Thinking Sideways: Tunguska Event

We're gonna have a live show on Saturday, so come and see us. Then we'll release a time ahead of time once we've completely firmed that up. We're also doing a meet up that night, Saturday night. Time and venue to be released, and there might even be a special surprise in there, but we're not gonna tell you that now, so you have to come and see it and we'll see you at crime Con. This episode is also brought

to you by Stitcher Premium. So if you got a stitcher dot com slash Thinking sideway as, you can sign up for Stitcher Premium using the promo code sideways and you get one month Freeme and the joy of Stitcher Premium is of course that you're gonna get episodes four days early. You're gonna get them and free, and we are putting out monthly bonus content on Down the rabbit Hole, so all kinds of extra stuff available there for you.

So Stitcher dot com slash Thinking Sideways promo code Sideways Thinking. Hey there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Devin, joined as always by Joe and Steve. Apparently I'm saying it for them now. Today we're going to talk about a not true crime mystery, or if maybe a true crime mystery. It was probably yeah, maybe on a bigger yeah, I'm kind of like a bludgeon cudgel scale, not like yeah, totally yeah, not a stabbing.

It was blunt forest trauma. We're going to talk about the Tunguska event. And this was originally suggested by Joseph way back in two thousand fifteen, which kind of seems like it was just yesterday. But that was a long time ago. I gotta be honest with you. I kind of thought we had covered this story. No, I've read enough about this, and this was seems just kind of our bag back in the day. When we were doing the twenty five minute episodes, we totally must have covered

that one. Oh my god, start on the list. Yeah, sorry, we didn't do it. We're gonna right now, though maybe probably not much longer though sorry everyone know you like those long ones. But it's not going to be this one. Actually, this, actually, this particular event has been thoroughly explored by some very

credible scientists. Scientists incredible, some not, yeah, some some of both. So, if you are unfamiliar with the Tunguska event, I happened hundred and ten years ago in June of nineteen o eight thirty of June, to be exact, A huge like huge like like huge explosion isn't even pronouncible anymore, dude, Yeah, a huge explosion rocked the isolated area of Siberia called the isolated Area of Siberia. Like they're not isolated, No, I'm sorry, it's a specific isolated area. No, no, it's

not even more. It's just one of these, one of the isolated areas, because all of Siberia, Siberia, it's isolated. But this one had the name. It's called governance, now called something else that I'm not going to be able to pronounce that was pretty close. This event took place close to the stony Tunguska River, which is apparently the only way to identify things out there. So it's called

the Tunguska event even though Tungusca isn't a place. Actually, yeah, there is a town called Tungusca, but it's not exactly where the event took place. But hundred two. I'm also I don't know you might know this when that became a place and if it became a place after memorium recognition. But also, by the way, this this place does show off that the actual creator, not that they were. The impact site does show up on Google Maps. Look, well

the event area think we'll call it. Yeah, I mean it's marked on Google It's like you can't actually see the see it on Trontal line around it. You can see it on Google Earth though. Yeah. Yeah, super super iceolated place. Like we said, it's Siberia. To this day, no one really knows what caused the explosion. The explosion is so big that it blew the h off of it. So it was big, hundreds of square miles of devastation. It was, so let's get into it. But just quickly.

It's not a little ears warning. I just want to mention that at this time in Russia they were still on the June Julian thank you calendar. I was like, Gregorian, no, that's right now. So a lot of the eyewitness accounts and things you'll read say that it happened on June seventeenth, not June. But I just want to get this out of the way so we're not getting emails from people

who are like, you dummy. We're so used to having one calendar that there's even people today that under different calendars. But the Gregorian calendar started, and I believe greg there decided to knock eleven days off of October because apparently people thought October was getting too good of a deal, so they took eleven days out, and so everything kind of shifted, is so, but not everybody shifted to the Gregorian calendar right away. Yeah, you know, the calendar has

been moved around a couple of times. I know there was at some point that the Russian people were on a different calendar that had them two or three thousand years ahead of the rest of the world. As in everybody said, it's nineteen o two and they're like, nope, it's sixty two oh five, Like there was just this weird. I don't know the exact numbers, but they did it a number of times. They shifted their calendar. Makes it

super confusing. But you know, actually we are reaching that point in our society where there's gonna be enough trek. He's out there. They'll take over Congress and probably the White House, and it's gonna be started. It's like started three or seven or something like that here pretty quick, I think so too. Yeah, you put in you anyway, let's see it again to this or away off track already, we're going to make this more than five minutes, no

matter what you sure are. I'm really sorry everyone else. As mentioned, the morning of the thirty of June nineteen o eight, an explosion that modern day scientists estimate was anywhere between oh was anywhere from sorry fifteen to twenty mega tons, caused about seven hundred and seventy square miles, which is about two thousand square kilometers of trees to just blow right over. For those of us who have

to look this sort of thing up. The atomic bomb that we set off in Hiroshima was about fifteen kilo tons, which means right, yeah, So that means that the blast was at this estimate, at minimum one thousand times more powerfer than that atomic bomb, which is pretty powerful. In nineteen o eight, also reportedly, though the blast completely flattened all of the trees, there were officially no reported deaths

of humans were actually underneath the trees. The trees the reindeer. Actually, the reindeer did die, a lot of a lot of wildlife did, yeah, but no humans specifically because of the blast. At about seven am local time, natives and Russian settlers in the area reported seeing a bluish column of light, nearly as bright as the sun, streaking through the sky.

