June 30, 1908 an event that changed our perception of our planet and its relationship to the cosmos, and yet after 118 years there are still disagreements among scientists over just exactly what happened! What we do know is that a massive explosion devastated an ancient forest and sent shock waves all over the world registered by seismographs. Not to mention that after this massive upheaval the sun could be seen 24 hours a day and people could read their newspapers at midnight outside in Europe! The Tunguska Forest is so remote, covered by swamps and lakes, with no roadways leading to it that it was difficult for science to investigate. The pristine yet unforgiving wild terrain might give away its secrets once the research began.

Leonid Alekseyevich Kulik, and his team made the arduous journey to the remote region and set the stage for future discoverers on the enormity of the event and how the massive force that exceeded the power of several nuclear devices, had unleashed unbelievable devastation. Even using aerial observations with sea planes, Leonid developed a grid map using aerial photography to illustrate the pattern of the blast and how it literally flattened the coniferous vegetation as if some powerful weapon had been detonated. Kulik found the epicenter of the blast and the 360-degree formation that was still evident to this day of fallen timber and scorched bark still evident on some trees.

Most scientific theories were that either a comet or asteroid plunging into the earth’s atmosphere caused a level of downward blast pressure that crushed all trees in that area down with nuclear force and heat that rivaled the surface of the sun. The atmospheric equivalent of chain reaction nuclear explosions seemed destined to yield both radioactive debris as a residue of the extraterrestrial body that exploded from overhead. Asteroids and comets yield such material from space like iron, nickel, iridium, and other metals characteristic of their composition, but after exhaustive research little if any of these materials were found!

A new theory arose due to this aspect of non-existent extraterrestrial residue. It is suspected that fissures that lead from deep beneath the earth’s crust to the outer core of the interior of the mantle where superheated magma pushes against the underlying basalt layer from under the Tunguska Forest floor could emit volcanic gases! When the gases were released into the earth’s atmosphere in a large cloud of flammable vapor, either an asteroid, comet, or simply static electricity spark ignited the massive bubble of gasses such as methane and sulfuric dioxide and this caused a massive explosion! Lake Cheko in Siberia is the seeming central point of where an impact zone should be, but core samples taken from the surface of the lake bottom do not yield such supporting evidence!

The Russians even created a laboratory model of the Tunguska event using small match stick sized markers that represent the forest trees and then used a simulated blast that would illustrate just how an atmospheric explosion would flatten the Tunguska Forest in a circular pattern with an epicenter where trees would still remain upright that had been directly below the initial blast! Problem solved? It would seem, but still the questions about the possible leakage of volcanic gases from beneath the surface persists!

And what of the continued glowing effect of sunlight after the Tunguska event that remained for days over Europe where it seemed like the land of the midnight sun had been created? According to one analyst at Los Alamos Laboratories, the Tunguska effect of blast radius, configuration of the blast pattern, and the residual daylight was all consistent with an atmospheric nuclear test which would also create a high-altitude debris and dust cloud that would reflect the sun’s rays and prolong daylight into several nightly illuminations. Yet, still, some scientists proclaim this even as being an ongoing unsolved mystery that will continue to be researched.

Strange anomalies do exist in the Tunguska Forest. Mutations found in cross sections of dissected tree bark showing enhanced growth compared to the 1908 rate of growth are indicated. There is a place known as “Iron Mountain” where the high content of ferrous oxide in the terrain is strongly magnetic! This seems to be a product of the 1908 blast. It seems that all the effects of physical damage observed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are there but without the lasting radioactivity that would accompany a manmade atomic weapon! It is known that entire native Siberian families were wiped out by the event even though the region is sparsely populated!

Odd conspiracy theories exist to this day. One theory is that a piece of anti-matter from deep space contacted the earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated the area. Another theory is that an alien civilization sent a message to mankind that there is a more advanced civilization with greater destructive capability! The theories get weirder! A US nuclear equipped bomber gets caught in a time warp and inadvertently drops a nuclear device on the Tunguska Forest! Still another idea stems from Nikola Tesla’s experiments and his claimed long range death ray inventions that was miscalculated when tested and hit the Siberian Forest region instead by accident! Still another speculation is that an alien race detecting that a massive comet or asteroid would strike the earth and attempted to intervene but failed and were destroyed by the celestial body that struck and vaporized the forest! There are more but they border on even more bizarre concepts. To this day, the massive destruction is still plain to see.