Ive seen various figures for the temperature and this article puts the temperature much lower at 250 while others at over 1000 degrees. Either way, a tad too hot for comfort.

Traveling at around the speed of sound you wont hear it though you might see it….but not for long.

No oxygen, no moisture and loaded with dust. So you are not going to burn. We are around 60% water so it boils, explosively in this case. So why don’t we see this if the temperature was 1000 degrees. Sorry to sound gory but we are talking brains and internal organs literally exploding.

At a lower temperature it will still boil violently but probably not explosively. 250-300 is enough to sear the skin and (forgive me please) there are enough orifice to release the rapidly expanding water vapor……..ears, mouth included.

We used to test sample of coal for what we called ‘volatile content’. To do this we heated one gram of coal at 900 degrees in an oxygen free atmosphere. This was a fast temperature rise. The essential shape of the coal did not change.

Sorry, I think I’m done now. It’s a subject of endless fascination.

Finally, I found these photos of a cast of a young woman shielding her face. She was one of the casts in the exhibition:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_khSBbOGByJ4/SLMzUEZNUuI/AAAAAAAAAhU/Z5WrXYBrUJQ/s400/IMG_3754.JPG

http://spqr360.com/images/article_images/body_casts_in_pompeii.jpg

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080214/images/met-pompeii220.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/ancienthistory/1/0/h/W/2/woman_800.jpg

I previously discussed with Martin Runqvist whether it is normal to be able to feel such empathy for the suffering of a total stranger who died on the opposite side of the world nearly 2,000 years ago (yes, I appreciate the irony of that comment), and he persuaded me that I’m not going mad. Well, maybe we both are – he mentioned he sometimes talks to skulls.

Anyway, you’ve made some interesting observations, but I would suggest that in any exhibit the chosen casts may be highly selected to illustrate certain points, and an exhibit designed with one process of death in mind may well be served by a different set of casts than a different exhibit with different ideas in mind.

(warning – some people might find this image a bit distressing):

http://freestockphotos.com/POMPEII/BodyCasts1.jpg

I’m trying to find images of some of the casts I saw in the exhibition, but no luck so far.

The casts I saw were a small sample, and it was obviously not a random sample – they were chosen selectively, I assume at least to omit casts that might be more confronting to a general public audience. Perhaps also they were chosen on the basis of the detail which was preserved, but I’m guessing.

The detail observable in the casts was quite remarkable – including pretty fine detail of the clothes people were wearing, body shape, etc. So these people and their clothing did not burn much if at all before they were covered by a thick layer of very fine ash in one of the phases subsequent to S4.

In a humane sense, I found the casts to be very touching – they were very lifelike and sympathy-inducing, at least to me. In a couple of groups, people were reaching out to one another – notably one couple who were assumed to be a husband and wife, and a separate couple who were two young women. Some had their hands or the hems of their clothing held over their lower faces in a self-protective gesture.

I have seen plenty of photos before, but seeing the casts up very close in 3D gave me a different perspective. Of those that I saw, I had the overwhelming sense that these people knew what was happening to them and were reacting to it. In other words, death was not literally instantaneous – they had time to react. It was not death by suffocation, but likewise it was not literally instantaneous. I saw no evidence of writhing or twisting that I could discern, with the exception of the guard dog, the image of which is pretty famous.

But it was a small sample, chosen with some bias, so I should not infer too much of a general nature. And I’m no biologist. But I am somewhat familiar with deaths in natural disasters.

But a cast of a young woman lying partly propped on one arm with the hem of her dress held up over her nose and mouth seems like pretty clear evidence she did not die instantaneously. Likewise the case of two young women lying huddled together, with one reaching out to the other, and the other case of the man and woman lying huddled together reaching out to one another.

The authors seem to be saying a few seconds to a few tens of seconds, which seems about right to me.