February 6, 2021 • 46 mins
In the year 79 CE, the Italian volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted with with the thermal energy of 100,000 atomic bombs. Ashen destruction rained down on Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae. In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe explore this terrifying episode in history and what we can learn from it. (Originally published 2/6/2020)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
of the show. This one originally aired on February six,
and it was part one of our series about the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in so we get to talk
about plenty of the younger we get to talk about
(00:27):
volcanoes this one. Or I've been wanting to do this
episode for a long time. And uh and I'm glad
we're bringing it back out of the out of the basement. Yeah,
all right, let's dive right in. Soon afterwards, the cloud
began to descend and cover the scene. It had already
surrounded and concealed the island of Capri in the promontory
(00:50):
of my scene him. My mother begged me to leave
her and escape as best I could, but I absolutely refused,
taking her by the hand and making her to hurry
along with Ash was already falling by now, though in
no great quantity. Then I turned and saw a thick
black cloud advancing over the land behind us like a flood.
(01:10):
Let us leave the road while we can still see
I said, but we will be knocked down and trampled
by the crowd. We had scarcely sat down when darkness
came upon us. Not such as we have when the
sky is cloudy or when there is no moon, but
that of a room when it is shut up and
all the lamps put out. Welcome to Stuff to blow
(01:48):
your mind. A production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey,
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you know
your ancient Roman literature, you might have guessed from that
opening that today we're gonna be talking about the great
eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Uh. This is something that I've
(02:12):
wanted to do an episode on for a long time,
mainly because I love some of the ancient Roman original
documents that we're gonna be reading from today that they
are like so crisp as a descriptive source of this
ancient catastrophe that happened in the year seventy nine. Yeah,
this is a This is a topic I'm excited to
get into as well, because I definitely have strong childhood
(02:35):
memories of of course being fascinated with volcanoes. Volcanoes along
with dinosaurs are just part of being a child. But
then also I remember having a national copy of National
Geographic that had all these beautiful, haunting photographs of the
remnants of Pompeii, uh, the the victims of Vesuvius. Yeah,
(02:56):
it's funny you should bring up dinosaurs, because I think
this was sort of the back of my mind and
I hadn't brought it to the front until you said that.
There's a weird way that in a lot of the
paleo art that I grew up with as a child.
I think we've actually mentioned this on the show before,
that dinosaurs are often depicted with volcanoes currently erupting in
the background. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes, absolutely,
(03:18):
you see it all the time. And the thing is,
sometimes I feel like the artists, the paleo artist in question,
is definitely trying to get something across, like this is
a region in which they were volcanic eruptions, or perhaps
they're discussing the role of volcanoes, the role they may
have possibly played according to various theories regarding extinction events.
(03:38):
But other times I think it's this just idea of
this was this primal dangerous age in which the earth
is opening up, monsters are walking about, feasting on each other.
It's just that the world is alive with danger. I
think that's correct. But I think there's also something to
the thing you mentioned first, like the idea that volcanoes
(03:59):
are sometimes invoked as one of the explanatory mechanisms for
some of the extinction events that killed lots of the dinosaurs.
And because they're thought of this way, we think about
dinosaurs often like as if we we mainly think of
them in like the last moments before they were wiped
from the face of the earth. That's like the defining
time of their existence there frozen in amber. Uh, in
(04:23):
the moment right before their doom. And in a strange way,
that is quite literally the case about the settlements surrounding
Mount Vesuvius. Absolutely. I mean that's one of the things
about Pompey as it is it allows us to to
look into the past in ways that the remains of
other ancient cities do not. Yeah, it's for that reason
that at the same time that it's very grim to
(04:45):
look at, it's also kind of magical. Uh. So we're
gonna be talking about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This
this catastrophe in the year seventy nine CE that obliterated
several Roman settlements around the Bay of Naples, including the
city of palm Pay and the town of Herculanium. And
historians studying the subject are very lucky because we actually
(05:06):
have access to historical documents describing the eruption of Mount
Vesuvius in seventy nine in extreme detail. Specifically, this is
a pair of letters written by the first century Roman
politician and author Plenty the Younger, who is in fact
the nephew of the great Roman author and encyclopedist Plenty
(05:27):
the Elder, whose natural history we reference on the show
all the time for insights on what the ancient Romans
thought they knew about everything from sea monsters to the
culinary virtues of lead. That's right, I feel it. Scarcely
a month goes by that we don't reference Plenty of
the Elder, So it's it's it's great and of course
bitter sweet to meet up with him again here, right,
(05:48):
because this, of course is the end of the story
of Plenty of the Elder. He spent a lifetime collecting
all of this knowledge and pseudo knowledge about the world.
But we've never discussed before how plenty Of the elder died.
It was mountain that killed him. So about these letters
describing the event. Sometime early in the second century CE,
I think I've seen it placed, maybe around the year
(06:08):
one oh four, one oh five, something like that. Around
this time, plenty Of the Younger wrote two letters to
the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus to give his firsthand account
of the eruption and to explain the ultimate fate of
his uncle. Now, these two letters are famous for their
vivid description of the events, and so we wanted to
(06:29):
put you on the ground during the eruption of Vesuvius
by reading some selections from these letters. Uh. These will
come from a couple of different English translations that you
can easily find online. I sort of made a composite
out of two different translations, trying to take some of
the best parts from each one. One is from a
book called Volcanoes of Europe from Dunedin Academic Press from
(06:50):
TV by Degal Jaram Alwen Scarth and Jean Claude Tangai.
And then there's another widely used English translation by William Melmouth.
So those two came together to to create what you're
about to hear. Yes, these are are typically described as
the the oldest detailed accounts, detailed firsthand accounts of a
(07:13):
volcanic corruption. That's not to say that volcanic eruptions were
not known to to do ancient people's They were known,
um and then we have mentioned of them popping out.
There's even I read there's there's an argument that Virgils,
a mention of an eruption of Mount Etna in the
in Need was actually generated via firsthand observation. But even
(07:38):
that would not be the level of detail that we're
discussing here, right. I have not found any evidence of
a description of a volcanic eruption in in literary history
older than Plenty's description here that contains nearly anywhere close
to the amount of detail we get, right, Certainly nothing
that has survived, and probably because a lot of the
(07:58):
people who might have been in a position and to
write such an account themselves did not survive. Uh So,
Plenty the Younger begins his first letter by praising Tacitus's
skills as a writer of history and talking about his
uncle Plenty of the Elder, and he he says, basically,
you know, my uncle died in a misfortune, but there's
a chance to redeem his legacy, because if you put
(08:20):
him in your in your history, if his name becomes
associated with the eruption of Vesuvius, it will render his
name immortal. Uh So, I'm going to pick up after
that section of of introduction and just read from Plenty's
account within his first letter. At the time of the
great eruption, my uncle Plenty was with the fleet under
his command at mycene him on the August about one
(08:44):
in the afternoon. My mother desired him to observe a
cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape.
He had just taken a turn in the sun, and
after bathing himself in cold water and making a light luncheon,
he had gone back to his books. He imediately arose
and went out upon a promontory, from whence he might
get a better site of this very uncommon appearance. From
(09:07):
that distance, it was not clear from which mountain the
cloud was rising, although it was found afterwards to be Vesuvious.
The cloud could best be described as more like an
umbrella pine than any other tree, for it rose high
up like a trunk and then divided into branches. I
imagined that this was because it was thrust up by
the initial blast until its power weakened and it was
(09:30):
left unsupported and spread out sideways under its own weight.
Sometimes it looked light colored, sometimes it looked modeled and
dirty with the earth and cinders it had carried up.
This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and
research as my uncle, extraordinary and worth further looking into.
He ordered a light vessel to be got ready and
(09:51):
gave me leave if I liked it to accompany him.
I said, I had rather go on with my work,
and it so happened he had himself give in me
something to ride out. As he was coming out of
the house, he received a note from a Retina, the
wife of Tascus, who was in the utmost alarm at
the immediate danger which threatened her for her villa, lying
(10:13):
at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. There was no way
of escape but by boat. She was terrified by the
threatening danger and begged him to rescue her. He's changed
his plan at once, and what he had started in
a spirit of scientific curiosity, he ended as a hero.
You know, at this point I always stopped, and I wonder, like,
how did he get the note? I imagine it must
(10:34):
have come to him across the water, right that maybe
in a smaller boat she was able to send a note,
doubt and to ask him to come back with larger
boats that she and her family could escape on. I
I imagine, I mean, the only ways it would be
that or by some manner of bird. Yeah, as long
as we're interjecting, I want to remind everyone here that
that Plenty of the elder would have been about fifty
(10:55):
six years old at this point. If you're trying to
picture him in your head, and perhaps cast um an
actor in the role. Yes, and the younger Plenty also
says of his uncle that he was that he was
like brave and stout, but he he also says he
was a quite corpulent man, so like he wasn't necessarily,
you know, fit as a fiddle to be running out
into danger. But anyway, to go back to the account, uh,
(11:17):
Plenty continues, he ordered the galleys to be put to sea,
and he went himself on board with an intention of
assisting not only Rectina, but the several other towns which
lay thickly strewn along that beautiful coast, hastening then to
the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror,
he steered his course direct to the point of danger,
and with so much calmness and presence of mind as
(11:40):
to be able to make and dictate his observations upon
the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene.
