Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: the trio known as Stuff you Should Know the trio.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Jerry came to our live show. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm still a little giddy and um in amazement. It's
Speaker 1: been a while, Jaars. I mean, I know it's not personal,
Speaker 1: but I just remember she used to actually go on
Speaker 1: tour with us where she got a family before she
Speaker 1: checked out. Yeah, other people more than nuts. I'd also
Speaker 1: like to point out the um fact that Jerry is
Speaker 1: writhing and discomfort right now, Chuck. Yeah, you're really sticking
Speaker 1: a tour. No, she's fine. Um, well, it was a
Speaker 1: great show, probably because Jerry was there and everybody, well,
Speaker 1: I guess you would have heard it by now because
Speaker 1: these are coming out after Christmas. Time Warp. Let's do
Speaker 1: the time warp dance, Chuck, and everybody's like, gee, she
Speaker 1: would be nice to see some of the things you're
Speaker 1: talking about. What you can do maybe next year you
Speaker 1: mean in person? Yeah, if you want to do another
Speaker 1: live Christmas show, sure, Yeah, I'm done with that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we paid money for Christmas decorations. We did not to
Speaker 1: feel like we need to reuse those. YEA, hopefully everybody
Speaker 1: has heard it already and now they're like, yes, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what these guys are talking about, and I'm
Speaker 1: enjoying this horribly awkward intro diversion. It's not awkward. Speaking
Speaker 1: of intro divergence, Chuck, I want to mention two things. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Stuff Network has a ton of really
Speaker 1: good shows and there's one that I was on recently
Speaker 1: called Behind the Bastards. I was on a two parter.
Speaker 1: It was it was nice. So Robert Evans is the host,
Speaker 1: and he basically just does tons of research about some
Speaker 1: of the worst human beings who have ever lived, many
Speaker 1: of whom are celebrated in some quarters, and he just
Speaker 1: kind of tears him down to size. Did you do
Speaker 1: a show on me? No, you're just celebrated. There's no
Speaker 1: tearing you down. I'm sure people tear me down. I
Speaker 1: don't care. The ones that I sat in on were, Um,
Speaker 1: we're based on scientific racism, history of scientific racism and
Speaker 1: how it's been used to justify like colonialism and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff and the level of of research this
Speaker 1: cat does is astounding. Yeah, it's a good show. It is.
Speaker 1: It's a great show. So, um, I was on that.
Speaker 1: But that's a good maybe a good primer, but really
Speaker 1: any behind the Bastards would be a great place to start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the show was was a and I don't want to
Speaker 1: say some surprising success because Robert's awesome, but um, I
Speaker 1: think everyone was just like, wow, look at this thing,
Speaker 1: Look at him, go, look at him. Go. And we've
Speaker 1: got another news show actually from our pals that stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Joe and Robert. Yes, they just
Speaker 1: launched a show called Invention. I don't remember if they
Speaker 1: went with the exclamation point or not, but it's just
Speaker 1: awesome because I think no, but that boy, their album
Speaker 1: art is so cool. It's it's really great. It's just
Speaker 1: a cool maze where you're just waiting for a minuteur
Speaker 1: to leap out. Yeah. And for the people that are
Speaker 1: like album art, what are you talking about? Did they
Speaker 1: record an lp uh little industry lingo everybody, the little
Speaker 1: icons that you see on your podcast players, it's called
Speaker 1: album art in the industry for some reason. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: still haven't figured that one out. I think it's just
Speaker 1: a hold over from um iTunes days, I guess, But
Speaker 1: like what, it would be funny if they called it
Speaker 1: like the single art, that would be pretty funny. Actually,
Speaker 1: still never bought a single in my life. Oh I have.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what they were, but I have. So anyway,
Speaker 1: go check out Invention. You're gonna love it. If you're
Speaker 1: a stuff to blow your mind fan, it's Joe and
Speaker 1: Robert doing their thing but on different topics, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna love it. And then if you're not a stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind fan, well you're welcome for introducing
Speaker 1: YouTube to awesome podcasts at once. Yeah, those guys are great. Ye.
Speaker 1: So uh okay, let's talk about our own thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do our own stuff. Yeah, what about us? So
Speaker 1: we're talking, let's get in the way back machine, and
Speaker 1: we need to put on our high temperature protective suits
Speaker 1: that we used to hang out on volcanoes sometimes. Well,
Speaker 1: and also our low temperature protective suits are in the back.
Speaker 1: They are we don't need them for this one. Well,
Speaker 1: what day are we going to We're going to June eight,
Speaker 1: so sure, it's probably about seventies seventy degrees actually early
Speaker 1: in the morning. We're going to get there around around
Speaker 1: seven am to give ourselves some time to get set up.
