Archaeologist compares eruption at Roman town close to Pompeii to dropping of WW2 atomic bomb
An Italian archaeologist has compared the impact of the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Herculaneum – the ancient Roman beach town close to Pompeii – to the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during the second world war.
Such was the heat of the pyroclastic surge produced by Vesuvius – believed to have been between 400C and 500C – that the brains and blood of the Herculaneum’s victims instantly boiled.
