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SECRET /NGFCIRN
-00789R001 2000600Q8-^ 0
J
!
PROJECT SUN STREAK
WARN I NB NOTICE
!!
I NTELL IGENCE SOURCES AND METHODS
INVOLVED
PROJECT NUMBERS
0227
(Tng)
SESSION NUMBER:
DATE
OF
SESSIONS
02 MAR 90
DATE OF REPORT:
05 MAR
9C
STARTs
0907
END:
0922
METHODOLOGY
s
CRV
VIEWER
I DENT IF" IEIR:
052
i*
(S/STD)
MISSION:
To describe the target
site
(The air explosion
in
Tunguska,
Siberia)
in Stage
2 terminology.
2.
(S/ST D)
VIEWER TASKING:
Encrypted coordinates not
set,
so target
number
was used
«
•
No other cueing
given.
3,
(S/STD)
COMMENTS!!
No Physical
Inclemencies.
052 accessed
the site
quickly
in Stage
and proceeded through Stage
2 quickly and efficiently.
052 has had problems getting sound perceptions
in the past,
but
this has
evidently been
resolved.
052 needs
a little more practice
inv di mensional^^
perceptions,
an>i
will
be ready
to proceed
into Stage
3 training.
~~
4'.
(8/STD)
EVALUATION;
2,
*
5.
(8/STD)
SEARCH EVALUATION;
N/A
MONITOR;
018
HANDLE VIA STIPPLE CHANNELS
ONLY
SECRET /NOFORN
CLASSIFIED
BY;
DIA
(DT)
DECLASSIFY;
OADR
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
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Approved For Release 2001/03/07
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Approved For Release 2001/03/07
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Approved For Release 2001/03/07
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Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00789
WHAT SET OFF THE BIGGEST
BANG IN RECORDED HISTORY?
tjirc j
Shortly after 7 A.M. on Jane 30/1908/
.':.
early
rising
farmers,
herdsmen,
and
trappers
in
the
sparsely
settled
r-vastness of the central Siberia Plateau
watched in awe as a cylindrical object,
glowing with an
intense bluish-white
light and
trailing
a
fiery
tail,
raced
across
a
clear
blue
sky
toward
the
northern horizon. At 7:17, over a des-
olate
region
of bogs and
low,
pine-
covered
hills
traversed
by
the Stony
Tunguska
River,
it
disappeared;
in-
stantly, a
“pillar of
fire"
leaped
sky-
ward, so high
it was seen hundreds of
miles away; the earth shuddered under
the impact of a
titanic explosion; the
air was wracked by thunderous claps;
and
a superheated wind
rushed
out-
ward, setting parts of the taiga on
fire.
At a trading post forty miles from the
blast, a man sitting on the steps of his
house saw the blinding flash and cov-
ered his eyes; he felt scorched, as if the
shin on his back were burning, and the
next moment he was hurled from the
steps by a shock wave and knocked un-
conscious. Four hundred miles to the
south
the ground heaved under
the
tracks
of
the
recently
completed
Trans-Siberian Railway, threatening to
derail
an
express.
And
above
the
Tunguska
region
a
mass
of
black
clouds, piling up to a height of twelve
miles, dumped a shower of “black rain”
on
the
countryside — dirt
and
debris
sucked
up
by
the
explosion — while
rumblings like heavy
artillery
fire
re-
verberated throughout central Russia.
Since seismographs and barographs
everywhere had
recorded
the
event,
the entire world knew that something
extraordinary had occurred
in the
Si-
berian wilderness. But what? Scientists
conjectured
that
a
giant
meteorite
must have
fallen, exploding from the
i
intense heat
its impact generated; On
hitting the ground, such a body would,
-theoretically, have blown out
a huge
crater like the one in Arizona, three-
quarters of a mile -square, left by a me-
teorite
that
fell
fifty thousand years
( ago, but
the
Siberian
nimpact
site
a
' turned out to be a dismal swamp, with
no trace of a meteorite to -be seen.
Nevertheless, for want of a better ex-
planation,
scientists
continued
to
ascribe the cataclysm to
a meteorite,
/bomb was detonated).
*
Could the Siberian blast have been
atomic? In 1958 a Russian engineer-
and Leonid Kulik/a mineralogist who
turned-writer, Aleksander
Kazantsev,
headed
government-sponsored,
ex-
peditions to the Tunguska in the early
1920s and again in 1938^39, searched
for evidence to support this view.
Although this search proved
fruit-
less, Kulik uncovered a wealth of in-
formation about
the
blast. Near
the
swamp into which the meteorite had
supposedly
plummeted,
scorched
rrees, striped of branches,
still stood,
but around this weird “telegraph-pole”
forest, except where intervening hills
had shielded them, every tree within
fifty
miles
had
been
blown
flat,
its
trunk pointing away from the swamp.