Speaker 1: But seven am on June thirtieth, nineteen o eight in
Speaker 1: the Russian wilderness around the Pudka Manya Tungusca, which means
Speaker 1: the stony Tunguska River. Um, it was probably about fifty degrees,
Speaker 1: Will say, okay, yeah, which is I mean that is
Speaker 1: like choice summertime weather for the Siberian Plateau. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this place is gorgeous. So the stony Tunguska River is
Speaker 1: a nice, wide, meandering, slow river, and it's name stony
Speaker 1: because the bottom is all beautiful pebbles and it just
Speaker 1: kind of its banks are not really well defined. It
Speaker 1: just kind of goes into the land and swamp land
Speaker 1: and then suddenly the land rises upward into ridges with
Speaker 1: huge all evergreens everywhere. It's just gorgeous. I love it here.
Speaker 1: You know what we call those rocks in the South
Speaker 1: skipping rocks. They are skipping rocks. They call them that
Speaker 1: in Russia too. Oh really yeah, Skivinski rocks. Emily the
Speaker 1: other day was like, I wish I could skip rocks,
Speaker 1: and I was like, dude, you just gotta get the
Speaker 1: right rocks. That's really the key. I mean, this show,
Speaker 1: there's techniques in the wrist and everything, but it really
Speaker 1: is the rock. Although so there are people who can
Speaker 1: skip just about any rock you handem well that I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty good skipper, but you still need those good, little, smooth,
Speaker 1: little river rocks. It's true. It makes it way easier
Speaker 1: for sure. So in this beautiful place, I also failed
Speaker 1: to mention there's lots of reindeer wandering around and they're
Speaker 1: not wild. They're actually being herded by the Evenki people
Speaker 1: also known as the toong goose Um, who are basically
Speaker 1: nomadic reindeer herders that live in the area. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: are working deer, right. So everything's pretty idyllic and sweet
Speaker 1: and nice. It's the Siberian summer. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there's a streak of cloud across the sky,
Speaker 1: a fireball at the tip. It looks like about a spear,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, this is seven seventeen
Speaker 1: am local time, all of a sudden, that fireball disappears,
Speaker 1: and then a huge flash of light explodes in the sky.
Speaker 1: And that's followed very quickly by a huge burst of heat,
Speaker 1: and then after that is followed by a huge shock wave,
Speaker 1: and a massive explosion has just taken place, the likes
Speaker 1: of which have never been seen in recorded human history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where are we? Are We dead now? No, we're in
Speaker 1: our protective bubble. Since we're actually visiting from another time,
Speaker 1: we're still in this time. We're just kind of visiting
Speaker 1: as in like a movie. I have never really quite
Speaker 1: wrapped my head around the physics of it. But we're safe.
Speaker 1: We're not dead now. If Jerry killed us while we
Speaker 1: were paying attention to um, the Tungusco blast in this life,
Speaker 1: we would be dead. Yeah. When you talk about explosions, um,
Speaker 1: this was depending on where you look, Uh, it was
Speaker 1: something in the order of a hundred to one thousand
Speaker 1: times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. I did
Speaker 1: the math. I saw two hundred to two thousand times
Speaker 1: more powerful. Yeah. Man, this that's the thing. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about explosions in night. Sure it's gonna be arranged,
Speaker 1: but the thing is, the Hiroshima bomb was fifteen killo
Speaker 1: tons fifteen thousand tons of t NT yield. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a big explosion, so much so and we'll get
Speaker 1: to more details, but supposedly you could see the light
Speaker 1: from this thing as far away as London. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of worldwide effects that happened from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Hiroshima woman was fifteen kilo tons. This is
Speaker 1: an estimated three to third mega tons, million tons of
Speaker 1: t n T. Just an astoundingly greater explosive force, and
Speaker 1: it just happened out of the blue, literally out of
Speaker 1: the clear blue sky on this day, on June nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight. Yep, that's right. And uh, thankfully it's not
Speaker 1: a very populated area, but there there are people there,
Speaker 1: and there are you know, native tribes people that make
Speaker 1: their way there and they live in huts and they
Speaker 1: raised those reindeer, and while there weren't a lot of
Speaker 1: people there, it created Uh, it was. It was an
Speaker 1: awful thing if you lived in the area. Some people
Speaker 1: died of of shock and heart attacks, reindeer died, huts
Speaker 1: were leveled. It really kind of wiped out the way
Speaker 1: of life for these people. Yeah, yeah, big time, because
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if you live in Siberia, you're spending
Speaker 1: your summer like preparing for the winter, and this blast
Speaker 1: like just leveled their supplies, the deer, the reindeer that
Speaker 1: they depend on. It like had a huge impact on
Speaker 1: them and some people some some people did die, although
Speaker 1: I think um, no one died directly like being blown
Speaker 1: to bits by the blast. It was like, um, elderly
Speaker 1: people had heart attacks and things like that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it ended up it was a very interesting pattern that
Speaker 1: emerged here. So these trees were flattened out in a
Speaker 1: radial pattern that pointed away from the center of this
Speaker 1: explosion over an area this was about like close to
Speaker 1: seven seventy five square miles. Oh my god, which is
Speaker 1: a huge, huge explosion. Uh. There were trees that remains standing,
Speaker 1: and this is really interesting, but there were no branches,
Speaker 1: no leaves, no uh, no needles or anything. They were
Speaker 1: just basically the the stem and the trunk of the
Speaker 1: trees bear standing straight up. Yeah. And that that was
Speaker 1: Those trees were right in the middle of the blast,
Speaker 1: the radio blast pat Yeah. And the fact that they
Speaker 1: were basically just stripped bear means that it was a
Speaker 1: very huge but super fast impact that blasted all those
Speaker 1: branches off without affecting the tree itself. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: this this blast, this explosion is very hot, fast, explosion
Speaker 1: actually lit the trees on fire from the temperature that
Speaker 1: formed the leading edge of the explosion, and then the
Speaker 1: shock wave that followed that moved the air actually put
Speaker 1: the fire out, so they were like flash charred and
Speaker 1: then immediately extinguished. Yeah, there's one quote here from uh,
Speaker 1: I mean because this was there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: direct accounts, but they do have a few, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how in a minute. But this is one
Speaker 1: hot wind blew past us the ground and all the
Speaker 1: huts trembled, causing the sod packing to fall from the ceilings.
