I’ve often pondered how history would have been different if this thing had annihilated Moscow — instead of exploding over Siberia.
Ping for your list.
Being an American, I can visualize miles far better than I can kilometers. I just converted that figure to miles, which (if my math is right) comes out to about 730 square miles.
That's an area over twenty seven miles on a side.
I don't know about you, but getting a picture of something flattening an area that large just boggles my mind. I never had any idea the Tunguska blast was that huge.
Oh, everyone knows by now that the Tanguska event was actually an extraterrestrial spaceship on a goodwill mission to Earth that inexplicably imploded to critical mass in the fierce overpressure of our lower atmosphere and then detonated with thermonuclear ferocity.
;^)
Personally, I doubt they’ll ever really know what caused that explosion.
“At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post [65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion], facing north. [...] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul’s Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest [as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up—expedition note]. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.”
A quote from wiki. Pretty wild.
Freegards