Judging by animation it would be quite obvious to leave at 1PM and you still have plenty of time until 5PM before things get really bad, heck in 2 hours you can get at least 12km away to Nocera inferiore, where you would be already pretty safe and in another hour to Cava de tirreni where you would be completely safe
I don't know if this is really as obvious as you suggest. If you grow up near a volcano (see for example modern day active volcanoes in Indonesia or Etna and Stromboli in Italy), you will be used to some degree of rumbling and smoke and ashes spewing. So this might be regarded as a normal occurrence. Until it's too late, of course.
The animation is awesome because it shows it would be quite hard to tell that something extreme is about to happen in the morning (when the article details you must have left to survive).
It probably depends on your mode of transportation.
If you need to reach Naples by 2pm on foot, then yes, you need to leave in the morning. If you have a horse, though, you can probably hang around until lunchtime and still have time to spare.
When I visited Pompei and Herculaneum my first thought is I couldn't help but to think how stupid humans are for rebuilding those towns in exactly the same place, and even closer to the volcano than the ancient destroyed towns.
Farms, I get it -- fertile soil -- but why cities? Did people not learn from the historical records of their time, to draw lines around the boundaries of destruction and not build again within those lines?
Hi there, I live around 30 km from Pompeii and I'm in a "safe zone". I'm only expected to receive some ashes in case of eruption (if the eruption is like the one of 1600, that is more probable but less strong than the one of 79BC).
After a few years after the eruption, nobody knew the exact location of Pompeii and Ercolanum, and also for quite some time these two areas were unhabitated and used only for farming.
The emperor at the time of the eruption, Tito, tried to rebuild the cities but nobody wanted to live there anymore.
They only found out that Pompeii was there around 1500-1600. The repopulation of the area has happened during the last century, mainly because Italy was, after the second world war, in an economic boom and people built houses (and factories) without any permit. Politics was usually corrupted or "closed their eyes" for votes.
And here we are. At the point we are now, it is impossible to relocate this huge amount of people (around 2M) anywhere. The evacuation plan itself is a joke, due to the nature of the eruptions of a stratovolcano.
So, let's hope for the best, as there's nothing we can do to prepare for the worse.
Vesuvius is the most problematic because in the past it showed a 25 years cycle between eruptions, but the eruption of ~1975 was missed (last was in 1944 and lava capped the eruptive canal). Anyway, this Vulcanic area is the most populated in the world and evacuating will be a mess.
Every time I hyke to the Vesuvius top, guides explain that there are other active vulcanos in the area; they are all considered active and may harm at any moment. The Phlegraean Fields are problematic because they generate a lot of bradyseism (and in some places the ground went underwater for about 10 meters!), but for now they are considered quiescent.
Ischia island also is a volcano, that has erupted last time around 700 BC. Finally, there's an underwater volcano called Marsilii, that can generate a tsunami.
A couple of years back I was on a flight from the UK to Sicily and it flew down the coast there and so much of what you can see looked volcanic - Ponza in particular.
I feel a bit the same about other similar hazards. Cities built on flood plains that regularly get washed away. Cities built on volcanic hotspots with regular serious earthquakes. Cities, as you say, in the shadow of active volcanoes. But people always seem to think "it won't happen again."
I live in the Canadian city of Winnipeg which is built upon the intersection of two large rivers and their flood plains.
We have the Red River Floodway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Floodway) which has been quite successful, however, we're getting more floodwater every year and now we sometimes face severe flooding on the Assiniboine River.
This all used to be at the bottom of a giant lake and probably will go back to that at some point, but we've done a pretty good job at preventing billions in losses.
The airport in Kona on Hawaii is built on a lava flow from Hualalai’s last major eruption about 200 years ago. Hualalai is still considered an active volcano, too. Maybe they’ve got a force field they haven’t told anyone about.
Hawaii has fairly liquid lava, which means that the dissolved gas can escape safely and not build up pressure for a big sudden explosion. Accordingly, while the airport may not be safe, the people should be since they can move away from any incoming lava in time.
