Of all the events that can impact human lives explosions are easily hides among the most devastating and the most destructive. While there have been multiple instances in the history of accidents and incidents where various substances have resulted in widespread devastation. They have historically happened with a lot more deliberate intent, it seems that since the advent of gunpowder and all the way through the development of TNT high explosive weapons to the development of nuclear bombs. The ability of a blast to wreak havoc over a widespread area has been harnessed by people which probably not really in our best interest. A lot of the time it has been again used against fellow human beings because for some reason we’re really warlike. However while accidents with dynamite or high explosives are devastating and the deliberate bombing of others is equally damaging. There is a third scenario that could well be argued is somehow a lot more terrifying one that defies explanation. So now, we’re headed to Siberia and Russia to look into what became known as the Tunguska event and try to figure out what exactly or who caused it.
Tunguska is a barely inhabited and frigid portion of Siberia part of modern-day Russia. Even in a country that is famous for its cold climate and snow Siberia has always been arguably most framed by how remote it is in fact it’s probably why Russia is as big as it is because nobody actually wants to go live there well. I mean People live there but the point is that it’s really easy to claim land when nobody wants the land. Spanning over an enormous expanse of seemingly nothingness the distant location and how far it is from much of civilization made it perfect as a location for not only some of like the gulags or work camps but even the more feared and brutal prisons like the black dolphin. While this is still the case today, In the early 1900s there were even fewer reasons than ever for like any human to try to exist there. The lack of natural resources and the sheer distance that people would have to travel to begin to reach society made it a hard and unrelenting place that seemed to resist human Inhabitancy by its very nature.
On Apocalyptic Day
All of this started exactly at 7 in the morning on June 30th 1908, and it was still snowing. Those living in the hillside, hundreds of miles away reported that the sky lit up with an unearthly glow, the endless dark suddenly illuminated by an unknown source. The strange light was followed shortly thereafter by one of the most extreme explosions that have ever been recorded. It was seen heard and measured by instrumentation as far away as several thousand kilometres which is several thousand miles, basically they probably heard it in the US and just as suddenly as it appeared it was done. Aside from the various accounts and measurements, taken it was almost as soon as it had begun it was just poof over. But those that ventured towards the area where the blast had begun were sure to find the destruction far beyond what any of them had expected.
The energy blast was so large that seismic recording equipment in many different countries picked it up as an earthquake. It was visible from Northern Ireland which is around 5,500 km from the area. Reports from as far as the stated that despite it being a moonless night, there was enough of what they described as a nocturnal glow that they could see fairly well. Despite being dark night, some even captured evidence of this glow and documented it not just civilians and casual observers but various scientists and researchers. People that you would expect to be able to distinguish between something natural and expected, whatever happened that day. While it was hard to pin down an exact epicentre for the initial event those that eventually ventured into the area were soon to see that for the most part where the main source of the blast occurred didn’t really matter.
What Happened?
A huge amount they began to encounter trees that had been levelled by the explosion and not just one or two, there were entire forests that were completely flattened. In fact there were trees that had been knocked over that stretched over an area calculated to roughly be about 2000 square kilometers, an area greater than the land mass of the Mauritius. It would be estimated that up to roughly 80 million trees were knocked down by the force of whatever the Tunguska event was. Even in the modern day there are still many of them that can be seen lying flat still in the exact same position that they were left in more than a 100 years ago. A meteorologist who was cited around 64 kilometers away from the explosion that morning, gave his account, “The sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The entire Northern side was covered in fire.”
Witness and Reports
A tribe that occasionally inhabited the region were known as the Shanyagir one of their members gave an account where he and his brother were inside of their hut, on the Fateful time of the event the first thing that they noticed was the noise that they compared to a whistling wind or the sound of many birds flying overhead. When the blast occurred they were thrown out of bed and could hear the trees falling all around them before the hut itself was demolished. When he looked up this is how he described it bright as if there was a second sun.
When these reports were all disseminated and boiled down researchers have come up with just over 40 reports of what they believe came from people that were closer than 130 km from the event as it occurred. Based on the damage caused by the area effect, there have been various calculations made since then to try to estimate the amount of energy actually just generated by the event most agree on a force of 3 to 5 megatons. However some have calculated as high as between 10 and 20. Megaton is term used to measure energy and it is equivalent to what 1 million tons of TNT would generate. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan was equivalent to only about 15 kilotons and we are using the word only very cautiously here because there is no denying that the death and devastation that bomb caused was brutal by any measure. Its TNT equivalent would have been around 15,000 tons the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was around 21 kilotons or 21 tons of TNT. The damage that these two explosions caused has been documented all the world over and led fairly directly to Japan’s decision to surrender. By comparison the Tunguska event was somewhere between 3 and 5 Megatons that’s three to 5 million tons of TNT equivalent by more conservative estimates an instantaneous blast of energy that almost defies comprehension.