Speaker 1: The glass was blasted out of the window frames. Scary moment. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine. Supposedly, the um the Evenki people
Speaker 1: believed that their god ug Dy who is I think
Speaker 1: the god of either lightning or fire or thunder one
Speaker 1: of those. Um. I've seen different accounts of it. Um,
Speaker 1: they that they assumed. So imagine this like you're the
Speaker 1: only people that you're the only people are used some
Speaker 1: reindeer hurting tribes people who live in the area. Um,
Speaker 1: and this happens and you have no scientific frame of
Speaker 1: reference for it, and UM, you believe your god came
Speaker 1: to punish you wipe out all of your stores and
Speaker 1: all of your reindeer and everything, and then that's just
Speaker 1: what you had to live with. Because you were in
Speaker 1: such a remote area. No one knew about this. No
Speaker 1: one knew that this happened for a very long time, actually,
Speaker 1: Like I think some of the local papers began to
Speaker 1: report it by the end of the summer, but the
Speaker 1: larger world had had no real ideal what had happened,
Speaker 1: even though there were effects worldwide, but no one could
Speaker 1: no one traced it back to this this moment in
Speaker 1: Siberia for decades, at least a full decade I think
Speaker 1: actually too. Yeah, And it wasn't like, uh, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like the scientific community just descended upon this place ever,
Speaker 1: really like they've and we'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: superstars of uh, particularly this one man that went and investigated.
Speaker 1: But uh, I mean that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: we still don't know exactly what happened. We have a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea, which will say for later, but there
Speaker 1: aren't Uh. This was a singular event. It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that we could say, well, this is
Speaker 1: like that other thing that happened right exactly, Yes, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's nothing like although they they think that
Speaker 1: there was at least one other thing that happened like
Speaker 1: it in the twentie century. Um. Actually now to two
Speaker 1: things have happened that are similar to it. So we're
Speaker 1: kind of dancing around it a little bit. Um. But
Speaker 1: let me tell you, let me point out one thing
Speaker 1: that has happened. Even though this is considered far and
Speaker 1: away the largest cosmic I guess explosion that you that
Speaker 1: that we we have ever recorded, there was something else
Speaker 1: that happened in Brazil in nineteen thirty near the Crusa.
Speaker 1: I think I'm saying that right river um where there
Speaker 1: was a very similar event, huge explosion in the sky
Speaker 1: um scared the Bejesus out of the indigenous tribes living there,
Speaker 1: burned a significant portion of the Amazon for a full month.
Speaker 1: Um And there was a Jesuit missionary who um came
Speaker 1: along five days after and got a lot of firsthand
Speaker 1: accounts from that one. But they think it was similar
Speaker 1: but much smaller than Tunguska. Yeah. And and the mystery
Speaker 1: of this whole thing has led to some weird theories
Speaker 1: that will hit on later that are I mean some
Speaker 1: of them of course, just like aliens and beasts and
Speaker 1: things like that, which is the we obviously no, that's
Speaker 1: not the case, but it still remains somewhat of a
Speaker 1: mystery after you know, a hundred plus years right um.
