THERE IS NO WORD in Latin for "volcano."
But that didn't stop Mount Vesuvius from erupting and burying the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under 141 trillion cubic feet of volcanic debris on the 24th of August in AD 79.
And thank goodness for that. Horrifying loss of life notwithstanding, the story of the buried city of Pompeii has long fueled the imaginations and writings of those who know of it. The latest to take the sensational bait have done a fantastic job. The Discovery Channel and the BBC recently co-produced a kick-ass documentary about the 24 hours of volcanic eruption, and the ruins of the towns nearly 2,000 years later--scheduled to air this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.
(Admit it, you weren't going to be doing anything better on Sunday at 9:00 p.m., so plan to watch.)
The obligatory "life as usual" opening scenes are adequate: We learn about the gladiator Celadus, who graffiti labels the "heart-throb of the girls," and we see "one house overlooking the harbor" where "slaves were about to serve hard-boiled eggs, bread, salad, small cakes, and fruit." Peevish masters mistreat large-eyed slave girls wearing gold snake armbands, and political slogans fly in anticipation of upcoming city council elections. All of these details are drawn from artifacts, which flash on the screen between reenacted scenes.
But the documentary really comes into its own when recreating and describing the number and variety of grisly volcano-related deaths.
The eruption--which buried and preserved the town and 5,000 of its inhabitants--was
unusual. So unusual, in fact, that the vivid description of the event as seen from across the Bay of Naples recorded by Pliny the Younger was disbelieved by scientists and historians until very recently. Rather than the "usual" picturesque cascading lava, the people of the Campania region (including the Pompeiians) saw an enormous plume rise from the volcano at supersonic speed, they ran as they were pelted by tiny pumice stones formed in the stratosphere from cooling magma and ash, and finally they were overcome by six pyroclastic surges--each a "glowing red cloud" tumbling down the side of the volcano in an "avalanche of hot, dry ash, rock fragments and gas" traveling at 100 k.p.h. (62 m.p.h.) at a temperatures in excess of 815 degrees Celsius (1,500 degrees Fahrenheit).
These pyroclastic surges provide some of the best material in the documentary. The first surge caught residents of Herculaneum on the beach, where they were hoping for rescue from the sea. "The people on the beach died of thermal shock. At such high temperatures, their skin vaporized and their bones were incinerated. Their brains boiled, then exploded. Even today, their skulls are still stained from the red cerebral matter that poured out. Like glass that shatters under boiling water, their bones snapped in half and their teeth disintegrated."
Much later, around 7:00 a.m. on the morning after the eruption began, the third pyroclastic surge reached the north wall of Pompeii. People nearby would have "felt its burning 400 degree Celsius (750 degree F) heat" and "fallen victim to the choking, foul cloud of gasses that followed. . . . Carbon dioxide, evil-smelling hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride and sulfur dioxide, the gas cloud put the weakest out of their misery."
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