About ten minutes later, a very loud boom, a very loud, it's kind of an understatement, a very loud boom was heard, and a shock wave powerful enough to knock people to the ground and shatter windows was felt hundreds of miles and kilometers away. Both and most of the eyewitness of reports actually came from towns that are hundreds of miles away but felt shock waves that they likened to tremors

or earthquakes. And it's at its actually estimated that many of those tremors were of equivalent to uh about a five point earthquake, so it was not a nothing. That's a pretty big shake of the earth. The explosion also caused some interesting atmospheric phenomenon, including reports that the night sky in Asia and Europe had a glowy quality to them. That is a technical term. Um no, more like glowy, not like lights, kind of just like a shimmery ear

descence to it, Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Some people reported that the blast sound they heard sounded like it moved east to north, but I don't know if that really matters. And also those people's positions weren't aren't really specified, so I don't know how helpful that is. Probably changees depending on where vantage point is. It would assume this area of Siberia so remote that it took more than a decade for the first investigators to come and try figure

out what exactly had happened. Actually, the Russian Civil War was also happening during this time, so it took almost two decades. It was wasn't until nineteen seven that um An exploration made it out there. Yeah. I think this guy was his name La Kulik. Yeah, Yeah, apparently he'd been out there like you know, six years earlier on some unrelated matter, early stories of this big, huge kaboom. He was a mineralist, so he was going out. I mean,

his job was basically fine minerals. So his job was to go out and find minerals, right, and you do that mostly in kind of isolated areas like Siberia. Yeah, so he was out looking at all these natives get saying yeah, that was just really enormous streak of the sky and yeah. And so it took him like six years, I think, to actually get the resources to come back.

He had actually took him a really long time to probably kind of lie and convince his way, because the Soviet government at the time is actually what bankrolled his first expedition. And I think what he said was he was sure that it was a meteorite and that he was going to find meteoric iron here and maybe some of them fancy pants things that call yeah stuff that was definitely going to further the cause of the Soviet government.

So he basically said, Hey, if you guys pay for me to go out and do this with, I'll come back with a lot of really fancy, expensive, really worthwhile stuff. I screw it up. I'll already be in Siberia. Yeah, it'll be great. Yeah. Yeah, that didn't go so well, but we'll talk about that in a little bit too. When the expedition first arrived in the area, they asked some local tribe hunters to take them to the impact site, or what they were assuming would be an impact site

of some kind. This proved challenging because the tribe believed that this was this whole event was actually a punishment sent down from a god. Are there? Yeah? They also there was also some some talk of some kind of boogeyman creature that might live in that area too. Yeah, that the initial party went out and the guys like before they got to the impact site spooked and left because of that that's scary boogeyman kind of creature, And they had to go back to town and go get

more guys to come back. Yeah. It was just a really long, arduous task to get out. It was a giant cluster. Yeah, it was. It really was. When the expedition did finally reach the center, the epicenter of this explosion event whatever, they found a note. They found a note and I said, love Choopy, just kidding it. They did not. They really were expecting a crater because they thought, oh, a meteor hit and we're going to get some really cool rare earth whatever was previously pure. Yeah, it's gonna

be amazing. But when they got there, actually they were really surprised to see that actually what was there was just kind of a giant ground zero area where instead of the giant hole they were expecting to see, there's actually a five mile patch of pretty undisturbed trees. But they were disturbed. They were disturbed, but they were still standing and completely they were burned, they were scorched, the

branches were for the most part gone. But you will remember that seven hundred miles square miles around this patch of five mile wide trees that are standing. Everything was just flattened. Can I stop for a second and just consider how difficult it must have been to walk and travel from me. You think, well, I'm just walking through the forest, is no big deal, But no, every tree is on the ground and you can't you can't take probably two steps with having to walk on and over

a giant tree trunk. I can't imagine how because when I go out in the woods, you know, and I go through some area, some reason where there's a lot of blowdown some storms or whatever. Yeah, it's frustrating. It's just it's just I mean, I start getting kind of how do you think about how slow you go? Oh? Yeah, I think about these guys that are a party. It's not like they they're taking their supplies with them, so it's not as if their horses could get through the area,

or at least not easily. I mean, that's just a t yeah. Yeah, and and it's a long one. I mean, you know it is. It's just anyway, it was tough. As mentioned, we're talking about the stand of trees that somehow still existed. Yeah. And the pattern that that that group established for the blast is actually accurate. Somehow they were they were right in this and they call it kind of an eagle it's kind of sweetie. Did you guys get to see it? Yeah? Well, I think it

also described. It took me a while to figure it out, but I've seen it also described as a butterfly or moth pattern because it's got kind of the big lobes at the top and then the little lobes on. But it's not just a circle or anything like that. That's why I always until we started researching. I always thought it was just a big circle. Not at all. No, it's not. It's modernly estimated that this blast toppled more than eighty million trees, though I'm I don't know about that,

and I've never seen the reasoning behind that. Yeah, basically, probably areals. They probably just like took an aerial and just took one teenage square and counted the trees and multiplied it by accident. There you go. Yeah, during the expedition, cool it found what are now called pothole bogs, but at the time he thought they were meteorite holes though they were too deep for him to excavate, which okay, he was going out there with the sole purpose to

excavate minerals. But fine, whatever. If you see some of the footage, then they have standard spades. They don't have any kind of equipment to suck water out of a hole, and that's what you need to drain a bog. Oh yeah, sure, so I think that's why. I think that's why it was we can't do it because no matter how fast I shovel, the water keeps coming back. He totally. Yeah.