So he's taken notes as he goes. He was now
so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew
thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships,
together with pumice stones and black pieces of burning rock
(12:00):
shattered by the fire. They were in danger too, not
only of being a ground by the sudden retreat of
the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled
down from the mountain and obstructed all the shore. Can
you imagine that being out on a boat and so
like the sea is first of all pulling away from
the shore as you're trying to get into the shore
(12:21):
to rescue people from the villas along the shoreline. So
the seas retreating, and then also stuff from the mountain
is now coming down and making its way into the water, right,
I mean it must have been like approaching a shore
upon which there was a battle. Only instead of two
human forces engaged in battle, it is a battle between
civilization and the elements of the earth itself unreal. He continues. Here,
(12:46):
he stopped to consider whether he should turn back, for
the pilot was advising retreat. Fortune favors the brave, he said,
Steer to where Pomponius is. Pomponius lived at t Stavia,
a town across us the Bay of Naples, which was
not yet in danger, but would be threatened if the
eruption spread. Pomponianus had already put his belongings into a
(13:09):
boat to escape as soon as the contrary onshore wind changed.
The wind, of course, was fully in my uncle's favor,
and quickly brought his boat to Stabia. My uncle calmed
and encouraged his terrified friend, the more effectually to soothe
his fears by seeming unconcerned himself. He ordered the drawing
of a hot bath, and then, after having bathed, sat
(13:30):
down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least with
every appearance of it, Which is just as brave? Is
that just as bread? I guess? So, yeah, if you're
like trying to calm other people, even though you are
yourself scared. Yeah. I mean, if there's only so much
you can do, calmness is going to help and help
to maintain a proper retreat. I mean, I guess to
(13:52):
a certain extent, one could again apply the military metaphor here,
you know, and the military backgrounds of individuals involved. So
I guess what they're saying here is that he's stuck
at the house until the winds change and they can
get out by water, and trying to encourage people not
to panic while they're while they're there, so plenty continues. Meanwhile,
tall broad flames blazed from several places on Vesuvius and
(14:16):
glared out through the darkness of the night. But my uncle,
in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured
him it was only the burning of the villages which
the country people had abandoned to the flames. After this
he retired to rest, and it is most certain that
he was so little disquieted as to fall into a
sound sleep. For his breathing, which on account of his corpulence,
(14:37):
was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants
outside his door. But eventually the courtyard outside began to
fill with so much ash and pummice that if he
had stayed in his room, he would never have been
able to get out. So he was awakened, and he
went to Pompony Inis and the rest of the company,
who had stayed up all night and we're feeling too
(14:58):
anxious to think of going to They consulted together whether
it would be most prudent to trust to the houses,
which now rocked from side to side with frequent and
violent concussions, as though shaken from their very foundations, or
fly to the open fields, where the stones and cinders,
though light and porous, fell in large showers and threatened destruction.
(15:20):
In this choice of dangers, they resolved for the fields,
a resolution which, while the rest of the company were
hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool
and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied
upon their heads with napkins, for this was their whole
defense against the storm of stones that fell around them.
(15:41):
And I have to admit that is that is a
slightly comical mental image. Yes, it is put in your head. Well,
it's it's like both at the same time. It's like
funny but it's also so grim and so real, like
you can imagine like, Okay, so the house you're you're
afraid the house is going to collapse. You've got to
get away from the house. But outside the house, stuff is,
rocks are falling from the sky. So what do you do?
(16:01):
You know, like it's not safe to be under a roof.
So like they literally were like, okay, we've got to
improvise helmets, right, yeah, So yeah, I agree, it is.
It is both a little bit comic but also terrifying.
I mean, this whole situation is terrifying. And I think
one thing to keep in mind too, is we read
this account is again thinking about to what extent Plenty
is trying to manage evacuation and to to to manage
(16:25):
their response, a calm response to this catastrophe that's taking place,
because that is going to be vital not only do
this scenario, but to other scenarios and even future scenarios
regarding the clash of human civilization and volcanic activity. Yes. Uh,
And you say he's having to manage an evacuation, He's
not only having to do that, he's having to improvise
(16:47):
management of an evacuation because they don't know what the
best practices are. So anyway, it goes on to the
conclusion of the letter here. So they've gone out with
the pillows tied to their heads, And then plenty of
the younger says it was now daylight everywhere else, but
there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night,
and they were forced to light their torches and lamps.
My uncle went down to the shore to see if
(17:09):
there was any chance of escape by sea, but the
waves were still far too high. There my uncle, laying
himself down upon a sail cloth which was spread for him,
called twice for some cold water, which he drank. Then
immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whift of sulfur,
dispersed the rest of the party and obliged him to rise.
(17:30):
He raised himself up with the assistance of his two servants,
and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by
some gross and noxious vapor, having always had a weak
throat which was often inflamed as soon as it was
light again, which was not till the third day after
this melancholy accident, his body was found entire and without
(17:50):
any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in
which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep
than dead. So Plenty of the Elder dies here on
the shore, but not everybody in his party does because,
of course, like the servants and friends are later able
to report back to Plenty of the younger what happened
to his uncle? Right and uh? And of course Plenty
of the Younger mentions his his ailing lungs as being
(18:13):
a possible reason that he succumbed to these fumes. It
has also been hypothesized that he could have actually even
though by all appearances it might have had something to
do with the fumes, it also could have simply been
a stroke or heart attack. Yeah, I mean, obviously this
is a high stress, high exertion situation. Um, and he
(18:33):
wasn't a young man anymore. But so Plenty then ends
his letter by saying he witnessed a lot of other stuff,
but he didn't include it in the letter because Tacitus
originally had only asked how his uncle had died, And
apparently Tacitus wrote back and wanted to know more. He
wanted to know details about what the younger Plenty and
his mother had encountered when they stayed behind it mycene him,
(18:55):
and that makes for the content of the second letter.
So maybe we should take a break, and then when
we come back we can read from plenty second letter
about the eruption. Thank alright, we're back. So before the
break we were discussing how Plenty of the elder died,
and now we are essentially going to explore how Plenty
of the younger lived. Yes, so now remember in the
(19:18):
first letter, plenty of the younger and his mother stayed
behind at mycene him while the elder took the fleet
out to help people who were further along the shore.
And so Plenty picks up his narrative like this. He says,
after my uncle left us, I studied, dined, and went
to bed, but slept only fitfully. We had had earth
tremors for several days, which were not especially alarming because
(19:39):
they happened so often in Campania. But that night they
were so violent that everything felt as if it were
being shaken and turned over. My mother came hurrying to
my room, and we sat together in the fore court
facing the sea. As I was at that time, but
eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should
call my behavior in this dangerous juncture courage or folly.
(20:01):
But I looked up to Livy and amused myself with
turning over that author and even making extracts from him,
as if I had been perfectly at my leisure. Though
it was now morning, the light was still exceedingly faint
and doubtful. The buildings around we're already tottering, and we
would have been in danger in our confined space if
(20:21):
our house had fallen down. This made us decide to
leave town. We were chased after by a panic stricken
crowd that chose to follow someone else's judgment rather than
decide anything for themselves. I love that detail that he's
like he's trying to act like he's not afraid, so
he's just going on with his studies. It's like, I'll
just keep reading Livy, make some notes. And then again
(20:43):
this is terrifying scene of like every no one knows
what to do, and so like, of course they're going
to follow uh plenty here, just like like somebody who
looks like they know what needs to be done and
knows no where they need to go, they're going to
fall in behind them. We also he was the of
a family of military command, so his uncle would have
been known as the commander of the fleet there at
(21:04):
the bay. So I think if the relatives of the
commanders suddenly start leaving town, everybody is going to see
that and be like, we probably need to get out
to Yeah, I would. I would say, you know, the
comeback here would be of course, we're following you and
not thinking for ourselves. You're the military, like you're you're
you're the one to follow you. We're not going to
(21:25):
trust your own judgment. Here you are the navy. But again,
this would not have been a time when people had
like a list of safety procedures they could look up
for a volcanic eruption. I mean you you have no precedent.
You had no idea what to do, right, because, as
well as we'll discuss as we get into this topic more,
this volcano had not erupted in quite a while. It
had at the very least been centuries. Yeah. Now Plenty
(21:47):
picks up of this narrative. He says, being at a
convenient distance from the houses, we stood still in the
midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The carriages
we had ordered began to lurch to and fro although
the ground was flat, and we could not keep them still,
even when we wedged their wheels with stones. Then we
saw the sea sucked back, apparently by a convulsion of
(22:11):
the earth, and many sea creatures were left stranded on
the dry sand. From the other direction, over the land,
a dreadful black cloud was torn by gushing flames and
great tongues of fire, like much magnified lightning. Soon afterwards,
the cloud began to descend and cover the sea. It
had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capri and
(22:33):
the promontory of my Sinum. My mother begged me to
leave her and escape as best I could, but I
absolutely refused, taking her by the hand and making her
to hurry along with me. Ash was already falling by
now they're in no great quantity. Then I turned and
saw a thick black cloud advancing over the land behind
us like a flood. Let us leave the road while
(22:55):
we still can see, I said, or we will be
knocked down and trampled by the crowd. We had actually
sat down when darkness came upon us, not such as
we have when the sky is cloudy or when there
is no moon, but that of a room when it
is shut up and all the lamps put out. Can
you imagine that? So this is daytime now, but the
it is not only dark like a night, it is
(23:16):
darker than night. Yeah, this is this is the darkness
at noon type situation exactly. So he goes on to
describe the terror of the scene. He says, you might
hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and
the shouts of men, some calling for their children, others
for their parents, others for their husbands, and seeking to
recognize each other by the voices that replied, one lamenting
(23:39):
his own fate, another that of his family, some praying
to die from the very fear of dying, some lifting
their hands to the gods. But the greater part convinced
that there were now no gods at all, and that
the final, endless night of which we had heard had
come upon the world. Among these there were some who
augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or willfully invented.
