The moscow Meteor

The effects of whatever hit Tunguska hitting somewhere in Eastern Europe instead would be of serious effect, both within and outside of Russia.

First, I would reject a "aimed shot" scenario where the detonation just happens to "bullseye" Moscow or St.Petersburg, either right overhead Red Square or the Tsar's Palace respectively. I'd accept a rough geographic area of those cities and maybe even a close by hit. But bullseye hits are simply too unlikely.

This means that the city is badly wrecked and in a bad way, but it will continue to exist.

Second, think back to the other times in modern history where a totally unexpected and unexplained natural event signifcantly struck a city. That right, hasn't happened. I'd suggest that in the short term, the rampant fears and paranoia between the nations of the world is going to get ratcheted up to levels like has never been contemplated. Bluntly put, Berlin, London, Paris, Rome, Toyko, Washington and every small power's capitols are all going to be going absolutely apeshit asking two very specific questions: Who did this and are we next? The Russians will be asking the first one and will be also running in circles trying to make sure that they don't get hit again.

That leads us to the most likely scenario: No matter what or who ends up in charge in Russia, the fact is that they will assume they have been attacked viciously and nearly fatally. Think back to the days right after 9/11. The fear of when and where the next attack would happen were quite prevalent. We had a pretty good handle on that in terms of understanding the mechanism of attack, this one would be totally confusing and much like the fear the Japanese had right after the A-bomb attacks. It would seem that an invisible and angry God had just struck them. So, what does the playbook call for when Russia is attacked? The answer at that time is simple and still true to this day: Total mobilization of military forces. So the Russians are at full on mobilization, not knowing who they are at war with, just knowing they need to be ready for it.

Now, we all know what the Germans are going to do when the Russians start their mobilization clock. They are going to sucker punch the French hard. This will be done for two reasons: First, they do not want an angry and mobilized Russia on their eastern frontiers. Second, the very real fear of every country that is not Russia is that the event in Moscow/St.Petersburg was not an attack, but either a false flag attack or an accidental discovery of a "wonder weapon" that the Russians will advance behind. When the Russians start massing troops, the second theory will gain a huge amount of credibility.

So, instead of WW1 kicking off in 1914, it comes in 1908.

The question of how this changes things is not easy nor easily defined. The first biggie would be the effects of Moltke's tinkering with the plan to shift resources eastward not being fully in place, combined with a Russia mobilizing merely because of reflex rather than an actual effort to assault Germany's eastern frontier, means that Paris probably gets captured and the French Army gets rolled up.

Second, a weakened and angry Russia would probably lash out at Germany once the Germans moved on the French, seeking to both fufill their treaty obligations, but also with a suspicion that the explosion was the work of the Germans somehow.

This leads to the Germans and the Russians fighting WW1 far more directly and viciously against each other without the French and British having any great involvement. The British might shut down the Germans on the high seas, but with the Germans engaged fully with the Russians, they wouldn't care overmuch. The British and possibly Americans might ship in troops to aid the Russians in the ground war, but for the most part, the British and Americans will be trying to get as many scientists into the blast area to study what happened and if it can be replicated.

Who wins? Eventually, Germany gets swamped under. Chances are, the trench warfare does unfold, but this time in Eastern Prussia rather than in France.
 
Actually, it didn't land in Tunguska, Siberia. It exploded over Tunguska. When
the first expedition went to the area in 1928, they didn't find a meteor. If it had exploded over a populated area, like Moscow, then it would have been like
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No offence, Bard, but do you ever read anything in a thread but the OP?

[Wiki] puts the impact at 10-15 megatonnes - a third the power of the tsar bomba. It also helpfully adds that this "is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area." Moscow is getting toasted.

The Tunguska event caused damage equal to a 10 megaton H-bomb, 50-80 times greater than either of the weapons used in WWII. Having that occur over the center of a major city such as Moscow would have caused apocalyptic damage, most of the inhabitants would have been killed, and rebuilding would have taken decades. Damage wise, the only noticeable difference between a 10MT thermonuclear blast and a 10MT explosion from a comet impact is the lack of radioactive fallout downwind from the comet impact.

...Tunguska wasn't a meteor, but a comet that explode before even reaching the ground.

:rolleyes:
 
The effects of whatever hit Tunguska hitting somewhere in Eastern Europe instead would be of serious effect, both within and outside of Russia.

First, I would reject a "aimed shot" scenario where the detonation just happens to "bullseye" Moscow or St.Petersburg, either right overhead Red Square or the Tsar's Palace respectively. I'd accept a rough geographic area of those cities and maybe even a close by hit. But bullseye hits are simply too unlikely.

This means that the city is badly wrecked and in a bad way, but it will continue to exist.

I doubt it - 15 Mt has a radius of complete destruction - to a modern city, built out of stronger materials than wood, unlike Moscow/St Petersburg - of 6.5 miles. At 50 miles it's still doing "moderate damage", which would still be a lot for the Russians at this time. The "target" for complete obliteration of the city is pretty wide.

...I'll get to the rest later. Busy now. But I think that you're overestimating the complete chaotic panic the Russians will be running under, and if you think they could mobilize under these conditions you're crazy. And the Germans, the French, and everyone else will be too busy absolutely freaking out to go to war.
 

bard32

Banned
Can we get back to the topic of a Tsarist Russia which just lost Moscow to a Tunguska event rather then rambling on and on in a debate about the physics of timing such an event and the forum it goes in? This is starting to resemble those debates on the impact an ISOT will have on the gulf stream that crop up every once in a while in the ASB forum?

on an oddly related note (but one which will hopefully put this back on track), one of my ancestors (my grandfather or great-grandfather, not certain which) was somewhat present at tunguska. He was on the trans-siberian railroad on June 30, 1908, and passed by the devastated forest a few hours after the blast.

