This post is not about the G20

Yeah, I know that Toronto just hosted the G20 summit, and I know that the police made the most arrests at any single event in Canadian history, and I know that a couple hundred people were herded into a park and made to stay there in the pouring rain for several hours, but you know what? Fuck that shit. I'm gonna post a really fucking cool blog post about how people die from fucking volcanoes, because I can.

[T]hat is how the people at Pompeii, who's remains were found trapped and partly preserved within ghostly body-shaped tombs within that pyroclastic flow, died. They did not suffocate. They did not get blown apart by force. They did not die of gas poisoning. They simply cooked. Instantly.

Fuck. Yeah. That is some cool fuckin' research. For those who don't know (the details), Mt. Vesuvius, a still-active volcano 8 km away from Pompeii, erupted with extreme force in 79 AD, burying the city (and a bit of some other ones nearby) with ash and pumice. The type of eruption which occurred is still known as a "Plinian eruption," after the Roman author Pliny the Younger who described the eruption which killed his uncle Pliny the Elder in a letter to his friend Tacitus.

This research actually has important implications for disaster preparedness and discovery today, as such eruptions are rare and their effects have not been terribly well-documented. But forget that. Fucking awesome.

Original paper here.