Imagine yourself feeling hopeless; you can smell the sulfur in the air, tickling the back of your throat. The ground rumbles and sways as if the Gods themselves are furious and want to unleash on this small city. Panic all around in the streets, women screaming, children running scared in the streets, men hopelessly trying to save their families from certain doom. This is what it would feel like if one lived in the Italian city of Pompeii in 79 A.D when Mt. Vesuvius had, perhaps the largest volcanic eruption for those times. The feeling of hopelessness is not a great feeling to have. Not knowing what is about to happen to an entire city is devastating. We now live in a world where are more aware of what Mother Nature can do without warning,
Also known as, strato-volcanoes, these volcanoes are the biggest and most majestic of the three types of volcanoes. Most of the composite volcanoes are situated on Pacific Ocean, in an area known as the “Ring of Fire” (Lutgens. F, Tarbuck. E. pp-238-239 2014). Composite volcanoes are composed of silica-rich magma, which has an andesitic composition. This along with occasionally having various amounts of basaltic lava and pyroclastic felsic lava causes a thick viscous lava that does not travel more than a few kilometers. Composite volcanoes are known as having very explosive eruptions. This is why composite volcanoes can be the most dangerous. Composite volcanoes like Fujiyama in Japan, and Italy’s Etna are both composite volcanoes. Mt. St. Helens is another example of a composite volcano. Its eruption in 1980 leveled may trees in the forest and filled in with magma a lake that was beside the giant symmetrical volcano that is Mt. St. Helens (Lutgens. F, Tarbuck. E. pp-238-239 2014). Much like St. Helens, Mt. Vesuvius is a composite volcano. These volcanoes need to be studied in order to understand how and when they may erupt. If we can further understand these giant volcanoes, we may be able to save people in the future. Pants and vegetation are important, however, volcanic eruptions and their damages to vegetation and trees have been an ongoing phenomenon. It has also been shown that after
They were tasked with escaping the jaws of the giant volcano known to them as Mt. Vesuvius. To the everyday citizen in Pompeii the mountain was just that a mountain. They did not know what we now know about volcanoes and their eruptions of lava. Not only was their lava and flying projectiles, but there were also earthquakes leading up to the eruption that leveled the entire city of Pompeii. It is for this reason that many were not able to escape the sure death. To them it was a typical day in one of the most sophisticated cities known to mankind at the time. The city of Pompeii had aqueducts, modern paved streets, stores, and many other things. In this era, these commodities were not available to anyone, except the citizens of Pompeii. Sure, they had ample warnings given by the thunderous mountain. Earthquakes rocked the city, but the citizens had no knowledge of what was happening below them. The citizens of Pompeii did not have the education of how the Earth worked. They had no idea that the strong pungent smell was coming from the mountain, which was the smell of sulfur. Animals perished from the gases that were escaping Mt. Vesuvius, but how can the citizens know when there is no knowledge of hoe volcanoes work. At the time there was no word for volcano in Latin, how could these poor souls be ready for what they did not even now was coming. In the article, “Buried by a Volcano” Tarshis goes on to
On the afternoon of 24th August 79 AD, a volcano called Mt. Vesuvius erupted, which resulted in destroyed lives of citizens, it was estimated that there were 10 to 12 thousand people who occupied the city .The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and a few others were severely affected by the eruption. The cities are well known for its beautiful landscapes and its temperate climate.Pompeii is based in the south, close to Naples in the region of Campania in Italy.The eruption started a series of events such as pumice,rocks and ashes falling down and caused hot volcanic gases to rise high in the sky, people from around 100 miles away could see the event unfolding.The remains of Pompeii and other cities was frozen in time due to the pyroclastic surges
A prominent feature that contributed heavily to the way of life in Pompeii was the cities geographical location. The city was situated on a bay and was surrounded by rivers. Seneca tells us that “the city is a pleasant bay ….. bounded by the shores of Surrantum and Stabiae.” This meant that a large amount of trade took place in Pompeii, not only from the sea but from inland as well. Pompeii was also close to Vesuvius, a volcanic mountain. Pliny the Elder writes of this in his Natural History, “Pompeii [with Vesuvius visible close at hand.” Previous volcanic activity in the region led to extremely fertile soil. This contributes heavily to Pompeii’s productive and successful agricultural lands. The geographical location of Pompeii was a prominent feature as it contributed heavily to the city’s economic, industrial, and social aspects.
