[CCIP]

Well, in light of another big story of the past day - the big stampede in Cambodia - it's also not unreasonable to imagine that this could have been case of irrational panic or violence. It's plausible that at some point in the night, they or one of them were terrified or otherwise provoked by something (be it a jet aircraft or an argument), which resulted in a panic/confusion/derangement. Maybe one of them freaked out and killed the others, but was also fatally injured by one of the other victims in the ensuing incident. Things like that also happen, especially on cold nights in the middle of nowhere - I think more than anything, strange environments like this can really throw people out of rational balance.

Either way, you can't discount psychological phenomena in this, either. The human mind is a strange place and can really throw very strange behaviours into the mix. The fact that this was a group of university students alone in the Urals, at night in the middle of winter speaks volumes about that!