1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,240
Speaker 1: Well, this will knock your socks off. Literally. What if

2
00:00:03,279 --> 00:00:05,720
Speaker 1: I told you there was an explosion in nineteen oh

3
00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:08,840
Speaker 1: eight that was over two hundred and fifty times more

4
00:00:08,920 --> 00:00:12,959
Speaker 1: powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. But it

5
00:00:13,039 --> 00:00:16,960
Speaker 1: wasn't mad made. I'm Patty Steele. To this day, nobody

6
00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:21,200
Speaker 1: knows what caused the Tunguska event. That's next on the backstory.

7
00:00:25,280 --> 00:00:29,960
Speaker 1: The backstory is back. Okay. It's a beautiful, peaceful summer morning,

8
00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:33,960
Speaker 1: June thirtieth, nineteen oh eight. We're in the remote Tunguska

9
00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:37,639
Speaker 1: region of Siberia, where daytime tempts in the summer can

10
00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:41,640
Speaker 1: actually reach into the eighties. But suddenly the tranquility is

11
00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:45,800
Speaker 1: shattered by an event so powerful it flattens more than

12
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:50,640
Speaker 1: two thousand square kilometers of forest, some eighty million trees.

13
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:55,680
Speaker 1: But oddly, it doesn't leave a crater. This massive blast

14
00:00:55,880 --> 00:00:59,600
Speaker 1: was a Tunguska explosion, estimated to be around two hundred

15
00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:03,480
Speaker 1: and fifty times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped

16
00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:07,480
Speaker 1: on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. Can you imagine

17
00:01:07,520 --> 00:01:10,560
Speaker 1: the shock for the few eye witnesses. It was a

18
00:01:10,680 --> 00:01:14,680
Speaker 1: very remote area. They were mostly local tribal folks, as

19
00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: well as Russian settlers looking for a life away from

20
00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:21,280
Speaker 1: the big cities. What did they see and hear? Well?

21
00:01:21,480 --> 00:01:25,200
Speaker 1: They describe a vivid blue light, almost as bright as

22
00:01:25,240 --> 00:01:29,679
Speaker 1: the sun, and then a massive fireball streaking across the sky.

23
00:01:30,440 --> 00:01:35,039
Speaker 1: Next came multiple deafening explosions, and then a pillar of

24
00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:38,839
Speaker 1: fire that turns the sky into a deep and frightening

25
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:43,319
Speaker 1: fiery red. Finally, a shock wave moves across the land

26
00:01:43,680 --> 00:01:48,040
Speaker 1: that literally knocks people off their feet, shattering windows hundreds

27
00:01:48,040 --> 00:01:52,120
Speaker 1: of miles away and even knocking over a train. Eventually,

28
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:55,720
Speaker 1: the pillar of fire was replaced by a billowing tower

29
00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:58,960
Speaker 1: of smoke that seemed to reach all the way into space.

30
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,760
Speaker 1: And think about this. Reports from the time say those

31
00:02:02,800 --> 00:02:07,120
Speaker 1: blasts were deafeningly loud hundreds of miles away, and the

32
00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:10,200
Speaker 1: skies three thousand miles away in Europe where it was

33
00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:13,680
Speaker 1: still night, as well as all over Asia, were glowing.

34
00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:17,639
Speaker 1: There are even several photographs that were taken around midnight

35
00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:20,560
Speaker 1: in Scotland and Sweden that looked like they were shot

36
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:24,520
Speaker 1: during the day. But what was it? A meteor, a comet,

37
00:02:24,919 --> 00:02:29,000
Speaker 1: maybe a ufo. It took scientists almost twenty years to

38
00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:35,560
Speaker 1: actually reach the remote explosion site in Siberia. In nineteen

39
00:02:35,639 --> 00:02:38,960
Speaker 1: twenty seven, a researcher visited the center of the blast,

40
00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:42,200
Speaker 1: and it was forty years after the blast that anybody

41
00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:44,880
Speaker 1: was able to interview the few eye witnesses that were

42
00:02:44,919 --> 00:02:49,000
Speaker 1: still left. What really blew scientists away was the story

43
00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:52,079
Speaker 1: these people told of the sky lighting up a few

