

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Am I the only one on Fark that feels like the Austria/Australia meme is played out? Seriously....

It's the only way people pay attention to Tazmania without a Hitler reference.

/whoops.

coco ebert: zealot_45: Megain: A seventh member of the group decided not to join the party and so escaped the fate of his companions.

I would kinda feel like an asshole if I had planned to go somewhere with a bunch of my friends, bailed at the last minute, and then everyone died while I was out doing whatever the hell I had to do instead...

Have you heard this story? Link (new window) Creepy.

This is taken from the Cracked article "6 Famous Unsolved Mysteries (With Really Obvious Solutions)"

The Dyatlov Pass Incident


On February 2nd, 1959, during the cold winter on Kholat Syakhl ("Mountain of the Dead") in Russia, nine intrepid ski hikers decided to do what they do best, which is ski hike, whatever the hell that is. On February 26th, the first of their very dead bodies turned up. Man, who would have thought such a tragedy could strike on "The Mountain of the Dead?"

*insert skull mountain pic*

It probably didn't look like this, but can you imagine?

But it was the discovery of the campgrounds that added the icing to the creepy-as-fark cake. The ski hikers' tent was shredded. The skiers were scattered around the grounds wearing either very sparse clothing or just their underwear. Three of them were found with crushed ribs and fractured skulls, but no visible defense marks or other signs of a struggle.



Oh yeah, and one of the bodies was missing a tongue.

In case you weren't already on the phone with Mulder and Scully, trace levels of radiation were supposedly found on their bodies. The official statement on what happened was about as vague and ass-covering as possible, saying it was caused by an "unknown compelling force." In laymen's terms this means, "fark if we know."

The story has become an internet sensation over the years, with many people blaming aliens, and then ghosts, and then the yeti, or possibly all of them working in tandem.

robomonkster: Stay Cool Babylon: robomonkster: I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

Were you out with the swine flu the week they taught inflation?

SARS actually, I'm old school.

Ah, the halcyon days of SARS! Canada, eh? And wasn't SARS actually worth getting somewhat hysterical over? I don't recall. I do know that a tanned, rested and ready strain of the Plague could return, but I'd be too busy making fun of it at Fark to notice the life slowly draining from my asshole. Meh, boy who cried wolf

/jack

The Obvious Answer:

So there's six things that freak people out about this one:

1. The no-tongued woman

2. A mysterious orange tan on the dead bodies

3. The ripped tents

4. The hikers' lack of clothing

5. The crushing damage done to three of the hikers

6. The traces of radioactivity

The big fact that gets lost in the re-telling of this story is that the bodies weren't found until weeks later. It's not like somebody turned their back, then five minutes later all their friends were dead and half naked.



That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate. Laying out in the sun surrounded by white snow for days also accounts for the weird tan.

The trauma and the destroyed tent points to an avalanche. Their state of undress can be explained by paradoxical undressing, a known behavior of hypothermia victims when their brains start to freeze and malfunction. In other words, it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a group of injured avalanche victims wandering around in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.



What about the radioactivity? Or stranger details that turn up in some accounts, like orange lights in the sky? Well, there's the fact that none of that stuff turns up in the original documents from the incident, and appears to have been added later by people who just can't resist making things spookier than they are.

It's those later accounts that have stuck in the public memory, because so many of the original reports were destroyed (this was the Cold War-era Soviet Union, which treated casserole recipes as state secrets).

So none of the details on their own prove anything other than a tragic hiking accident. The conspiracy-loving public widely reject this, too busy lighting their torches and getting their pitchforks to go hunt down an, "unknown compelling force."

*insert picture of snow*

Otherwise known as snow

cabritosaurio

so you're saying it was aliens?

Benq: cabritosaurio

so you're saying it was aliens?

I'd go with the Nazi Zombie theory, the cold, frozen northern hemisphere of 1959 still had plenty of Nazi zombies that could thaw out if the corpses were exposed to the sun after an avalanche.

cabritosaurio: The Obvious Answer:

You must be a hit at parties.

svenbertil

Came here for that guy.

/what I automatically think of when I see the word "Austria" anymore
//congratulations, creepy incest man, you replaced Hitler in my brain

NSFW example of hot Austrian girls. (new window)

You know who else was Austrian?

100% of the Austrians I know are nucking futs.

//I also don't particularly like Fosters.

The hills there...they're ALIVE.

cabritosaurio: That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate.

That's what I've always assumed about that incident. It's creepy when you first read about it, but most everything is easily explainable.

beoswulf: Benq: cabritosaurio

so you're saying it was aliens?

I'd go with the Nazi Zombie theory, the cold, frozen northern hemisphere of 1959 still had plenty of Nazi zombies that could thaw out if the corpses were exposed to the sun after an avalanche.

