Eyewitness Semanov thrown 20 feet by blast at Vanavara trading station

A 15 Megaton Explosion Over Siberia and Humanity Forgot!
Source: A 15 Megaton Explosion Over Siberia and Humanity Forgot! by The Randall Carlson

Eyewitness Semanov was sitting on his porch at the Vanavara trading station when the sky split in two. He felt scorching heat as if his shirt caught fire, was thrown about 22 feet from the porch, and lost consciousness—all from 40 miles away. Closer reindeer herders had tents ripped away; one man went deaf for years.

Key facts

  • Eyewitness Semanov was sitting on the porch at the Vanavara trading station when the sky split in two
  • He felt intense heat as if his shirt caught fire before the sound arrived
  • Semanov was thrown about 22 feet (3 sagenes) from the porch and lost consciousness
  • His daughter described seeing the sky in the north open to the ground with fire pouring out
  • Vanavara was approximately 40 miles from the epicenter
  • Reindeer herders closer to the site had tents torn away and thrown by the blast
  • One man was rendered deaf for years after the event

Related stories

Sources

New data on accounts of the 1908 Tunguska event - Ol'khovatovonlinelibrary.wiley.com
Since 1908, many eyewitness accounts of the June 30, 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia, Russia, have been collected (Vasil'ev, Kovalevskij, Razin, ...
Tunguska event - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3–50 megatons TNT equivalent that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate ...
THE TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION OF 1908icr.org
The Tunguska explosion occurred on the morning of June 30, 1908 at 7:17 AM local time (0h 17m 11s UT) in the area of the Stony Tunguska River.
First-Hand Eyewitness Accounts May Shed New Light On ... - Forbesforbes.com
The Tunguska Event of June 1908 was the largest cosmic impact witnessed by modern humans.
Tunguska Event: Eyewitness accounts from the last time a heavenly ...slate.com
S.B. Semenov, a peasant who had been living about forty miles from the site of impact, wrote Kulik a letter to report his experience: It was ...
Was this story useful?

← All stories

Keep exploring

Every site on this page sits on the globe, and the people who research them are on the Discord.

3D Globe · Sites by country · Story Archive · Research Library · Weekly Journal · Search

AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.