A moment frozen in time. People, animals, plants, and even an entire city perfectly preserved and halted in a split second. What great force could cause such an event? None other than the angry fire of Mount Vesuvius. The town of Pompeii was not destroyed, but merely covered and left hidden in the dust of the Earth for centuries. Mount Vesuvius' mysteries can be unraveled by looking at the volcanoes history, the destruction of Pompeii, and the present danger it poses to the world. Located in Italy, Mount Vesuvius is the only volcano active on Europe's mainland. Vesuvius is just one volcano in a large region of them known as the Campanian Volcanic Arc. This group of volcanoes formed over the subducted area between the African and Eurasian …show more content…
The most famous, however, is the eruption on Pompeii in 79 A.D. This eruption killed over 16,000 men, women, and children. When it first erupted it began by throwing ashes, rock, and volcanic gasses so high into the sky that people could see it for hundreds of miles around. A historian named Plinian described what he saw from miles away, "It's general appearance can be best expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches." This is why large eruption clouds are called Plinian eruptions; Mt. Saint Helens is an example of Plinian eruption. Soon ash and rock came falling towards the Earth. As more ash fell it became very difficult to breath, the ash covered the sun and made noon seem like midnight. Next came a Pyroclastic Surge, super hot poisonous gas and rocks came down the side of the mountain and stopped for nothing in it's way. After the eruption, the entire city of Pompeii and a few neighboring villages were completely covered in millions of tons of ash. In 1748, a group of scientists and explorers dug up and found the lost city of Pompeii. Everything, from people to loaves of bread, had been preserved from the ashes. However, Mount Vesuvius' threat to the world was not