Speaker 1: And then so there's one other that this was an
Speaker 1: unrecorded history as far as we consider recorded history typically,
Speaker 1: but there there's evidence that this happened one other time
Speaker 1: and then this time people weren't so lucky. At something
Speaker 1: like about thirty years ago around the Dead Sea um
Speaker 1: there was a large area I think about five hundred
Speaker 1: square kilometers wide, which is a pretty significant amount of
Speaker 1: land that was just wiped bear of of life, including
Speaker 1: humans living in the area at the time, and that
Speaker 1: it was an explosion from the sky and it wiped
Speaker 1: out one village in particular called tall l Hammam And
Speaker 1: get this, chuck, you know what Tall l hamm was
Speaker 1: also called at this time thirty years ago. Saw them
Speaker 1: that interesting. So they think that this is where the
Speaker 1: legend of sodom being wiped out comes from. That it
Speaker 1: was actually an explosion much like Tungusca. And they found
Speaker 1: shards of um like pottery from the time that the
Speaker 1: outsides have been turned to glass some of the particles
Speaker 1: inside have been gasified. And for this to have happened
Speaker 1: without like doing anything more to the to the pottery
Speaker 1: means that it happened like in an instant, and that
Speaker 1: the air temperature was suddenly about four thousand degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that happened too, and this I
Speaker 1: think also kind of bolstered the Sodom legend, was that
Speaker 1: um a lot of the dead sea salts were pushed
Speaker 1: across the land, um over this huge amount of land
Speaker 1: and took like what was once fertile and turned it
Speaker 1: into like dead sterile land because it was salted, and
Speaker 1: it took something like six years for the area to
Speaker 1: recover from that. In that fascinating let's take a break,
Speaker 1: because so I think you can tell him getting a
Speaker 1: little worked up here. All right, Well we'll be right back,
Speaker 1: everybody with more amazing nous, alright, dude. So from the outset,
Speaker 1: some scientific minded types were like, well, I'm hearing reports
Speaker 1: of this this weird event that happened in eight in Tunguska,
Speaker 1: the Tungusca area, and it sounds to me a lot
Speaker 1: like a meteorite. So I'm gonna go check out you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing and try to find this meteorite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that was one of the early theories. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were seismographs that did register some activity, so some
Speaker 1: people thought it was an earthquake at first. Uh. It
Speaker 1: lit up the sky um and created this massive dust plume.
Speaker 1: So that's where people in like London and Germany. Um,
Speaker 1: they said that they could read newspapers at midnight even
Speaker 1: that far away. So it was it was causing a
Speaker 1: little bit of commotion in the scientific community. Uh. And
Speaker 1: still you know, consider this as was eight. Um. It's
Speaker 1: hard for a word to get around, so you can
Speaker 1: hardly blame people with you know, this event happened kind
Speaker 1: of in the middle of nowhere in nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: and it didn't exactly like you know, shake the world.
Speaker 1: But there was one man, uh and this was uh,
Speaker 1: this was later on. His name was Leonid Kulick, and
Speaker 1: he was He was a scientist. He had a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting life and career. Um. He was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty three in Estonia, which was later part of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. He studied math and he studied science. He
Speaker 1: fought in both World War One and World War Two,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting because I'm curious about the number
Speaker 1: of people who were unfortunate enough to experience both those wars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were probably a lot, not a ton. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you do the math, like, you would have had
Speaker 1: to have been pretty young and then pretty old to
Speaker 1: have fought in both of these. Um. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: uh one he had the task of examining meteorites within
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. And that's where I got the impression
Speaker 1: that the first sort of a scientific fire was lit
Speaker 1: under his his butt to uh to get into studying meteorites. Yeah, well, no,
Speaker 1: he was already studying meteorites, and he heard some he
Speaker 1: read some of those local press clippings that had had
Speaker 1: been written like ten, ten or twelve years before, and
Speaker 1: that that he kind of put piece together like, oh,
Speaker 1: this sounds a lot like a meteorite impact. My job
Speaker 1: is already to go fine meteorites because they you know,
Speaker 1: when they strike the ground, they have all of this
Speaker 1: rich interroal or with them. So I'm gonna go find
Speaker 1: it and um the government can come mind it, and
Speaker 1: that's my job. So he if if Leonig Kulik had
Speaker 1: not bred some of these accounts and then traveled to
Speaker 1: the area. Um, we would probably not have anywhere near
Speaker 1: the kind of um understanding or awareness of them the
Speaker 1: impact that we have today. Yeah. So was that the
Speaker 1: sinct enough for you? Yes? I think so? Okay, good? So,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, in nineteen twenty one, he was, uh,
Speaker 1: he was given the task of studying meteor rights in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and so by the time seven rolls around,
Speaker 1: he's got a pretty good knowledge bed that he's sleeping
Speaker 1: on every night, right, so he makes his first uh,
Speaker 1: he makes eventually three trips here to try and study things.
