The Ancient World’s Most Famous Natural Disaster
On August 24th, 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted with a force 100,000 times greater than that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. The blast tossed deadly debris, mixed with a cloud of poisonous gasses, over twenty miles high. As Vesuvius spewed into the air, lava and hot pumice poured out of the volcano’s mouth at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second. The mixture raced down the mountainside to devastate the surrounding region and destroy nearby towns, of which Pompeii and Herculaneum are the best known.
There had been tremors for days, but they were not unusual. Then, around noon on August 24th, a cloud appeared atop Vesuvius. About an hour later, the volcano erupted and ash began to fall on Pompeii, six miles away. By 2 PM, volcanic debris, begin to fall with the ash. By 5 PM, sunlight had been completely blocked and roofs in Pompeii began to collapse under the accumulating weight of ash and pumice. Panicked townspeople rushed to the harbor to seek any ship that would take them away.