THE UNKNOWN: The Tunguska Event

Summary

So Supernatural: THE UNKNOWN - The Tunguska Event

Podcast Information:

• Title: So Supernatural
• Host/Author: audiochuck | Crime House
• Episode: THE UNKNOWN: The Tunguska Event
• Release Date: January 24, 2025

Hosts:

• Ashley Flowers
• Racha Pecorero
• Yvette Gentile

---

Introduction

In this episode of So Supernatural, hosts Ashley Flowers, Racha Pecorero, and Yvette Gentile delve into one of history's most enigmatic natural disasters: the Tunguska Event. Occurring over a century ago in a remote region of Siberia, this colossal explosion flattened an immense area of forest without leaving a discernible crater, sparking decades of speculation and mystery.

---

The Tunguska Event: A Historical Overview

On the morning of June 30, 1908, a phenomenal explosion occurred near the Stony Tunguska River in central Siberia, Russia. Witnesses described an "enormous pillar of fire" extending into the sky, accompanied by a roaring sound that shook the ground. The event is comparable to a 5.0 magnitude earthquake in terms of the ground's tremors.

Racha Pecorero [07:01]: "If it had happened today, the earthquake would be a 5.0 on the Richter scale."

The explosion devastated approximately 830 square miles of forest, equivalent in size to the state of Rhode Island, making it the most significant impact event of the millennium.

---

Immediate Impacts and Witness Accounts

Residents hundreds of miles away from the blast site experienced severe repercussions:

• Hurricane-force winds shattered windows and caused horses to topple.
• Fishermen fixing their boats were thrown into the Tunguska River by the shockwave.
• Massive amounts of dirt and dust were propelled into the atmosphere, leading to black rain that drenched nearby villages.

Despite the widespread destruction, investigators found no meteorite fragments or crater to explain the explosion, leading to widespread intrigue and various theories about the event's true nature.

Yvette Gentile [08:22]: "It sounds like those who witnessed this, they thought that they were experiencing some sort of apocalyptic event, like the world was actually coming to an end."

---

Early Investigations: Leonid Kulik's Quest

In 1921, geologist Leonid Kulik spearheaded the Soviet Academy of Sciences' first expedition to investigate the Tunguska site. Kulik, renowned for his expertise in meteorites, aimed to uncover the remains of the supposed space debris responsible for the explosion.

Despite meticulous efforts, Kulik and his team found no trace of a meteorite. The trees at the epicenter were burned yet intact, defying expectations of an impact scenario. Kulik's repeated expeditions between 1927 and 1939 yielded no conclusive evidence, leaving the mystery unresolved.

Racha Pecorero [13:27]: "He really didn't know what to do with himself. He camped out for weeks, taking as many samples as he could. And when his team ran out of food, they turned back. Kulik had to return to his hometown of Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg, empty-handed."

Kulik's dedication was significant enough that his legacy includes the Kulik Crater on the Moon, honoring his contributions to meteoritics.

---

Alternative Theories: Tesla's Death Ray and Beyond

Among the myriad of theories, one particularly intriguing proposition ties Nikola Tesla to the Tunguska Event. Tesla, the visionary inventor, was rumored to have been experimenting with a powerful "death ray" capable of massive destruction.

Yvette Gentile [24:03]: "The visionary inventor is Nikola Tesla. Accidentally blew up Siberia with an experimental death ray."

According to this theory, Tesla may have inadvertently caused the explosion while testing his device, which he initially intended for communication purposes. However, discrepancies in timelines and the lack of concrete evidence cast doubt on this hypothesis.

Racha Pecorero [28:14]: "It's a cool theory, but there are a few problems with it."

---

The Nuclear Explosion Hypothesis

In 1945, engineer Alexander Kazantsev proposed that the Tunguska Event bore the hallmarks of a nuclear explosion, predating humanity's known development of atomic weapons. Kazantsev drew parallels between the Tunguska shockwave and those recorded from the Hiroshima bombing.

Racha Pecorero [30:00]: "He poured over thousands of firsthand accounts from both incidents and saw similarities there too."

Kazantsev noted similarities in eyewitness descriptions, such as the brilliant flash, towering black smoke, and black rain, all reminiscent of nuclear detonations. Additionally, the native Evenki people observed their reindeer succumbing to mysterious diseases, potentially indicative of radiation poisoning.

However, this theory raises significant questions:

• The Manhattan Project required extensive resources and time, making it implausible for atomic bombs to exist in 1908.
• No debris consistent with nuclear technology has been definitively linked to Tunguska.