From this— and from his failure to find
even a small impact crater— Kulik con-
cluded
that the meteorite had never
reached the ground but had exploded
two or three miles up in the
air. The
testimony of local herdsmen
yielded
other curious
details:
the
blast s
in-
tense heat had melted the permafrost, ’>
causing
water
trapped
underground
for tens of thousands of years to gush
-
forth in fountains, and those reindeer
that had not been killed had developed
mysterious blisters and scabs on their
hides. Stranger still, examination of the
trees
that
had
been
germinating
in
1908
revealed
that
they
had
then
-grown at several times the normal rate.
During World War
II
Kulik
was
.
. captured by the Germans and died a
/prisoner. The riddle he had worked to
solve was forgotten. In August
1945,
however,
certain
Russian
scientists
were
abruptly reminded of
it by the
atom-bombings
of
Hiroshima
and
Nagasaki, events which seemed uncan-
nily familiar in both
their manifesta-
tions (the fireball, the searing thermal
current,
the
towering
“mushroom”
eloud) and
their effects (the
instanta-
neous and -neaxrtotal destruction, the
radiation burns on living flesh, the ac-
*
celerated.:growth
of new
plant
- life,
.
published a
story-article pinning that
disaster on
Martians
killed on
their
way to Earth by cosmic rays or meteor-
ite bombardment;
their ship, with no
one at the controls, hurtles into our at-
mosphere
at
unreduced
speed
and
burns up
from
friction,
triggering
a
chain reaction
in
its atomic
fuel
that
sets off the explosion. Few informed
readers by then
still accepted the me-
teorite theory, and some, particularly
younger men and women, found Ka-
zantsev’s
hypothesis
persuasive,
but
others rejected
it in favor of an earlier
alternate
explanation,
according
to
which the head of a comet had pene-
trated the atmosphere at such high ve-
locity that the heat thus generated had
caused the comet to blow up. (Skeptics
pointed
out, however,
that
a comet
could
hardly have approached
Earth
without being seen.)
Two further explanations involving
natural
causes
have been
advanced.
The first is that a tiny “black hole”—
a
chunk of matter collapsed to minuscule
dimensions and so dense that its grav-
ity sucks up even light— hit Siberia and
passed
in
an
instant
through
Earth,
emerging in the North Atlantic. The
second
asserts
that an
“anti-rock“ of
antimatter
plunged
into
the
atmos-
phere and exploded on contact with
atoms of ordinary matter, producing a
fireball
of gamma
rays.
While
this
would
account
for
the
absence
of
residual material
at the
site,
it
is not,
most experts say, compatible with ob-
servable
physical
effects of the
blast.
In
the
end, we do
not know what
caused che
cataclysm
in
Siberia. We
cnay
never
know.
But
today, fewer
scientists than
at any time in the past
.would be astounded to receive a mes-
sage beamed from some corner of the
- universe
inquiring
into
the
fate
of
„ certain space voyagers who vanished
even the “telegraph-pole”, appearance
on our planet in what we call the year
of scorchedand branchlesstreesstandrip/1908.
ing below the 'point at which an atom
a charred and smoking world; he was scorched and penni-
less, biv
alive.
A Guest from
the Universe?
less,
biv
alive.
I
while for miles aroun
Approyed For Refe^ste^0^W7^C4A^DP8^ee^89R(pO1 20013&0jD&8^ST
explosions
ever
recorded
on
earth.
Something
weighing
l
known to ha » chmr
The
stage was
being
set
for
a
world-shaking drama
that
was rushing
to
its
fiery climax hear the cold and
sluggish
Yenesei River of
Siberia.
The date; June
30,
1908.
Out
in
space,
miles
from
the
earth,
a
gigantic
object
was rushing
to
destruction, headed
for a
thinly populated
area near the Yenesei
Its speed was probably in excess of
thirty thousand
miles an hour.
It was
only
seconds from
destruction,
trailing long streams of
fire behind
it as
it en-
tered the atmosphere.
On the river a fisherman tugged at the ropes
leading
to
his
nets. He paused in his work long enough
to return the
wa^e
of
a
friend who
sat on
the
shore,
sheltered
fortu-
nately by a steep overhang. His friend on the bank was the
last thing the fisherman would ever see.
He had less than five seconds to live.
A few miles from the river a herdsman,
driving
several
hundred reindeer
across the
grassy
flats, paused
' to
fill
his
leather water bag
at a shallow
well. The bag
fell
into
the
water and he climbed down to retrieve
it.
It was the luckiest move of his
life.
Across
the
river,
at the edge of a small grove of
trees,
a woodchoppcr and his two grown sons took time out from
their labors to smoke their pipes,
their axes leaning against
the log on which they were sitting.
The
stage was set
The
gigantic
thing
that was plunging
to
earth
exploded
with a
fury
that was recorded around
the
globe. Of those
in the immediate
area, only the herdsman
in
the
well and
the man
sheltered by
the
river bank
survived. The
fisher-
man was swept away. The woodchoppers were never found;
but one of
their axes was
finally picked up a mile and
a
half from where
they had been smoking
their
pipes. The
herd of reindeer vanished
in the twinkling of an eye. When
the
bewildered herdsman
climbed
out
of
the
shallow
well
that had
saved
his
life, he found himself
in
the
midst
of
explosions
ever
recorded
on
earth.
