Dr. Jessica Venner

that he experienced of watching this eruption happen and his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who we've also talked about actually being involved in the rescue efforts and passing away there during the eruption.

So we have that side, the very human reaction to it.

And then we've got the stratigraphy, so the layers of the eruption that we can reconstruct the events and even down to the hour now.

So the eruption begins.

We've got obviously earthquakes that have been happening for a very long time previous, and there would have probably been earthquakes happening at this time while the volcano is starting to erupt, basically.

A column of ash goes up into the sky and it goes miles and miles and miles high.

I think it's like multiple Burj Khalifas.

It's so, so high.

Importantly, it creates a sort of ceiling over the Bay of Naples.

So it goes up and is described by Pliny the Younger as like a plane tree.

Yes, which anyone that's been to the region today will know these.

They're umbrella pines, they're called, because they look like an umbrella.

And so it goes out and it sort of eventually blocks out the sun.

After a while, so this is around midday to 1pm that this happens.

So everyone's confused, of course, because as we've talked about, they didn't know it was necessarily a volcano.

They're also going to start thinking, is this the gods?

Are they annoyed with us?

Is this something that will pass?

They wouldn't necessarily know to run from this.

Very apocalyptic.