Speaker 1: The first one unfortunately he didn't even find the site
Speaker 1: because there was poor mapping going on. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: really sort of um charting new territory, exploring this area,
Speaker 1: and was just getting help from anyone he could. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were scared to go there because of
Speaker 1: you know, they thought it was a judgment from the gods. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was, Um, it was slow going, so that
Speaker 1: that first expedition in nine was basically to just say, hey,
Speaker 1: I think I know where this actually happened. Like that's
Speaker 1: how rudimentary things were back then. Yeah, he um, he
Speaker 1: I think was so was it the first expedition in seven,
Speaker 1: he didn't make it in Did he also make it
Speaker 1: the same year or was it a different year? Did
Speaker 1: he also make it back there the same year? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: well I saw that he went in twenty seven nine, Okay,
Speaker 1: so what whatever time he made it in there, he
Speaker 1: made it in there at least once there one the
Speaker 1: first time. And he knew like pretty much right off
Speaker 1: the bat that he had had found the site because
Speaker 1: all around there were trees that were laying on their sides,
Speaker 1: but they were all pointing in the same direction, which
Speaker 1: you just don't see very often, Yeah, for sure. And
Speaker 1: then that you know, those at the center of those
Speaker 1: trees standing straight up with with nothing there was another
Speaker 1: pretty good indication. Yea. So the thing the thing about
Speaker 1: Leonid Koolik is is that he um, he was very
Speaker 1: very frustrated. Like again, he was a meteor hunter, like
Speaker 1: this is his his thing. Um. So he fully expected
Speaker 1: to find an impact crater and hopefully the meteorite that
Speaker 1: that had all sorts of iron or whatever or um
Speaker 1: it bore for him to go back and tell everybody about.
Speaker 1: But he couldn't. He could not find this. Um. He
Speaker 1: did find those trees standing upright at the center that
Speaker 1: indicated that the reason they weren't blown over was because
Speaker 1: the force had blown directly down on top of them.
Speaker 1: So he knew he'd found the center, but there was
Speaker 1: no sign of an impact crater. And he suspected that
Speaker 1: there was a swamp in the south just south of
Speaker 1: the um, the place where the trees still stood, that
Speaker 1: was hiding the impact crater and the meteorite itself. And
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of like what he He went
Speaker 1: to his grave believing that he just could never find
Speaker 1: it because the swamp had basically swallowed it up. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't blame the guy in the in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. It was a pretty decent idea because
Speaker 1: he and again you know he had he had no
Speaker 1: idea that, uh well, should we go ahead and say
Speaker 1: what people think happened? Oh okay, alright, let's do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had no idea that a meteor could explode pre impact,
Speaker 1: which is basically what most people think happened. Now. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he died in a Nazi sorry, a Nazi prison camp
Speaker 1: in World War Two. Uh so he would not have
Speaker 1: been had the benefit of that knowledge that came later on.
Speaker 1: I think starting in the fifties they started to really
Speaker 1: suspect that. But at the time um when he came
Speaker 1: back and said, this is definitely like, look at these pictures,
Speaker 1: an explosion unlike the kind that we are even remotely
Speaker 1: capable of creating here on Earth. So therefore a natural
Speaker 1: explosion took place here. I have photographic evidence here. I've
Speaker 1: interviewed locals who were there, so firsthand accounts of the experience.
Speaker 1: I've documented all this stuff, and I cannot find the
Speaker 1: meteorite or the impact crater. There's this sum total of
Speaker 1: all the info that I can provide, and some people
Speaker 1: took that and pieced it together to mean that, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a comet impact then, because comets are
Speaker 1: largely icy, they're rocky, and they have minerals and stuff
Speaker 1: as well, but they're not like an asteroid or a
Speaker 1: meteoroid where they're they're they're made mostly of rock or metal.
Speaker 1: They're made mostly of ice. So when it does explode,
Speaker 1: it would just kind of evaporate, and it might have
Speaker 1: the same kind of impact, but it would also not
Speaker 1: leave a crater or any real remnants of self behind.
Speaker 1: So for a very long time and among some quarters
Speaker 1: that still explains the Tunguska event that it was a
Speaker 1: common impact rather than a meteor. Yeah, it's like that riddle, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one where the guys hanging and there's a puddle
Speaker 1: of water. Q. Look, was like, there's a big puddle
Speaker 1: of water here. Actually he thought the swamp swallowed it.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know that didn't explain it. And you look,
Speaker 1: I will say, like, although, like I feel bad for
Speaker 1: the guy that he died. Uh, well, obviously he died
Speaker 1: in prison camp. That's the worst thing, but that he
Speaker 1: died not really getting to the bottom of this, but
Speaker 1: he kind of kept that drumbeat going for people to
Speaker 1: study this, took those great photographs, interviewed locals, and really
Speaker 1: did a lot of the groundwork for other people later
Speaker 1: to build on. Yeah, like if if he hadn't taken
Speaker 1: this expedition on himself and really gone in and like
Speaker 1: piece together the first bits of evidence we had fairly shortly.