So Kilick did actually lead three more expeditions over the course of the next decade or so back out to this area, because apparently the one time climbing over felled trees for twelve days wasn't enough. It was his unicorn. Yeah, I guess, I don't know. But so he had found those bogs and he thought, oh, there were meteorite holes, and there that's where the meteoric iron is going to be. This time, I will not fail the Soviet government. It's you actually can't blame him. I mean I would go

there expecting a hole in the ground too. So any holes in the ground I saw, I want to check them out. Yeah, exactly. Well, it turns out so they brought the technology with them one of those three times to drain the bog and to get the meteoric iron out of the bottom of this bog. On the hole in the center of a log and the tree and the toad and the no, okay, anyway, it's fine video game.

I'm sure it's camp song. But whatever they actually found at the bottom of the bog, stumpy tree stump from space, that's what you're saying. I think so. No, Actually, I think more of like a tree that had died and it was an old, old tree that was at the bottom of a bog, which means that it couldn't have been recently made by this bad luck. Obviously, I'm sure the Soviets were less and less patient every time that Coola came back to them and was like, listen, I

know I promised you the meteoric iron. It's just not going to happen this time. I think they're just natural area bogs all just full disclosure. I haven't ever seen anywhere a different explanation for them, so I just think they're just it's that's just a boggy area of Siberia, probably like the shirt says, there's a shirt that says that there will be now I gotta get one. Yeah, you're gonna make it. Yeah, it's gonna be. Yeah, that's

how it's going to happen. I'm sure I'm gonna be done with this little podcasting thing my T shirt empire. Okay you're not. You're going to run out of ideas for a T shirt. So without the podcast by this time, you may assume that the Soviets might have decided that bankrolling these expeditions was pretty pointless because the mediorc iron not coming through and blah blah, But no, apparently not. There have been tons of expeditions, most of which science.

Actually we're kind of into the whole science thing. Yeah, not necessarily for peaceful purposes, but they were. It would be kind of interesting to know what exploded that powerfully, and if they could recreate it, why not. So, like I said, tons of expeditions over the years, some more helpful than others. In the fifties and sixties, they decided to start sifting the dirt and they found tiny silicate

and magnetite balls. On other expeditions, the suspicion that these balls would be found in the trees was confirmed, so that theory was confirmed. That they're just or at least lent some support, lents some support. Yeah, and it did kind of lend support to the idea that something exploded really violently and that these yeah, that it was material

spread from this thing. Still kind of weird that there's no crater, but whatever, you know, there's been Actually, scientifically speaking, there still is to this day a lot of scientific speculation about precisely what happened. Yeah, that's why we're doing a show on it. I know it seems crazy, but I believe or not. There there's still not a totally satisfying answer out there, which again is why we're doing show on it. Is that why? Yeah, because it's still unsolved.

I guess the point I was trying to get across is that this isn't just confined to the realms of you know, like conspiracy theories and stuff there. And actually a lot of love been really looking into this are for a long time, and not just Russian ones either. The composition of those balls, just briefly was consistent with an extraterrestrial thing of some kind. Again, that is the scientific term. Okay, so don't email me about that, thank you.

On later expeditions, the samples of flora in the area, especially bog pete, were taken and they found genetic damage similar to what you would find from a nuclear explosion. Yeah. I've read some claims that people in the surrounding areas also suffered from genetic mutations on just a genetic level, not like suddenly they grew a third arm out of their torso or whatever. I know, the not the not fun kinds. But I didn't I wasn't really able to suss out the sources for that or if there had

been good documentation on any of that. That's the sort of thing that you know, you're watching the fifth BBC or History Channel thing history documentary on the US and they say in passing the people in the area were also affected on a genetic level. But that's like it. Yeah, I'd like to get some explanation as yeah, and what did it? Because there's other factors out there too, I mean, background radiation varies quite a bit from geographic locations locations. Yeah.

Worth mentioning here briefly is there's a lake that we're going to talk about the minute, so shut up. That's about five miles or eight kilometers from the ground zero where all of the trees are still standing, that some people have speculated could in fact be a crater site. In two thousands seventeen, some people suggested that the lake was created by a fragment fragment of a meteor, but an entire meteor, but just a part of one. Yeah.

