I’m currently reading The Case for Space by Robert Zubrin and it’s really good. You can tell the guy dedicated his career and life to really thinking about how humans might live in Space, whether that be on the Moon, Mars or in the Asteroid Belt.
I recently read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and that was also very good, it explained the shortcomings of other theories such as the geographic determinism espoused by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel although I think Why Nations Fail was a bit repetitive at times.
He does! I’m not sure if it’s been widely accepted as I haven’t seen his theory pop up in many places, but he spoke to some scientists and it sounds plausible to me. Explanation below, hopefully the spoiler works.
spoiler
It wasn’t just cold exposure. They unfortunately camped at a point on the mountain that funneled air into a whirlwind that would have sounded like a freight train passing their tent. It would have also created infrasound waves, which at certain frequencies/volumes can make people essentially go temporarily insane. It is the best explanation (imo) for why they would have cut out of their tent, partially undressed, and scattered in random directions. They eventually got far enough away to realize what happened and some of them started trying to salvage the situation, but most of them were too poorly dressed and one or two fell down a ravine to their deaths.
