What gets you? Is it the ash, the heat, unbreathable chemicals in the air, getting buried, or do they catch fire and burn up?
2006-09-08 22:45:04 · 18 answers · asked by MBK 7 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
No, worse. It's the superheated gases. The temperatures of those gases range from 350 degrees C on up. They comprise CO2, SO2 and others. Nasty, lethal.
The first inhalation of those gases burns out your entire respiratory system, as though someone had just run a poker down your throat and into your lungs.
The next inhalation is what kills you, because by then your ruined respiratory system will be filled with your burning blood.
It's one of the most horrible ways to die known to Nature.
2006-09-08 22:52:40 · answer #1 · answered by fiat_knox 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
In a pyroclastic flow they would die by incineration if they hung about long enough - you would start to cook but then your body woudl die of inhalation of toxic gases and shock. If it was a pyroclastic surge however (much less dense - mainly liquid gases )they would die in the same way your would die in a domestic house fire. The sheer heat of the toxic gases and the air basically cooks their lungs and thats it you are tatty bread. Nasty but pretty quick - they would be well dead before they could figure out what happened.
2006-09-09 07:06:11 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I was under the impression those at Pompeii suffocated. The ash they breathed in turned into a form of concrete in the lungs apparently. Didn't the pyroclastic flow here destroy a place called Herculanium and not Pompeii?
2006-09-09 08:10:31 · answer #3 · answered by Peter W 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think it tends to be suffocation, as when you are buried you can't breathe. The chemicals don't have enough time to affect your breathing, so it can't be that. If you look at what they found at Pompeii: people weren't burnt, so it wasn't fire or the heat, and they weren't crushed, so it wasn't the weight of stuff on top of you.
That said, I'm thinking now that they always said in geography that they had a quick painless death and didn't know it had happened. And suffocation takes a minute or so. So maybe I'm wrong.
2006-09-08 22:49:57 · answer #4 · answered by Steve-Bob 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
they die. because the pyroclastic flows is super heated ash before it even touches them and it is a few feet away when the Vitim breathes it in it settles as fluid in there lungs and then it hardens so by the time it hits them there already dead and then the ash harden on their skin and leaves them in a casing in the position they died in forever scientist think its the most dangerous weapon that the volcanoes has and it because it is really fast unlike lava .
2006-09-08 23:12:48 · answer #5 · answered by qwerty 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Their lungs are filled with hot poisonous gas and ash, which turns to a kind of cement inside them, and they are knocked off their feet and cooked alive. All at once... Nice...
They would most likely die instantly from the hot gas and ash in their lungs and the heat cooking them alive.
2006-09-09 01:40:20 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well they die twice, since you're asking twice. Once at the moment they look up at a mountain of volcanic cloud rolling at them at 500 miles per hour, and in the instant they are fried by the 2000 degrees. They feel nothing.
2006-09-08 22:49:22 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They are quickly incinerated. The heat of a pyroclastic flow is enormous.
2006-09-09 04:16:53 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Both kill. But archaeologist say it is the pyroclastic flow that kills first. That is what killed the people found in Pompeii-they had choked from the fumes, then covered with ash before the lava even reached them
2016-03-27 03:50:01 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They suffocate on the ash and dust first, then they're burned.
2006-09-08 22:59:55 · answer #10 · answered by Phlodgeybodge 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