Survivors and Victims
While it may not sound like a strange thing to say it is actually unknown if there was any loss of human life due to the Tunguska event the remote region. Where it occurred and the sheer distance that many of these people lived from one another would be classed as a civilization or could be classed as a civilization makes it difficult to calculate not because there are so many apparent deaths but quite the opposite. In fact the reality is that there were no accurate records of who was living within the massive Blast Zone. Many of the people that lived even within a 100 miles of the explosion were cut off from the rest of the world. They were almost entirely self-sufficient and had little to do with anyone else.
For this reason the official death count is still thought to be zero although there are local reports that survive from the time that hint as many of like three people losing their lives. It should be noted that this is not based off any bodies that were found but more on a rumour that people’s belief or memory that there were at least some people in the area that either lived in the blast zone or had the potential to be around there when the incident occurred. The three unnamed victims of the event have their deaths recorded as being from an impact with a tree that led to infection shock or causes unknown.
Without reliable sources though it’s hard to confirm or deny this part of this is based on similar yet much less forceful events such as an air burst called as Chelyabinsk. In 2013, it resulted in a multitude of injuries from the pressure wave associated with the event. What is certain is that a great number of wildlife and reindeer were actually taken out by this event. The number is suspected to be extremely high as they were prevalent across the entire region with many substantial herds known to be active at that time estimates put the number that have died anywhere from a 100 to over a thousand.
Another group of people the Evenki tribe were known to frequent this area as well they were hunters, that were familiar with the area and would later help to guide some of the later expeditions to try and find the Impact zone. While they still survive to this day do, so in relatively small numbers with less than 40,000 members counted in Russia. Traditionally they would live in the temporary accommodations while out hunting or hurting reindeer and horses. Due to the nomadic nature of these peoples it’s hard to confirm or deny the reports that anyone lost their lives in the immediate aftermath.
Conspiracy Theories
The number of deaths and injuries notwithstanding the sheer destruction that the event brought with it led to everyone desperately searching for an explanation. Multiple eyewitnesses presented their versions of the events to those investigating the source and the cause. At the time in 1908 there were still no conventional modern weapons that would have been able to cause such carnage. But the key there was that there were no known weapons that existed. The military were already familiar with high explosives and the use of them are better aim and kill enemies. If there were some new forms of like devastating explosives being fine-tuned and honed by an army somewhere, could you really think of a better place to test it? After all if you were going down the route of creating a probably unknown size of explosion logic, would tell you the very best place to do it would be as far away from people as was physically possible to that effect. You could argue that there were few places better suited than Siberia and particularly this region.
However calculations have shown that the force of whatever the Tunguska event was caused by had the force that surpassed the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan at the end of World War II by around 200 times. One theory was that it could have been caused by a black hole somehow that’s right that the very fabric of space and time had been wrenched open and resulting chaos was the cause of this devastation left behind in its wake. As to be expected there is no evidence or justification given for this or even an explanation of how this would have happened, why it happened there or what would stop it from happening either again or repeatedly has never really been discussed.
Similarly another wild theory proposed was that it was Antimatter, in a form that the proposer does not really elaborate on collided with the ordinary matter of our planet and generated an absurd amount of energy as it disappeared from existence in a split second. The result of this through mechanisms that are really never explained was the destruction that is now known as the Tunguska event.
Well no matter what the situation, the location, no matter one theory would possible surfs up. The Aliens. If it was aliens or not seemingly regardless of time frame or world picture at the time there was always at least one theory that points to the skies. Some believe that a strange light or the strange light the explosion and the fallen trees could only mean one thing, a visit or crash landing by an Extra-terrestrial. One of the ideas is that like an alien pilot at a craft of dimensions and power far beyond what we could achieve at that time and place. The pilots then lost control of the vessel and came tearing through the atmosphere at a rate of knots their craft lighting up the night sky for thousands of miles. The idea was busted somewhat by claims that some debris had been found in the area some fragments of metal that had no business being there and no other explanation for their source. A group was then sent in in the late 1920s to investigate the area and search for this strange metal scattered around the Impact zone assisted by the Evenki tribe. Others stated that these were parts of like alien technology that obviously that brought the creatures here. The lack of an impact crater never seem to deter proponents of this theory. They argue that the crater may have disintegrated entirely upon interest. A more rational and possible source for the various metal fragments was proposed over the intervening decades.