(24:03):
I remember some who declared that one part of my
sin him had fallen, that another was on fire. It
was false, but they found people to believe them. So
just chaos is raining misinformation is flying. The world is
dark and full of terror. The day is dark and
full of terrors. All right, he continues, it now grew
(24:25):
rather lighter, which we imagined to be the forerunner of
an approaching burst of flames, as in truth it was
rather than the return of day. However, the fire fell
at a distance from us. Then again we were immersed
in a thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes
rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and
then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should
(24:47):
have been crushed and buried in the heap. I might
have boasted that during all this scene of horror, not
a sigh or expression of fear escaped me. But in
truth my support was grounded in that miserable though my
d consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity,
and that I was perishing with the world itself. That
(25:07):
line has haunted me ever since I first read it.
That he says he's not afraid because he knew it
wasn't just him dying, it was the end of the
entire world. And finally he concludes the letter saying, at
last the darkness paled into smoke or cloud and the
real daylight returned, but the sun shone with a lurid light,
(25:29):
as during an eclipse. Every object that presented itself to
our weakened eyes seemed changed, being covered deep with ashes,
as if with snow. We returned to my sin Him,
where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and
passed an anxious night between hope and fear, though indeed
with a much larger share of the latter, for the
(25:50):
earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down,
heightening their own and their friends calamities by terrible predictions. So,
for st of all, I think those letters are just
amazing literary documents. But also I wanted to say, there
is a painting that I've seen online several times that
captures the spirit of those letters pretty well for me.
(26:12):
It's called The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the
English Romantic painter John Martin. Yeah, all right, so we've
presented you with the drama of what is happening. Let's
provide a little background just about this region, about Pompeii
and some of these other cities that we were name dropping, Right,
(26:33):
what was going on in the area before the seventy
nine CE eruption of Vesuvius. So the part of Italy
immediately surrounding Mount Vesuvius. The the larger region here is
known as Campania, which Plenty makes reference to because he says,
you know, we were used to earthquakes in Campania. It's
kind of a geologically active region. So when the little
(26:53):
earthquakes began, we weren't too worried at first, and still,
you know, until it started rocking the house back and forth. Um,
and so Campania translates into I think roughly into the
word countryside. Apparently it was once known as the Campania
felix or the happy countryside. And it's this region in
the southwestern part of the Italian Peninsula along the Tyrannian Sea,
(27:17):
and its capital is, of course, the coastal city of
Naples or Napoly in Italian. This is where the pizza
comes from, is it? I think maybe it is, or
at least a famous variety of pizza that comes from
He here's Nepolitan and Neapolitan. I'm not sure. I don't
know what the relationship between those two words. You thinking
about ice cream? Maybe, yeah, I don't know we'll have
to do this, We'll have to come back to it
(27:37):
on our other show, Invention. Just right in and shame us.
Go ahead, Okay. So today, Campania is a highly sought
after tourist destination, in large part due to the natural
beauty of its coastline, including stretches like the famous Amalfi Coast.
If you've seen these gorgeous photos of like little antique
(27:58):
towns nestled into the steeply descending hillsides between looming cliffs,
sull covered in trees and lush greenery, this kind of
stuff along the waterfront in Italy, I think there's a
very good chance that you are looking at images of
the Amalfi Coast. But it turns out that the tourism
industry is not new in Campania. Even in the first
century during the Roman Empire, places especially around the Bay
(28:22):
of Naples, were extremely fashionable as vacation resorts for the
rich elite of Rome and other capitals of the Empire.
And again, you just look up pictures of this place
and you instantly understand why it is a place of
of of absolutely gorgeous natural formations and vegetation. The coastline
is pristine and striking. I mean I want to go
(28:43):
there right now. Yes, yes, looking at a photos of
this region which which is still a vacation destination, like
you said, it looks very inviting. But that's not all.
Of course. Campania also has a reputation as a rich
and fertile farmland both then and now, and it's and
today it's very densely populated, but it's also a center
(29:04):
of agricultural food production for Italy. Yes, lots of orchards,
lots of vineyards. Uh. Now. Probably the most famous point
of destruction within this this sort of broad cone of
destruction from the vesuvious eruption is the city of Pompeii.
It was a city that had been settled by seafaring
Greeks almost a thousand years before, like in the eighth
(29:26):
century b C. And then for several centuries after that
was a city controlled variously by the Greeks and the Etruscans,
sometimes trading off. It only fell under Roman control during
the second century b c. E Before the Empire. This
would have been during the period of the Roman Republic
uh and then by seventy nine CE, Pompeii had somewhere
(29:47):
between like ten thousand and twenty thousand inhabitants. It was wealthy,
it was thriving. Like other places in Campania, Pompei was
a resort for the famous and the powerful families of Rome,
with expensive illa's, bath houses, restaurants, brothels, you know, kind
of a kind of an aspen of ancient Rome. All right. Uh.
(30:07):
The one problem, of course, that is that all of
this was built up in the region surrounding Vesuvius, and uh,
and of course Vesuvius at the time was slumbering, or
seemed to be slumbering, but then in seventy nine it awakens.
And you know, I would say, it's not We can
come back to this later if you want, but it's
not necessarily just a coincidence that like this is a
(30:30):
place of great beauty and agricultural production, so it draws
a lot of people and just happens to be near
a dangerous, active volcano. There might be some reasons that
both of these things are true. Oh yeah, I mean yeah,
we can go and touch on these facts really quickly,
because first of all, we mentioned how fertile, uh, the
the area is, how well things grow even on the
(30:52):
slopes of Vesuvius itself. And that is because of this
rich volcanic soil. Yes, and I think it's also possible
to argue that some of the geologic features that make
it kind of risky in terms of volcanic activity also
contribute to the beauty of its coastline. Absolutely. I mean
the the the volcanic activity is the the the engine
that formed the land that people are occupying, that people
(31:14):
are growing crops upon, etcetera. Now, on the day of
the eruption, it's estimated that of the between ten thousand
and twenty thousand inhabitants of Pompeii, about two thousand inhabitants
were probably killed. And when you add up all those
who perished in other Vesuvian settlements like the towns of Herculaneum,
Oplontis and Stabbia, Stabia was where plenty of the elder
(31:38):
sale to help his friend, Somewhere close to maybe like
sixteen thousand people died in total, though it's very difficult
to have accurate numbers. But one thing that makes Pompeii
special is because of the way it was buried under
the ash and ejecta of the eruption, Pompeii became at
once both obscure and illuminating obscure of course, because it
(31:59):
was literally hidden from investigation. It's sort of vanished from
history as if wiped off the face of the earth
because it had been paved over by the volcano. But
at the same time, uh it kind of became a
bright and transparent window into life in ancient Roman times
because under all of that dust, the city was almost
(32:20):
perfectly preserved. Since it had been buried in e raced
from history, there's no way for the remains of the
city to be disturbed. And it was also very democratic
in its preservation of the dead. Uh So it's one
of these great examples where we we get a little
inside into just how daily life worked in this city
(32:40):
before the eruption. Yeah, many people are just found, presumably
lying dead, exactly where they were when the calamity hit,
and so the city basically stayed that way until amateur
excavation of the of this geologically paved oversight began around
seventy an event that is sometimes referred to as the
Earth of modern archaeology. All right, on that note, we're
(33:03):
going to take one more break, but when we come back,
we're going to continue our exploration by looking at the
volcanic eruption itself. Than alright, we're back. Okay, so we've
gotten the ground level view of what was happening on
the day of the eruption of Vesuvius in but what
(33:23):
do we know now looking back with the scientific lens,
What do we think probably happened on that day in
geological terms? All right, well, let's let's back up a
little bit and just talk about the basic idea of volcano. Volcano,
of course, is just a rupture in a planet's crust,
but there are are various types of volcanoes, depending on
their location, their history, and the the underlying activity. Fun fact, though,
(33:47):
the word volcano derives from the volcanic isle of Volcano,
named for Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. The Greeks
knew this island by other names, but they also considered
it the foundry of Festus, basically the equivalent of Vulcan. Yeah,
they like the forge, god of sparks and banging. Yeah,
So so again, you know, the ancient people is definitely
(34:09):
knew of volcanoes, and they were remembered, at least in
in the construction of myths and the naming of places. Now,
Vesuvius itself is considered a soma stratovolcano. Um, it's also
considered a complex volcano. So let's talk about what this means. First,
we'll talk about the Soma part. So, if you were
(34:31):
to travel back four hundred thousand years or so, you
would not find Mount Vesuvius at all. Rather, you'd find
Mount Soma. So Mount Soma underwent various eruptions, and we
have to remember that volcanoes are places of violent change,
and due to these violent eruptions, Mount Soma eventually collapse
(34:53):
into what is known as a caldera. So this occurs
when a particularly violent eruption empties the underlying magma chamber
of a volcano, making it impossible for it to support
its own weight. Alright, So um again, it's like the
volcano just has erupted so much, and it grew so much,
erupted so much that it's just caved in on itself.
