[HN Gopher] Vesuvius ancient eruption rescuer identified at Herc...
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Vesuvius ancient eruption rescuer identified at Herculaneum, says
expert
Author : harscoat
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-05-12 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| erulabs wrote:
| It's fairly incredible to think one of those skeletons found on
| the beach may actually be Pliney the Elder himself. These sort of
| quasi-mythical accounts being made tangible are amazing. It's
| like finding a piece of the Trojan Horse!
| praptak wrote:
| There's some evidence that a skull that was dug up at the site
| a long time ago is Pliny's:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/science/pliny-archaeology...
| dheera wrote:
| I've been there and my first thought is just how idiotically
| stupid humans are for building a massive modern town UPHILL
| from those ruins.
|
| I mean hello this place got obliterated, evidence is right in
| front of you, it's probably not a great place to build stuff
| ...
|
| Oh and even in California I see these lava flows around Mt.
| Shasta and railways cut into them ... hello, have you thought
| about going _around_ the lava flows instead of cutting into
| them? What do you think is going to happen next time lava comes
| flowing down?
| erulabs wrote:
| But the tile yield bonus for building next to a volcano are
| so good!
| verst wrote:
| Civ 6? :)
| eCa wrote:
| Speaking of California. SF bay area has a 20% probability of
| 7.5 earthquake within the next 30 years[1]. Probably not a
| great place to build stuff either.
|
| [1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-
| will-o...
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| You can build earthquake proof buildings. See many nations
| in the pacific: notably Japan.
| hourislate wrote:
| You really don't have to go that far back. Considering every
| decade a beach community gets wiped off the map by a
| hurricane and is immediately rebuilt, few rarely care about
| the consequences. People are always building in
| fire/flood/disaster zones. I suppose with insurance and the
| ability to flee these destructive forces of nature are an
| acceptable risk. Taking this a step further, climate change
| could make the whole planet uninhabitable and we still can't
| get anyone to give a shit.
| bernardv wrote:
| True, and then people complain about their insurance
| premiums!
| jdonaldson wrote:
| On a geological time scale, it's probably more economical to
| cut through them and shave time off of every journey between
| eruption events.
| dheera wrote:
| Maybe, but we could create a transport infrastructure that
| has 99.9999% uptime instead of 99% uptime.
|
| It would be more economical for Google to use 99% uptime
| systems but they do go the extra mile for 99.9999% uptime.
| erulabs wrote:
| As a career SRE - this is more or less categorically
| false. In the specific case of Google, it is absolutely
| false.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| I doubt it would be more economical. I strongly suspect
| someone did the analysis, determined that at five 9s they
| earn $X, at six 9s they earn $Y, and the difference
| between the two is large enough to be worth funding the
| projects to get there.
| camhenlin wrote:
| By that logic, nobody should be doing any construction,
| anywhere.
|
| Natural disasters are a part of living on our planet. If an
| event is exceedingly rare, such as a volcano eruption, how
| much time do we need to spend worrying about it? As far as
| the Romans were aware at the time, Vesuvius was probably one
| of the only volcanic episodes that any Roman had ever dealt
| with, they were likely well aware that it was unlikely to
| happen again. Today, we're a bit better off with our hoards
| of knowledge and ability to observe to some higher level of
| accuracy, when a volcano might erupt, so it does make a lot
| of sense to just build whatever convenient infrastructure we
| need right next to a volcano
| dheera wrote:
| > Natural disasters are a part of living on our planet.
|
| No, they don't have to be. It's exceedingly easy to avoid
| certain types of natural disasters by avoiding disaster-
| prone areas. Volcanoes are easy to avoid.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > No, they don't have to be. It's exceedingly easy to
| avoid certain types of natural disasters by avoiding
| disaster-prone areas. Volcanoes are easy to avoid.
|
| Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and hurricanes
| are each fairly easy to avoid, but its harder to avoid
| them at the same time without giving up on things like
| freshwater supplies, trade by sea, prime agricultural
| land, etc.
|
| There are reasons people live in places that periodically
| see disaster.
| Someone wrote:
| For volcanoes, the lure is that volcanic soil is extremely
| fertile. In Roman times, the choice for those living around
| Vesuvius was one between "way harder to grow your food" and
| "small chance of a volcanic eruption that may kill you"
|
| https://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/soil.htm:
|
| _"One example of the effect of volcanoes on agricultural
| lands is in Italy. Except for the volcanic region around
| Naples, farming in southern Italy is exceedingly difficult
| because limestone forms the basement rock and the soil is
| generally quite poor. But the region around Naples, which
| includes Mount Vesuvius, is very rich mainly because of two
| large eruptions 35,000 and 12000 years ago that left the
| region blanketed with very thick deposits of tephra which has
| since weathered to rich soils. Part of this area includes
| Mount Vesuvius. The region has been intensively cultivated
| since before the birth of Christ. The land is planted with
| vines, vegetables, or flowers. Every square foot of this rich
| soil is used. For example, even a small vineyard will have,
| in addition to grapes and spring beans on the trellises, fava
| beans, cauliflower and onions between the trellis rows, and
| the vineyard margin rimmed with orange and lemon trees,
| herbs, and flowers. It also is a huge tomato growing region"_
| a3n wrote:
| There are old stone tsunami markers in coastal areas around
| Japan. "Don't build below this point."
|
| The Fukushima nuclear facility was built below that point.
|
| > "It takes about three generations for people to forget.
| Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to
| their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory
| fades," Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at
| Tohoku University, told the AP.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-
| warnin...
| lmilcin wrote:
| Trains are maybe not such a huge issue. I mean... if lava
| starts to flow you just don't go there?
| dheera wrote:
| And then you have to shut down lots of supply chains. You
| could just route the tracks a minimum distance from active
| volcanoes and not worry about the next eruption disrupting
| transportation.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Material damage to a road or a track is a different
| matter from a catastrophy where an entire settlement gets
| wiped with all souls.
|
| We have roads high up in the mountains even though there
| is danger they get flooded, rock falls on them, the
| ground gives, etc.
|
| We build wooden houses where tornadoes are regular
| occurrence.
|
| It is not all stupidity, think of it at least partly as a
| sign of stubbornness and perseverance of humankind.
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| It's very likely that they didn't really know that Vesuvio
| was a volcano at all...
|
| According to various sources they just consider it a
| mountain, given that it was all covered of vegetation and
| there was no recorded trace of activity in the previous
| centuries.
|
| Plus, as said... Growing stuff there is a pleasure (reason
| why plenty of people still live in that area). Have you ever
| tasted the tomatoes growing there? There's a reason why the
| pizza you can have nearby is something you can't eat anywhere
| else in the world!
| ilamont wrote:
| If you want to read a fantastic historical fiction novel that
| covers these events (including Pliny the Elder's rescue mission)
| seek out _Pompeii_ by Robert Harris.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76010/pompeii-by-ro...
| ggambetta wrote:
| I really like Robert Harris in general, Fatherland being my
| favorite (shame about the terrible movie adaptation!), and the
| Cicero Trilogy being fantastic. But for some reason Pompeii
| didn't do it for me :( It's _OK_ , it's by no means _bad_ , but
| it left me unsatisfied.
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(page generated 2021-05-12 23:01 UTC)