Lessons of Vesuvius, Part 1

behind us like a flood. 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 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 wanted to do an episode on for a long time, mainly because I love some of the ancient Roman original documents that we're going to 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 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, it's funny you should bring up dinosaurs, because I think this was sort of in 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, 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.

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 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. They're frozen and amber, uh in 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 Pompei is it is it allows us to to look into the path 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 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 Pompeii and the town of Herculaneum. And historians studying the subject are very lucky because we actually 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 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, 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 the 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 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 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 England 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 seventeen by Degal Jeram Alwyn 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

volcanic eruption. 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 mention of an eruption of Mount Etna in the in Needed was actually generated via firsthand observation, But even 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 people who might have been in a position 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 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 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 immediately arose and went out upon a promontory, from whence he might get a better site of this very uncommon appearance. From 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 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 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

given me something to ride out. As he was coming out of the house, he received a note from Retina, the wife of Tascus, who was in the utmost alarm at the immediate danger which threatened her for her villa. Lying 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 have come to him across the water, right that maybe in a smaller boat she was able to send a noe doubt and to ask him to come back with larger boats that she and her family could escape on. 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

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 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 so much calmness and presence of mind as 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 rocks

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 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 force is engaged in battle, it is a battle between civilization and the elements of the earth itself. Unreal. He continues. Here 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 from. Ponianus lived at Testavia, a town across 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 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 down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least with every appearance of it, which is just as brave. Is that? Just as 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 a proper retreat. I mean, I guess to a certain extent one could again apply to military metaphor here, you know, and the military backgrounds of individuals involved. Yeah, 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 Vesuvious and 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, 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 were feeling too anxious to think of going to bed. 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. 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. 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? 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 their response, a calm response to this catastrophe that's taking place, because that is going to be vital not only did 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 in evacuation, he's not only having to do that, he's having to improvise management of an evacuation because they don't know what the best practices are. So anyway 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 they're 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 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. He raised himself up with the assistance of his two servants, and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by 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 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 and of course plenty of the younger mentions his his ailing lungs as being 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 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. 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. Than alright, we're back. So before the break we were discussing how Plenty the elder died, and now we are essentially going to explore how Plenty of the younger lived. Yes, so now remember in the 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 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 forecourt 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. 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 were already tottering, and we would have been in danger in our confined space if 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. Is like, I'll just keep

reading Livy and make some notes. And then again this is terrifying scene of like every no one knows what to do, and so like, of course they're going to follow uh cliny here, just like like somebody who looks like they know what needs to be done, it 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 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 a are you're the one to follow you. We're not going to

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 have no idea what to do, right, because as will 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

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 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 the promontory of my Sine 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 me. 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. Let us leave the road while we still can see, I said, or 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.

Can you imagine that? So this is daytime now, but the it is not only dark like a night, it is 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 were led.

One lamenting 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. I remember some who declared that one part of my snum had fallen, that another was on fire.

It was false, but they found people to believe them. So just chaos is reigning, 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 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 inst 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 have been crushed and buried in the heap. I matt it 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 mighty consolation that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I was perishing with the world itself. That 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 letters, saying, at last the darkness paled into smoke or cloud, and the real daylight returned, But the sun shone with a lurid light, as during an eclipse. Every object that presented itself to our weakened eyes seemed to change, being covered deep with

ashes as with snow. We returned to mycene 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 earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down, heightening their own and their friends calamities. By terrible predictions. So, first 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. 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, what was going on in the area before the seventy nine 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 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, 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 a famous variety of pizza that comes from Here's Nepolitan and Neapolitan. I'm not sure. I don't know what the relationship between those two works. You thinking about ice cream? Maybe, I don't know. We'll have to get this. We'll have to come back to it 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 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 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 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 even today. It's very densely populated. But it's also a center 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 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 c. Pompeii had somewhere between like ten thousand and twenty thousand inhabitants.

It was wealthy, it was thriving. Like other places in Campania, Pompeii was a resort for the famous and the powerful families of Rome, with expensive villas, bath houses, restaurants, brothels, you know, kind of a kind of an aspen of ancient Rome, all right. Uh. 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 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 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 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 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 Pompey 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 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 perfectly preserved. Since it had been buried and erased 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

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 an event that is sometimes referred to as the birth of modern archaeology. All right, on that note, we're 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 do we know now looking back with the scientific lens. What 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. Of volcano, of course, is just a upture 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 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 Hephaestus, basically the equivalent of Vulcan. Yeah, they're like the forge,

god of sparks and banging. Yeah. So so again, you know, the ancient people's definitely knew of volcanoes, and they were remembered at least in the 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 to travel back four hundred thousand years or so, you would not

find Mount Vesuvia, said 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 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. 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 ring shaped called 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 avict 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 up into what is known as a resurgent dome like with the yellow Stone, and it's you know, it's so called supervolcano. But in the case of Vesuvius, 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. So the remnants again of the old mountain, the caldera, are still around it, and the Soma Caldera is also sometimes referred to it'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, Vesuvia is certainly in geologic time, is is a young volcano. Okay, So what sort of volcano is Vesuvius itself. We'll remember we used the the

description a Soma strato volcano. So a strato volcano is a steep conical volcano built from many layers of lava ash pomis and tefra tefra that's a pyroclass or rejected fragments from the volcano that have fallen to the ground. 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 time is 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 activity as of this recording was between nineteen thirteen and nineteen forty four CE. 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, we're known in ancient times. But at the time of its eruption in seventy nine C, it had been inactive for at least two hundred and ninety five years. It was reputed to have erupted into seventeen b c E based on the writings of Solicitaicus, but a great many modern writers have rejected this. We know it sustained a particularly powerful eruption during the second millennium b c E. This is the Avellino eruption, which decimated

the Bronze Age settlements in the area. Uh. But again we 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 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 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. 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 Vesuvius to Mount Etna, which was certainly active and was described erupting again in Virgils and need, 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 you look at the activity of a volcano across geologic time, you just see it's pretty regular, you know, pretty frequently this thing is 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 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 CE eruption a k a. The plan a plan a in eruption named for plenty, but but we still know quite 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 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 ft or twenty three ms of ash, and will eventually look 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 that 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 three dozen times since uh, sometimes with deadly results. Mud flows and lava flows from a sixt thirty one eruption killed, but some three thousand, five hundred people, and today, as before the seventy nine CE eruption, vineyards and orchards cover the slopes of the mountain. Uh, there's an there's an enormous 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 a volcano on Earth. But again, the yeah, people, but it's beautiful. You look at these pictures, it's beautiful. There's an actually tremendous amount of growth there. Again, 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, 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, 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 of 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 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 not the volcane know, it'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 this is the case where the area right around this volcano that could erupt again is

extremely beautiful and fertile and inviting to life. All right, 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 Vesuvious. We're gonna get into some of the 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 the Elder, and 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 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 further episodes that deal with

volcanoes and UH and 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. 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 Build your Mind dot com, that will definitely redirect you to the I Heart page for our show, where you can subscribe, you can download, etcetera,

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