The background information for the book Crater, the first book of the Crater Series.

Patomskiy crater or Patom crater (also known as “Kolpakov cone”) is a peculiar rock formation located in a remote area in the Irkutsk region of southeastern Siberia, 360 km from the district center Bodaibo. It is a large mound made of shattered limestone blocks, rising from dense taiga. Its base diameter is about 160 meters and a height of about 40 m; the cone’s crown is ring-shaped, and in its center there is a smaller mound with a height of about 12 m. The volume of the crater is estimated as 230-250 thousand cubic meters, with a weight of about one million tons.

Patomskiy crater was discovered in 1949 by Russian geologist Vadim Kolpakov. Its origins have been subject of intense scientific interest, with hypotheses including meteorite, volcanic and gaseous origin, but to date no definite proof has been given. It is estimated to be only 300 to 350 years old.

The Mysterious Crater of the Siberian Wilderness (www.thebigriddle.com) We like to think that we have the world pretty mapped out. In this age of Google Earth and the ability to zoom into whatever location we want on a whim, there is the conception that there are no new places to be found that lie beyond our all-seeing eye. However, this was not always the case. There was a time where exploration could uncover new natural wonders right over the next hill, and places remained out in the wild frontiers of the world that managed to elude not only detection, but explanation as well. In some cases, the answers to these mysteries have come no closer to being solved even as we have advanced to the age of satellite mapping. One such site can be found in the desolate, rugged wilderness of Russia’s Siberia region. Here, among the silent forests and eternal cold lies a mysterious crater that has long defied efforts to categorize or label it; a place that was stumbled upon by accident and is the very definition of strange natural wonder.Read more…

Unresolved Mysteries (www.reddit.com) In Siberia, Russia, there’s an unusual natural phenomenon that has been called ‘The Most Mysterious Place in Russia’. That phenomenon is The Patomskiy Crater. Trees do not grow on the sides of the crater, but flourish for miles around it. There is a magnetic anomaly inside it, and there is evidence (based on analysis of the nearby trees) that radiation was once very high in and around it. The origins of the crater have been speculated as everything from volcano to meteorite to secret nuclear reactor to multiple (yes, multiple!) UFOs. However, the truth remains unresolved…Read more…

Town Perevoz. It used to have its own website that started with the following poetic words: “Our town is small, but beautiful. River Zhuia runs around it, while the town continue its hard life under the sound of taiga.”

At Perevoz (here you can see its map and some pictures), a small river Khomolkho joins the river Zhuia. Patomskiy crater is located upstream Khomolkho. Town Perevoz is at the crossroad of pathes to the gold mines of the area.

Like many other small towns of Siberia, Perevoz struggles to survive. But its population shrinks all the time. Currently (2010), it counts around 1,100 only.

Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (December 9, 1842 – February 8, 1921) was a Russian activist, scientist, and philosopher, who advocated decentralized government and anarchism. Kropotkin was a proponent of a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers.

The initial spark of these ideas were generated in 1866, when Kropotkin began reading the works of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and other political thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexander Herzen. These readings, along with his experiences among the peasantry in Siberia, led him to declare himself an anarchist by 1872.

He was disinherited by his father for quitting his military career and all his life lived by the labor of his own hands. Among other activities, he cooperated with Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote some 200 articles for it.

Kropotkin’s entry on “Anarchism” in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910): ANARCHISM (from the Greek word, meaning “contrary to authority”), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.

In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defense of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs.

Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.