In 2013, a mysterious crater appeared overnight on the Taimyr peninsula in Siberia, almost swallowing a group of reindeer herders. Measuring 13 feet wide and 330 feet deep, its possible causes were debated for months before most experts settled on either a collapse triggered by climate-change-induced melting permafrost or a methane gas explosion, also due to climate change. Just three years later, the crater has widened from 15 feet to 230 feet and fearful locals, as well as Siberians living near other mysterious craters, are suddenly remembering details of its birth – a massive explosion and a huge glow in the sky. Is it time for a new explanation for these strange craters?

The Taimyr crater shortly after it appeared – notice its size and distance from the lake

There is verbal information that residents of nearby villages – at a distance of 70-100 km – heard a sound like an explosion, and one of them watched a clear glow in the sky. It was about one month after the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

Dr. Vladimir Epifanov, from the Siberian Research Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineral Resources, is one of the few experts to actually visit the remote crater (now called the Taimyr crater or the Deryabinsky crevice) because its location on the desolate Taimyr peninsula in the Krasnoyarsk region (referred to as the “end of the world”) is at least 275 miles (440 km) from the dozens of other Siberian holes that have been appearing in the past few years. in addition to hearing the new reports from witnesses, he has seen the unexpected and rapid growth of the crater, which is filled with water and now looks more like a lake. Photographs confirm that one wall of the crater is approaching an actual lake and its possible collapse could merge them – an event whose consequences have yet to be determined.

The Taimyr crater is now nearly touching the lake

While the Russian government claims to be monitoring this and the other Siberian craters by satellite, there has strangely been no new onsite research at the mysteriously-growing Deryabinsky crevice, including any by Dr. Epifanov, who continues to support the degassation theory – that degradation of gas hydrates at 500 meters ignited methane pockets at 100 meters – and believes this is a normal process in permafrost regions. However, he does not have an explanation for the rapid fifteen-fold growth of the Deryabinsky crevice.

Dr. Epifanov – is he revealing everything he or the Russian government knows about the Siberian craters?

Is the Russian government hiding something? Is Dr. Epifanov? Other researchers? Oil and gas companies?

Meanwhile, reindeer herders and the rest of the residents of “the end of the world” watch nervously as their the earth continues to mysteriously consume their land.