We only "dodged" it in the sense that the Tunguska event happened in a very remote area. Did you see the post on The Corner over at National Review Online about Tunguska? John Derbyshire posted the following:
Narrow Escape [John Derbyshire]
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is of the impact site for the 1908 Tunguska meteor, "the most powerful natural explosion in recent Earth history." The meteor hit with a force of about 20 megatons, fortunately in a remote region of Siberia. Isaac Asimov pointed out that the latitude of the strike (60.96°N) was almost precisely that of St. Petersburg (59.93°N), so that if the meteor had arrived about 4hr 46m later, the second city of Imperial Russia would have been wiped out.
I, among others, wrote him a bit of a critique about his logic, pointing out that in 4 hours and 46 minutes the earth would have been over 300,000 miles out of place in it's orbit to have been hit by the tunguska impacter, but that in only about 2 minutes of Earth's movement in our orbit it might have been in line with St. Petersburg, if it have been moving in just the right direction in 3 dimensional space, but then so would lots of other places on Earth, given just the right movement.
He posted this follow up:
Everybody's a Critic [John Derbyshire]
An astronomical number of readers emailed in to observe, with asperity only slightly tempered by mere scorn, that (a) if the Tunguska object had arrived 4hr 46m later it would have missed the earth completely by over 300,000 miles, and (b) a degree of latitude is nearly 70 miles, so the inhabitants of St. Peterburg would have been in the position of Manhattanites watching a 20-megaton blast in Poughkeepsie.
Yeah, yeah. With no offense whatsoever to the fine people of Poughkeepsie, just hope you never find out. In any case, don't blame Asimov, I probably misquoted him.
I think we're beginning to realize that these things happen a lot and we just haven't been paying close enough attention.
They can talk about man made disasters but mom nature is the dealer and there are jokers in her deck.
Forget my link, I forgot what thread I was on. Senior fugue on my part.