Speaker 1: I mean, what like this is ninety seven and the
Speaker 1: thing happened in nineteen o eight, So within twenty years
Speaker 1: he really went and documented it had enough and for
Speaker 1: his work, we um we would probably not have like
Speaker 1: any kind of anything like the understanding that we have today,
Speaker 1: and who knows, it might have been lost to history
Speaker 1: as well too, maybe, although I doubt it, because like
Speaker 1: you can still see evidence of this today, which, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. It is for sure, like the fact
Speaker 1: that that that you can still find trees laying on
Speaker 1: their sides, right or laying yeah, on the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the forest is grown up around it,
Speaker 1: but that stuff is still there sometimes, you know, in
Speaker 1: some places. I would love to see that, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course in prison. It's just I would definitely go in
Speaker 1: the summer, but um so for those two weeks between
Speaker 1: late June and mid July before winter sets in and
Speaker 1: late July. And I should also say, yes, I just
Speaker 1: saw it in the way back machine. But you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Yeah, and this was like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: still not a populated area, so it's not like things
Speaker 1: have built up around it. It's it's still largely the
Speaker 1: same as it was back in. Yeah. There's a little
Speaker 1: little little town called Vona Vara, and at the time
Speaker 1: it was basically a trading post and it's not much
Speaker 1: bigger now. It's really small. They have an airport which
Speaker 1: is basically a strip of concrete that has been cleared,
Speaker 1: and um, you can get in and out of it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's not an easy place to get to.
Speaker 1: It requires helicopters, horseback, some people ride reindeer in on
Speaker 1: some of it. A lot of hiking. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of bears, there's a lot of wolves. But the blast site,
Speaker 1: the epicenter, is preserved in a nature preserve in Siberia,
Speaker 1: so you could conceivably go study it, and people do.
Speaker 1: I think the most recent expedition was in two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: They're still trying to get to the bottom of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Q look, I mean he he took every
Speaker 1: available mode of transportation he could to get there over
Speaker 1: I mean it took him days and days and days
Speaker 1: over these expeditions to reach it. And he was he
Speaker 1: was a brave dude and like very determined. So um
Speaker 1: Culic found a couple of other things. He found that
Speaker 1: the ground around the epicenter was actually um scrunched up
Speaker 1: like a rug from the blast, which must have been
Speaker 1: astounding to see on like a massive scale. But he
Speaker 1: also saw that there were holes, really like strange circular
Speaker 1: holes that were just a few yards deep, but up
Speaker 1: to fifty or a hundred feet in diameter, and he
Speaker 1: had no idea what he was looking at. He knew
Speaker 1: that it must have something to do with the explosion,
Speaker 1: but it's just peculiar. He hadn't seen those before. There
Speaker 1: was nothing in the literature to explain what he was
Speaker 1: looking at, and so some of the stuff that he
Speaker 1: documented it was great documentation and he was a very
Speaker 1: brave person for going and undertaking this this expedition. But
Speaker 1: he also laid the groundwork for basically, um, everybody with
Speaker 1: a theory to come along and suggest that their theory
Speaker 1: was what explains the Tunguska event. And like you kind
Speaker 1: of referred to earlier, some of them are kind of
Speaker 1: out there. So let's take a little bit of break
Speaker 1: and we're gonna come back and get into some explanations
Speaker 1: for the Tunguska event, including the real one. All right, Charles,
Speaker 1: you've heard of this before, right, So, like, did you
Speaker 1: grow up with this was just one of the things
Speaker 1: you're just aware of as a kid. No, it's you know,
Speaker 1: something that became aware of with the Internet. I think
Speaker 1: I heard about it from my time life Unsolved Streets books,
Speaker 1: which just God bless those things. Those the the set
Speaker 1: of those books, Um, the Uncle John's Bathroom Readers and
Speaker 1: David Letterman Top ten Lists from the nineties book. Um,
Speaker 1: probably are the three things that shaped my brain more
Speaker 1: than anything else. Yeah. Yeah, it says a lot Mad
Speaker 1: Magazine to you. Oh yeah, I can't forget Mad. Sorry,
Speaker 1: thank you for for for saving me on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So here's some of the theories that have kind
Speaker 1: of come and gone over the years. Uh. As we
Speaker 1: said that Q looks was that it was this meteor
Speaker 1: was swallowed up by the swamp south of the impact zone.
Speaker 1: Other people suggested that it was like Chico in Italy
Speaker 1: and that they were just off by their their mapping
Speaker 1: skills were poor, and so this was the actual impact
Speaker 1: creator and is now a lake. But now we think
Speaker 1: that they just didn't draw maps well back then because
Speaker 1: that wasn't on previous maps, and everyone's like, but now
Speaker 1: it's here, so that's what it is, right right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But there, Yeah, like you're saying, I think is it
Speaker 1: was just so remote and people weren't drawing maps of
Speaker 1: it that it just hadn't been bothered to be put
Speaker 1: on exactly, which I totally believe. Um, I think the comment,
Speaker 1: I mean are there people that still believe it was
Speaker 1: a comment? Yeah, Um, well, let me explain why there.
Speaker 1: There have been surveys of the site that UM are
Speaker 1: looking for traces of things that would be telltale signs
Speaker 1: that it was definitely a meteor um. Like, there are
Speaker 1: different kinds of meteors, but most meteors are either really
Speaker 1: stony rocky that it's basically like a chunk of earth,
Speaker 1: or it's like super metallic it's basically like a big
Speaker 1: ball of metal or whatever. And there's like different It's
Speaker 1: a spectrum, right, there's like you can fall anywhere in
Speaker 1: between those totally rocky and totally metallic um. But the
Speaker 1: the stuff aboard are going to be basically the same things.
