So far this year, I’ve had the privilege of seeing Emily Barker three times – once in Rough Trade Records in Shoreditch, once in Love Music in Glasgow and on Sunday evening in Oran Mor also here in Glasgow. I have also seen her previously with Frank Turner and on the Revival Tour with Chuck Ragan. Always go and see the opening band and was blown away by Chris T-T – in particular was captured by his song Tunguska.
Did the Google thing and found that at about 07:14 on the 30th June in 1908, there was an air blast above a remote area of Siberia near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. It was estimated that it was caused by an object somewhere between 60m to 190m across and that the explosion happened between 5km and 10km above the earth’s surface.
The bit which for me puts the level of destruction into a level of context was that it destroyed somewhere in the region of 80 million trees across an area of 2,150km. It was (to date anyway), the largest impact on or near this wee planet we are lucky enough to inhabit. The energy created, was about 1,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Given the remoteness of the Tunguska region and the probable reluctance of the Russian government at the time, not a huge amount is known about the detail of what actually happened that day.
Further reading has indicated that the air blast was likely to have been created by an asteroid entering the earth’s atmosphere but in 1930, the British astronomer F.J.W. Whipple put forward the suggestion that the blast was created by a small comet. This “cometary” meteorite, being composed primarily of ice and dust, could have been completely vaporised by the impact with Earth's atmosphere, leaving no obvious trace.
Reckon its hard to imagine how one event can cause so much damage but then maybe that is exactly the point in the song …
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