History with the Cap'n- An Eruption of Trivia

For some people if they hear one catchy tune on the radio, they spend the rest of the day annoying people with their repetitious humming. Others find themselves at work getting all the itches and twitches of a rehab patient when they know they have a new gadget to tinker with at home. We all have our tiny obsessions that can dominate our thoughts when the right stimulus triggers them. For the Cap'n, I often find my mind picking up a stray reference to an unusual topic, and suddenly my brain starts craving arcane or trivial knowledge about that subject like a 5 year old craves the taste of paste.

The other day I listened to President Obama address Congress about some silly thing, then tuned in for the response from the Republican representative on behalf of the opposition party. Much to my later vexation, my ears picked up Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana mention something in his best "Kenneth the Page"-voice about "something called volcano monitoring". While others went on to bicker about the comparisons between the two speeches and the two yokels, I started to ponder whether history could provide any interesting stories of when volcanic activity was either monitored too little or too much. Well the historical record did not disappoint in the area of volcano related anecdotes. I share the results of my search below, along with some other intriguing factoids related to volcanoes.

• If the general populace already knows about any volcanic eruption in history, they know that Mount Vesuvius unexpectedly blanketed Pompeii with volcanic ash and debris on August 24th in the year 79 CE (or as the Pompeians would have said LXXIX). Every school child gets to look at pictures of the bodies sealed in place by the volcano's spew and enjoy a macabre thrill. No wonder we all grow up so desensitized to violence and fascinated with the morbid. A few things the general populace may not now include the fact that Vesuvius wiped out two cities, famously Pompeii, which has petrified corpses, and the less well-known Herculaneum, which got slowly buried under fifty feet of mud. Actually, considering that, I can understand why Pompeii gets better publicity.
  

• Pompeii actually stands out as a very strong example of people not paying enough attention to the local neighborhood volcano. Even before Vesuvius gradually built up to its main explosion over the course of a few days -shooting steam, causing tremors, and the like- the city of Pompeii had been evacuated just a few year earlier because of massive earthquake. In fact archaeologists found evidence that many people where still in the process of repairing and redecorating their homes when the volcano finally burst. That just proves that truisms of home ownership were as true during the Ancient Roman empire as they are today. As any homeowner knows, once you finally bring a contractor in to start fixing one problem, some new and completely unrelated thing goes wrong.
  

• Excavation of Pompeii revealed more secrets than just buckets of plaster and stacks of tile. Apparently archaeologist uncovered so much erotic art in the remains of the city that they were able to open a special museum focusing on the pornography of Pompeii. If we included that in the history books half the high schoolers would graduate wanting to become archaeologists. I would take this as fairly convincing evidence that the Pompeians did not expect the eruption to strike so quickly. If I thought I was about to be buried in place by a cloud of super-heated pumice, I would not want to be caught holding a dirty magazine.
  

• Pompeii also provided an excellent opportunity for someone to try investigating an eruption far too closely. Legendary Roman scholar Pliny the Elder heard about the eruption and felt overcome by his own curiosity and compassion. As the first natural historian, Pliny decided to inspect the volcano more closely and lead a rescue mission to go right into the middle of the outburst. Apparently feeling no reason to fear the ongoing flare up, Pliny spent the night with a friend who lived near Vesuvius. He ate, bathed and slept as fire rained from the sky, and the mountain spewed ash, rocks, and lava all around. Pliny seems to have developed a sense for the danger he faced, as history records that he had the members of his rescue crew strap pillows to their heads to protect them from falling rock. Unsurprisingly, Pliny died during his ill-planned mission, seemingly from a combination of the volcano's deadly fumes and his own underlying asthma. History would remember Pliny as one of the great minds of his age, all available evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. (I can safely mock Pliny the Elder without having to worry about appearing insensitive or offending anyone, right? It's not too soon is it?)
  

• Now before you go thinking volcanoes are all bad. I should let you know that we get all our diamonds from volcanoes. I know you think of diamonds coming from mines dug into the Earth's crust. In truth, diamonds form several hundred miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It takes volcanic eruptions to drag them to where we can reach them. This is why most rich diamond mines are usually near sites of volcanic activity. Before you start filling your head with get-rich-quick schemes, go reread the section on Pliny the Elder, then reconsider messing around with anything volcanic.

• You might look down on the case of Pompeii as an example of the ignorant people of the ancient world suffering because they lacked sophisticated scientific knowledge. You should know that humans have shown the same propensity to ignore the warning signs of an imminent eruption in modern times. In 1902, the island of Martinique began experiencing some early symptoms of an impending eruption of the island's Mount Pelee. Unfortunately for the residents of Martinique the local governor was more concerned about politics than safety. With his party facing a major election soon, he didn't want the voters getting all anxious and hung up on some minor thing like an impending eruption. If they overreacted to hearing the news that their lives were in grave danger, they might take it out on their elected officials. So instead of evacuating the island the governor suppressed any warnings of the danger, prevented people from leaving and assured people that the city at the foot of Mt. Pelee, Saint-Pierre, was the safest place to be. This led to thousands of people crowding into St. Pierre in the hopes of protecting themselves. When the eruption came in killed more than 28,000 people, including the governor, in about two minutes. One of the few survivors was a prisoner who lived because he had been sealed in the underground holding cell awaiting execution. The prisoner would be pardoned and later travel with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, because any rube would gladly part with two-bits just to see irony of that magnitude.
  

• The nation of Iceland has actually found a way to turn volcanoes to their benefit in an unusual way. Since this nigh-Arctic island rests on a volcanic hotbed as overactive as Philip the Hyper-Hypo, it has found all sorts of uses for geothermic energy. In surely the most unexpected example of this, Iceland uses the geothermal heat to grow bananas. Botanists build greenhouses around hot springs which when controlled can provide ideal conditions for cultivating the tropical fruit. For a time Iceland produced more bananas than any other European nation and even grew enough to begin exporting them. Iceland made so much money from the banana trade, that even Greenland has tried to get into the act. If proper volcano monitoring can allow two nations known for their frigid conditions to become major producers of tropical fruit, then maybe it does merit more attention.

• In all of this I should note that at times people have gotten carried away when watching volcanoes. Once in 1976 some scientists became very concerned about the signals they observed from the volcano on the island of Guadalupe, La Grande Soufrière. (That's French for "big sulfur outlet". Wait, really? C'mon France I thought you were supposed to be more poetic than that.) While some scientists thought any volcanic eruption would do little damage and didn't warrant alarm others suggested evacuating Guadalupe for fear of a Martinique level disaster. Caution won out and thousands of people had to relocate, except for those few individuals who resigned themselves to whatever fate the volcano dispensed. Famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog became fascinated with the idea of an impending catastrophe and took a crew to document the desolated island and the terrible detonation whenever it occurred. In the end La Grande Soufrière barely erupted at all, the geothermal equivalent of a burp. After all that trouble and worry, the ultimate result was a host of inconvenienced people from Guadalope and a very weird documentary. So it just may be the case that some people do take their volcano monitoring too seriously. Then again, maybe we should all read that passage about Pliny the Elder again.