But actually I think that the original suggestion was well before, right, Yeah, And we're going to go deeper into this in just a minute. But in sixty one, scientists did some sampling of the lake and estimated it had been created five thousand years ago. So the lady took samples of the rock and set out of it. Because that's really the way that you figure out how old the lake is

is how much crud is built upon the dead animals. Nessy, but yeah, I mean the lake is another another huge source of It is a hot topic with scientists and good news. We'll talk about it in a minute. I just wanted to give people something to look forward to, because I know our listeners love hot topics from you know, for some hot science topic science. I was about to say that we're not at the mall at hot topics. People don't love that place. Nobody liked it. It's just

full of teenagers and angst. And actually that's why that's where I buy. I don't think that's true, but okay, anyway, I think it is. I've had to argue with you money. We're getting punchy, and I think this is like a good time to start moving onto theories. Our first theory is a sub atomic collision or anti matter theory. Don't don't done? Okay, let's with the h So this guy is a fun one. That's why we're starting off with it.

From truncated from the Wikipedia because sometimes they just do a better job of doing the explain, Like I'm five things than I episode. I got a children's website. Sometimes I get it. Yeah, well, you know, it's that whole thing where Einstein said, if you can't explain it to a five year old, you don't understand it, right, I

do not understand this stuff. We'll spit it out. So anti matter comments, and that's what the theory would be, is that this would be anything matter comment or meteor is a hypothetical comment or meteor composed solely of antimatter instead of ordinary matter. You guys know what the difference between the sis are? Right, it is brain melter. But yes, it's not a brain melter. Just reverse the charges on

all the particles and there you go. Yeah, it's basically it's the opposite of everything that we are, and antimatter and matter balance each other out. But for some reason, but for some reason, there's just enough more matter than antimatter to allow life brain melter situation. Anyway, there's a theory that there are comments because you know, if there's

matter comments, there's antimatter comments. They don't matter. We just don't know are they often another corner of the universe or lazing around or first may Yeah, I mean it might be the will will arrive at the nearest star and planet and everything, it will be antimatter, and they're all hanging out in the mill the the corner of the galaxy gymnasium, smoking cigarettes together. It just doesn't matter, man,

it just doesn't matter exactly the French philosophers. I was thinking, they're more the kids who are like outside the old defunct auto shop class, but just like smoke cigarettes. Anyways, antimatter smokes is what we're apparently. Apparently the theory here would be that what actually happened was we had an anti matter collision and that was what caused this explosion. There are actually some interesting theories. We talked about ball lightning in an episode one time. Yeah, yeah, when we

did skyquakes. Yeah, this is actually there's actually a theory out there that anti matter comments actually cause ball lightning. I don't understand it, still don't understand it. Don't ask me to explain it, don't, but you have your quizzical face on. We talked about ball liking another time, and I'm trying. It was another one of my episodes of the One of the Lights episodes. Yeah, anyway, but do you think about it is is obviously it's the size

of a common bit amanti matter. It wouldn't just cause ball lightning. Yeah, I mean the release of energy would be like a like a ten megaton like that's actually that is what those theories are out now. I suspect that something the size of a comet hitting hitting the planet Earth it was anti matter, would be a lot bigger than well. The problem, yeah, the problem is here and we'll talk more about this kind of in the

comic media theory. But the problem is is that for something big enough made of matter orienting matter to survive through our atmosphere, it has to be bigger because it would have made a bigger it would have been made a bigger explosion. But if it was little to make an explosion of this size, it would have just disintegrated in long before it got that close to the serious Yeah. Exactually you know, just fun fun science fact. Actually animator

hits hits the Earth every day constantly. Yeah, And actually that's what I was going to say, is the bad news for this theory is that in nineteen fifty eight they were able to disprove that. By the size that it would have had to have been, it would have either been killed all the dinosaurs kind of explosion, or it would have totally disintegrated in their atmosphere, because that's what they usually do. This one doesn't matter, So it doesn't matter. It's a cool theory though. I like it,

you know. I mean, I hope that if an animate of common comes by one of these days that won't hit us. Yeah, I could hit one of those other dumb planets. Yeah, I feel like I kind of feel the same way about just matter of comics for that matter. I don't know pun intended. I don't want either want have been hitting us. I don't really either yet. Yeah. The next theory is that it was an alien craft that exploded. This one has been around a long time

because I remember hearing this one when I was a kid. Yeah, because this story has been around a long time since. I think it probably happened when you were like nine or ten. No, it has. This story has been around for a hundred and ten years actually, and the people have been fascinated for at least ninety of those years. Yeah, But it wasn't until like the sixties or so, you started getting a lot of paranormal type books coming out,

slowly started leaking out of the Eastern Block. But it had that weird mystique because well, they were keeping it behind the iron curtain. You didn't know what was there. So there was it had a different flavor and a different panash is not the right where, but it just it got people going, yeah, still does actually, I think

a lot of times. The theory here, the most prevalent theory that I've seen, the reason for the alien craft being there and being so low to the ground is that it was that lake you remember we were talking about. It's Lake Checko that's close by. The theory is that they Siberia would be a place that you an alien craft who was just trying to do research, scientific recon research. It's isolated enough that, yeah, that would be the kind of place that they would want to go to not

get caught. So the theory is that they were trying to take some water samples or something like that, or fuel up with water something. They're doing something with the water in the lake in Lake Checko, and some how it just exploded. Somebody hit the wrong But they were trying to put something in Mr Fusion, And that gets back to my what I was saying when we talked about the secret base in Antarctica. You know, as you can be confronted with these aliens who had this fantastic technology,

