A decade later, Frozen is still a pretty incredible looking movie. Despite accusations of Disney Face and a slew of films that have imitated the art style, Disney’s landmark 2013 film remains a pretty amazing display of digital animation skill. Of the many fantastic looking elements, the snow is perhaps the most impressive. But Frozen‘s snow has done more than just look pretty: the technology Disney used to create it has helped solve the decades-old mystery of the Dyatlov Pass.
For those who don’t know, the Dyatlov Pass Incident is a hiking tragedy that occurred in Russia’s Ural Mountains in 1959. A group of nine people were found dead a few weeks after pitching their tent on the snowy slopes. What was especially terrifying about the bodies, however, was the condition in which they were found (Ed. remark: This description is a bit graphic): Several appeared to have been dragged many meters from the campsite, while others were even further away. Some were discovered in various states of undress, with injuries and deformities, missing eyeballs or tongues, and with cracked ribs and skulls. The bodies had also, bizarrely, been lightly irradiated. In other words, it looked like a graphic and grisly mass murder, but no one could provide an explanation that exactly matched the facts.
That mystery gave way to decades of fantastic theories, including Yetis, aliens, wild animals, infrasound, the Soviet army, or (most boring and plausible) an avalanche. But for years the avalanche theory was considered an inadequate explanation. In the initial investigation, and in several subsequent investigations, investigators found no typical evidence that would indicate an avalanche had been caused. But in 2019, a group of physicists determined that an extremely small avalanche could be technically possible in that area.
Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios
The next question for researchers was whether an avalanche of that size could actually cause the kind of injuries the nine victims were found with – and that’s exactly what Frozen comes into play.
When Johan Gaume, head of the Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at EPFL, a Swiss Federal Technical Institute, saw Frozen, he was immediately impressed by the way the snow moved in the film. So impressed, in fact, that he met with Disney to talk about the animation technology they used to create it. Gaume then expanded the code slightly to create a more realistic model for what an avalanche of that size might look and behave, and more importantly, how it might impact and injure a human body.
Between the Frozen code, his own simulations, and some old crash test data from General Motors, Gaume and his team determined that a small avalanche was actually could be be enough to cause the kind of traumatic injuries suffered by the victims of the Dyatlov tragedy. According to their research, an avalanche of that size under those specific conditions could, for example, break ribs or cause serious head injuries, or even cause enough soft tissue damage to result in death – unlike most avalanche victims, who tend to die from to die by suffocation.
Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios
But while Gaume’s model provides compelling support for the avalanche theory, it cannot quite explain all the mysteries of Dyatlov’s Pass. For example, why were the bodies irradiated (possibly due to thorium present in some camping lanterns, but this has not been confirmed) or what happened to the eyes and tongues of certain members of the group (possibly wiped out by animals, although not many other signs are those that refer to those on the bodies). Another mystery that is still ongoing is why the bodies were so far from the camp or why they were stripped naked – although various forms of panic and hypothermia could be to blame.
But in the end, we’re still one step closer to finding the answers that have eluded researchers for years, and it’s all because Frozen.
Honestly, Disney should lean into it. Frozen 3 And Frozen 4 are on their way – what prevents the House of Mouse from realistically modeling radiation dispersion, katabatic windsand possibly the alpine speed of a Yeti?