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The Tunguska Asteroid Impact Event By The Numbers
The largest asteroid blast in recorded history
While Earth is no stranger to massive asteroid impacts, rather few of them have been confirmed during human history. People can see massive holes in the ground and speculate what it must have been like to witness such an impact, but we have few contemporary analogs to base it on. The Tunguska impact event is the largest asteroid impact in recorded human history, and it rocked Siberia in 1908. This event is one of the only powerful asteroid strikes ever experienced, and the numbers are highly illuminating — and terrifying.
The asteroid (or comet, depending on who you ask) seemingly exploded in the skies above Russia on June 30th, 1908 and unleashed the equivalent of a massive atmospheric nuclear strike. Thankfully, the asteroid exploded over an almost entirely unpopulated area. If this event had occurred overtop a densely populated region, the casualty numbers could have easily been in the hundreds of thousands.
The Event
- Date: June 30, 1908
- Time: 7:17 AM (local time)
- Location: Tunguska region, Siberia, Russia
- Coordinates: 60.9°N, 101.9°E