The barren wastelands of Siberia and particularly the region where the event happened became a relatively popular graveyard for a different and much more conventional form of air travel Rockets. The Soviet Union was the second major player in the big space race of the late century. Eventually losing being beaten out by the Americans in the race to the moon. But the Soviets were in space first, it doesn’t matter USA planted the flag on the moon first, it’s them get over it prior to that. However the USSR arguably achieved a lot more success they got again. The first man to space Yuri Gagarin and beat the US in a number of feats but USA ultimately beat them. The great Aerospace achievements require many rockets and part of the launch process involved where think to get rid of them than over a largely uninhabited area and this is where Aerospace Enthusiasts and Ufologists disagree with. For some of them, it makes sense that over the decades many metal fragments would logically and probably looking like at flight logs become scattered over these barren areas. Fragments that point more to man’s desire to get to space rather than space desire to get to us.
Possible Theory
One of the most plausible and potentially rational explanations has been offered years. After the fact and the answer surprisingly enough, did actually come from the sky? After all it’s possible that the devastation caused that day came from outer space something on a collision course with Earth. One of the proportions that are not only hard to imagine but hard to believe as it would have hurdled towards Earth at speeds around 50,000 kmph reaching incredible temperatures as it approach the Earth and then enter the atmosphere. This would have caused it to basically deteriorate. The extreme force on a massive hunk of rock combined with the heat generated would have caused it to fragment. Gradually at first but eventually exploding into multiple smaller fragments each of them a flaming mass of devastation rain from above. Described by scientists as a meteor air burst exploding over the ground over Tunguska causing the enormous explosion the damage the light.
The detections on seismic monitoring equipment everything for some brief context they are known as Meteoroids when they are still traveling through space, become meteors when they enter the atmosphere and meteorites because they have the right stuff to hit the ground combats on. The other hand they are primarily made of ice and dust and tend to disintegrate easier when exposed to the extreme temperatures entering Earth’s atmosphere.
In a similar yet possible theory a comet was the source of the event given that later assessments would put the location of the explosion as high as 10 km in the air. This could be a contender as it does share many core aspects with the more accepted airburst idea while the most accepted account was a meteor exploding above the ground for recordkeeping purposes. This is still classed as an impact event essentially putting it in the same category. As any object that have physically collided with Earth and left craters and other scars in their way.
Conclusion
This is indeed the explanation that holds the most water then we are left with what must be the largest such event on record. While there are signs and indications around the world both born on the surface of Earth and the history of nature that shows much more significant impacts that have occurred in the distant past. This one was still pretty significant so that’s where we leave the Tunguska event, the main question left to pose is whether the modern scientific explanations match up with the physical reality of what happened over that Barren Siberian landscape more than 100 years ago? When we look back through history there are many incidents where the objects from Space have entered our atmosphere and either burned up spectacularly in the sky or impacted with little to no effect on the people or Wildlife immediately around them equally. There is evidence of major impacts that have clearly affected the course of the world after all there are multiple craters around the world that seem to bear the scar that marks on Earth’s surface showing that this was a pretty bad impact.
One of the most popular theories regarding what caused the mass extinction events that took many of the dinosaurs to Extinction based on this very idea is that an Asteroid or meteor of truly enormous proportions hit the earth and aside from like the devastation that it left behind locally this kicked up enough dust and debris to limit sunlight for an extended period of time. The resulting upset to the ecosystem led to the ultimate demise of a myriad of creatures regardless of what caused it whether it was alien intervention probably not a meteor air burst probably or something else not likely. There is one question that lingers in the back of most people’s mind when it comes to an event like this how likely could we experience another Tunguska event either in our lifetimes or sometime in the future. The reality is that no one can really be certain estimates of a similar event occurring can range really from once a century all the way up to even a million years. What remains is the reality that had the Tunguska event or whatever had happened somewhere like populous then the results would have been even more disastrous. While there are at least three unconfirmed deaths we look to the area that the blast had covered and the damage that it caused and it’s hard to picture how bad it could have really been unless it happened. If we imagine it landing somewhere more populous even slightly then the death toll could have run up into the hundreds and well beyond. So even if we all can’t agree on what the actual Tunguska event was natural, unnatural alien or human (at least we can all agree) that this is something that we really don’t want to happen again which is why we need to develop an Asteroid defence system so that we don’t just get a bug Planet hurling asteroids at us.