---

Modern Interpretations and UFO Theories

Building on Kazantsev's nuclear hypothesis, some theorists speculate an extraterrestrial origin for the Tunguska Event. The absence of human-developed nuclear technology at the time suggests that if the explosion was nuclear in nature, it may have involved alien spacecraft.

Yvette Gentile [36:33]: "So if that were true, the location actually makes a lot of sense. If you were an alien coming in for a crash landing, would you aim for a big city or somewhere remote like Siberia?"

However, this remains speculative, as no tangible UFO remnants have been authenticated. Claims, such as those by Yuri Lavbin in 2009, who reported finding quartz stones with unusual etchings near the blast center, have yet to be substantiated by scientific examination.

Yuri Lavbin's Claim [45:33]: "These crystals had unusual etchings that were just too perfect to have been made by human technology."

---

Conclusion

The Tunguska Event remains one of the most perplexing natural disasters in history. Despite extensive investigations and numerous theories ranging from meteorite impacts to nuclear explosions and extraterrestrial interventions, a definitive explanation remains elusive. The combination of remote location, lack of physical evidence, and historical context surrounding early 20th-century Russia has only added layers of complexity to this enduring mystery.

As Science and technology advance, the hope persists that future research may one day uncover the true cause of the Tunguska Event, silencing speculation and answering one of Earth's most enduring supernatural questions.

---

Notable Quotes:

1. Racha Pecorero [07:01]:
   "If it had happened today, the earthquake would be a 5.0 on the Richter scale."

2. Yvette Gentile [08:22]:
   "It sounds like those who witnessed this, they thought that they were experiencing some sort of apocalyptic event, like the world was actually coming to an end."

3. Racha Pecorero [13:27]:
   "He really didn't know what to do with himself. He camped out for weeks, taking as many samples as he could. And when his team ran out of food, they turned back. Kulik had to return to his hometown of Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg, empty-handed."

4. Yvette Gentile [24:03]:
   "The visionary inventor is Nikola Tesla. Accidentally blew up Siberia with an experimental death ray."

5. Racha Pecorero [28:14]:
   "It's a cool theory, but there are a few problems with it."

6. Racha Pecorero [30:00]:
   "He poured over thousands of firsthand accounts from both incidents and saw similarities there too."

7. Yvette Gentile [36:33]:
   "So if that were true, the location actually makes a lot of sense. If you were an alien coming in for a crash landing, would you aim for a big city or somewhere remote like Siberia?"

8. Yuri Lavbin's Claim [45:33]:
   "These crystals had unusual etchings that were just too perfect to have been made by human technology."

---

Embark on more supernatural explorations with So Supernatural, where mysteries unravel and the unknown becomes just another story waiting to be told.

Transcript

[Ashley Flowers]

I don't know about you guys, but anytime I hear on the news like an asteroid is going to be passing within X miles of Earth's atmosphere, I sort of feel like a doomsday prepper. I'm like, all right, the end is near.

[Racha Pecorero]

Everyone.

[Ashley Flowers]

Kiss your loved ones goodbye. Duck and cover. But in reality, meteors and asteroids hit Earth way more frequently than I care to know about. And we have survived to tell the tale so far, including that time a massive piece of space debris caused an explosion in Russia back in 1908. Only in that case, the possibility of an asteroid or meteor was called into question due to one glaring There was no crater left in its wake. This led many people to wonder what really caused the mysterious explosion known as the Tunguska event? Because for years, people have tried and failed to figure it out. Leading many to wonder, was something more supernatural to blame for one of the biggest impact events in modern history? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is so supernatural.

[Racha Pecorero]

Foreign aloha, friends. I'm Racha Pecorero.

[Yvette Gentile]

And I'm Yvette Gentile.

[Racha Pecorero]

And today we're talking about something that's literally out of this world. More than 100 years ago, something seemingly from outer space flattened 830 square miles of forest in central Siberia that's almost the size of Rhode Island. And at the time, it was the biggest explosion of the millennium.

[Yvette Gentile]

But when the investigators went to check it out, they couldn't figure out what caused it. There was no meteorite, no crater, nothing. Whatever the object was, it just seemed like it vanished without a trace.

[Racha Pecorero]

To this day, people still wonder what happened in Tunguska. But in this case, the best answer might really be extraterrestrial.

[Yvette Gentile]

We're talking UFOs, naturally.

[Racha Pecorero]

And believe me, this one gets good.

[Ashley Flowers]

There are some cases so infamous that we have all heard about them. But some of the coldest cases, the most mysterious, are the ones that you've never heard of before. I'm Ashley Flowers, and every Wednesday on my show the Deck, I dive into the coldest of cold cases. Many of these victims didn't get the press coverage they deserved during the initial investigations, but I'm sharing what our reporting team has found on these stories in hopes that someone listening may have the information needed to bring answers to light. And that listener could be you. Listen to the Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Racha Pecorero]

Com in.

