Facing death

A picture can say more than thousands words. Or sometimes it can. When the volcano Mount Vesuvius near Naples in Italy erupted in the year of AD 79, at first nobody in the region understood what was happening. The volcano had been sleeping for 400 years and people had forgotten that living on a volcano could be dangerous. So the first reaction was going to see what it was. But soon it became clear that there was only one thing to do: flee. So that’s what most people did. Nevertheless many people in Pompeii, the biggest city in the region, died. The inhabitants of Herculaneum were more fortunate and almost everybody survived. Or so it was thought, when the town was rediscovered in the 18th century. But not so long ago, in the 1980s, some 300 dead bodies of men, women and children were found in the boat houses along the beach. Maybe they had been enclosed by the volcano and the sea, because they had no boats to escape, or maybe they had taken shelter and waited till they could go home again. Suddenly, “a scorching cloud of superheated volcanic ash burst into the crowded shelters. They were instantly fried alive.” The refugees thought to have escaped the danger, but death has overtaken them. However, it didn’t occur that fast that these poor people didn’t realize what was happening and what was waiting them. Look at the positions of the bodies. Look at the faces. Even though not more than the skulls remain from the faces, we still can see how afraid these people were and that they looked into the death’s eyes. They were literally facing death.

For more information and for the quote see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/4762420/Refugees-trying-to-shelter-from-Vesuvius-were-fried-alive-by-volcanic-ash.html.