Mount Tambora, located on the Island of Sumbawa, Indonesia is classified as a Stratovolcano. Also known as a composite volcano, Tambora is a tall conical volcano (cone like structure) where layers of the walls are built by hardened lava and volcanic ash. The term composite is used to describe the volcano due to the composite layered structure built from sequential outpourings of eruptive materials1. Among the most common types of volcanoes, Tambora also shares its destructive prowess with best-known volcanoes such as Krakota (1883) and Vesuvius (79 A.D). The Island of Sumbawa is located in the middle of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain (a group of islands in the southern Maritime Southeast Asia) and is in the province of West Nusa Tenggara3. A map of Mount Tambora is shown in Figure 1 to provide a better perspective of its location. Interestingly enough, Tambora forms its own peninsula on Sumbawa, known as the Sanggar Peninsula. In April of 1815, after years of dormancy, Mount Tambora erupted with great intensity, approximately 7 on the volcanic explosivity index, which is shown in Figure 2. It has been estimated that the eject volume of Tambora was 160 cubic kilometres, which represents the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The death toll has been projected to be at least 71,000 people, of who over 15% were killed directly from the eruption1. The remaining 75% have been thought to succumb to starvation and disease, as the eruptive fallout decimated the agricultural industry in the region. Following the eruption, a volcanic winter ensued. As sun become less abundant due to clouds of ash, crops and livestock perished. Please note that all definitions appearing in the footnotes are either taken from already referenced so...
He gave the representative that spoke to us all of the information. It was known that your city was still recovering from the earthquake back in 62. You guys became used to the earthquakes shortly after though. It became a regular part of your daily activity, which is why you took no notice of the volcano. Eventually a massive cloud of debris was coming out of this once inactive mountain. According to Pliny the younger it resembled a tree and expanded into many branches. But this was no tree. It instead was a mass of ash and dust spewing out of Mt. Vesuvius. This ash eventually went over the city, covering the sun, then dropped down at an alarming rate of 6 inches each hour. The citizens of Herculaneum tried to shovel it off but it fell to quick and they stayed out there breathing in the ash, slowly killing themselves. The citizens fled to your town as volcanic mud engulfed their city. But they were not safe. Around 6:30 you guys felt the wrath of the volcano that constantly warned you by shaking the ground on a weekly basis. During that morning a cloud of volcanic gas and debris tumbled
When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it is said that the hot, smoldering ash flowed onto Pompeii as if it was a flood of water, the estimated amount of peole to have died were over two thousand. In 1748, a group of explorers saw the potent time stopping endowment that the ash had shown. While digging the ash and exploring, the group found that the entire city of pompeii was exactly as it had been from the abounding years ago. In future years, there was a scientist named Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo who studied volcanoes. Mastrolorenzo and his co-workers went to Pompeii and evaluated the layers of volcanic ash in the town, then concluded that most people died from the first surge. Although the first surge of ash and smoke that travelled into the town was slow moving, it was enough to finish them off. The team was able to estimate how high the temperatures of the ash were, due to the fact that it had melted some metals like lead and tin.
Pompeii was once a large and promising city that one day became uninhabitable due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Nearly two millenniums ago a massive eruption rocked the Roman city of Pompeii, destroying buildings and coating the town in deep layers of volcanic ash. Fortunately, this same ash served as a tool for preservation and has allowed archaeologists to discover the remains of various types of Pompeii’s art. The values, beliefs, and daily workings of Roman culture have been brought to new light through the paintings, mosaics, statues and other forms of art found in the lost city of Pompeii.
Many of us know Mount Shasta to be a beautiful mountain and a popular tourist location in California. However, this mountain is much more than that, this mountain is actually a volcano. Volcanoes come with a number of hazards and a volcano of this size is of no exception. Previous eruptions on Mount Shasta have given us an idea of the power this volcano has and the damage it may do. With this information scientists are able to predict what may happen should another explosion occur.
