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Comment by eunoia | Hacker News Reader

> 2 of them are still alive, third died of unrelated causes;

I’ve seen a number of different ends (continuations?) posited for these 3 guys. I tried to research and found about as much evidence that they lived happily ever after as they died immediately (i.e it’s a black hole of conjecture based on the particular writer’s feelings towards the Soviet Union).

Can you point me towards evidence?

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28 June 2019 - https://www.president.gov.ua/ru/news/volodimir-zelenskij-pri... Official document by Ukrainian president granting the divers the title of Heroes of Ukraine. Only one is mentioned posthumously - Boris Baranov.

Boris Baranov - died in 2005 of heart attack. https://24smi.org/celebrity/98385-boris-baranov.html

Ananenko Alexey - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5...

Bespalov Valeriy - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B0...

Here's an inteview with one of them from 2019 [1], which would be pretty hard if he immediately died. I have never found any piece of evidence that they immediately died; most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO series as if it were a documentary.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOo3Rp7rCE

> most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO series as if it were a documentary

That would be strange, because the series didn't show them die. And one of the epilogue screens said: "It has been widely reported that the three divers who drained the bubbler tanks died as a result of their heroic actions. In fact, all three survived after hospitalization. Two are still alive today."

The show itself makes a big deal of the 'suicide mission' nature of the task. I'm not sure many viewers bothered watching the epilogue.

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