and that doesn't mean they're not just dumb masses. They can totally be they can totally be just dumb. So

that I think somebody hit the wrong button. But when I was a kid, the first time I ever heard this story, it was in a book that I referenced before, Stranger Than Science by Frank Edwards, and he talked about this one in his story was the alien craft came down to Earth, and it was like it was like an emergency ditch kind of deal because there, you know, they're there's they're positronic reactor was overloading and they were gonna blow and they needed a part in place of

land right now, and so they picked Siberia because it's the most isolated placed, so you know, you know, if it did blow up, then not not as many people would get killed on the ground, So that no very very I thought so too. So that was his theory, is that it was a desperate alien trying to land his craft, but you didn't. It does seem like parts of alien craft would have been found if that were in fact what had happened. Well, I actually have a cutter that. Okay, have you ever built the boat? You

ever built the paper boat? You know, folded and then you can flip the little paper boat down the waterway or down the gutter or whatever. Yes, So now you just scale that up and you slap some nuclear reactors on there, and there it is the paper alien. So it exploded and burned up. You're saying that interstellar travel is done by paper. Yeah, you've got to use about a hundred and twenty bond though that that crappy forty

pounds stuff just will not survive for the entry. I guess another theory similar to that could be that that the Leonardo da Vinci spacecrafts that were made out of wood were actually feasible, and that's actually he is actually an alien and he was just trying to tell us that. Yeah, and then it did explode his corpse and said, egg dude, you know, let's see that spaceship come on. And so you tried, it didn't quite work out, and I blew up and c nuclear reactor just you know, couldn't quite handles.

But the only thing I will mention here is that there the Russians did do one exploration of the area in two thousand four and apparently found some stuff, but I haven't publicly released what they found, which doesn't surprise me. They probably didn't actually find anything, and people are just blowing the sweat proportioned. But you know, probably found a giant weed for me. I don't know. Next theory, let's

hear the next theory. Tesla Tesla, the car could someday crashed down and cause it explosion that he was just sending it to radio to Rainbow Road. I'm pretty sure that it would actually the ironic thing actually came back down and they crashed on that exact same spot. Oh my gosh, you're yeah, but I don't. I don't think it's I think it escape Velocity, didn't it. Yeah's flotting

around somewhere near Mars or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's supposed to be bumped giant intergalactic game of pool bounce back. That'd be kind of fun. Anyhow, let's talk about this theory seriously. It was actually Nicola Tesla, the you know, famous energy guy, the smart guy scientist. He apparently had a giant tower that he was working on building. I had read in Colorado Springs, but Joe tells me I'm

wrong about that place. I heard it was Long Island, New York, somewhere in America that was called Warden Cliff Tower, and it wasn't. He wasn't building it specifically, right, he was repurposing some kind of tower that was already there. I don't know if you're built to scratch or not. I know that there was already a building there. They built on top of this building. Yeah, but it was

supposed to be this giant broadcast energy tower. Apparently that could broadcast ten billion watts of power worldwide wire energy, wireless energy, which theory cool. Sure, I don't know about the ten billion watts, but maybe I just scout tower. But don't come between Tower A and Tower BE. Basically, yeah, lots of dead pigeons in that area. Yeah. The crux of this theory goes generally that Tesla was mad at JP Morgan for not funding a the end of this

building project. Yeah, apparently JP Morgan had cut off the funding for the event originally, but they decided he wasn't seeing results. Yeah, screw Tesla. So Tesla decided to show off the power of it or something not. It's not really really well fleshed out here. What what the reasoning

was behind it? I think that I think the plan was a Tesla is going to give a demonstration by shooting a massive bolt of energy because apparently, if you read the about this theory, he was also besides the transmission to the to the air of electricity, was also working on this sort of death ray, although he preferred to call it the piece ray. Well yeah, well I I saw one of the websites referred to it as

the rest in peace. Right people call it the piece ray because because it would be such a scarier weapon that war would become non existent. Although I got news for it doesn't work out that way, But everybody said that about nuclear weapons, it would make war absolutely Well, I didn't really work out that way. But anyway, he was going to put on to show the world who was everybody was skeptical. He was going to put on a demo by show by shooting a massive bolt of

energy at the North Pole. Yeah, you know, and that would show people and he and he was going there and what was the name of the explorer that he told Robert Perry. Yeah, he was headed to the North Pole apparently at that time. And he told Robert Perry, watched for unnatural phenomena while you're out there wing wing. But that can mean anything, again, out of context, alying tenant to this show. Out of context, anything can mean anything. If the if the meeting even took place. And now

