the plaster casts from Pompeii
In: Biology
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A Pyroclastic flow is a flood of crazy hot gas and material that immediately pours out of an erupting volcano and any people of Pompeii were well and truly incinerated by it while simultaneously being encased in the remains of this material which you might think of as “ash” but it a harder porous conglomerate called tephra. The incinerated people were quickly reduced to more or less nothing but not before they created a hollow vacancy in the tephra, into which plaster can be poured very similarly to how any other plaster cast is made.
Great answer by u/Luckbot, here is a fun [recreation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_3ggKg0Bc) of what it was like the day of the eruption.
Fun History Fact: Two of the greatest scientist/philosopher/historians of the age were sent to witness the events, as people understood for several weeks before the big eruption that something was… off. They were Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. (In case you’re a major beer snob, those recognizable names, but you can now annoy everyone knowing it’s pronoucned “Plih-knee” not “Ply-knee”). Oh, and they were uncle/nephew not father/son.
Anywho – the Elder went ashore and had the younger stay on the boat to witness. The elder died in the eruption but the younger witnesses and documented a rapid wave of exploding gas the completely obliterated Herculaneum (a neighboring city) in seconds. But his description was so unbelievable, that well no one believed him and just figured he was terrified. I wasn’t until Mt. St. Helens in the US in the 1980 that we witnessed it again and now have the term ‘pyroclastic surge’ for a supersonic mixtures of gases and lava that just blows the fuck out of whatever is down hill.
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