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[Yvette Gentile]

I am a total sucker for big blockbuster films like, you know, Armageddon with Ben Affleck and our dear friend Will Patton. But it's one thing to go to the movies and watch some good looking men suit up to save the world.

[Racha Pecorero]

Uh, we can't forget the beautiful women that were in that movie like Liv Tyler. Hello.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, fair enough, fair enough. But damn it is another to imagine that one of these things may actually land on my house, right?

[Racha Pecorero]

And when you Think about it. We've gotten really lucky when it comes to this stuff because apparently millions of meteors enter Earth's atmosphere every year. Millions.

[Yvette Gentile]

That's right. And if you listen to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, he's amazing. He's so invested in this. It's literally millions.

[Racha Pecorero]

Yeah, I love Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Now, most of these meteors are tiny. You rarely see one bigger than a baseball. And the heat from plummeting through the atmosphere usually burns them up before they even reach us. But still, there's like 10,000 of these things that actually hit the ground each year. And when they do, it isn't pretty. For example, in 2023, a metallic meteorite the size of a brick smashed through a house in New Jersey. It bounced off the floor and tore another hole in the ceiling. The family that lived there was home at the time, but luckily no one was hurt.

[Yvette Gentile]

That's terrifying. I guess it could get worse, right? I mean, we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.

[Racha Pecorero]

Yes, but like the age old mystery of what happened to the dinosaurs, I think you'll find the situation at Tunguska equally mind blowing. So let's turn the clock back to June 30, 1908, when our story begins, and travel to the Gobi Desert. Now, the maps have been redrawn a few times since then, but at the time, the Gobi was part of northern China, near the border of Imperial Russia. A little after 7am that day, a nomadic caravan looked up at the morning sky. And that's when they saw a ball of fire zipping north towards Russia. Seventeen minutes later, there's a massive explosion in the Central Siberian plateau near the stony Tunguska river in Russia. And when I say massive, I mean massive. People hundreds of miles away said they saw an enormous pillar of fire reach all the way up to the heavens. It was followed by a roaring sound as the ground shook beneath their feet. To put it into perspective, if it had happened today, the earthquake would be a 5.0 on the Richter scale. And if you were there looking up, it would have seemed like the sky was cut in two. A witness said, quote, one had the impression that the earth was just about to gape open and everything would be swallowed up in the abyss.

[Yvette Gentile]

It sounds like those who witnessed this, they thought that they were experiencing some sort of apocalyptic event, like the world was actually coming to an end.

[Racha Pecorero]

And a quick side note here, there are a lot of names outside of our native tongue coming up. You'll hear us give it our best go, but it's worth calling out. Anyway, this One guy named S.B. semenoff was about 50 miles away when the explosion happened. He was sitting on his porch when all of a sudden, the whole sky lit up like there was a second sun. He barely had time to register what was happening before the shockwave literally tossed him into the air and knocked him unconscious. When he woke up a few seconds later, the ground was still shaking, and it nearly brought his entire house down.

[Yvette Gentile]

Almost 400 miles away, Hurricane force wind shook doors and windows and even made horses fall over. Some fishermen were fixing their boats when the shockwave hit and they were thrown into the stony Tunguska River. The explosion sucked up tons of dirt and dust into the sky, literally blocking out the sun and creating thunderstorms. And over the next few hours, black rain drenched nearby villages. The next day, the story was front page news on almost every Siberian paper. They talked about a flying object that set the forest on fire. They all suspected that it was a meteorite. But as far as we can tell, no one actually went to see the blast site for themselves.

[Racha Pecorero]

Which was why the mystery prevailed, especially when people as far as Western Europe noticed something strange in the night sky. And this was weeks after the blast. Newspapers in Germany, England and Spain commented on the inexplicable yellow and white lights that kept appearing after sunset. But word of the Tunguska explosion hadn't reached them yet. So most newspapers chalked it up to electrical discharges from the sun, sort of like the aurora borealis.

[Yvette Gentile]

But the aurora usually lights up northern spots like Iceland and Canada, and it's pretty rare for it to get as far south as Spain. Something like that only happens, I don't know, maybe every 20 years or so.

[Racha Pecorero]

But even then, a lot of people said it didn't really look like the northern lights. In places like Scotland, it was still so bright after midnight, you could literally read a book outside.

[Yvette Gentile]

That is so, so very eerie. And the fact that these lights are seemingly popping up all over Europe for weeks, it definitely doesn't sound like your average northern lights.

