to explain Tunguska about a century later. In fact, that made ten year old me realize how full of shit he was.

Here, conspiracy nuts are generally those who don't read/won't read. There, their access to information has been limited for a long time and even when it was a little more freely available, people weren't used to being able to access it and didn't. So they've got an excuse but we don't.

Putin's problem is that he falls into the "won't read" category, with the exception of bullshit from Oleksandr Dugin, someone whose lofty theories about Russia's exalted place in the world would make von Daniken blush but which Adolf Hitler would understand perfectly if you changed a few names.

It did resemble an air burst nuke; but of course, he couldn’t have known that. A broken clock,. . .

His books use edited pictures to "prove" supposed "ancient astronauts."

Before he started in with his books, he was an embezzler who was diagnosed as a serial liar.

As to the Tunguska blast, all the actual evidence shows the blast to have been caused by a stony asteroid exploding in an airburst.

In 2013, a much smaller meteor blew up over Siberia, causing damage that sure looked like a bomb hit.