(35:15):
It's just destroyed itself. It's like if you you were
too empty out all of the molten lava from your
molten lava cake and then the cake just collapses, right.
All you have with like the edges of the cake
that form like like ring mountain around a center it's
like a crater um. And this is where we get
that classic image of what a volcano you usually looks like.
If you draw a cartoon volcano, you're probably drawing a
(35:36):
ring shaped caldera where the top of the mountain has
collapsed after some eruption in the past. But even though
the the the the mountain itself has collapsed, the underlying
volcanic avic activity is still there, so magma and volcanic
gases continue to build, and this can result in a
few different varieties of caldera. The center can swell back
(35:57):
up into what is known as a resurgent dome, like
with a yellow stone, and it's you know, it's so
called supervolcano. But in the case of Avessuvius, another volcanic
cone and this is the Mount of Vesuvius, rises up
in the center of the Soma caldera, and this is
why we call this type of volcano a Soma volcano.
(36:17):
So the remnants again of the old mountain the caldera,
are still around it, and the Soma caldera is also
sometimes referred to who's just Mount Soma today, But again
it is the remnant of the old mountain and in
the center is Vesuvius. That's hard, I mean volcano inside
a volcano, right, and again it's important to know. Yeah,
Vesuvius certainly in jel other time is a is a
(36:38):
young volcano? Okay, So what sort of volcano is Vesuvius itself?
We'll remember we use the the description a soma strato volcano.
So a strato volcano is a steep conical volcano built
from many layers of lava ash pumas and tefra tefra.
That's a pyroclass or rejected fragments from the volcano that
(36:59):
have fallen to the round. All of this from various
eruptions building up, building up this volcano. Now you mentioned
it was a young volcano. Yes, relatively young again in
terms of geologic time. Uh, certainly human times a different matter,
which we'll get into. Uh. During its life, it's had
periods of activity and inactivity. Its most recent period of
(37:22):
activity as of this recording was between nineteen thirteen and
nineteen forty four CEH. And today it's uh, you know
it's it's it's inactive. You rather inactive. You can actually
hike up to the top. Uh. It's eruptions, however, were
known in ancient times, but at the time of its
eruption in seventy nine CE, it had been inactive for
(37:42):
at least two hundred and ninety five years. It was
reputed to have erupted into seventeen b c E based
on the writings of Solicitalicus, but a great many modern
writers have rejected this. We know it's sustained a particularly
powerful erupt and during the second millennium b c E.
This is the Avellino eruption, which decimated the Bronze Age
(38:06):
settlements in the area. UH. But again, well, it's ultimately
a situation where we don't have a lot of information
about its pre about its activity in pre seventy nine
c E uh in that time period, but we can
presume that it had been centuries since its last eruption.
Avelino is the name of another town nearby Naples, So
(38:26):
it's actually I remember that because it's the town that
Tony Soprano's family comes from. Okay, At any rate, enough
time had passed for humans in this region to lose
their immediate fear of the mountain um and so cities
encroached upon its domain. Gardens and vineyards popped up around it.
The children of Prometheus grew bold in the silence of Vesuvius.
(38:49):
But again it's it's clear that they had not really
completely forgotten what Vesuvius had been capable of in the past.
Myths of giants battling Hercules. Uh, you know, still remained
about the mountain. Uh. There were geologic connections that linked
that clearly linked to suvious to Mount Edna, which was
certainly active and was described erupting again in Virgils and need,
(39:12):
which I referred to earlier. So it's not like people
did not know what had happened here in the past
or what a volcano looked like. I mean, there was
it was the world wasn't completely ignorant of what it
could do. You know, it's kind of weird. It's it's
one of these tragedies of time scales that humans are
I feel like, almost constantly facing off against, where if
(39:36):
you look at the activity of a volcano across geologic time,
you just see it's pretty regular, you know, pretty frequently
this thing's going to erupt. But then you zoom into
human historical time and the eruptions are not quite frequent
enough to discourage settlement. Because our memories are not that long,
like a few hundred years. Seems like, you know, an
(39:57):
eternity to an individual person. Yeah, yeah, I mean the
whole whole lives will pass during the periods of relative
inactivity of a volcano. Uh in many of these cases.
So you know, we don't know everything about the seventy
nine eruption a k the plan a plan a in
eruption named for plenty, but but we still know quite
(40:19):
a bit, as it was again the first volcanic eruption
to be described in detail. We have plenty of the
Younger's excellent descriptions of the pre eruption quakes, the eruption itself,
the ash fall, pyroclastic flows, and the resulting mild tsunami
in the Bay of Naples. It is estimated that the
column of ash that rose up into the sky towered
(40:40):
some twenty miles or thirty two kilometers, and then it
ejected one cubic mile or four cubic kilometers of ash
in just something like nineteen hours. Ten ft of tephra
fell on Pompeii. Pyroclastic flow buried herculaneum under seventy five
or twenty three ms of ash and will eventually look
(41:00):
at what all of this meant for the humans who
resided in the impacted cities as well, like on a
biological level. I think we'll have to get into them
in the next episode. Yeah, it's also been estimated that
the eruption itself would have carried the thermal energy of
a hundred thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs, and all of this
would have lasted roughly two days. Vesuvius has erupted some
(41:23):
three dozen times since UH, sometimes with deadly results. Mud
flows and lava flows from a se eruption killed but
some three thousand, five hundred people. And today, as before
the seventy nine CE eruption, vineyards and orchards covered the
slopes of the mountain UH, there's an there's an enormous
(41:43):
population surrounding the volcano today. I believe the area is
like the most densely populated part of Italy. Right. I've
also seen it described as the as the most densely
populated area surrounding volcano on Earth. But again, the people,
but it's speed of full. You look at these pictures,
it's beautiful. There's an actually tremendous amount of growth there. Again,
(42:03):
the soil is very fertile um, and before the eruption
of six thirty one, during a very long period of inactivity,
forests are actually said to have grown in the crater,
and you would have found three lakes there as well.
So yeah, given the the amount of time, the great
amount of time relative to the human experience and even
the lives of plants that transpires between eruptions, I mean
(42:28):
you can have a great greening of the mountain occur.
Oh man, I wish I could see what that was
like to have the forests and the lakes down in there,
because I love that kind of thing. I don't know
if you've been the Crater Lake in Oregon. I have not, Well,
you've probably seen images of it. At least it's absolutely gorgeous,
one of the most amazing beautiful places I've ever been.
But I think it's exactly that contrast of like of uh,
(42:50):
this clear still water and all these forests in life
just flooding in to this place where there was catastrophic
destruction you know, some number centuries ago, right, and then
that and then the humans come in as well, And
there's probably something elegant to be said about just like
the nature of of the human experience too. You know,
like even though something terrible happened here, humans have a
(43:12):
way in many cases of moving forward through it and
and finding a way to make a life there. I
know it's not this way, but it almost it seems
almost malicious, like the the the volcano with this fertile
volcanic soil is just sort of like baiting you. It
is like leaving out this bait to attract you into
the geologic trap. Sorry, I know that's anthropomorphizing. It's it's
(43:37):
not the volcano's fault. It doesn't mean to hurt you. Yeah.
I think even Tolkien didn't say Mount Doom itself was evil, right,
it was just but Mount Doom is more what you'd expect.
It's in more door, which is a place where even
the air, the very air you breathe, as a toxic
fume and nothing grows there. And you know, it's just
like it's just this blasted landscape. I mean, no, that
(43:57):
this is the case where the area right around this
vult cano that could erupt again is extremely beautiful and
fertile and inviting to life. Yeah. Alright, on that note,
we're gonna go ahead and call it for this episode.
But We will be back in the next episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind to continue our discussions regarding
the suvious. We're gonna get into, uh, some of the
(44:18):
sort of forensic evidence of what happened to the people
in Pompeii. We're gonna get into. We're gonna discuss the
possible remains of plenty of the elder and I will
also just discuss the continued threat posed by volcanoes to
settled regions today and you know, and some some about
you know, what we what we're prepared to do or
(44:38):
unprepared to do about their eruptions. I can't wait. I've
been wanting to talk about this for so long. I'm
so glad we finally got here. Yeah, and I think
it may kick off even further, um uh further episodes
that deal with volcanoes and uh human history. There's a
there's a lot of rich there's a lot of rich
soil uh that that is left behind by these uh
(45:00):
these often cata cataclysmic events. In the meantime, if you
want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
your Mind, you can find our show wherever you get
your podcasts um. If you go to Stuff to Blow
your mind dot com. That will definitely redirect you to
the I Heart page for our show, where you can subscribe,
you can download, et cetera, and wherever you get the show.
(45:21):
We encourage you to do those things. Rate, review, subscribe.
These are the things you can do to help the show,
as well as just telling a friend in the real world,
just spread the word huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,
(45:43):
just to say hi, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind It's a production of I Heart Radios.