Speaker 1: It's just the company the concentration of them. But one
Speaker 1: thing that you would find on like a meteorite is
Speaker 1: something like a ridium or osmium. There are things you
Speaker 1: would find in Earth, but you have to go to
Speaker 1: the center of the Earth to find them. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: not on the surface. So if you find those things
Speaker 1: on the surface of Earth, it's strongly suggests that a
Speaker 1: meteorite impacted Earth. Well, they've found not not much osmium
Speaker 1: or a ridium around the Tunguskas site. So they think
Speaker 1: that actually is kind of a thing that it suggests
Speaker 1: that maybe actually it was a comet, because a comet
Speaker 1: would have those things, but just not in high concentration,
Speaker 1: because it would mostly be a big ball of ice.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of kept the comet thing alive. Is
Speaker 1: recently is just the last few years. Yeah, Well, they
Speaker 1: did surveys in the fifties and they did find uh,
Speaker 1: space dust is probably the best way to say it.
Speaker 1: They did. It's true. Yeah, so, uh they found you
Speaker 1: know what was extraterrestrial rock dust. Uh, they found it
Speaker 1: in the area, They found it in the soil. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again it does match the date of the event um.
Speaker 1: So that to me means that the leading theory is
Speaker 1: probably correct, which is that a meteor exploded about three
Speaker 1: miles above land um, which basically just blew it to
Speaker 1: dust and that's why there aren't huge, huge chunks of
Speaker 1: rock laying everywhere. Yeah. So that's that's the predominant theory
Speaker 1: right now, is that it was a meteor um that
Speaker 1: blew up, like you said, I think something like half
Speaker 1: a dozen miles over over the surface of the Earth
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, and it blew up so with such
Speaker 1: force that not only did it, you know, cause the
Speaker 1: ground to to buckle and bend and turn into like
Speaker 1: a rug and blow eighty million trees down over a
Speaker 1: couple a hundred square miles, it also just blew itself
Speaker 1: and every any evidence of itself just into smith reeds,
Speaker 1: into dust, and so that dust layer is the only
Speaker 1: remnants of it left. Um. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: they didn't know how that could happen. Like that's if
Speaker 1: you put all the evidence together, that's the picture it painted.
Speaker 1: But at the time, and until very recently, science was like,
Speaker 1: we don't know how something like that would happen. It
Speaker 1: seems like that is what happened, but how would that
Speaker 1: even happen? Yeah, and it explains the fireball in the sky,
Speaker 1: because that's what you would expect to see when a
Speaker 1: meteor is is trucking towards the earth. Uh. This thing
Speaker 1: was about a hundred and twenty feet or larger in diameter,
Speaker 1: was going about thirty three thousand miles an hour. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was hot, like super super hot because of friction. Right.
Speaker 1: So the thing this this huge rock, and they got
Speaker 1: all those numbers just basically reverse engineering the force of
Speaker 1: the explosion. Right, So that rock that's traveling so fast,
Speaker 1: what did you say, like thirty four thousand miles an
Speaker 1: hour or something like that. That's at thirty three but
Speaker 1: give or take a thousand miles, all right, who cares?
Speaker 1: At that point? Right when it hits the atmosphere, it's
Speaker 1: suddenly met with that friction and gravity and drag and everything,
Speaker 1: and that these forces acting on it all of a
Speaker 1: sudden just destabilize it. And that the the pressure that's
Speaker 1: building up at the front of this huge rock is
Speaker 1: different by so much to the pressure behind it that
Speaker 1: the differential just destabilizes this rock. And because it's traveling
Speaker 1: so fast and has so much energy and there's so
Speaker 1: much heat associated with it, it doesn't just break up.
Speaker 1: It blows up. Yeah. What I'm surprised about it is
Speaker 1: that this hasn't happened more, and it must just be
Speaker 1: a very specific combination of size and speed and heat.
Speaker 1: But I'm surprised that that doesn't happen more. That combination. Well,
Speaker 1: some people are worried that it could happen more like
Speaker 1: one of the predictions I saw as that Tungusca like
Speaker 1: event we could expect it to happen over Earth maybe
Speaker 1: once every hundred to three hundred years. Yeah, but we
Speaker 1: haven't seen that. That hasn't played out right. No, But um,
Speaker 1: some somebody who wrote an article I read pointed out
Speaker 1: like the like, there's not some some schedule that that
Speaker 1: that rocks follow when they're coming into Earth's atmosphere. This
Speaker 1: is not how things work. So, um, we hope it's
Speaker 1: like that, but it's it's probably much less predictable than that.
