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I find it slightly disconcerting my name (well, handle) comes up twice in a diary dedicated to farting. What is this? Some unconscious prejudice?

Flatulence of the earth was related with volcanoes from the days of yore.  The Greek, the Romans, during the Middle Ages, although more hellish annotations were more en vogue as well. Dante made his own little contributions to this.

Volcanoes also have a particular mix of gas constituents, a fart signature if you will, although it's also dependable on time. Etna, for instance, is the largest volcanic contributor to atmospheric CO2. It's also quite rich in sulphur. Also, volcanic gasses are monitored and used to predict eruptions.

Just to elucidate to the novice: Pliny the Elder was not killed by a pyroclastic cloud, but as afew said, the gasses from the volcano.  No normal living mammal survives the onslaught of a pyroclastic cloud. As famously recorded, the destruction of St. Pierre by a pyroclastic flow from Mount Pelée killed some 30.000 people and left just two survivors: one of them stowed deep in the city's prison and another living at the city's edge.

Returning to Pliny the Elder, there is also speculation that his death was a combination of exhaustion, possibly asthma or even a heart attack. I can look this up... The descriptions of his final hours were later related to Pliny the Younger also has left us with another impressive witness account of the Pompeii destruction.

(BTW, Order of the PN???)

by Nomad (Bjinse) on Thu Apr 27th, 2006 at 06:51:51 AM EST
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