The volcanoes with more viscous lava (such as Vesuvius) are much more dangerous in comparison.
Also reminds me of this thing I saw in satellite maps near Mt. Shasta. Train track cutting right through a lava flow, and a highway (that might serve as a valuable escape route) cutting right next to it. Seriously? Are humans that stupid? The very FIRST thing I see when I look at this satellite map is "oh shit lava how about we stay the hell away from it"
As a useful tip in a similar vein, I vaguely remember reading somewhere that
the wells went dry in the area around Vesuvius about a day in advance because
of increased pressure underground. It would be great if anyone with domain
knowledge could confirm or debunk.
I tried researching this and found several websites making this claim, the most reputable of which is a Smithsonian article (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/resurrecting-pompeii-...). None of these articles cite any sources, so I tried a Google Books search and was able to find an excerpt from Pompeii: The Living City which mentions “the wells and springs that had run dry despite a normal fall of rain in the preceding months” in the days preceding the eruption. Both of the authors are academic historians, so it seems like this claim may be accepted history.
When we went to Sakurajima, an active vulcano island in the Kagoshima prefecture, there were flying rock shelters and tables with evacuation routes in regular intervals, for the local inhabitans to use. This is how a minor eruption looks like & what locals are long used to:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wqxnJQcQXss
(Note the cars below just driving about.)
I buy green tea from near there. So called "Ariake Sencha / Gyokuro", out of Shibushi maybe 15 to 20km away. Joked to the shop owner about how he could advertise this so much better with a volcano on the bag, instead of just plain white paper bag with black lettering.
i had such a hard time reading this article. the text kept moving up and down because of the adds, I eventually hit control a and copied everythign to a notepad to read..... wow that was an awful experience.
And yet protagonists survive after going through a pyroclastic flow routinely in the movies, such as Jurassic World: FK and 2012. It is a recurring trope in movies!
I don't care, as long as none of them challenge the way to escape an exploding volcano involves parkour and beating up/shooting bad guys while doing so.
> So instead, you and the rest of the Pompeiians find yourselves 6 miles from the vent of Vesuvius with only two options: Run north, or run south.
I dunno, I checked the map and you can run to east and then south without any mountains towards Cava de tireni and you will be further from Vesuvio than in Naples plus you can cross small hills and end up in Salerno with unlimited path further on coast.
I don't know what kind of considerations drove the author to exclude east. We know that from Pompeii to Nuceria (now Nocera Inferiore) there was a road, but probably not well maintained. Consider that at the time this was probably, a huge forest. Nocera itself was only interested by the earthquakes and not by any pyroclastic event, nor gases. Here's an image of the eruption of the time: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Mt...
So probably the author felt that travelling to Nuceria was more dangerous, because you would be exposed to the winds that could bring the gases to you at any time.
I'll try to reach out to the author and ask him directly why the east road was excluded.
This map suggests that Pompeii was well-connected by a major road to Salernum via Nuceria Alfaterna (Nocera), which is not surprising, given that Pompeii is between Salernum and Neapolis' metropolitan area on the north of the bay. The highest point on the pass is just 200m, at Cava Di' Tirreni, which is beyond Nuceria.
As Nuceria is closer, and on a flatter route, than even the death-trap of Herculaneum (2hr 40min vs. 3hr 10min, according to Google walking directions), let alone safety in Neapolis, this might well have been the last chance of escape.
I just received an answer from the professor that was interviewed in this article. His answer explains why going east is not advised. There was just another eruption that can be compared to the one of 79 BC, and happened around 2000 BC. During that event, the direction of the material was towards east, reaching the city of Avellino. Other (less intense) eruptions that have been studied all showed that winds generally go to east/east south east. 79BC is considered an unicum. To wrap up:
- if you time-travel to 79BC you may survive going to Nuceria, but we don't have evidence of anyone survived through that path
- the ones we know survived the event, went to Neaples
- For future eruptions, go north or south, but avoid east - winds at 2-4000m are much different respect to what you feel at the ground