Speaker 1: And we actually did a survey called UM Projects Space
Speaker 1: Guard I think, where we surveyed all of the near
Speaker 1: Earth rocks, the big ones, and we found that none
Speaker 1: of the big ones are probably going to come near
Speaker 1: us anytime soon. But we found also that we had
Speaker 1: trouble seeing the small ones, and the small ones could
Speaker 1: still create like a Tunguska event, which I mean, like
Speaker 1: you said, it happened over a pretty depopulated area and
Speaker 1: it's still affected humans. If it happened over a like
Speaker 1: a city, a major city, it would be just lights
Speaker 1: out for that that entire city. So the chances are
Speaker 1: pretty low that it would happen over a populated area
Speaker 1: just by you know, virtue of the fact that we
Speaker 1: tend to populate in in dense clusters while leaving also
Speaker 1: huge portions of the Earth, especially the oceans, unpopulated. Where
Speaker 1: but if it did happen over over a populated area,
Speaker 1: it would be really really bad. Yeah. I mean they
Speaker 1: make movies about, like fictional movies about that stuff, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So hopefully it doesn't happen, but it could, is the point. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I always wonder, like, man, I'm surprised that it
Speaker 1: hasn't happened over like a big city, But like you
Speaker 1: said that, it's we always think like others just people everywhere,
Speaker 1: but that's that's not the case. Uh, well, like how
Speaker 1: our settlements are. Yeah, like when you think about how
Speaker 1: large the Earth is compared to where the people are,
Speaker 1: it's we're we're we're we're not everywhere. Water is everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: that's true. So there there. I think in two thousand thirteen, Chuck,
Speaker 1: there was the Cheliabinsk meteor. Do you remember that over Russia?
Speaker 1: M M. I don't remember that. There was a like
Speaker 1: it was very well documented because everybody has a video
Speaker 1: tape camera on their cell phone these days, and um,
Speaker 1: there was a meteor that that basically did the same
Speaker 1: thing into Tunguska, except it was far, far smaller. It
Speaker 1: was something like, um, two thousand times more powerful than
Speaker 1: than Hiroshima. Now that doesn't sound right, thirty times more powerful.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Well, Tunguska was up to two thousand times
Speaker 1: more powerful. But it like blew the windows out of places,
Speaker 1: that knocked people down, and it really caught people's attention,
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, everybody, this is a real thing that
Speaker 1: that that like this can happen, and if a huge
Speaker 1: one happens over a population center, then we will be
Speaker 1: in trouble. So I think it kind of caught the
Speaker 1: attention of the scientific community that like, this is something
Speaker 1: we need to keep an eye on. Literally, Yeah for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully we will. I'm glad it's not up to me. Ah,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Tunguska event,
Speaker 1: type that word in the search bar of your favorite
Speaker 1: search engine and it will bring up all sorts of
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. And since I said that, it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail, I'm gonna call this letter from a teacher.
Speaker 1: We love these. Hey guys, am writing to thank you
Speaker 1: for helping you teach my ap psychology course. I have
Speaker 1: a degree in history and had taught just United States
Speaker 1: history and world history up until last year, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to thank you guys for helping me teach my
Speaker 1: own class. Needless to say, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: self teaching to do in order to prepare, and years
Speaker 1: of listening to stuff you should know has prepared me
Speaker 1: in a way that I was not expecting. As I
Speaker 1: taught the class, I found myself referencing knowledge I picked
Speaker 1: up from you guys, including how to train a pigeon,
Speaker 1: Stockholm syndrome, Oh mommy interesting, and the effects of bath
Speaker 1: salts on the brain. It also seemed to me, uh,
Speaker 1: it also seemed at least once a class, I would
Speaker 1: utter the words I listened to this podcast once and
Speaker 1: then dive into something like feral children and how that
Speaker 1: gives insight into development, or how a social panic works.
Speaker 1: Even got a few students to listen, just a few
Speaker 1: nice Thank you for that. All that's to say, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for what you guys do. You've given
Speaker 1: me confidence in the classroom and a constant stream of
Speaker 1: entertainment that isn't mind numbing, and that is from Michael
Speaker 1: Jacobs from Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he came and saw us
Speaker 1: in St. Louis in May, which is where he's from. Cool,
Speaker 1: and he said, Josh, you actually ran into my sister
Speaker 1: on the street right before the show. I ran into
Speaker 1: a few people at St. Louis like more than usual,
Speaker 1: and everybody was super friendly. Well, this was Samantha, So
Speaker 1: we're giving her a shout out. Hey, Samantha, So Samantha
Speaker 1: Michael Michael's sister. Thank all you guys and ladies for
Speaker 1: the sport. Yeah, thank you everybody who came out to
Speaker 1: that show. And actually all of our shows, you guys
Speaker 1: are really we appreciate all of you for it. Um.
Speaker 1: Actually you can come out to our other shows. We've
Speaker 1: got some coming up. You can go to s Y
Speaker 1: s K Live dot com to find out where to
Speaker 1: see us all over the map in January. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with this,
Speaker 1: follow us on social Just go to stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com and you can find all the links
Speaker 1: there and you can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com