Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD)

A good disaster story never fails to fascinate and, given that it actually happened, the story of Pompeii especially so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has provided an object of great historical interest ever since its rediscovery in 1599. Baths, houses, tools and other possessions (including plenty of wine bottles), frescoes, graffiti, an ampitheater, an aqueduct, the "Villa of the Mysteries": Pompeii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-century Roman life goes.

The ash-preserved ruins of Pompeii, more than any other source, have provided historians with a window into just what life in that time and place was like. A Day in Pompeii, an exhibition held at the Melbourne Museum in 2009, gave its more than 330,000 visitors a chance to experience Pompeii's life even more vividly. The exhibition included a 3D theater installation that featured the animation above. Watch it, and you can see Pompeii brought back to life with computer-generated imagery and then, in snapshots over the course of 48 hours, entombed by Vesuvius again.

As inherently compelling as we find the story of Pompeii, modern drama has struggled to capture the power of the disaster that defines it. The late-1960s BBC show Up Pompeii! offered a comedic rendering of life in the city before the explosion, but more serious interpretations, like the 2014 Hollywood movie Pompeii, met with only lukewarm critical reception. Best, it seems, to stick to the words of Pliny the Younger, witness to the destruction and still its most evocative describer:

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.

Thanks for sharing this, it was very engaging.

It is amazing, the power of nature, the constant change, one thing balancing another, as two plates (in plate tectonics) separate, this can open the upper surfaces to the fire or lava of the core, but then on the other side of the plates they press together and could trigger an earthquake.

I live in California, and have experienced many earthquakes in my 60 years. Along the Hayward Fault a disaster is waiting to happen, and of course South in Los Angeles. In the 1906 quake, the epicenter was very far from San Francisco, yet we see what happened. Yet today, we could have an epicenter dead on the spot where millions live.

Today, of course, we have better building standards and so on.

But what we donâ€™t have is better standards of people.

In the 1906 earthquake aftermath, the Army, National Guard, and police were ready to shoot looters on site. Today we do not have the courage to enforce such crisis mode threats or actions. I believe when the “big one” comes in California, while perhaps less buildings will fall and the fires will not be as occurred on such a level as in San Francisco, I do believe there is going to be mass destruction because it is likely the epicenter will be just under huge populations of Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, and not far off in San Juan Bautista. In fact, the destruction could be just as bad in the aftermath as many residents are now located in hills that have overgrown weeds and fire hazards due to lack of weed control. In fact, fires could escape easily from buildings and then spread into the fields of the California hillsides full of thousands of houses in these times.

But that is not my greatest fear.

When the “big one” comes there will be NO police to help you. There will not be enough police. The military or guards will not be able to arrive quickly enough. Many “officials” will be busy looking after their own families, or unable to arrive at all. You will be on your own.

You will be in your house or at work, God knows.
Then the looters will come, the thugs. In many numbers.

I have my guns. Do you? There will be no police on that day. There will never be enough police on that day. Not in the San Francisco Bay Area.

And just imagine what is going to happen in Los Angeles. It will be overrun by the worse of humanity, looters, fires will break out, many will be raped, many homes invaded and everyone shot dead, you will be their victims. Unless. Better know your neighbors. Better have guns.

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