It would seem that potentially catastrophic strikes are more common than previously believed. We’ve been lucky the last 2,000 years.
“It would seem that potentially catastrophic strikes are more common than previously believed. We’ve been lucky the last 2,000 years”
It might be that they happen more often, but not in places where they would be noticed. If the Tunguska 1908 hit took place in a populated area...it would have been “bad”. And maybe 70% of the Earth surface is water, and a lot of that is in the middle of nowhere (the South Pacific). Maybe some tsunamis of the past in that area were caused by comets or meteors.
Histories report a few apparently catastrophic events that may have an airburst component. For example, Thomas Short reports the destruction of Antioch on 22 Oct 105. Part of his description reads: “...then came thunder and lightning, which made the night like noon-day; ... the sea raged and roared; then came an intolerable heat, that men stripped, and hid themselves underground; the sky dark, and the air so full of dust, that one could not see another....”
The date seems questionable to me; Short may have been copying a description of the “sudden fire all over Antioch” of Oct 525. Maybe his hand slipped and he wrote “October 105” instead of “October 525.”
Anyway, ancient histories do contain scattered reports that may describe local catastrophic events.