Tunguska: One Blast. 80 Million Trees. No Crater.Episode 61:17
The Burned Forest Still Standing
Nineteen years after Tunguska, Kulik reaches its center and begins searching for the object that caused it.
Watch it in the appThis episode needs All Access, from $4.99 a week.
Transcript
One herder was blown into a tree and later died.
Over Siberia, June 30th, 1908, around 7:15 a.m.
The first scientific survey occurred two decades after the event.
In 1921, geologist Leonid A. Kulik tried, but it was inaccessible.
In 1927, Kulik reached the site during the expedition.
Near the epicenter, trees stood stripped of branches and bark. From roughly three to ten miles away, trees were blown over.
Evidence of burning marked the trunks near the epicenter.
For the team, the forest became a map written in broken trunks.
Later surveys mapped an 830-square-mile butterfly-shaped destruction zone.
Inside it, millions of trees had been knocked over.
Kulik found no physical evidence at the site.
Witness S. Semenov later described the sudden moment. I raised an axe to hoop a cask when the northern sky split apart.
Investigators sought a crater and meteorite fragments, but found neither.
A mid-air explosion most likely vaporized the object before ground impact.
Where it leaves off
Beneath the stripped trees, Kulik found no crater and no physical remains of the bolide.
Sources
- 1908 SIBERIA EXPLOSION: Reconstructing an Asteroid Impact from Eywitness Accounts - Planetary Science Institutepsi.edusecondary
- 115 Years Ago: The Tunguska Asteroid Impact Event - NASAnasa.govsecondary
- NASA/Technical Memorandum (NASA/TM--220174) 2018ntrs.nasa.govsecondary
- Vurdalak | Witness: S. B. Semyonovvurdalak.comprimary
- AN ARCHIVAL AND ORAL HISTORY OF THEhou.usra.edusecondary
The whole series is in the app.
Download on the App StoreAll Access is $4.99 a week, $14.99 a month or $39.99 a year. The annual plan starts with three days free.