The Trees That Died Standing Up

Name: The Trees That Died Standing Up
Genre: Documentary

Tunguska leaves a bizarre signature: a burned central forest surrounded by millions of trees pointing away from the sky.

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Transcript

A herder was blown into a tree by the blast, and later died.
Over remote Siberia, June 30th, 1908, about 7:15 a.m.
Witnesses saw a fireball brighter than the Sun, then heard an explosion like thunder.
People nearby were thrown into the air, knocked unconscious, and left with damaged dwellings.
Semyonov raised an axe, saw the northern sky split apart, and felt intense heat.
Witnesses reported massive forest fires and trees blown over for miles.
Millions of trees fell across a destruction zone covering 830 square miles.
Near ground zero, branches and bark vanished, but the trunks remained standing.
After regaining consciousness, herders found the forest burning and many reindeer lost.
Three to ten miles away, fallen treetops pointed outward from the blast.
Models put the tree-burn radius at about 6 miles, or 10 kilometers.
In 1921, geologist Leonid A. Kulik headed to Tunguska, but the area stopped him.
Kulik reached the site in 1927 and found burned, stripped trees near the epicenter.
At Vanavara, another witness described the blast from a trading post. The sky split in two, and fire covered the northern sky.
Kulik found no evidence of whatever caused the blast. Tunguska had no crater.

But this forest-sized crime scene would remain beyond scientific reach for nearly two decades.

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