The eruption on Mount Saint Helens has a specific cause and comes with many effects. A multifold of people would say that the “mountain looked like the site of an atomic blast” (Bredeson 30). That is a very accurate depiction as it took great power to inflict as much damage as it did. The reason for this impressive amount of force is that when magma is built up with pressure and an earthquake hits, the pressure gets magnified and the volcano explodes (Lewis). This is exactly what happened inside Mount Saint Helens. Furthermore, it has been revealed that “The earthquake that triggered the explosion was a 5.2 on the Richter scale” (Gunn 559). The earthquake to the magma can be compared as a match to gasoline. Even though the earthquake was not huge, the scale of the eruption was much greater than that of the earthquake (Gunn 560). The earthquake was only the trigger that allowed for more devastating things to occur. Thirteen hundred feet of the volcano were lost in the explosion followed by landslides, mudslides, and lava flows...
Like most of the other volcanoes in the Cascade Range, St. Helens is a great cone of rubble, consisting of lava rock interlayered with ash, pumice and other deposits. Volcanic cones of this internal structure are called composite cones or stratovolcanoes. Mount St. Helens includes layers of basalt and andesite through which several domes of dacite lava have erupted. The largest of the dacite domes formed the previous summit; another formed Goat Rocks dome on the northern flank. These were destroyed in St. Helens' 1980 eruption.
Stories about volcanoes are captivating. Myths come in different versions, but all of them are capable of capturing yours, and everybody’s imagination.
Pompeii is possibly the best-documented catastrophe in Antiquity. Because of it, we know now how the Pompeians lived because they left behind an extensive legacy of art, including monuments, sculptures and paintings. Pompeii lay on a plateau of ancient lava near the Bay of Naples in western Italy in a region called Campania, less than 1.6 kilometers from the foot of Mount Vesuvius. With the coast to the west and the Apennine Mountains to the East, Campania is a fertile plain, traversed by two major rivers and rich soil. However, in the early days, it was not a remarkable city. Scholars have not been able to identify Pompeii’s original inhabitants. The first people to settle in this region were probably prehistoric hunters and fishers. By at least the eight century B.C., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its origin is unknown. “The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community consisted of five hamlets or, perhaps, was settled by a family group (gens Pompeia)”(Kraus 7). In the course of the eight century B.C., Greek and Etruscan colonization stimulated the development of Pompeii as a city around the area of the Forum. A point for important trade routes, it became a place for trading towards the inland. Up until the middle of the 5th century B.C., the city was dominated politically by the Etruscans.
Comparison to Mount St. Helens: “The Mount Fuji of America” is the nickname given to Mount St. Helens based off of its resemblance to Japan’s Mount Fuji. The last time Mount St. Helens erupted was July 10, 2008. Mount Fuji stands 4 thousand feet taller than Mount St. Helens. Mount St. Helens does not have a history like Mount Fuji does. St. Helens was not recognized as a volcano until 1835. In the eruption of 1980, which is the first eruption to date, fifty-seven people were killed and the eruption caused $1.1 billion damage. Homes were destroyed and hundreds of square miles of forest were flattened. The hot ash caused forest fires and the snow melted at the top of the mountain cause floods. Since the eruption smoke and ash is released from St. Helens leaving a plume visible for more than 50 miles. The steam and ash gets higher during time of seismic activity. Mount St. Helens is still active and it still produces thick, pasty lava. This mountain gives a prediction of what we can expect from Mount Fuji.
...nto the water. To finalize, there were so many people in Pompeii the night before the eruption, due to the beautiful scenery, that because of it almost all of those people died.
Mount Vesuvius is a strato-volcano consisting of a volcanic cone (Gran Cono) that was built within a summit caldera (Mount Somma). The Somma-Vesuvius complex has formed over the last 25,000 years by means of a sequence of eruptions of variable explosiveness, ranging from the quiet lava outpourings that characterized much of the latest activity (for example from 1881 to 1899 and from 1926 to 1930) to the explosive Plinian eruptions, including the one that destroyed Pompeii and killed thousands of people in 79 A.D. At least seven Plinian eruptions have been identified in