Hows to works and more podcasts from my heart Radio.
Visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(46:04):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
of the show. This one originally aired on February six,
and it was part one of our series about the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in so we get to talk
about plenty of the younger we get to talk about
(00:27):
volcanoes this one. Or I've been wanting to do this
episode for a long time. And uh and I'm glad
we're bringing it back out of the out of the basement. Yeah,
all right, let's dive right in. Soon afterwards, the cloud
began to descend and cover the scene. It had already
surrounded and concealed the island of Capri in the promontory
(00:50):
of my scene him. My mother begged me to leave
her and escape as best I could, but I absolutely refused,
taking her by the hand and making her to hurry
along with Ash was already falling by now, though in
no great quantity. Then I turned and saw a thick
black cloud advancing over the land behind us like a flood.
(01:10):
Let us leave the road while we can still see
I said, but we will be knocked down and trampled
by the crowd. We had scarcely sat down when darkness
came upon us. Not such as we have when the
sky is cloudy or when there is no moon, but
that of a room when it is shut up and
all the lamps put out. Welcome to Stuff to blow
(01:48):
your mind. A production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey,
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you know
your ancient Roman literature, you might have guessed from that
opening that today we're gonna be talking about the great
eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Uh. This is something that I've
(02:12):
wanted to do an episode on for a long time,
mainly because I love some of the ancient Roman original
documents that we're gonna be reading from today that they
are like so crisp as a descriptive source of this
ancient catastrophe that happened in the year seventy nine. Yeah,
this is a This is a topic I'm excited to
get into as well, because I definitely have strong childhood
(02:35):
memories of of course being fascinated with volcanoes. Volcanoes along
with dinosaurs are just part of being a child. But
then also I remember having a national copy of National
Geographic that had all these beautiful, haunting photographs of the
remnants of Pompeii, uh, the the victims of Vesuvius. Yeah,
(02:56):
it's funny you should bring up dinosaurs, because I think
this was sort of the back of my mind and
I hadn't brought it to the front until you said that.
There's a weird way that in a lot of the
paleo art that I grew up with as a child.
I think we've actually mentioned this on the show before,
that dinosaurs are often depicted with volcanoes currently erupting in
the background. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes, absolutely,
(03:18):
you see it all the time. And the thing is,
sometimes I feel like the artists, the paleo artist in question,
is definitely trying to get something across, like this is
a region in which they were volcanic eruptions, or perhaps
they're discussing the role of volcanoes, the role they may
have possibly played according to various theories regarding extinction events.
(03:38):
But other times I think it's this just idea of
this was this primal dangerous age in which the earth
is opening up, monsters are walking about, feasting on each other.
It's just that the world is alive with danger. I
think that's correct. But I think there's also something to
the thing you mentioned first, like the idea that volcanoes
(03:59):
are sometimes invoked as one of the explanatory mechanisms for
some of the extinction events that killed lots of the dinosaurs.
And because they're thought of this way, we think about
dinosaurs often like as if we we mainly think of
them in like the last moments before they were wiped
from the face of the earth. That's like the defining
time of their existence there frozen in amber. Uh, in
(04:23):
the moment right before their doom. And in a strange way,
that is quite literally the case about the settlements surrounding
Mount Vesuvius. Absolutely. I mean that's one of the things
about Pompey as it is it allows us to to
look into the past in ways that the remains of
other ancient cities do not. Yeah, it's for that reason
that at the same time that it's very grim to
(04:45):
look at, it's also kind of magical. Uh. So we're
gonna be talking about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This
this catastrophe in the year seventy nine CE that obliterated
several Roman settlements around the Bay of Naples, including the
city of palm Pay and the town of Herculanium. And
historians studying the subject are very lucky because we actually
(05:06):
have access to historical documents describing the eruption of Mount
Vesuvius in seventy nine in extreme detail. Specifically, this is
a pair of letters written by the first century Roman
politician and author Plenty the Younger, who is in fact
the nephew of the great Roman author and encyclopedist Plenty
(05:27):
the Elder, whose natural history we reference on the show
all the time for insights on what the ancient Romans
thought they knew about everything from sea monsters to the
culinary virtues of lead. That's right, I feel it. Scarcely
a month goes by that we don't reference Plenty of
the Elder, So it's it's it's great and of course
bitter sweet to meet up with him again here, right,
(05:48):
because this, of course is the end of the story
of Plenty of the Elder. He spent a lifetime collecting
all of this knowledge and pseudo knowledge about the world.
But we've never discussed before how plenty Of the elder died.
It was mountain that killed him. So about these letters
describing the event. Sometime early in the second century CE,
I think I've seen it placed, maybe around the year
(06:08):
one oh four, one oh five, something like that. Around
this time, plenty Of the Younger wrote two letters to
the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus to give his firsthand account
of the eruption and to explain the ultimate fate of
his uncle. Now, these two letters are famous for their
vivid description of the events, and so we wanted to
(06:29):
put you on the ground during the eruption of Vesuvius
by reading some selections from these letters. Uh. These will
come from a couple of different English translations that you
can easily find online. I sort of made a composite
out of two different translations, trying to take some of
the best parts from each one. One is from a
book called Volcanoes of Europe from Dunedin Academic Press from
(06:50):
TV by Degal Jaram Alwen Scarth and Jean Claude Tangai.
And then there's another widely used English translation by William Melmouth.
So those two came together to to create what you're
about to hear. Yes, these are are typically described as
the the oldest detailed accounts, detailed firsthand accounts of a
(07:13):
volcanic corruption. That's not to say that volcanic eruptions were
not known to to do ancient people's They were known,
um and then we have mentioned of them popping out.
There's even I read there's there's an argument that Virgils,
a mention of an eruption of Mount Etna in the
in Need was actually generated via firsthand observation. But even
(07:38):
that would not be the level of detail that we're
discussing here, right. I have not found any evidence of
a description of a volcanic eruption in in literary history
older than Plenty's description here that contains nearly anywhere close
to the amount of detail we get, right, Certainly nothing
that has survived, and probably because a lot of the
(07:58):
people who might have been in a position and to
write such an account themselves did not survive. Uh So,
Plenty the Younger begins his first letter by praising Tacitus's
skills as a writer of history and talking about his
uncle Plenty of the Elder, and he he says, basically,
you know, my uncle died in a misfortune, but there's
a chance to redeem his legacy, because if you put
(08:20):
him in your in your history, if his name becomes
associated with the eruption of Vesuvius, it will render his
name immortal. Uh So, I'm going to pick up after
that section of of introduction and just read from Plenty's
account within his first letter. At the time of the
great eruption, my uncle Plenty was with the fleet under
his command at mycene him on the August about one
(08:44):
in the afternoon. My mother desired him to observe a
cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape.
He had just taken a turn in the sun, and
after bathing himself in cold water and making a light luncheon,
he had gone back to his books. He imediately arose
and went out upon a promontory, from whence he might
get a better site of this very uncommon appearance. From
(09:07):
that distance, it was not clear from which mountain the
cloud was rising, although it was found afterwards to be Vesuvious.
The cloud could best be described as more like an
umbrella pine than any other tree, for it rose high
up like a trunk and then divided into branches. I
imagined that this was because it was thrust up by
the initial blast until its power weakened and it was
(09:30):
left unsupported and spread out sideways under its own weight.
Sometimes it looked light colored, sometimes it looked modeled and
dirty with the earth and cinders it had carried up.
This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and
research as my uncle, extraordinary and worth further looking into.
He ordered a light vessel to be got ready and
(09:51):
gave me leave if I liked it to accompany him.
I said, I had rather go on with my work,
and it so happened he had himself give in me
something to ride out. As he was coming out of
the house, he received a note from a Retina, the
wife of Tascus, who was in the utmost alarm at
the immediate danger which threatened her for her villa, lying
(10:13):
at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. There was no way
of escape but by boat. She was terrified by the
threatening danger and begged him to rescue her. He's changed
his plan at once, and what he had started in
a spirit of scientific curiosity, he ended as a hero.
You know, at this point I always stopped, and I wonder, like,
how did he get the note? I imagine it must
(10:34):
have come to him across the water, right that maybe
in a smaller boat she was able to send a note,
doubt and to ask him to come back with larger
boats that she and her family could escape on. I
I imagine, I mean, the only ways it would be
that or by some manner of bird. Yeah, as long
as we're interjecting, I want to remind everyone here that
that Plenty of the elder would have been about fifty
(10:55):
six years old at this point. If you're trying to
picture him in your head, and perhaps cast um an
actor in the role. Yes, and the younger Plenty also
says of his uncle that he was that he was
like brave and stout, but he he also says he
was a quite corpulent man, so like he wasn't necessarily,
you know, fit as a fiddle to be running out
into danger. But anyway, to go back to the account, uh,
(11:17):
Plenty continues, he ordered the galleys to be put to sea,
and he went himself on board with an intention of
assisting not only Rectina, but the several other towns which
lay thickly strewn along that beautiful coast, hastening then to
the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror,
he steered his course direct to the point of danger,
and with so much calmness and presence of mind as
(11:40):
to be able to make and dictate his observations upon
the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene.