44
00:02:52,200 --> 00:02:55,680
Speaker 1: nights before the big blast took place that actually goes

45
00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:59,919
Speaker 1: against everything we know about impact explosions caused by comets

46
00:03:00,160 --> 00:03:03,919
Speaker 1: or meteors. The leading theory is that an asteroid or

47
00:03:03,960 --> 00:03:07,760
Speaker 1: a comet exploded in the Earth's atmosphere, known as an

48
00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:11,600
Speaker 1: air burst, releasing energy equal to as much as fifteen

49
00:03:11,680 --> 00:03:16,360
Speaker 1: megatons of TNT. But again, there was no impact crater found,

50
00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:19,440
Speaker 1: so that's still just a theory. And the problem with

51
00:03:19,520 --> 00:03:23,240
Speaker 1: that theory is that early exploration of the site turned

52
00:03:23,320 --> 00:03:27,160
Speaker 1: up absolutely no debris linked to an asteroid. And there

53
00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:31,080
Speaker 1: are other theories too. Some scientists thought that natural gas

54
00:03:31,160 --> 00:03:33,800
Speaker 1: leaking from the Earth could have been ignited by a

55
00:03:33,840 --> 00:03:39,600
Speaker 1: meteor causing that huge explosion. That seemed speculative at best. Now,

56
00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:43,040
Speaker 1: when you go into the more kind of outlandish explanations,

57
00:03:43,360 --> 00:03:47,360
Speaker 1: there are some folks who think that an extraterrestrial spacecraft

58
00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:53,120
Speaker 1: crashed at Tunguska, causing the explosion, but sadly for UFO enthusiasts,

59
00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:59,320
Speaker 1: that is not backed by any scientific evidence. The small

60
00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:03,280
Speaker 1: amount of collected years after the fact was impossible to

61
00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:08,640
Speaker 1: test due to environmental contamination. And there's another fascinating theory

62
00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:11,480
Speaker 1: that goes against all the laws of nature. It's the

63
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 1: black hole hypothesis. Some think that a tiny black hole

64
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:20,279
Speaker 1: passed through Earth's atmosphere, causing the explosion, but again no

65
00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:24,799
Speaker 1: concrete evidence. Most importantly, what did the people who witness

66
00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:29,200
Speaker 1: this thing imagine? The fear you'd feel, no explanation, and

67
00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:31,680
Speaker 1: almost no way to communicate with the rest of the

68
00:04:31,720 --> 00:04:34,440
Speaker 1: world about what you'd seen. A lot of them thought

69
00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:37,240
Speaker 1: it was a sign of the end for humanity, sort

70
00:04:37,279 --> 00:04:42,280
Speaker 1: of like what dinosaurs experienced millions of years earlier. Now, interestingly,

71
00:04:42,520 --> 00:04:46,240
Speaker 1: the Tunguska explosion had a lasting impact on the world.

72
00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:50,479
Speaker 1: It influenced policy on the monitoring of space objects and

73
00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:54,920
Speaker 1: actually began asteroid tracking programs. It also became a fixture

74
00:04:54,960 --> 00:04:59,800
Speaker 1: in pop culture, inspiring books, movies, TV shows like episodes

75
00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:02,800
Speaker 1: of of Doctor Who, in The X Files, and of

76
00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:07,640
Speaker 1: course countless conspiracy theories. So here's the question. Have we

77
00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:11,320
Speaker 1: figured it out yet? No way. Over a century later,

78
00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:15,080
Speaker 1: the Tunguska explosion, or event as they call it, is

79
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:19,200
Speaker 1: one of the twentieth century's greatest unsolved mysteries. Was it

80
00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:23,479
Speaker 1: a natural, cosmic event or something else. It's just one

81
00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:26,440
Speaker 1: example that shows we're still at the dawn of our

82
00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:38,919
Speaker 1: understanding of our universe. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a

83
00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:43,159
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and

84
00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:47,159
Speaker 1: Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer

85
00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:51,000
Speaker 1: Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

86
00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:53,599
Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

87
00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:57,599
Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at real Patty Steele and

88
00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:00,680
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

89
00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:04,440
Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't

90
00:06:04,520 --> 00:06:05,640
Speaker 1: know you needed to know.