[Racha Pecorero]

Totally. And it takes a long time for anyone in Europe to make the connection between the lights and the explosion in Tunguska, probably because the event happened in one of the most remote, uninhabited places on the planet.

[Yvette Gentile]

And look, okay, we won't bore you with all the geographic details, but it's important to get a sense of the landscape where this actually happened. First of all, Siberia is ginormous. It makes up three quarters of Russia's total landmass, pretty much the whole northern part of the country. It's like if you place Mexico next to Brazil, that might give you a sense of how big we're talking. But the area is only home to, I don't know, about 36 million people, which might sound like a lot, but it evens out to be like seven people per square mile. And back in 1908, it was even less than that.

[Racha Pecorero]

And that might be because it isn't exactly the easiest place to live. During the winter, it's brutally cold. In the summer, the snow melts and it becomes this dense wilderness of pine trees and swamps. There are even giant swarms of mosquitoes. In 1908, most of the people who lived there were actually exiles and prisoners, folks who were sent there to work in brutal labor camps, sometimes for life. The rest of the locals were either poor rural settlers or members of the local indigenous population called the the Evanki.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, so this all goes to say this really big thing happens, but it's way out in the boonies where hardly anybody lives. And the newspapers that actually reported on it were these tiny publications, so no one in the bigger cities really paid any attention.

[Racha Pecorero]

Plus, the country had bigger fish to fry. Imperial Russia was going through this dark period of turmoil and unrest, and it got worse as the years went on. We're talking World War I, the communist revolution, a bloody civil war, and a typhus epidemic that killed millions. Russia was not a good place to be back then.

[Yvette Gentile]

And in the midst of all the chaos, there probably wasn't a lot of interest in this weird explosion out in the middle of nowhere. People had better things to worry about.

[Racha Pecorero]

Exactly. So this enormous blast goes off and Imperial Russia basically shrugs its shoulders. Then the government gets replaced and rebranded as the ussr, and the new government is basically just trying to keep its head above water. Which may be why it wasn't until 12 years later, around 1921 or 1922, that anyone even bothered looking into the Tunguska event. And that person was Leonide Kulik.

[Yvette Gentile]

Kulik was a geologist, and exactly the kind of person you'd want digging into this mystery. He was this rugged scientist adventurer type who liked nothing better than solving the riddles of the universe. It all started back in 1918, when he was serving in the army. Kulik was called out to inspect fragments of a 300 pound meteorite in the Soviet town of Kashin, about 130 miles north of Moscow. At the time, there weren't many scientists who knew a lot about meteorites, so his report on the Kashin rock pretty much made him Russia's top meteorite specialist, and he took it as a calling. Then, in 1921, one of his colleagues handed him a decade old newspaper clipping. It described a large meteorite strike in Siberia. Kulik realized if he could find this meteorite, it might contain all sorts of valuable metals like nickel, iron and platinum. Stuff that would be worth a lot of money even today. Not to mention it could make him super famous.

[Racha Pecorero]

He convinced the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the biggest scientific institution in the USSR to pay for an expedition to Siberia. But due to delays and issues with funding, he didn't arrive in the area until October. Which was pretty bad timing since the brutal cold was setting in. Kulik knew they couldn't go meteorite hunting in the Siberian winter. So he settled for collecting eyewitness statements instead. He hoped they would at least confirm the explosion actually happened and give him an idea of where to look. At least on that front, his mission was a success. He learned that the impact probably happened near one specific trading post on the stony Tunguska River. After the expedition was over, he vowed to return as soon as he could. He wanted to find the meteorite and bring it home. Unfortunately, it would take another six years to fund a second expedition. But in 1927, he finally got the green light. This time, Kulik left in early spring, just as the ice was starting to thaw. He hired a few indigenous guys from the Evanki tribe to lead him to the site. But as soon as he got close to his destination, the the guides became jittery and forced him to turn around. When he asked why, they told him the land they were about to enter was cursed.

[Yvette Gentile]

This is my first thought, like, listen to the indigenous people. If the land is cursed, listen to them always. But anyhow, there's a few different versions of the story, but one of them goes like this. In the years before the Tunguska event, a particular Eventki clan living in the area used a shark shaman to cast a spell on their rivals that shaman called an evil spirit to give the other clan some kind of disease. So to return the favor, the rival clan summoned Ogede, a powerful God who ruled over Siberia. And on June 30, 1908, the day of the event, it's said that Ogedee sent a flock of fiery iron birds to wreak havoc and burned the forest down. Ever since then, many Evenki refused to visit the area, fearing the wrath of Oged. And look, I totally get it, because y'all know that I wouldn't be wandering around some cursed forest in the middle of nowhere.