So he's taken notes as he goes. He was now
so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew
thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships,
together with pumice stones and black pieces of burning rock
(12:00):
shattered by the fire. They were in danger too, not
only of being a ground by the sudden retreat of
the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled
down from the mountain and obstructed all the shore. Can
you imagine that being out on a boat and so
like the sea is first of all pulling away from
the shore as you're trying to get into the shore
(12:21):
to rescue people from the villas along the shoreline. So
the seas retreating, and then also stuff from the mountain
is now coming down and making its way into the water, right,
I mean it must have been like approaching a shore
upon which there was a battle. Only instead of two
human forces engaged in battle, it is a battle between
civilization and the elements of the earth itself unreal. He continues. Here,
(12:46):
he stopped to consider whether he should turn back, for
the pilot was advising retreat. Fortune favors the brave, he said,
Steer to where Pomponius is. Pomponius lived at t Stavia,
a town across us the Bay of Naples, which was
not yet in danger, but would be threatened if the
eruption spread. Pomponianus had already put his belongings into a
(13:09):
boat to escape as soon as the contrary onshore wind changed.
The wind, of course, was fully in my uncle's favor,
and quickly brought his boat to Stabia. My uncle calmed
and encouraged his terrified friend, the more effectually to soothe
his fears by seeming unconcerned himself. He ordered the drawing
of a hot bath, and then, after having bathed, sat
(13:30):
down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least with
every appearance of it, Which is just as brave? Is
that just as bread? I guess? So, yeah, if you're
like trying to calm other people, even though you are
yourself scared. Yeah. I mean, if there's only so much
you can do, calmness is going to help and help
to maintain a proper retreat. I mean, I guess to
(13:52):
a certain extent, one could again apply the military metaphor here,
you know, and the military backgrounds of individuals involved. So
I guess what they're saying here is that he's stuck
at the house until the winds change and they can
get out by water, and trying to encourage people not
to panic while they're while they're there, so plenty continues. Meanwhile,
tall broad flames blazed from several places on Vesuvius and
(14:16):
glared out through the darkness of the night. But my uncle,
in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured
him it was only the burning of the villages which
the country people had abandoned to the flames. After this
he retired to rest, and it is most certain that
he was so little disquieted as to fall into a
sound sleep. For his breathing, which on account of his corpulence,
(14:37):
was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants
outside his door. But eventually the courtyard outside began to
fill with so much ash and pummice that if he
had stayed in his room, he would never have been
able to get out. So he was awakened, and he
went to Pompony Inis and the rest of the company,
who had stayed up all night and we're feeling too
(14:58):
anxious to think of going to They consulted together whether
it would be most prudent to trust to the houses,
which now rocked from side to side with frequent and
violent concussions, as though shaken from their very foundations, or
fly to the open fields, where the stones and cinders,
though light and porous, fell in large showers and threatened destruction.
(15:20):
In this choice of dangers, they resolved for the fields,
a resolution which, while the rest of the company were
hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool
and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied
upon their heads with napkins, for this was their whole
defense against the storm of stones that fell around them.
(15:41):
And I have to admit that is that is a
slightly comical mental image. Yes, it is put in your head. Well,
it's it's like both at the same time. It's like
funny but it's also so grim and so real, like
you can imagine like, Okay, so the house you're you're
afraid the house is going to collapse. You've got to
get away from the house. But outside the house, stuff is,
rocks are falling from the sky. So what do you do?
(16:01):
You know, like it's not safe to be under a roof.
So like they literally were like, okay, we've got to
improvise helmets, right, yeah, So yeah, I agree, it is.
It is both a little bit comic but also terrifying.
I mean, this whole situation is terrifying. And I think
one thing to keep in mind too, is we read
this account is again thinking about to what extent Plenty
is trying to manage evacuation and to to to manage
(16:25):
their response, a calm response to this catastrophe that's taking place,
because that is going to be vital not only do
this scenario, but to other scenarios and even future scenarios
regarding the clash of human civilization and volcanic activity. Yes. Uh,
And you say he's having to manage an evacuation, He's
not only having to do that, he's having to improvise
(16:47):
management of an evacuation because they don't know what the
best practices are. So anyway, it goes on to the
conclusion of the letter here. So they've gone out with
the pillows tied to their heads, And then plenty of
the younger says it was now daylight everywhere else, but
there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night,
and they were forced to light their torches and lamps.
My uncle went down to the shore to see if
(17:09):
there was any chance of escape by sea, but the
waves were still far too high. There my uncle, laying
himself down upon a sail cloth which was spread for him,
called twice for some cold water, which he drank. Then
immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whift of sulfur,
dispersed the rest of the party and obliged him to rise.
(17:30):
He raised himself up with the assistance of his two servants,
and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by
some gross and noxious vapor, having always had a weak
throat which was often inflamed as soon as it was
light again, which was not till the third day after
this melancholy accident, his body was found entire and without
(17:50):
any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in
which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep
than dead. So Plenty of the Elder dies here on
the shore, but not everybody in his party does because,
of course, like the servants and friends are later able
to report back to Plenty of the younger what happened
to his uncle? Right and uh? And of course Plenty
of the Younger mentions his his ailing lungs as being
(18:13):
a possible reason that he succumbed to these fumes. It
has also been hypothesized that he could have actually even
though by all appearances it might have had something to
do with the fumes, it also could have simply been
a stroke or heart attack. Yeah, I mean, obviously this
is a high stress, high exertion situation. Um, and he
(18:33):
wasn't a young man anymore. But so Plenty then ends
his letter by saying he witnessed a lot of other stuff,
but he didn't include it in the letter because Tacitus
originally had only asked how his uncle had died, And
apparently Tacitus wrote back and wanted to know more. He
wanted to know details about what the younger Plenty and
his mother had encountered when they stayed behind it mycene him,
(18:55):
and that makes for the content of the second letter.
So maybe we should take a break, and then when
we come back we can read from plenty second letter
about the eruption. Thank alright, we're back. So before the
break we were discussing how Plenty of the elder died,
and now we are essentially going to explore how Plenty
of the younger lived. Yes, so now remember in the
(19:18):
first letter, plenty of the younger and his mother stayed
behind at mycene him while the elder took the fleet
out to help people who were further along the shore.
And so Plenty picks up his narrative like this. He says,
after my uncle left us, I studied, dined, and went
to bed, but slept only fitfully. We had had earth
tremors for several days, which were not especially alarming because
(19:39):
they happened so often in Campania. But that night they
were so violent that everything felt as if it were
being shaken and turned over. My mother came hurrying to
my room, and we sat together in the fore court
facing the sea. As I was at that time, but
eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should
call my behavior in this dangerous juncture courage or folly.
(20:01):
But I looked up to Livy and amused myself with
turning over that author and even making extracts from him,
as if I had been perfectly at my leisure. Though
it was now morning, the light was still exceedingly faint
and doubtful. The buildings around we're already tottering, and we
would have been in danger in our confined space if
(20:21):
our house had fallen down. This made us decide to
leave town. We were chased after by a panic stricken
crowd that chose to follow someone else's judgment rather than
decide anything for themselves. I love that detail that he's
like he's trying to act like he's not afraid, so
he's just going on with his studies. It's like, I'll
just keep reading Livy, make some notes. And then again
(20:43):
this is terrifying scene of like every no one knows
what to do, and so like, of course they're going
to follow uh plenty here, just like like somebody who
looks like they know what needs to be done and
knows no where they need to go, they're going to
fall in behind them. We also he was the of
a family of military command, so his uncle would have
been known as the commander of the fleet there at
(21:04):
the bay. So I think if the relatives of the
commanders suddenly start leaving town, everybody is going to see
that and be like, we probably need to get out
to Yeah, I would. I would say, you know, the
comeback here would be of course, we're following you and
not thinking for ourselves. You're the military, like you're you're
you're the one to follow you. We're not going to
(21:25):
trust your own judgment. Here you are the navy. But again,
this would not have been a time when people had
like a list of safety procedures they could look up
for a volcanic eruption. I mean you you have no precedent.
You had no idea what to do, right, because, as
well as we'll discuss as we get into this topic more,
this volcano had not erupted in quite a while. It
had at the very least been centuries. Yeah. Now Plenty
(21:47):
picks up of this narrative. He says, being at a
convenient distance from the houses, we stood still in the
midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The carriages
we had ordered began to lurch to and fro although
the ground was flat, and we could not keep them still,
even when we wedged their wheels with stones. Then we
saw the sea sucked back, apparently by a convulsion of
(22:11):
the earth, and many sea creatures were left stranded on
the dry sand. From the other direction, over the land,
a dreadful black cloud was torn by gushing flames and
great tongues of fire, like much magnified lightning. Soon afterwards,
the cloud began to descend and cover the sea. It
had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capri and
(22:33):
the promontory of my Sinum. My mother begged me to
leave her and escape as best I could, but I
absolutely refused, taking her by the hand and making her
to hurry along with me. Ash was already falling by
now they're in no great quantity. Then I turned and
saw a thick black cloud advancing over the land behind
us like a flood. Let us leave the road while
(22:55):
we still can see, I said, or we will be
knocked down and trampled by the crowd. We had actually
sat down when darkness came upon us, not such as
we have when the sky is cloudy or when there
is no moon, but that of a room when it
is shut up and all the lamps put out. Can
you imagine that? So this is daytime now, but the
it is not only dark like a night, it is
(23:16):
darker than night. Yeah, this is this is the darkness
at noon type situation exactly. So he goes on to
describe the terror of the scene. He says, you might
hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and
the shouts of men, some calling for their children, others
for their parents, others for their husbands, and seeking to
recognize each other by the voices that replied, one lamenting
(23:39):
his own fate, another that of his family, some praying
to die from the very fear of dying, some lifting
their hands to the gods. But the greater part convinced
that there were now no gods at all, and that
the final, endless night of which we had heard had
come upon the world. Among these there were some who
augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or willfully invented.