Zombie Nazis are always a good time

They bought their lift tickets, they knew what they were getting into...I say, "let 'em crash."

Sir Cumference the Flatulent: Neeek: Been to Austria. It's not the least bit cursed. And the chicks are smoking.

It's the most beautiful country I've ever visited:

Do you have that in a larger image size?

"...is the place cursed?"

It's not cursed, they're just tryin' to hard to be like the current residence of their favorite son

Oldiron_79: You know who else was Austrian?

Arnold?

cabritosaurio: That makes the missing tongue a lot easier to explain. As disturbing as it may be, the first thing a scavenging animal is going to go for is probably the soft tissue of an open mouth, especially if it still smelled like the burrito the hiker just ate.

An animal that eats only tongues, not going for any of the other tongues in the area, doesn't eat the eyes (a scavenger favorite) and doesn't leave any marks on the face or other external trauma? That's a damn picky scavenger.

Laying out in the sun surrounded by white snow for days also accounts for the weird tan.
Not after you're dead- you might discolor if you were exposed, but you won't tan once your skin stops producing melanin. If they were under the snow crushed by an avalanche, they wouldn't even discolor. The discoloration was noted by the searchers that found them, which makes regular old 'skier's tan' seem unlikely.

The trauma and the destroyed tent points to an avalanche.
The tent was actually cut with something sharp, and though a little snow had collapsed the middle of it, it wasn't buried despite being pitched on the slope of a hill. There was no sign of an avalanche in the area, and tracks were still visible in the snow when the camp site was found later. Four people were fully dressed, indicating that either they were already dressed in the middle of the night for some reason, or they had time to dress before leaving. Both are potentially odd.

Their state of undress can be explained by paradoxical undressing, a known behavior of hypothermia victims when their brains start to freeze and malfunction. In other words, it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a group of injured avalanche victims wandering around in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.
Most of the missing clothing was back in the camp site- it wasn't people casting off clothes as they stumbled around, they just never got dressed in the first place, despite the fact that four of the party were completely dressed. Some of the missing clothing was apparently cut from the dead after they died, and used to keep living victims warm. Paradoxical undressers can rarely get down to their skivvies because your fingers go numb from cold exposure before you can work all of the zips, snaps, and buttons associated with shedding Siberian cold weather gear.

I too doubt the whole 'it was aliens/nuclear missile tests' explanation, but there are a number of pretty enduring oddities. One of the most interesting that I've seen pointed out that it was odd that four people were dressed in the middle of the night, and that camp was pitched in a very odd location- on an exposed hill, when there was a more sheltered area with closer firewood quite nearby. Also, people wrote in their journals before sleeping every night of the trip except this one. One forumite posited that something that happened earlier that day made the party nervous, so much so that they pitched camp in a more exposed position that had a good view of the surrounding land and had four people on watch.

The injuries are also odd. You have one person up in the woods with a serious injury (skull fracture), and three in a shallow gully with potentially fatal trauma (skull and chest fractures). If they received those injuries in an avalanche, where was the avalanche? If they fell, where did they fall, and how did one person with an injury end up somewhere else? Why didn't the investigators conclude that the trauma was do to a fall if that was the case? Why were they building a fire in the tree line so close to camp?

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Am I the only one on Fark that feels like the Austria/Australia meme is played out? Seriously....

/not as bad as Sarah Connor though

Nope. It's not funny anymore. Hell, I don't think it was ever funny.

/Claiming responsibility...

Neeek: Been to Austria. It's not the least bit cursed. And the chicks are smoking.

Have you seen the kangaroos ?

/Alps are awesome.

/hot

Subby: ...is the place cursed?

Seven out of ten of the world's most poisonous animals...I remember going to the restroom at a heavily populated park, and there was a funnel spider just chilling on its web in a urinal. Everyone went about their business with a "Hell if I'm getting rid of it" attitude

Also, speaking of floods, Australia is constantly on the border of water shortages and enforces strict water usage and regulations.

So to answer your question: Yes, this place is cursed

/but very, very worth it

srhp29: I hope there were no kangaroos injured.

Don't be silly.There are no kangaroos in Austria. (new window)

About the castle photo posted at 5:12 AM,......that is Schloss (castle) Hohen Werfen near Salzburg. This castle has been used in the filming of Clint Eastwood's WHERE EAGLES DARE as well as the more recent mini-series, THE 10th KINGDOM.

/nice castle
//been there several times

As I share residency with the victims of recent fire and flood problems I am SOOOO going to hell.

/The handbasket is full
//Take the next one!

lol @ groverpm

BTW this is my first greenlight (7 years of Fark) - and I'm a little ashamed of the silly pun I had to use.

But hey, if I learnt something in these 7 years around here is "aim for the low hanging fruit" :)

Cheers mateys.