It's wild to see this footage safely behind a monitor. Kind of macabre to ponder but I wonder if the victims of Pompeii had a similar experience. The last we see is a hailstorm of ash and molten lava raining down then signal lost.

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fsckboy 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

there is a poignant set of images taken by a photographer Robert Landsburg who chose to post himself too close to the blow up of the top of Mount Saint Helens in 1980.

the last picture from his salvaged camera is similar to what we see for this topic: https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads... his camera was found under this body, with speculation that he was protecting it, which doesn't seem unlikely, but it also would not be surprising for him not to have had that presence of mind, things were happening very quickly.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/robert-landsburg

	▲	tobyjsullivan 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		From that article: After taking his final photograph, Landsburg removed the roll of film from his camera and placed it in a canister. He buried the camera and the film canister deep in his backpack. Then, he placed the backpack on the seat next to him and covered it with his body. It was more than just jumping on top of his camera. Sounds like there’s some confidence about his intention.

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toss1 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

iirc, Pompeii was a pyroclastic flow [0], a fast-moving current of hot gas and volcanic matter with speeds between 100-700 km/hr and temperatures up to 1000°C. So, probably something like that, but a lot bigger, faster, and arriving faster from further away.

I was surprised how long the camera lasted getting buried. It'd be a not good end.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow

	▲	fsckboy 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		i just posted a sister comment to yours about the Mt St Helens explosion, with a picture from 1980, and then i noticed that they are calling (it's a non technical article) what rained down in the photograph onto the camera and photographer "pyroclastic flow" and it looks very similar to what happened here.
	▲	asdfman123 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, they likely saw it racing down the mountain and then met their doom fairly immediately.