Yes, we can. The government just moves to St. Petersburg.
 

bard32

Banned
Yes, I do. Tunguska, was either a black hole, a meteor, a comet, or as some UFO enthusiasts claim, a UFO that crashed trying to steal our water. the large
meteor crater, in Meteor Crater, Arizona, was owned by a man who bought it
to drill for oil. However, what he found, were meteor fragments. It was determined that a large asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded. The
new theory about Tunguska is that it's an airburst meteor. I think I said this in an earlier post right here.
 

bard32

Banned
The Tunguska event caused damage equal to a 10 megaton H-bomb, 50-80 times greater than either of the weapons used in WWII. Having that occur over the center of a major city such as Moscow would have caused apocalyptic damage, most of the inhabitants would have been killed, and rebuilding would have taken decades. Damage wise, the only noticeable difference between a 10MT thermonuclear blast and a 10MT explosion from a comet impact is the lack of radioactive fallout downwind from the comet impact. It is likely that the Russian Empire would have come apart at the seams if such an even had occurred. Hell even most nations today would be in a world of hurt or would collapse into anarchy if their largest city was to be abruptly scoured from the face of the earth.

According to the latest theory on Tunguska, it was an airburst meteor just like
the large crater at Meteor Crater, Arizona. That crater was created recently.
The first owner of the meteor crater in Arizona originally bought it in 1912 so he could drill for oil. He found fragments of a meteor that blew up in the atmosphere about 10,000 feet above the ground.
 
I doubt it - 15 Mt has a radius of complete destruction - to a modern city, built out of stronger materials than wood, unlike Moscow/St Petersburg - of 6.5 miles. At 50 miles it's still doing "moderate damage", which would still be a lot for the Russians at this time. The "target" for complete obliteration of the city is pretty wide.

You have to remember, those calculations don't take into account things like channeling of the blast and shadow effects. Yes, the force will still be enough to do damage 50 miles away, assuming you have it detonate on a glass flat surface over 50 miles wide.

But I think that you're overestimating the complete chaotic panic the Russians will be running under, and if you think they could mobilize under these conditions you're crazy.

Actually, thanks to the nature of mobilization plans, especially in that time frame, they are pretty much the only state function that remains an option.

I think you're confusing the idea of them rolling out a specific operational plan with the actual mobilization of troops. Mobilization is the concentration, activation and movement of logistics into large scale formations, usually in positions that favour the most likely scenarios.

In this case, for which we have a beautiful OTL parallel example of the mobilization in 1914 of all powers, the mere act of Russia spinning up it's military to a heightened state of readiness was enough for the Germans to conclude that they needed to KO France fast.

And the Germans, the French, and everyone else will be too busy absolutely freaking out to go to war.

Of course they'll be freaking out. And freaking out people never make stupid mistakes.

The massive degree of fear, combined with the "mobilization dominoes" mean that an unexplained explosion whacking the Russians pretty much assures a war.
 
All eyes would be on the world powers to have done it. The small powers would probably be ignored cause how could they have gotten that kind of firepower. America might be ignored because they were in isolationism.
 
First - cool tunguska photo! BOOM!

Second- cool Tunguska article, especially the back half of it:
Tunguska

I particularly like this part: From this they concluded that even if the airburst explosion took place at an altitude of 12 kilometers or higher, it probably had a magnitude of only 3 to 5 megatons. This is considerable less than the popular figure of 10 to 15 megatons, and less than 1% the high end suggestion of 700 megatons. That such a comparatively small explosion could cause this much damage is due to the fact that it was not a point explosion at the airburst altitude that caused the damage, but the fireball and shockwave that continued moving towards the surface. At a height of around 4 kilometers, the simulations show, the fireball came to a stop, but the shockwave continued on. It was the shockwave, not the explosion at the airburst altitude and not even the streaking fireball, which was responsible for most of the devastation in the forest.

The article goes on to say that the affected area is about 50km, which is enough to destroy a city, but IMHO, not enough to bring down a country. And it's unlikely to bulls-eye a city (that's a reallly unlucky shot.)

However, since we're moving the blast east or west, I propose that to maximize damage we move it a little farther west still and have it impact in the Baltic Sea! I feel that the shockwave should be large enough (3-5 Mtons is close to the energy release in the tsunamis after the Indonesian Xmas quake - that was 5Mtons) to generate a decent devastating tsunami. The very shallow Baltic sea should help with wave height at the expense of wave speed. I think we can expect wave heights from a meter or so to maybe 10 meters depending on where the airburst occurs. You'd need someone with better math skills than I to figure that one out. However, everything between Denmark and Finland should be affected in some way. Thats a lot of coastal cities to dry out and a lot of commerce disrupted. Look at what Katrina did to just one city.

Anyway, thats my thoughts.
 

Vault-Scope

Banned
So, in WWI the Russian Empire is likely to be on the defensive or neutral.

Because of the butterfly effecty, WWI probably won´t start as in OTL. :D


Can we get back to the topic of a Tsarist Russia which just lost Moscow to a Tunguska event rather then rambling on and on in a debate about the physics of timing such an event and the forum it goes in? This is starting to resemble those debates on the impact an ISOT will have on the gulf stream that crop up every once in a while in the ASB forum?

on an oddly related note (but one which will hopefully put this back on track), one of my ancestors (my grandfather or great-grandfather, not certain which) was somewhat present at tunguska. He was on the trans-siberian railroad on June 30, 1908, and passed by the devastated forest a few hours after the blast.

Yeah, agreed! :mad:
 
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