[Racha Pecorero]

Well, Kulik thought it was nothing more than superstition, but it was a setback nonetheless. He had to go back to the nearest town, hire new guides who weren't scared, and try again a few weeks later. This time, Kulik and his new team hiked through streams and over rocky hills and swamps. They followed a trail of toppled trees until they reached the center of the devastation. And what he saw was. Well, let's just say you can understand why people thought it was cursed.

[Yvette Gentile]

That's right, because miles and miles of pure destruction. I mean, we're talking giant trees burnt to the core like matchsticks, yet they're still standing. And if you guys Google this, you will see exactly what I'm talking about.

[Racha Pecorero]

Kulik had spent six years dreaming of this exact moment. He pictured himself being praised like a hero, posing for pictures with the giant metal space rock that he believed caused this damage. But when he finally got there, there was no space rock, no impact site, no crater, nothing that could explain the damage whatsoever.

[Yvette Gentile]

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[Racha Pecorero]

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[Yvette Gentile]

When Leonide Kulik arrived at the epicenter of Tunguska's devastation, there was no crater or, or impact site, which left him and his team completely perplexed. Even weirder, the trees at the very center were blackened, but somehow still standing. Almost like the shock wave had spared them somehow.

[Racha Pecorero]

Kulik had come for a space rock, but with no signs of a meteorite. He really didn't know what to do with himself. He camped out for weeks, taking as many samples as he could. And when his team ran out of food, they turned back. Kulik had to return to his hometown of Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg, empty handed. And frankly, he was feeling a bit embarrassed.

[Yvette Gentile]

Just imagine being Kulik. After spending all that time and money making such a big deal publicly about this expedition. He basically comes home with his tail between his legs. I mean, people probably thought he, he'd made the whole thing up just for fame and attention.

[Racha Pecorero]

Even though he had pictures of the trees without the meteorite. People just said it was probably a forest fire. But Kulik really believed there was more out there. He just needed more time and resources to find it. And he kept telling people how much money it would be worth when he finally did. So Kulik ends up leading more expeditions, first in 1928 and 1929, and then again in 1937, 1938 and 1939. For each of these outings, he brought gear for digging trenches and taking samples. He scoured the area with metal detectors, looking for iron and other metals you'd see in space debris. He even collected dead birds and checked their bodies for possible rock fragments they may have eaten. But despite his best efforts, he still came up empty handed. It was like the mystery was taunting him. And time wasn't on his side either. His investigation was cut short the same year as his last expedition, When World War II broke out, Kulik eventually joined a local Soviet militia, only to be captured by the Nazis. And on April 24, 1942, Kulik died. As a prisoner of war, Kulik was well respected.

[Yvette Gentile]

He actually has a crater on the moon. It's on the far side and it's called the Kulik crater. But even with Kulik gone, the questions just kept coming. Like, what really happened along the Tunguska that day? What did all of those eyewitnesses. See, in 1908, theories began to spawn.

[Racha Pecorero]

So we don't have time to get into all of them, but believe me, they get pretty crazy things like black holes and antimatter, asteroids. Stuff that would take a whole episode to explain and frankly don't hold much water in our opinion anyways.

[Yvette Gentile]

But there's one theory that definitely deserves a mention because, you guys, it's just so cool. It says that the visionary inventor is Nikola Tesla. Accidentally blew up Siberia with an experimental death ray.

[Racha Pecorero]

Okay, I love this theory, but I have a love hate relationship with Tesla because my father, since he wasn't your dad, he didn't make my dad, he didn't make you do this. But he forced me at the age I think I was like 8 or 9, to read Tesla's autobiography and the autobiography of Petamahansa Yogananda, but that's a.

[Yvette Gentile]

Whole nother episode I can get behind.

[Racha Pecorero]

Yes, okay, but basically all I remember is that Tesla was a mad scientist.

[Yvette Gentile]

He totally reminds me of Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Right? I mean, to describe him as a mad scientist is an understatement. The guy really was ahead of his time and there's so much that he pioneered. And although he's best known for his discoveries in electricity, he had this super creepy lab in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and apparently you could hear the thunder from his experiments 15 miles away in the next town over. Residents of the town, they got so used to all the weird phenomenon that happened near Tesla's laboratory. Like sparks jumping from the ground as they walked by, or from a faucet when they turned on the tap, light bulbs lit up, even if they weren't plugged in. I mean, all kind of crazy stuff. Tesla's inventions laid the groundwork for so much of the technology we use today, like radios, X rays, remote controls, smartphones, I mean, you name it, there's so much. His most ambitious and secretive project was a transmission system. One that would allow him to wirelessly beam electricity anywhere around the world.

