What If the 1908 Tunguska Asteroid Hit Earth Today?

In 2013, a space rock that was about 20 meters wide and weighed about 13 000 tons, hit the earth and blew up in the air over the Chelyabinsk oblast in Russia. It exploded with about 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, thousands of buildings across six different cities in the region experienced their glass windows shattering from the event, and over a thousand people were injured seriously enough to seek out medical attention. Although thankfully, nobody was killed, the event caused approximately 33 million dollars worth of damages, and it's estimated that on average something of this scale happens somewhere around the world about once every 60 years or so.

It is the biggest known object to have struck the planet in more than a century, but the one that did hit the planet a century ago was a lot bigger, caused a lot more destruction and just so happened to also hit Russia. This was the Tunguska event and if it had hit the planet today, it would have been really really catastrophically bad, and it was already bad enough when it happened more than a century ago back in 1908.

That year, in the month of June, a massive rock, at least three times bigger than the Chelyabinsk asteroid entered into the earth's atmosphere from above, and was on a direct collision course with this location, right here, near the Tunguska River in the incredibly remote forests of Siberia. In what was then, the Russian empire, the meteor was traveling at about 27 kilometers per second, and within five to ten kilometers above the surface, it most likely exploded in an air burst with a titanic force of around 12 megatons, which was probably the biggest explosion in recorded human history.

Until the 1st of March 1954, when the United States successfully tested the megaton castle bravo thermonuclear device, the devastation wrought by the meteor five decades previously was just as absolute. An estimated 80 million trees were absolutely flattened across an area that was the size of Luxembourg, an epic shockwave with the power of an earthquake was generated that knocked people off their feet and shattered windows hundreds of kilometers away, as it measured a five on the richter scale, the blast was measured in places as far away as Washington DC and London, but of all the places on the earth's surface to hit, this was luckily one of the least catastrophic for human civilization. Albeit one of the most catastrophic for reindeer, thousands of dead reindeer carcasses would later be discovered by scientists littering the area around the explosion, and who knows how many other animals died.

Siberia has always been one of the most desolate remote and underpopulated places on the planet, and as a result, it's not really entirely clear if this apocalyptic asteroid even killed anybody, the extent of damage that this thermonuclear bomb equivalent rock caused is listed on wikipedia as only zero confirmed deaths, three possible and a few damaged buildings. It happened in such a remote part of the world at the time that it took more than a decade after the event had happened until any kind of scientific analysis of the area could even take place.

I mean, imagine if this meteor had hit somewhere like Moscow, London or New York back in 1908, and completely obliterated one of those cities instead, just think how radically different the entire course of the 20th century and our history since would have been. A meteor like this can cause a civilization ending apocalypse if it hits in the right location at the right time, and it's currently estimated that these big scale events, happen somewhere about once every thousand or so years.

Luckily for us the time that it happened in 1908 became a minor historical footnote that most people probably haven't even ever heard of, because it happened in the middle of nowhere. But what if it didn't and what if it happened today? Let's dive in deep.

For starters, if the Tunguska event happened today in the exact same location in the middle of Siberia, it probably wouldn't be any different than the last time because this part of Siberia is still in the middle of nowhere and hardly anybody lives there. So let's imagine if instead it hits somewhere really nasty like New York City.

First off, let's look at the area affected, I mentioned earlier that the Tunguska explosion destroyed 80 million trees and wiped out most life in an area that's roughly the same size as Luxembourg, placing Luxembourg over New York, you can see that, well, yeah the city would be pretty screwed. To find out just how screwed we can extrapolate some data from the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Both the Tunguska meteor and the Hiroshima atomic bomb were air burst events that took place above the ground they targeted, the Hiroshima atomic bomb detonated about 500 meters above the city's surface, and the energy it unleashed completely destroyed 63 percent of all of the city's buildings.

Meanwhile, the Tunguska meteor blew up much higher above the surface, around 5 to 10 kilometers. But it also exploded with about 300 times the power that the Hiroshima bomb blew up with. Based on this and based on selected eyewitness testimony to the Tunguska explosion itself, this is probably what would happen had the meteor struck New York instead. As the meteor descended from above towards the city, there would be a massive amount of light as it streaked through the sky and a blinding fireball once it explodes, to the people immediately living within the city, this would appear bright enough to look like a second sun and would literally blind you if you gaze too long into it.

For a brief moment following the explosion, there would be silence. And then, chaos. The air burst generated an intense fireball then incinerated everything within an eight kilometer radius. In Tunguska, this lit millions of trees on fire. In New York, if the meteor had exploded directly above Central Park, all of Manhattan would have been incinerated, even up to 65 kilometers away from the explosion's epicenter.

Eyewitnesses in Tunguska reported getting so hot, they felt as if their clothes had set to fire. And after the fireball would inevitably come the shockwave. For dozens of kilometers radiating away from the epicenter, the shockwave from the blast leveled millions of trees, and even up to 65 kilometers away was strong enough to throw people off of their feet and hurl them for several meters.

It is said that the Tunguska event devastated an area roughly in the same shape of a gigantic butterfly, this butterfly destruction pattern had a wingspan of 70 kilometers and a body length of 55 kilometers, so placed over New York City, this is kind of what it would look like, the eight kilometer radius circle in the middle would experience total devastation and complete loss of life.

Further out beyond that in the rest of the pattern, less intense fires would break out and the shock waves would probably destroy and level most of the buildings, causing widespread destruction and even further loss of life. Even if you were lucky enough to have survived the initial explosion, the bright flash and loud bang could have rendered you blind and or deaf, while the intense heat could have greatly injured your body.

Further away from the main devastation within New York, there would be an excessive amount of shattered windows and other minor building damage radiating out to around a thousand miles from the epicenter, impacting people and structures as far away as Minneapolis and Orlando, it would be a disaster. Impossible for any of us to imagine and one that would surely the entire United States.

The fact that this huge meteor blew up in the middle of nowhere in Siberia a century ago was an incredibly lucky twist of historical fortune for the human species, had it struck somewhere else instead like New York, London or Moscow, the deaths and injuries could have easily reached into the tens of millions. If the meteor was just a few minutes later or earlier, it may have struck somewhere else like one of these that was substantially more populated.

The day the Tunguska meteor made impact with the earth was the 30th of June, which is globally recognized today as international asteroid day, a day that is set aside to raise awareness about the continued threat of celestial collisions with earth, conveniently the very day after that is international chicken wing day, a day set aside to celebrate the glorious taste of chicken wings.

It is always thank you for watching. Goodbye.