I checked on Perry's last expedition. There's nineteen expedition and they left New York City July six, which was after the Tunguska Well, and you know, it's I guess it's a little possible even that by that time they had heard about the Tunguska event. I mean, I don't know that. Yeah,

it seems unlikely, but yeah, that's why. That's why. Well, the thing about it is is you read about the story in multiple places, but I don't know if it's actually got any basis in reality, which just just everybody somebody made it up and it's all been cut and pasted. I think people just like to have Tesla be this. He isn't every freaking story. I mean, you don't get me wrong. The guy was very smart and did some amazing things, but he is involved in very positive and

very negative ways in so many story said. It's just there's no way he could have had any time to do any of the things he we know he did and do all those other things. Yeah, I'm sure he did a few, at least a few weird other world Yeah, but I don't think this was it. Next up is what I'm calling the Bogel Chandler. It's actually, uh, the

idea of natural gas build up igniting somehow. Yeah, it's pretty similar to the theory behind that Bogel Chandler cases I mentioned a minute ago, and a couple others that we've talked about, and those who were talking about, Yeah, there are a ton of bogs in that area, and some scientists have speculated that there could have been a build up. Okay, these are all Every number in this story is just dr evil esque. You know, it's like billion.

This one is ten million tons of gas could have built up in that area over a period of time and then exploded, which, okay, it's posible. Yeah, the idea that you get all these decomposing you know, plants and everything, and you get this layer of methane gas down there but it's frozen all the time, and if he's accumulating, and then one day you have about just an unseasonably warm summer and at all that ice melts and starts

gassing off. The next thing you know, you've got this huge, enormous essentially fuel their mixture bomb hanging over the countryside. And a rock falls and causes a spark. Well there are one animal lighting a cigarette. Yeah, that's why they all died. Girls, Well, it could have been ignited by actual lightning, because as you may recall, the eyewitness reports did say there was a bolt of blue light. They said it was blue light, but who knows what it

could have been. I will say you both remember this was too plus years ago. All those reports out of the Soviet blocks aren't showing up of these giant holes in the ground, and they couldn't figure route. And one of the prevalent early theories was there must be as Joe described, these giant pockets of gas that as things warmed up, all the gas heat it up and was released and then something ignited it to make these Now we've figured out since then they're pretty sure they're actually

just sink holes because no material was ejected away. But that's that was the first thing I thought of after I got passed by paper UFO ship idea was that it must be just a giant gash bag that exploded, that had happened more often you would, and maybe it did, because there are those places in Oh lord, what is the place. There's some lake in Europe that is known or not Europe, in Asia that is known for having lights at night and no, but they figured out on

this lake. It's in Asia, the Mendmen's or in Australia. But they figured out that it's gas that is leaking and occasionally igniting. And that's why people say that this lake is on fire all the time. It's just natural gas leaking out and something in the atmospheric conditions set it off. I don't think that's what this is, but it is very easy to say on a grand massage scale, that would make sense to explain what happened at Tungusca. It would except for the standard trees that was unaffected.

That is it really explain. There's the second part of this theory, and that is a thing called Verndon s n a start a shot, which is basically an underground volcanic eruption, but from gas. I don't understand it. I can't explain it. Like I'm five. I think that's kind of the sink whole thing that we were just talking about. Yeah, I think so too, but I don't. I don't think it's likely because it doesn't make sense with the tree pattern,

the tree fall pattern. I don't think that that would have been Probably she was worth mentioning, and it probably would have been said, this sort of weird quasi volcanic activity. Don't you think I would? I would, But the only thing I will say is that the tremors could you know, it was basically earthquakes, so it could have been well, yeah, all right, next theory another they final theory. No, sorry, I just like that technical term that tossed out there.

We've been doing a lot of technical terms in this I'm going to make a whole bunch of t shirts from this episode. It's the final theory in it is that it was a meteor or a comment or something like that. The big problem that people seem to have with this comment meteor theory is the lack of a crater, which I agree with. I think that's a problem that

is to deal. And that's because I mean, it's not at all unusual for a decent sized meteor to come rock it again and explode in the atmosphere and not ever contact the earfect we had that one that was it five years ago in Russia, and another one that one which we all remember never touched never touched the surface at all. And but but the problem here is like that the numbers don't quite pencil because I mean, this one was so big, there must have been enough mass.

There's no way it could have all like evaporated in the atmosphere. Something had to pit the ground. So let's talk about first or second, No, let's talk about like the lake from this lake like Checko, as we mentioned, has been I guess suggested as as a as a possible site for a meteor. And it goes back and forth. It's either it is the crater itself or it's hiding a big chunk of a meteor. It just happened to fall into this biggest lake and sort of rocket it

off to the side over there and hit the lake. Yeah, just by happenstance, happened to disappear. Basically, Yeah, that's what there is. No nest in that lake. Yeah, we said that they did a ton of sampling of the silt and the lake bed that concluded that it was about five thousand years old, So that kind of gets rid of that theory, although that ended up being wrong about

the actual time of when the lake was created. But it's been back and forth pretty much the entire time, a lot of scientists working on this and yeah, arguing

back and forth about it. Yeah, there were studies in two thousand eight and two thousand seventeen that say the trees surrounding the lake are much older than a hundred years old, they should have been knocked down, and core samplings of the bedrock indicate a lake of at least two hundred and eighty years old, which isn't prehistoric, but it's not on in ten however, studies from two thousand one and two thousand nine indicate that the shape of

the lake was consistent with an atmospheric creater of some kind, and further realized that the sediment could have easily been built up over a hundred years instead of just five thousand years or hundred or two hundred and eight years or anything like that. And actually the fact that it actually looks like it might have been a meteor impact. Doesn't mean it was this one. It could have been a previous have been a really old one. I'll just say that general consensus at the time of this recording,

because it could change it any day. That is that at least the majority of this lake existed prior to this meteor hit or whatever it was. Yeah, because I think about Okay, let's let's just pretend that what we jokingly talked about in the beginning this theory actually happened. That this chunk of not the entire meteor, right or whatever it is, it hap to just conveniently land in

this big gas lake that's five miles away from that center. Correct. Okay, it's still going to be really really hot and moving extremely fast and such that it is probably going to if it doesn't push all the water out of the lake or boil it all off, which are things that you think, well meteors would do because they're so freaking hot.

