A note from the Kumamoto International desk of the Several Ways that Volcanoes can Kill You: We won’t discuss the recent Hawaiian eruption, which resulted in magma flowing to the sea causing the sea salt to turn into a sodium chloride gas that will suffocate everything in its vicinity because those types of hot spot volcanoes do not occur in Japan and are anyway easily avoidable if you’re not stupid. Or a bird.
Japanese eruptions, being subductive, don’t present such danger; instead, there are two others: ejecta (rocks hurled up to kilometers from the site - ever notice really large rocks in Kumamoto whose existence is difficult to explain? -probably ejecta), and pyroclastic flow, which is a very hot mixture of ash and gasses that flows down from a volcano much faster than you can move away - basically, if you see pyroclastic flow within a kilometer from its origin, it’s probably the last thing you’ll ever see.
The reason I bring this up is that the guy who had died in the Mt. Vesuvius eruption of A.D. 79 and whose demise was assumed to have been due to a huge boulder landing on his face (ejecta - see photo) actually appears to have died from pyroclastic flow suffocation, with the boulder coming later as a cherry-on-cake kind of thing.
Mt. Pompei is very similar to Mt. Aso. Ejecta is cause for concern; pyroclastic flow leaves nothing alive in its wake. Then again, you might find yourself famous 2,000 years later. - William
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/30/europe/pompeii-victim-new-findings/index.html