[Racha Pecorero]

But Tesla was thinking even bigger, if you can believe it, because on July 10, 1934, he told the New York sun that he'd invented a so called death beam. It was completely silent and left no trace. Supposedly this machine could wipe out entire armies in an instant, making the country that had it invincible.

[Yvette Gentile]

Now, it's hard to say if he actually developed this beam and it worked because he never demonstrated it in public. But Tesla seemed really confident it was a sure thing. Apparently he even tried to get several governments to buy it Although, as far as we know, no one did. And here's where things get really interesting. Tesla was talking about this beam years before Tunguska, but he had no idea what it was capable of yet. At that point in time, he just thought this device could shoot electricity from one power generator to another anywhere on the planet. And in 1908, he supposedly got the chance to test that theory. An American explorer named Robert Perry was headed from New York to the North Pole. Tesla initially thought he could use his device to communicate with Perry in real time once he got there. Basically, he originally saw this device as like an old time cell phone, right? And as the story goes, Tesla aimed the beam at Perry's location and pulled the trigger. It's unclear how Perry was supposed to receive the energy. The sources out there are pretty slim. But Tesla did invent the radio. So maybe he gave Perry one of his small, smaller prototypes to take with him. When Tesla didn't get a response from Perry on how his little experiment was going, he scanned international newspapers for anything unusual. And that's when Tesla supposedly read about Tunguska and realized his device was capable of mass destruction.

[Racha Pecorero]

It's a cool theory, but there are a few problems with it. We've already talked about how the Tunguska story didn't really reach international papers for more than a decade. Even our geologist, Leonid Kulik, who lived in Russia, didn't hear about it until 1921, which was 13 years later. So unless Tesla got his hands on some remote Serbian news, I'm not sure this one holds up. Plus, Robert Perry hadn't even left for his trip before that. June 30, 1908, date he was still in New York at the time. So if Tesla was trying to beam electricity to someone, it definitely was not Perry.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, do I think this is the best theory out there? Probably not. But it's definitely fun to entertain. And I can see why people gravitated towards it early on if they were looking for answers. Because no one besides Kuleek had really tried to do a proper investigation.

[Racha Pecorero]

At least not until Alexander Kazontsev came onto the scene. And he had a radical idea that would change everything. Kazontsev was born in what is now Kazakhstan in 1906 and trained as an engineer. He spent World War II helping the Soviet Union create new weapons. But he was fascinated with Kulik. He followed his adventures in the newspaper when he was a teenager, and as he got older, the mystery of Tunguska still fascinated him. After learning about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima And Nagasaki in World War II. He thought he saw a connection with Tunguska. And he wondered, could that have been an atomic bomb too? Maybe an early prototype? It was just a hunch, but he had to investigate it.

[Yvette Gentile]

Kazants have new nuclear blasts left behind unique fingerprints. And if you know where to look, it could prove the explosion was nuclear and maybe even point to who was behind it. He started by comparing the vibrations produced by Hiroshima with the ones made after Tunguska. For almost a century, scientists all over the world had used the seismographs to detect earthquakes. And what these listening stations recorded in 1908 after Tunguska was eerily similar to what they recorded in 1945 after Hiroshima. So Kazantsev dug deeper. And when he saw the photos of the charred trees left standing in the middle of the Tunguska blast site, his blood ran cold. When the bomb exploded over Hiroshima, the shock wave spread outwards from from the center, allowing the trees directly below the explosion to survive. So in other words, the charred but still standing trees at Tunguska were proof of a mid air explosion. At least to Kazontsev.

[Racha Pecorero]

He poured over thousands of firsthand accounts from both incidents and saw similarities there too many. Avenki described seeing a brilliant flash, like a second sun. It was so hot, one person said his shirt almost burned off his back. Then came a huge tower of black smoke that could have been a mushroom cloud and black rain. Detail for detail, these reports read just like Hiroshima.

[Yvette Gentile]

After the dust settled, the Evenki noticed their reindeer getting sick with a mysterious disease. Scabs started appearing all over their bodies, which could have been signs of radiation poisoning. And if the bomb exploded in the atmosphere, it would have filled the sky with radiation, causing those weird spooky lights that everyone saw all the way back to Europe. While the weird lights weren't reported with Hiroshima, they had occurred with other nuclear tests that went off higher in the sky.

[Racha Pecorero]

So if Kazontsev was right, that meant someone dropped an atomic bomb on the Soviet Union decades before they were ever invented.