But even if it doesn't do that, it is probably going to cause so much disturbance in the water, you know, undercurrents and impact like cavitation, almost that the whole lake bed is going to be stirred up, all of that sediment that would be going down would probably get all mixed up in that work would be one very dirty, dirty, non life supporting environment because of all of the stuff

floating into it for a significant period of time. So that would make the stuff that they try to pull not make sense because you would think, bear with me here, if you pull core samples from five areas, they should be relatively similar in profile. But if the whole thing has been stirred up like a kid sticking a straw in a milkshake, then nothing's gonna match from one sample to the next. And that would a throw your results off and b should be an indicator. Wait, something really,

really catastrophic happened in this aquatic ecosystem. So I don't I don't think that that could have happened, because it's just it would have been so much turmoil in I think we've been obviously did nothing matched from one spot to the next, and so it shouldn't make any sense. And I would think that would be to such a

degree that would be very obvious. Think that the thing, the thing I don't really like about it is that the angle of the lake is the essentially north northwest of the of the impact site, Whereas the best estimates I've heard from science the scientists is that the media itself came in kind of from the essentially north fifty degrees east, so essentially that would be east southeast, which means that if it was a fragment of this common media or whatever it was, it would have had to

come in essentially from the east, like I said, east southeast come in, and and then this other piece would have had to summon off fragment off and well, not not ninety degrees, but we're talking at least fifty degrees, which is a pretty make a sharp right turn to go up and hit the ground up here at this lake. So that's that's one of the things I can't quite that kind of makes me doubt the whole lake hypothesis to beginning. It would I totally agree, I discount the lake, yeah,

pretty adamantly. The theory that most scientists seem to be a part of at this point point is that comment came down towards Earth, but slowed significantly and then just blew up in mid air apparently a stony asteroid about thirty three feet wide, which is ten meters wide, which is big, can produce an explosion of about a tons, which is similar to that of the fat Man bomb. Uh. Sorry, we didn't do a good name naming. I'm sorry, I you Uh what is it? Randall Monroe, the guy who

writes X K C D. Is that his name? I always want to say Randall Flag But that's the guy from the stand. You gave me that what if book of his and I've just finished it and I was laughing because he was doing some problem in the end, and it was everything is related to the size of fat Man and Hiroshima, and it's just every It's just an easy way to kind of signify the amount of damage that can happen, ye say, somebody like you know,

like that truckload of dynamite. Well, so what we want to see that we want to see the kind of carnage you can create, you know. Yeah, exactly by that number that we gave in the beginning, that that big of an asteroid would still be about a thousand times less powerful than the explosion. But but it has been downgraded a little bit, but not to that level, not that far. It's been downgraded I think by more recent simulations down the three to five megatons, but which is

still far more a lot, a lot lot more. Yeah, but let's saying that just to put it in perspective. The Chiliabinsk media we're talking for five years ago, it was estimated to be about seventeen wide and about eleven thousand tons, so then, and that's still pretty decent size, did not come anywhere close to producing any kind of devastation. I was scared what we saw here at Tunguska. Yeah, and just briefly, we'll talk about that media in a second.

But the reason that we know about the dimensions of stony meteor and how much blast it can produce is because the United States Air Force has been actually tracking a ton of upper atmosphere explosions of this size, so they're able to kind of extract lake out. They happen all the time in our upper atmosphere. When most of these things explode, there's so much crap floating around in our solar system is scary. You know. I'm actually surprised that at least every now and again one of our

satellites isn't just smeared. Yeah, you know, because well I think they are. We just don't know about them so much. They don't tell us. But I mean, why do you think your Instagram feed just went down? It's not because you put up those really gross photos, just because the satellite. There's an estimate just but by these same people who do these models all the time, that explosion like the Tunguska one could could happen about once every three years.

So there's some president of it, but it's it's unlikely. I know, Steve really wants to talk about this other so I have some the math that is recorded for Tunguska and Chilly Bins, they seem to be calculated in a different way, and I think part of it is because we have such good visual data of the most recent one in that area. Because it all depends on the angle or trajectory of the thing through the atmosphere.

They never fall straight down. They always come in at a glancing angle, so then they experience a lot more turbulence and friction which then burns them up. And so of course Jellibinsk, I've had it here that it was equated to a four hundred explore ocean. Okay, well, that's because this thing appeared to have been completely and totally solid rock all the way through, and not nearly as big as what they say that the Tunguska one was.