(24:03):
I remember some who declared that one part of my
sin him had fallen, that another was on fire. It
was false, but they found people to believe them. So
just chaos is raining misinformation is flying. The world is
dark and full of terror. The day is dark and
full of terrors. All right, he continues, it now grew
(24:25):
rather lighter, which we imagined to be the forerunner of
an approaching burst of flames, as in truth it was
rather than the return of day. However, the fire fell
at a distance from us. Then again we were immersed
in a thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes
rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and
then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should
(24:47):
have been crushed and buried in the heap. I might
have boasted that during all this scene of horror, not
a sigh or expression of fear escaped me. But in
truth my support was grounded in that miserable though my
d consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity,
and that I was perishing with the world itself. That
(25:07):
line has haunted me ever since I first read it.
That he says he's not afraid because he knew it
wasn't just him dying, it was the end of the
entire world. And finally he concludes the letter saying, at
last the darkness paled into smoke or cloud and the
real daylight returned, but the sun shone with a lurid light,
(25:29):
as during an eclipse. Every object that presented itself to
our weakened eyes seemed changed, being covered deep with ashes,
as if with snow. We returned to my sin Him,
where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and
passed an anxious night between hope and fear, though indeed
with a much larger share of the latter, for the
(25:50):
earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down,
heightening their own and their friends calamities by terrible predictions. So,
for st of all, I think those letters are just
amazing literary documents. But also I wanted to say, there
is a painting that I've seen online several times that
captures the spirit of those letters pretty well for me.
(26:12):
It's called The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the
English Romantic painter John Martin. Yeah, all right, so we've
presented you with the drama of what is happening. Let's
provide a little background just about this region, about Pompeii
and some of these other cities that we were name dropping, Right,
(26:33):
what was going on in the area before the seventy
nine CE eruption of Vesuvius. So the part of Italy
immediately surrounding Mount Vesuvius. The the larger region here is
known as Campania, which Plenty makes reference to because he says,
you know, we were used to earthquakes in Campania. It's
kind of a geologically active region. So when the little
(26:53):
earthquakes began, we weren't too worried at first, and still,
you know, until it started rocking the house back and forth. Um,
and so Campania translates into I think roughly into the
word countryside. Apparently it was once known as the Campania
felix or the happy countryside. And it's this region in
the southwestern part of the Italian Peninsula along the Tyrannian Sea,
(27:17):
and its capital is, of course, the coastal city of
Naples or Napoly in Italian. This is where the pizza
comes from, is it? I think maybe it is, or
at least a famous variety of pizza that comes from
He here's Nepolitan and Neapolitan. I'm not sure. I don't
know what the relationship between those two words. You thinking
about ice cream? Maybe, yeah, I don't know we'll have
to do this, We'll have to come back to it
(27:37):
on our other show, Invention. Just right in and shame us.
Go ahead, Okay. So today, Campania is a highly sought
after tourist destination, in large part due to the natural
beauty of its coastline, including stretches like the famous Amalfi Coast.
If you've seen these gorgeous photos of like little antique
(27:58):
towns nestled into the steeply descending hillsides between looming cliffs,
sull covered in trees and lush greenery, this kind of
stuff along the waterfront in Italy, I think there's a
very good chance that you are looking at images of
the Amalfi Coast. But it turns out that the tourism
industry is not new in Campania. Even in the first
century during the Roman Empire, places especially around the Bay
(28:22):
of Naples, were extremely fashionable as vacation resorts for the
rich elite of Rome and other capitals of the Empire.
And again, you just look up pictures of this place
and you instantly understand why it is a place of
of of absolutely gorgeous natural formations and vegetation. The coastline
is pristine and striking. I mean I want to go
(28:43):
there right now. Yes, yes, looking at a photos of
this region which which is still a vacation destination, like
you said, it looks very inviting. But that's not all.
Of course. Campania also has a reputation as a rich
and fertile farmland both then and now, and it's and
today it's very densely populated, but it's also a center
(29:04):
of agricultural food production for Italy. Yes, lots of orchards,
lots of vineyards. Uh. Now. Probably the most famous point
of destruction within this this sort of broad cone of
destruction from the vesuvious eruption is the city of Pompeii.
It was a city that had been settled by seafaring
Greeks almost a thousand years before, like in the eighth
(29:26):
century b C. And then for several centuries after that
was a city controlled variously by the Greeks and the Etruscans,
sometimes trading off. It only fell under Roman control during
the second century b c. E Before the Empire. This
would have been during the period of the Roman Republic
uh and then by seventy nine CE, Pompeii had somewhere
(29:47):
between like ten thousand and twenty thousand inhabitants. It was wealthy,
it was thriving. Like other places in Campania, Pompei was
a resort for the famous and the powerful families of Rome,
with expensive illa's, bath houses, restaurants, brothels, you know, kind
of a kind of an aspen of ancient Rome. All right. Uh.
(30:07):
The one problem, of course, that is that all of
this was built up in the region surrounding Vesuvius, and uh,
and of course Vesuvius at the time was slumbering, or
seemed to be slumbering, but then in seventy nine it awakens.
And you know, I would say, it's not We can
come back to this later if you want, but it's
not necessarily just a coincidence that like this is a
(30:30):
place of great beauty and agricultural production, so it draws
a lot of people and just happens to be near
a dangerous, active volcano. There might be some reasons that
both of these things are true. Oh yeah, I mean yeah,
we can go and touch on these facts really quickly,
because first of all, we mentioned how fertile, uh, the
the area is, how well things grow even on the
(30:52):
slopes of Vesuvius itself. And that is because of this
rich volcanic soil. Yes, and I think it's also possible
to argue that some of the geologic features that make
it kind of risky in terms of volcanic activity also
contribute to the beauty of its coastline. Absolutely. I mean
the the the volcanic activity is the the the engine
that formed the land that people are occupying, that people
(31:14):
are growing crops upon, etcetera. Now, on the day of
the eruption, it's estimated that of the between ten thousand
and twenty thousand inhabitants of Pompeii, about two thousand inhabitants
were probably killed. And when you add up all those
who perished in other Vesuvian settlements like the towns of Herculaneum,
Oplontis and Stabbia, Stabia was where plenty of the elder
(31:38):
sale to help his friend, Somewhere close to maybe like
sixteen thousand people died in total, though it's very difficult
to have accurate numbers. But one thing that makes Pompeii
special is because of the way it was buried under
the ash and ejecta of the eruption, Pompeii became at
once both obscure and illuminating obscure of course, because it
(31:59):
was literally hidden from investigation. It's sort of vanished from
history as if wiped off the face of the earth
because it had been paved over by the volcano. But
at the same time, uh it kind of became a
bright and transparent window into life in ancient Roman times
because under all of that dust, the city was almost
(32:20):
perfectly preserved. Since it had been buried in e raced
from history, there's no way for the remains of the
city to be disturbed. And it was also very democratic
in its preservation of the dead. Uh So it's one
of these great examples where we we get a little
inside into just how daily life worked in this city
(32:40):
before the eruption. Yeah, many people are just found, presumably
lying dead, exactly where they were when the calamity hit,
and so the city basically stayed that way until amateur
excavation of the of this geologically paved oversight began around
seventy an event that is sometimes referred to as the
Earth of modern archaeology. All right, on that note, we're
(33:03):
going to take one more break, but when we come back,
we're going to continue our exploration by looking at the
volcanic eruption itself. Than alright, we're back. Okay, so we've
gotten the ground level view of what was happening on
the day of the eruption of Vesuvius in but what
(33:23):
do we know now looking back with the scientific lens,
What do we think probably happened on that day in
geological terms? All right, well, let's let's back up a
little bit and just talk about the basic idea of volcano. Volcano,
of course, is just a rupture in a planet's crust,
but there are are various types of volcanoes, depending on
their location, their history, and the the underlying activity. Fun fact, though,
(33:47):
the word volcano derives from the volcanic isle of Volcano,
named for Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. The Greeks
knew this island by other names, but they also considered
it the foundry of Festus, basically the equivalent of Vulcan. Yeah,
they like the forge, god of sparks and banging. Yeah,
So so again, you know, the ancient people is definitely
(34:09):
knew of volcanoes, and they were remembered, at least in
in the construction of myths and the naming of places. Now,
Vesuvius itself is considered a soma stratovolcano. Um, it's also
considered a complex volcano. So let's talk about what this means. First,
we'll talk about the Soma part. So, if you were
(34:31):
to travel back four hundred thousand years or so, you
would not find Mount Vesuvius at all. Rather, you'd find
Mount Soma. So Mount Soma underwent various eruptions, and we
have to remember that volcanoes are places of violent change,
and due to these violent eruptions, Mount Soma eventually collapse
(34:53):
into what is known as a caldera. So this occurs
when a particularly violent eruption empties the underlying magma chamber
of a volcano, making it impossible for it to support
its own weight. Alright, So um again, it's like the
volcano just has erupted so much, and it grew so much,
erupted so much that it's just caved in on itself.