[Yvette Gentile]

That's what the evidence seemed to point to. But here's the thing. The Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear bomb, which was this huge feat of engineering During World War II, it took years, I'm talking years and billions of dollars, not to mention the legit geniuses working around the clock to make it happen. So Kazantsev figured if Tunguska was nuclear, and it happened decades before the nuclear bomb was invented, well, then the one that exploded over Tunguska likely wasn't made by humans. Which means, oh yeah, here we go. It may have been a ufo. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you invest with the spare money you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just the spare change. You don't need to feel like financial wellness is impossible. Head to acorns.com supernatural or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 2 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important [e-mail] supernatural.

[Racha Pecorero]

I won't.

[Unknown]

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[Yvette Gentile]

So it's 1945, and this Siberian engineer, Alexander Kazantsev, has a huge epiphany. He thinks that the Tunguska event was some kind of nuclear explosion.

[Racha Pecorero]

Now, as far as we know, humans didn't have nukes back in 1908, which meant that some other intelligence probably made it maybe someone not from our planet. But even though the explosion looked like an atomic bomb, Kazontsev still had his doubts. After all, why would someone want to blow up an uninhabited patch of forest? And why Siberia of all places?

[Yvette Gentile]

Well, he believed Whoever it was didn't do it, obviously on purpose. So Kazantsev knew it was theoretically possible to power a spaceship using nuclear fuel. So he wondered, what if one of these nuclear powered spaceships, maybe piloted by extraterrestrial life, blew up on accident?

[Racha Pecorero]

If that were true, the location actually makes a lot of sense. If you were an alien coming in for a crash landing, would you aim for a big city or somewhere remote like Siberia, Maybe? The pilots knew they were doomed and didn't want to take anyone out with them.

[Yvette Gentile]

It felt like that to Kazantsev, but he knew that he'd get crazy looks if he came out and said this. So in 1946, he published a work of fiction to get this idea out there and to get people talking. In his short story, he had two scientists arguing about what might have appeared in 1908. And one of them floats the spaceship idea as kind of a fun what if, right? The short story didn't get a whole lot of attention, but it impressed one of Kulik's old friends, Yevgeny Krinov. Krinov was part of Kulik's 1929 expedition. And this guy is hardcore. He lost his toad to frostbite on that trip.

[Racha Pecorero]

But Krinov believed Kazontsev was onto something with his spaceship theory. He also knew that a little controversy would get more people talking about Tunguska. Maybe he could use that to drum up support for more research expeditions, perhaps even finished the work that Kulik had started years ago. So in 1948, Krinov helped Kazantsev turn the short story into a play. It sounds pretty clever, too. Kazantsev would plant actors in the audience to shout that the spaceship theory was bogus. The other plants would stand up and argue with them and get real audience members to join in. So the play got really popular in Russia, which annoyed a lot of scientists. Most of them still believed it was a meteorite that hit the ground. And they tried to discredit Kazantsev. They didn't like that his nuclear powered UFO theory was catching on with the public.

[Yvette Gentile]

The scientists didn't know it, but Kazantsev's theory also caught the eye of some powerful people. One of them was Lavrenti Beria. Now, we've covered some really creepy things on this show. I mean, monsters, ghosts, you name it. But Beria was definitely worse than all of them put together. He was the head of the secret police and Stalin's right hand man at the time. He also ran the Soviet Union's atomic.

[Racha Pecorero]

Bomb program as head of the atomic program. He had access to all sorts of classified stuff that we will never know about. And when he heard Kazantsev's theory, he may have believed it, because in 1949 he sent a secret team of experts to look for debris in Tunguska.

[Yvette Gentile]

If I had to guess, I'd say he probably wanted to reverse engineer the crashed spaceship to make some kind of frickin horrible new weapon.

[Racha Pecorero]

Who knows? The mission was top secret, and we still don't have a lot of details, but it seems they reported back saying the explosion was very likely caused by a nuclear detonation. Whether they thought it was a UFO is unclear. But after the experts gave Beria their report, the trail went cold. We don't know what, if anything, Beria chose to do with it.

[Yvette Gentile]

And even though Beria kept those secrets close, he couldn't stop the growing wave of public interest in Tunguska. And thanks to Kazantsev's writings, more and more people wanted to visit Siberia and solve the riddle for themselves.