But I can The problem, of course is that Tungusca didn't leave any residue on the ground, any large bits and pieces of cot, right, But there are there are things that I mean, it could be a comet, or it could be um, it's not always a comet, but they I've read about asteroids or meteoroids that are basically a giant shell of stone and rock with a giant ice interior. So it's not so much an astro or

a comet because it's not moving like a comet. But it's just it's the what's the snow cone thing you get at the at the county fair where they put the sprinkles on the outside, but it's all ice and side. It's the it's the interstellar version of that without the waffle cone. That's what they call that. Yes, yeah, what else? But it could be that by the time it got close enough it finally burned through the rock layer that when the whole thing just went boom, it did drive

a whole bunch of crap into the earth. It just turned out that crap happened to be super dense ice which then melted. It's the old magic knife or knife blade or knife bullet, And that would actually also explain that glowy stuff we were talking about a little bit. Yeah, that it could have been ice crystals that got stuck in the atmosphere for a couple of days, because that's how long that was going on, that glowy technical term phenomenon was Yeah. But yeah, the the actual the mystery

is still there. I mean a lot of people think this is totally solid. It actually hasn't quite. There's still some two b between the asteroid theory and the common theory believe it. Yeah, And the reason again back to what I was saying before they downgraded it to from fifteen to twenty megatons and they downgraded the explosions three to five. Before they were saying, Okay, it would have to have been x mass to produce this explosion. Therefore,

there's something had to have hit the planet. Now they've downgraded it to a smaller mass. Therefore a smaller explosion that happened closer than we thought. Then I'm not so sure that it's the common theory is as necessary as it was seen to be previously. That's that's where the

common theory kind of came from. Is because commets are kind of dirty snowballs that have some big chunks of rock, but they're also held together by methane and frozen water akies, and that would break apart create a huge boom, but the constituent parts are small enough they would all disintegrate before hitting the surface. But at the same time, you know, our our understanding of some of these objects, like stabless thing, has changed. We know that asteroids, for example, aren't all

the same. Some of them may look like balls, you get we look at them up closer, now they look like sort of clumps of rocks kind of held together just by a slight mutual attraction of gravity and stuff like that. And the other the other difficulty is of course, at the angle, depending on the exact angle that it

came in. When this thing exploded, it could have launched all of the rocky material forward in this kind of projection up and away and sent it hundreds of miles out before those bits came crashing down, which would be outside of the blast zone. So then nobody's looking there because well, all the flattened trees are here, so let's look in here for the bits, and they've actually been thrown away, kind of like you see it with um.

With volcanoes. Sometimes you'll see those those weird smokey balls that will just go and it's just the random, weird ones that get thrown way out. That same phenomena can happen, and it just depends on what the material is. Yeah, it's it's a big old mystery still though, Yeah it is. You know it's a celestial object of some sort. I would agree, common asteroid or something else in Yeah, but most likely a meteor um. But you know, maybe a comment. I mean there's not also a fragment of a comment

with a piece of a comment too. I mean our understanding of comments has has been changing too. We used to think they were just all big snowballs, but there's there could be all kinds of different things. They don't have to do one thing or the other. So I can see a comment with a big old chunk of rock right at the core of it, you know, that would be big enough to make a big boom. Yeah, yeah, do you have any other things you want to add to this? Um? Let me think We talked about Chippy

last week, so not this week. Okay, okay, okay, okay, the UFO we did that whole thing. I've got nothing, but if I think of it, I'll interrupt you. And what you're going to do next? Yeah? Do you know I'm gonna do next? Is just say it was clearly da Vinci And that's all I have to say. I like to Da Vinci with Chip behind it, with an act DaVinci throw that kind of thing. Take me back to our home world, Yeah, take me back to the century. Well, I guess that's it for this episode. Then we figured

that one out yea that scientists. Yeah, we're better than you are. Uh, that's not true if it's not even close. If you are listening to this episode, you know where you're listening us to us at. It could be Stitcher Premium, it could be our website, it could be iTunes. Wherever you're listening to us. Please subscribe, leave a comment on a rating so everybody else can find us, et cetera.

For those of you who don't know, we are on Stitcher Premium, you join it, you get episodes add free four days early, and some bonus content once a month. It's pretty cool. If you are listening to us on the website, you can find links to our our science e research better that way, it's more better that way. Also, you can find links to our merchandise stores and episode lists of every single episode. We've done lots of fun stuff on the website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast

dot com. You can connect with us on social media, so we've got a Facebook page that you can like. We've got a Facebook group that you can join. If you're going to join, you should answer the questions and they are yes and Thursday. You can find us on Twitter at Thinking Sideways. You can find us on Instagram where we are Thinking Sideways Podcast out there. If all of that goes down, if all of that is too complicated for you and you just want to send us

an email, well, good news. We've got an email addressed to that email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. All of that having been said, we're gonna go ahead and blast on out of here or something. Hey, I'm gonna go get in the freezer. I've got some of those drumstick ice creams that I think I'm going to use to model how this worked. I'm pretty sure that the waffle cone part burned off first. So let's I've got a torch, Joe, you hold snowcone. We're gonna

make it happen perfect. Devin gets the R