(35:15):
It's just destroyed itself. It's like if you you were
too empty out all of the molten lava from your
molten lava cake and then the cake just collapses, right.
All you have with like the edges of the cake
that form like like ring mountain around a center it's
like a crater um. And this is where we get
that classic image of what a volcano you usually looks like.
If you draw a cartoon volcano, you're probably drawing a
(35:36):
ring shaped caldera where the top of the mountain has
collapsed after some eruption in the past. But even though
the the the the mountain itself has collapsed, the underlying
volcanic avic activity is still there, so magma and volcanic
gases continue to build, and this can result in a
few different varieties of caldera. The center can swell back
(35:57):
up into what is known as a resurgent dome, like
with a yellow stone, and it's you know, it's so
called supervolcano. But in the case of Avessuvius, another volcanic
cone and this is the Mount of Vesuvius, rises up
in the center of the Soma caldera, and this is
why we call this type of volcano a Soma volcano.
(36:17):
So the remnants again of the old mountain the caldera,
are still around it, and the Soma caldera is also
sometimes referred to who's just Mount Soma today, But again
it is the remnant of the old mountain and in
the center is Vesuvius. That's hard, I mean volcano inside
a volcano, right, and again it's important to know. Yeah,
Vesuvius certainly in jel other time is a is a
(36:38):
young volcano? Okay, So what sort of volcano is Vesuvius itself?
We'll remember we use the the description a soma strato volcano.
So a strato volcano is a steep conical volcano built
from many layers of lava ash pumas and tefra tefra.
That's a pyroclass or rejected fragments from the volcano that
(36:59):
have fallen to the round. All of this from various
eruptions building up, building up this volcano. Now you mentioned
it was a young volcano. Yes, relatively young again in
terms of geologic time. Uh, certainly human times a different matter,
which we'll get into. Uh. During its life, it's had
periods of activity and inactivity. Its most recent period of
(37:22):
activity as of this recording was between nineteen thirteen and
nineteen forty four CEH. And today it's uh, you know
it's it's it's inactive. You rather inactive. You can actually
hike up to the top. Uh. It's eruptions, however, were
known in ancient times, but at the time of its
eruption in seventy nine CE, it had been inactive for
(37:42):
at least two hundred and ninety five years. It was
reputed to have erupted into seventeen b c E based
on the writings of Solicitalicus, but a great many modern
writers have rejected this. We know it's sustained a particularly
powerful erupt and during the second millennium b c E.
This is the Avellino eruption, which decimated the Bronze Age
(38:06):
settlements in the area. UH. But again, well, it's ultimately
a situation where we don't have a lot of information
about its pre about its activity in pre seventy nine
c E uh in that time period, but we can
presume that it had been centuries since its last eruption.
Avelino is the name of another town nearby Naples, So
(38:26):
it's actually I remember that because it's the town that
Tony Soprano's family comes from. Okay, At any rate, enough
time had passed for humans in this region to lose
their immediate fear of the mountain um and so cities
encroached upon its domain. Gardens and vineyards popped up around it.
The children of Prometheus grew bold in the silence of Vesuvius.
(38:49):
But again it's it's clear that they had not really
completely forgotten what Vesuvius had been capable of in the past.
Myths of giants battling Hercules. Uh, you know, still remained
about the mountain. Uh. There were geologic connections that linked
that clearly linked to suvious to Mount Edna, which was
certainly active and was described erupting again in Virgils and need,
(39:12):
which I referred to earlier. So it's not like people
did not know what had happened here in the past
or what a volcano looked like. I mean, there was
it was the world wasn't completely ignorant of what it
could do. You know, it's kind of weird. It's it's
one of these tragedies of time scales that humans are
I feel like, almost constantly facing off against, where if
(39:36):
you look at the activity of a volcano across geologic time,
you just see it's pretty regular, you know, pretty frequently
this thing's going to erupt. But then you zoom into
human historical time and the eruptions are not quite frequent
enough to discourage settlement. Because our memories are not that long,
like a few hundred years. Seems like, you know, an
(39:57):
eternity to an individual person. Yeah, yeah, I mean the
whole whole lives will pass during the periods of relative
inactivity of a volcano. Uh in many of these cases.
So you know, we don't know everything about the seventy
nine eruption a k the plan a plan a in
eruption named for plenty, but but we still know quite
(40:19):
a bit, as it was again the first volcanic eruption
to be described in detail. We have plenty of the
Younger's excellent descriptions of the pre eruption quakes, the eruption itself,
the ash fall, pyroclastic flows, and the resulting mild tsunami
in the Bay of Naples. It is estimated that the
column of ash that rose up into the sky towered
(40:40):
some twenty miles or thirty two kilometers, and then it
ejected one cubic mile or four cubic kilometers of ash
in just something like nineteen hours. Ten ft of tephra
fell on Pompeii. Pyroclastic flow buried herculaneum under seventy five
or twenty three ms of ash and will eventually look
(41:00):
at what all of this meant for the humans who
resided in the impacted cities as well, like on a
biological level. I think we'll have to get into them
in the next episode. Yeah, it's also been estimated that
the eruption itself would have carried the thermal energy of
a hundred thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs, and all of this
would have lasted roughly two days. Vesuvius has erupted some
(41:23):
three dozen times since UH, sometimes with deadly results. Mud
flows and lava flows from a se eruption killed but
some three thousand, five hundred people. And today, as before
the seventy nine CE eruption, vineyards and orchards covered the
slopes of the mountain UH, there's an there's an enormous
(41:43):
population surrounding the volcano today. I believe the area is
like the most densely populated part of Italy. Right. I've
also seen it described as the as the most densely
populated area surrounding volcano on Earth. But again, the people,
but it's speed of full. You look at these pictures,
it's beautiful. There's an actually tremendous amount of growth there. Again,
(42:03):
the soil is very fertile um, and before the eruption
of six thirty one, during a very long period of inactivity,
forests are actually said to have grown in the crater,
and you would have found three lakes there as well.
So yeah, given the the amount of time, the great
amount of time relative to the human experience and even
the lives of plants that transpires between eruptions, I mean
(42:28):
you can have a great greening of the mountain occur.
Oh man, I wish I could see what that was
like to have the forests and the lakes down in there,
because I love that kind of thing. I don't know
if you've been the Crater Lake in Oregon. I have not, Well,
you've probably seen images of it. At least it's absolutely gorgeous,
one of the most amazing beautiful places I've ever been.
But I think it's exactly that contrast of like of uh,
(42:50):
this clear still water and all these forests in life
just flooding in to this place where there was catastrophic
destruction you know, some number centuries ago, right, and then
that and then the humans come in as well, And
there's probably something elegant to be said about just like
the nature of of the human experience too. You know,
like even though something terrible happened here, humans have a
(43:12):
way in many cases of moving forward through it and
and finding a way to make a life there. I
know it's not this way, but it almost it seems
almost malicious, like the the the volcano with this fertile
volcanic soil is just sort of like baiting you. It
is like leaving out this bait to attract you into
the geologic trap. Sorry, I know that's anthropomorphizing. It's it's
(43:37):
not the volcano's fault. It doesn't mean to hurt you. Yeah.
I think even Tolkien didn't say Mount Doom itself was evil, right,
it was just but Mount Doom is more what you'd expect.
It's in more door, which is a place where even
the air, the very air you breathe, as a toxic
fume and nothing grows there. And you know, it's just
like it's just this blasted landscape. I mean, no, that
(43:57):
this is the case where the area right around this
vult cano that could erupt again is extremely beautiful and
fertile and inviting to life. Yeah. Alright, on that note,
we're gonna go ahead and call it for this episode.
But We will be back in the next episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind to continue our discussions regarding
the suvious. We're gonna get into, uh, some of the
(44:18):
sort of forensic evidence of what happened to the people
in Pompeii. We're gonna get into. We're gonna discuss the
possible remains of plenty of the elder and I will
also just discuss the continued threat posed by volcanoes to
settled regions today and you know, and some some about
you know, what we what we're prepared to do or
(44:38):
unprepared to do about their eruptions. I can't wait. I've
been wanting to talk about this for so long. I'm
so glad we finally got here. Yeah, and I think
it may kick off even further, um uh further episodes
that deal with volcanoes and uh human history. There's a
there's a lot of rich there's a lot of rich
soil uh that that is left behind by these uh
(45:00):
these often cata cataclysmic events. In the meantime, if you
want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
your Mind, you can find our show wherever you get
your podcasts um. If you go to Stuff to Blow
your mind dot com. That will definitely redirect you to
the I Heart page for our show, where you can subscribe,
you can download, et cetera, and wherever you get the show.
(45:21):
We encourage you to do those things. Rate, review, subscribe.
These are the things you can do to help the show,
as well as just telling a friend in the real world,
just spread the word huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,
(45:43):
just to say hi, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind It's a production of I Heart Radios.
Hows to works and more podcasts from my heart Radio.
Visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(46:04):
you listen to your favorite shows.
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