In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, sending a cloud of ash and hot gas sweeping through the ancient Roman town of Pompei. The writer Pliny the Younger—whose uncle, Pliny the Elder, died in the eruption—watched the catastrophe unfold from a vantage point across the Bay of Naples, later describing how inhabitants had tied pillows over their heads to protect themselves from falling debris and carried torches to find their way through the darkness.

In 2024, archeologists discovered the skeletons of two of the volcano’s victims, likely killed as they tried to reach the sea, just outside Pompeii’s southern gates. The first skeleton was of a young man, who is thought to have died in a pyroclastic surge—a rush of superheated gas and hot ash that can literally boil blood.