Something
weighing
thousands of tons had exploded into a great ball of seething
fire
that climbed into
the clouds
in a matter
of
minutes,
leaving below
it a stunned
earth
that
sent
its
quivers
to
seismographs in many lands.
'World War
I
spread even
greater havoc of
a
different
sort and
scientists
almost
forgot
the
strange
explosion
in
Siberia, which they had assumed to be some
sort of huge
meteorite. It was not until 1927 that a scientific study group
reached the scene. They found a scorched and barren spot
that showed plainly the effects of incalculable heat and pres-
sure; trees brushed
flat to earth for miles around the center
of the
blast, their trunks charred by
its remarkable temper-
ature. They found
a few
witnesses,
including
the
herds-
man and
the man on
the
river
bank, and some
villagers
who had seen
the
catastrophe from a vantage point
miles
away. After examining the scene and interviewing the
wit-
nesses, the
scientists went away. They had determined
that
something from
outer
space
had
struck
in
those
lonely
reaches of the Yenesei, something that scorched and blasted
—but something that
left no
craters
in the
earth to mark
its collision. For want of a better name
it went down in the
records
as
the Tunguska
Meteorite, and
there
it remained
for more than
thirty
years.
A Russian scientist. Dr. Alexander Kazentsev, was a mem-
ber of the Soviet team that spent considerable time investi-
gating the scene of the Tunguska explosion, like their preder
cessors,
they were
puzzled by what
they found and
puz-
zled even more by what they did not find. No
craters. No
logical, acceptable explanation for the recorded fury of the
explosion.
Fortunately for science. Dr.
Kazentsev was
also a mem-
ber of the Russian team that went to Hiroshima to study the
effects of the atomic bomb which had obliterated
that hap-
less city and most of
its people.
Dr.
Kazentsev was
particularly
impressed
by
a
peculi-
arity
of
the
blast;
directly
beneath
the
center
of
the
air-
borne explosion the tops of the trees had been snapped
off,
while
the
trees remained standing. Somewhere, he had seen
something like that before—but where?
Suddenly he remembered. At the scene of the ‘Tunguska
Meteorite m
Siberia!
Tree
tops snapped
off
in one
area,
vrtiv
the
trees were brushed
flat to earth.
— _ — _ — —
-— — Hiroshima! But
that phenomenon was
known to be a characteristic of only nuclear devices. Did
it
mean
that
a
nuclear
explosion had taken place over
lonely
Siberian
terrain
almost
half
a
century
before?
There was a relatively simple way to check the suspicion.
' ^
.*k.e ^P^05*011 had been
nuclear,
there would
be
radio-
activity
in
measurable
quantities
in
the
earth. And
Ka-
zentsev knew that when Professor Kulik had made the orig-
inal investigation of the Tunguska
blast in
1927, no check
had been made for radioactivity; he
also knew
that Kulik
had been
disturbed by
the complete
absence
of
meteoric
fragments.
A new expedition, headed by Professor Liapunov and
in-
cluding Dr.
Kazentsev, was dispatched
to
the
scene of the
so-called Tunguska
Meteorite. They spent months
tracking
out the radioactive pattern in the
soil that sent their Geiger
counters
chattering;
they
interviewed
an
eyewitness who
still
recalled
vividly
the
great
ball
of
fire
that
rolled
into
the heavens and
the
strange mushroom cloud from which
it stemmed. They dug up tons of soil to collect a scant hand-
ful of metal fragments. Then
they went home
to evaluate
and study what they had found.
Dr.
Kazentsev and most
of -his
colleagues came
to'
the
conclusion that some sort of atomic-powered device of
tre-
mendous size had exploded over the earth at an
altitude of
1.2 miles on the morning of June 30,
1908. He
calls
it a
space
ship.
In
his
official
report
filed
with
the
Soviet
government
agency which
directed
the
expedition.
Dr.
Kazentsev
says
that
the
blast damage, and
the
radioactivity
charts enabled
the
scientists
to locate
the point
directly beneath
the
blast
and
to trace out
the familiar atomic cone.
Sifting
the
soil
around the edges of
ffiis “cone” produced tiny bits of metal,
some of which were not of any known meteoric nature and
some
of which seemed
to
be
alloyed.
Tffe
eyewitness
ac-
counts
all
agreed on
the
seething
fireball
and
the mush-
room
cloud, which we now know
to
be
characteristic
of
nuclear
explosions. And exhumation
of some
of
the
long-
dead residents of the area indicated that they had died of a
strange malady” indeed,
for they were victims of excessive
radioactivity.
Says
Kazentsev, ‘The
weight
of evidence
clearly
places
the explosion slightly more than (a mile) above the center of
the
destruction. The damage
is
identical
to
that
produced
by man-made atomic devices under
similar
conditions. The
lingering
radioactivity,
the
mixed
metals,
the
descriptions
the explosion
itself all coincide with an atomic explosion.
CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00789R001 200060008-5
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