Mount Vesuvius murdered its victims in more brutal ways than we thought. Boiling blood and exploding skulls.

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Our visions of Pompeii's destruction just got a little more gruesome.
Giorgio Sommer/Public Domain
▼ For nearly two millennia, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius has served as a stark reminder that nature is capable of some serious violence. The helpless residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum were inundated by volcanic horror, bludgeoned by hot ash avalanches that asphyxiated them while preserving their bodies for centuries afterward, within an unforgettable necropolis. At least, that’s what we always assumed. It turns out, many people probably died in ways that were more grizzly than we imagined.
In findings published in PLOS Onelate last month, researchers from Naples, Italy found that a segment of Vesuvius victims were likely killed by fast-moving laving surges that streamed down toward the towns below, creating temperatures high enough to vaporize bodily fluids and create explosions in the skull. It’s about as horrific a way to go as you might imagine, and upends the notion that the toxic gases and thick chunks of ash were responsible for choking inhabitants to death during the AD 79 eruption.
“These kind of field and laboratory studies are of great importance, not only from the point of view of a historical and biological reconstruction of the Roman age populations, but also because they provide fundamental information useful for the assessment of volcanic risk in densely populated areas,” says Pier Paolo Petrone, a scientist from the Federico II University Hospital in Naples, Italy and the lead author of the new study.
For over two days, the eruption of Vesuvius was sheer cataclysm for nearby residents. It was 100,000 more powerful than both atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. The event began with a blanket of ash hitting the towns below, followed by streams of pyroclastic surge (molten gas and rock).
The new study hinges on analysis of more than 100 skeletal remains from about 300 eruption victims who tried to dodge the worst of the volcano by hiding in boathouses by the waterfront of Herculaneum, 11 miles from Pompeii. These people, unfortunately, found themselves overwhelmed by a massive wave of pyroclastic surge, which radiated temperatures between 400 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit and swept through the scene at nearly 180 miles per hour. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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