[Racha Pecorero]

In 1959, two Siberian friends, an engineer and a paranormal researcher, created what they called the Complex Amateur Expedition, or if we use the Russian abbreviation, kse. They led a bunch of grad students, science fiction fans and hikers into the Siberian wilderness in search of clothes. They scoured the blast zone with metal detectors, took lots of photos, and collected samples from the soil. They also brought Geiger counters to measure radiation. When they analyzed the results, the KSE found that the soil near the center was slightly more radioactive than the area around it. This would have been one of the fingerprints of a nuclear explosion. Like we mentioned earlier. They also found a bunch of other really odd stuff, though, like the trees nearby grew faster after the explosion, something that also happened after Hiroshima. Even stranger, blood tests taken from a local Evinki family revealed a rare genetic mutation that only appeared in those born after 1908. There was also a trove of untapped data from research stations around the world. On the day of the event, for example, at Lake Baikal, about 800 miles from the epicenter, scientists detected a big magnetic storm only minutes after the explosion. This might have been what caused the glowing clouds seen across Europe. If you remember from earlier, the only things we knew that could create a storm like that were high altitude nuclear tests. But here's the bottom line. All this evidence pointed to some kind of nuclear blast.

[Yvette Gentile]

And apparently Kulik had overlooked some of the details from the eyewitnesses he'd originally interviewed. Most people said they saw something flying overhead before the explosion. Kulik had Assumed they were talking about a meteor. But some of the witnesses described something very un meteor like. As they described it, a long tube or cylinder. The fact that they could see it so clearly was another red flag for investigators, because that meant it was flying a whole lot slower than an actual meteorite would like, 10 to 20 times slower. And here's the best part. It may have changed direction mid air near the center of the blast. Trees toppled in a pattern suggesting the object was coming from the southeast. But people southwest of the explosion saw it pass overhead. And the only way it could have come from one direction and land in another is if someone had actually physically grabbed the steering wheel in mid flight.

[Racha Pecorero]

Or if the amateurs who calculated the flight plan made a mistake. Look, you know that both of us love a good UFO story, but in this case, I have a few doubts. Because while a lot of this stuff sounds like a UFO, none of it is 100% conclusive. Like the radiation, for instance. If a nuclear spaceship really did blow up, you'd expect it to be dropping atomic fuel all over the place. But the amount of radiation they found was so small that when folks went to check again the next year, it was all gone. So maybe it was just an asteroid, but it disintegrated before it hit the ground. We know this is possible because it actually happened recently. In February of 2013, an asteroid the size of a house blew up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. It exploded midair about 14 miles up. The shockwave smashed windows for 200 square miles around the city and injured more than 1600 people. It was super bright, like Tunguska, and it didn't make a crater.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, fair, fair enough. But unlike Tunguska, it did leave some fragments behind. And there weren't any weird northern lights that came after. Which is why I still need more to be sold on this asteroid theory. To me, the nuclear powered UFO theory checks the most boxes like first and foremost, the blasts, the after effects, the radiation. And if the KSE figured out about the object's speed and change of direction is true, it's pretty much the only explanation that works in my book.

[Racha Pecorero]

And there's no way that some other country may have developed a nuclear bomb and tested it before the Manhattan Project.

[Yvette Gentile]

And never came forward with the results, I think that's even less likely than the UFO theory. To be honest, if the Soviets, or any country for that matter, built an atomic weapon before the United States, I'm sure I'm like so, so sure that they would have been shouting it from the rooftops. The arms race was just as alive and well back then as it is is today.

[Racha Pecorero]

Okay, okay, fair. But if we are saying UFOs, it would be nice to have something we could actually point to in this case. Like a piece of the ship or something.

[Yvette Gentile]

Funny that you should mention that. There was a guy named Yuri Lavbin who claimed he'd found exactly that in 2009. He told newspapers that he discovered quartz stones near the blast center. Supposedly, these crystals had unusual etchings that were just too perfect to have been made by human technology. Because of that, Yuri believed it was a piece of a control panel specifically for the ship that exploded over Tunguska. And his own theory was. Get this, that it had rammed into an oncoming asteroid to save humanity. I mean, come on, y'all talk about a blockbuster movie franchise.

[Racha Pecorero]

Yes, exactly like Armageddon. And if that's the case, we should all be truly grateful. But as far as I can tell, he hasn't let any actual scientist look at the crystals. So all we have to go on are his words and a single low res photo.

[Yvette Gentile]

All right, maybe it's not a smoking gun, but that's the problem right there. I mean, whatever did blow up over Tunguska was totally vaporized. So when people say it's an asteroid, a meteorite, or a ufo, they're basically just guessing. Look, the universe is a really big place, and sometimes we think we know what's out there. And a mystery like this comes along and shows you just how small we really are. But you know what? Maybe the mystery is the best part.

[Racha Pecorero]

This is so supernatural. An audio Chuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram SoSuperNaturalPod and visit our website at SoSuperNaturalPodcast.com join Yvette and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? I won't let my moderate to severe.

[Unknown]

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Serious allergic reactions may occur. Tremphya may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them before treatment. Your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms of infection, including fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. Tell your doctor if you had a vaccine or plan to emerge.

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