Mr Titanic
Spirit of the Night
Location: Gotham City
Posts: 1355
Rivets: 13 (+13/-0)
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Re: RMS Roraima
No kidding! They were caught in what Pellegrino calls "cool spots" in the volcanic death cloud. All around them were fireballs thousands of degrees hot! I discussed this very thing with Dr. Pellegrino, and he stated some very interesting facts, which were rather scary all the while.
Quote:
Dr. Pellegrino Wrote:
It's ash and hot air (above 500 deg. C) that shimmered into the chambers, slightly denser than water, killing the brains within 1/200th second, and vaporizing even the tendons within the next 2/10ths of a second. {Snip}
I remember him also recently mentioning that the speed at which the heat engulfs the person is just barely faster than the time it takes for pain to reach the brain. So you would die just before you felt anything, BARELY before.
Last edited by Mr Titanic, Jul/14/2006, 10:07 am
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Jul/14/2006, 10:05 am
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Lights
Deck Officer
Location: Anyplace on Water
Posts: 637
Rivets: 17 (+17/-0)
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 Re: RMS Roraima
Not happy, Mr Titanic! I guess you can say that it is relatively merciful as deaths go but that's about it.
I don't know if you have watched any of the Discovery Channel specials on Pompeii and Herculaneum, but sometime in the 1980s (I think), archaelogists discovered what turned out to be Roman boathouses at what used to be the old shoreline before the 79 CE eruption, in Herculaneum. When they started to excavate, they found literally hundreds of skeletons of people who had died in the pyroclastic flow that did reach Herculaneum.
You could see that many of the skulls had burst from the vaporising of the brains, resulting in the skulls bursting. They also went into how the ash would have suffocated them because when it is inhaled it mixes with fluids in the lung and becomes almost a cement. So if the pyroclastic cloud hadn't gotten them, the ashfall would have and given that the pyroclastic flow killed much more quickly and relatively mercifully (at least compared to suffocting), I guess I would choose it over the ashfall.
When you see the skeletons you have to thank the Fates that at least they died before they could really know anything...hopefully.
Sorry to carry on so, but I am a fan of Pompeii and Herculaneum...the more they learn the more interesting it gets.
And yeah, Dr. Pellegrino is right...this stuff is scary. Most of those who died at Mt St Helens in the 1980 eruption died because they were where they shouldn't have been and got hit by a lateral blast pyroclastic flow.
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Jul/16/2006, 1:14 am
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TSOLD's time is: Nov/27/2009, 9:30 am